The PowerPoint® Blog

I work with PowerPoint on a daily basis and I am very honored to be a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP. We have a talented team of presentation designers at TLC Creative Services and ThePowerPointBlog is our area to highlight PowerPoint tips, tricks, examples and tutorials. Enjoy! Troy Chollar

Top 5 memories of the 2024 Presentation Summit

The 2024 Presentation Summit conference has concluded, with separate in-person and virtual editions. This year marks the end, or as it was labelled, “The Last Hurrah” of the in-person conference, with only a virtual conference scheduled for next year.

Both events were fantastic to attend. And after some reflection, here are 5 of my favorite memories of the conference this year.

1. SUNSETS AND STARGAZING

  • Enjoying a venue in California that’s directly on the Pacific Ocean with a sandy beach, palm trees, and the Channel Islands as our view was wonderful. With temperatures in the 70s made for amazing sunset gatherings each night! Having the once in 80,000 years “A3” comet on the horizon just after sunset – and being surrounded by people that figured out how to take long exposure night photos, at just the right location in the sky, so we could really see the comet – was truly cool!

2. TLC CREATIVE WAS THERE

  • TLC Creative Services was happily in many places during the conference.
    • We sponsored the event t-shirt swag.
    • We showed up with “Hello” stickers to accompany the event shirt and many had fun with them.
    • We hosted a PowerPoint Microsoft MVP podcast recording (and wine tasting).
    • Lori dazzled with a session showcasing real-client work (no NDA content revealed!).
    • I presented with a demo for 9 Microsoft PowerPoint add-in tools, showcasing real-world client formatting examples (ironically, 20 years ago I spoke on PowerPoint add-ins for design productivity!)

3. THEN AND NOW

  • Conference Director Ric Altman insisted on a session entitled “Then and Now”. And it was, to my surprise, an overflowing room of people! The talk went great, and everyone had a lot of fun looking at the past and comparing it to the present.

4. 45-IN-45 and UNICORN FARTS

  • Seemingly non-related session topics, all connected by presentation design, makes every memory of the Presentation Summit conference perfect. Nolan Haims, in a 45-minute session, delivered 45 absolutely amazing PowerPoint formatting tips! And the (in)famous Stephy Hogan took her AI session about creating presentation content to realms never imagined by a conference director (unicorn farts as an energy source)!

5. 22 YEARS

  • Finally, as I reflect on my Summit attendee badge with 19 stars, each star representing a Summit I attended, I still believe I should have 21 stars! (Yes, I was technically a guest at a San Diego summit for a half day on my way to Montreal for a client meeting, and I’m still searching for proof of the other star…) Regardless, over the years I’ve enjoyed some fantastic sessions, had amazing offsite dinners with large (10+) and small groups of other presentation people, and in general having the opportunity to be around so many amazing presentation people.

By |2024-11-06T12:48:58-08:00November 7th, 2024|Personal|

TPP e209 – Live From the Presentation Summit

The 2024 Presentation Summit, held at the picturesque Zachary Dunes Resort in Central California, brought together a vibrant community of PowerPoint presentation
professionals – including 13 (of the 39) Microsoft awarded the title “MVP for Microsoft PowerPoint”. This episode captures the essence of the Presentation Summit conference and showcases the camaraderie, expertise, and innovative insights of the PowerPoint MVPs! Listen in as they discuss AI, presentation design, and many other hot-button presentation topics!

Join the conversation through your favorite podcast app, or at the episode 209 webpage that includes the shownotes, links to pro-and-tech-tips, and photos of the Presentation Summit!

By |2024-11-04T16:52:20-08:00November 5th, 2024|PowerPoint|

A 2024 Happy Halloween – PowerPoint Animation/Movie

Jake Seelye, part of the TLC Creative Presentation Design Team and Showsite GFX Lead, created this mini Halloween themed PowerPoint movie!

Halloween is a favorite holiday for my family, so I was thrilled to be asked to create a Halloween themed animation using only PowerPoint for this year. One of my favorite memories around this time of year was when my friends and I would go to Knott’s Scary Farm and experience all the haunted houses and mazes.

Click play and turn on sound!

Haunted houses are certainly iconic for this holiday, and this was the inspiration behind this animation. First, I found a fun haunted mansion style stock art, along with some clouds in the background, to setup the main art and focal point of the animation:

PowerPoint’s amazing Morph transition was then used to zoom into the house, keeping the elements of the background as separate graphics to create a subtle “parallax effect.”

The seamless animation that morph provides worked well to give the feeling of walking up to an old creepy house on top of a hill. The screen capture above highlights how thinking “outside the slide” when setting up Morph animations is needed to create cinematic effects.

The next scene was the most complex, as there were many moving parts to create a fun cinematic visual animation. The lightning and simultaneous flashes of the environment here were created using simple PPT animations and graphic editing. The lightning bolts themselves were setup using “Wipe Down” and set to be quick, much like actual lightning. The “lit up” landscape was created by adding in a duplicate background graphic over the top of the house, with the brightness and contrast turned up quite a bit to simulate how lightning lights up the land around it.

A small but fun detail of this scene is the Jack-O-Lantern on the porch, with the “Pulse” animation on the eyes and mouth to make them appear to glow and flicker, set to repeat until the next slide/scene.

Finally, to add to the eerie atmosphere, I added some fall leaves to blow through the scene, using motion paths, and duplicating them while randomizing the timing:

This is a lot of animations and elements on one slide, all for about 8 seconds of actual animation, which really makes you appreciate the real animation artists out there who make full 2-hour animated films.

The final act of the animation features a Witch soaring into the skies above the haunted mansion and creating a “Happy Halloween” visual across the starlit background. The first part of this was achieved with morph once again, as a way to move from the mansion background to the starry sky background, in an upwards motion, and to also move the Witch across the screen as if she was flying.

Almost counterintuitive is the animation pane on this slide is empty, but the slide is full of animation (Morph transition at work).

Finally, the Happy Halloween ending was created using a motion path for the witch, and a “wipe right” animation for the letters, as if the Witch were creating the greeting with her magical broom.

And that’s it! With some time, trial and error, and creative usage of PowerPoint’s animation tools, you can actually create pretty fun movie without ever having to leave PowerPoint!

-Jake

By |2024-10-08T15:34:22-07:00October 31st, 2024|PowerPoint|

AI For Presentation ShowDown

At the 2024 Presentation Summit conference I was invited to be part of a fun event, “The AI for Presentation Showdown”. The goal was 5 event presenters each had 4 minutes to display a real-world application of an AI tool of their choice used for presentation – which could mean presentation design, presentation content creation, etc.

My AI tool was using Microsoft CoPilot, from within PowerPoint, to provide a 3rd party/unbiased review of the presentation and provide a summary of the content, based on the slide content. The prompt was simply “Summarize this presentation”. The idea is to review with the presenter and see if the external summary of the presentation message aligned with the message they planned.

I think this is a great use of AI as it provides an unbiased review and summary, which is a great conversation starter.

(note: I intended to have a video of my portion of this talk, but sadly no video was captured…)

Troy @ TLC

By |2024-10-24T07:51:54-07:00October 24th, 2024|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

Fun with Friends at the 2024 Presentation Summit

The 2024 Presentation Summit with ~200 presentation designers, trainers and speakers is a great place to be this week! In addition to being directly on the California beach with amazing sunsets, we heard from amazing presenters from Guy Kawasaki to Sally Koering Zimney. We have been with many, many amazing presentation designers, we’ve being geeky and gathering around computer screens to see the presentation work of others, we’ve enjoyed group dinners, and even star gazed to try and get long exposure photos of the Comet A3 just after sunset.

Troy & Lori @ TLC

By |2024-10-21T21:05:58-07:00October 22nd, 2024|Personal|

WeCompress is the Online Version of NXPowerlite!

If you’re frequently working with large files, especially images and presentations like the TLC Creative design team does every day, you might already be familiar with the pain point of dealing with oversized files. WeCompress is an online app designed to alleviate this problem by compressing a wide variety of file types — whether you want to compress PDFs, PowerPoint Presentations, Word documents, or images.

At its core, WeCompress is essentially a free, web-based version of the popular NXPowerLite desktop application. Developed by the same team at Neuxpower (who makes NXPowerlite), WeCompress allows users to upload and compress files without the need for installation, account or subscription. This makes it incredibly convenient for anyone who needs quick, on-the-go file compression, especially for presentations or documents that exceed email attachment limits.

One thing to keep in mind when using WeCompress, especially for images, is that it doesn’t save your files into different formats. For instance, if you’re working with a TIFF image that you’d like to use in a presentation, you want to convert it to an optimized PNG. But that’s not how WeCompress works. Instead, it will compress the file while keeping its original format intact. So, if format conversion is part of your workflow, you’ll need to use a different tool.

TIP: there is a file size limit. WeCompress will allow files up to 50MB.

TIP/or maybe this is a Public Service Announcement (PSA): the wecompress website contains A LOT of sponsor ads – everywhere on it. While these ads help keep the service free, they can be distracting or misleading, so be cautious about what you click on. Stick to the main functionality of the site, and you’ll be good.

The TLC Creative design team has the desktop version, NXPowerlite, on all design computers. NXPowerlite allows for larger file sizes (ugh, 2GB + presentations!), batch compressing of multiple files, and more advanced features like custom profiles.

Let’s walk through a demo of how to compress a file using WeCompress.com:

  1. On https://www.wecompress.com/, upload a file for compression by either dragging the file to the upload area or clicking the purple + icon in the middle of the screen.
  2. Select a file for optimization, then click OPEN.
  3. The file uploads (FAQ says it is a temp file and not stored after file compression completes)
  4. After the upload is complete, there is a notice that file compression is in process.
  5. Once the file is ready to download, a “File Ready” notice appears with the new file size, and information about the percentage of compression.
  6. Click DOWNLOAD FILE. The new file name has (wecompress.com) added to the original file name.
  7. After download, a successful download notice with a link to compress another file if needed.

That’s it. Easy, quick (depending on file size and internet speed), and free! WeCompress offers only 1 compress option with no levels of compression or profiles, which is possible in NXPowerlite. Bookmark WeCompress and test it, the TLC Creative design team has used it many times (especially when working on provided show computers that lack our suite of apps and settings).

-Amber

By |2024-10-03T20:57:28-07:00October 17th, 2024|Software/Add-Ins|

TPP e208 – Mike Power

One of the superpowers of PowerPoint is its ability to allow third party add-ins to expand its functionality. Neuxpower is the software company behind NXPowerlite and Slidewise, two add-ins installed on every computer at TLC Creative Services. Mike Power of Neuxpower spends some time with us talking about PowerPoint, add-ins, and what’s new on the horizon!

Join the conversation through your favorite podcast app, or at the episode 208 page, with shownotes.

Click here to listen.

By |2024-10-11T06:42:38-07:00October 15th, 2024|PowerPoint|

Build-A-Graphic Review

Build-A-Graphic seamlessly integrates with Microsoft PowerPoint, whether you’re using it on Windows, Mac, or PowerPoint Online. It offers a massive 10K+ library of pre-made, but fully editable graphics. Including graphs, charts, infographics, a favorite- Isometric (2D with a fixed 45º grid to easily align and mix-and-match) elements, and much more.

On the technical side, this is a JS Add-in (install through the “add-in” button on the PowerPoint Insert tab). As a JS add-in it enables it to be used within PowerPoint Online, and on any computer you are logged in with the registered Microsoft account.

Click the Build-a-Graphic button on the PowerPoint HOME tab. From the Build-A-Graphic action pane, search its library, or view the graphics by category and then by graphic type.

One of the best things about virtually all of the Build-A-Graphic content is they can be edited in PowerPoint; colors, text and other elements can be adjusted to align with a brand or the theme of the presentation. As an example graphic, here is a before (default on left) and after (customized on right) graphic. Colors and font changed; some content removed for a graphic customized to align with the presentation’s design.

A lot of the graphics include tips on how to edit them. As example, This Funnel graphic has a tip in the lower left about ungrouping to customize.

TIP: remove these tips before presenting!

As mentioned earlier, the primary advantage we see, is Build-A-Graphic content is PowerPoint native vector art and significant edits can be made directly within PowerPoint, saving time and simplifying the workflow. When ungrouped, elements can be deleted, customized, or replaced. A good example is that many of the graphics include icons. But the icons are not “locked” to the graphic, but separate elements (when ungrouped in PowerPoint) allowing each graphic element to be modified with different icons easily. For advanced editing beyond PowerPoint’s capabilities, graphics can be exported from PowerPoint as .SVG vector graphics and edited in Adobe Illustrator (then copy/pasted back to the slide).

Aside from the main draw of the graphic design library, one feature we like is the “Chunking” feature (yes, that is the real name!). With one click you can turn a slide full of text into separate smaller text blocks, in a stylized visual layout. Those smaller text blocks can then be modified as needed to better fit on the slide.

As example, here is a slide with 3, dense, paragraphs of text (Lorum Ipsum text for the example):

Using the “Chunk Text by Paragraph” tool, it separates the Lorem Ipsum text into separate text boxes and into separate paragraphs in one click. This can be just a starter and the new text boxes and styling elements can be edits, resized, recolored as best for the slide and content/message.

Incorporating Build-A-Graphic into a design routine can be a good time saver and an easy path to creating visual slides that stand out. Being able to quickly tweak graphics inside PowerPoint keeps things simple, especially when you’re working against tight deadlines. While it may not replace specialized graphic design software for more complex projects, it has the breadth of graphics to offer a convenient solution for enhancing slides directly within PowerPoint.

Note: Build-A-Graphic is a subscription and locks the subscription to the registered Microsoft ID (eg. your Microsoft 365 account) – and this is the first software we have used that leverages the Microsoft ID as the user.

See examples and details at the Build-A-Graphic website here.

By |2024-10-07T19:36:50-07:00October 10th, 2024|Software/Add-Ins|

How PowerPoint can use Adobe CC Fonts

The Adobe Creative Cloud font library is vast, with a much larger offering of font options than Microsoft provides. The question is, can an Adobe Creative Cloud font be used in a PowerPoint presentation? 

The quick answer is “yes”, but there are some gotchas to know about. The first gotcha is that to use Adobe fonts (anywhere) an Adobe Creative Cloud account is needed. Once you have signed up for the Adobe CC service, download and install the Adobe Creative Cloud app from the website. Then login using your credentials. To find fonts, you can use the Adobe Creative Cloud app.  From the menu on the CC homepage, click the “f” icon to navigate to Adobe Fonts: 

Once here, you can see the Adobe fonts you have added to your CC account or have installed on your computer. “Added Fonts” are all fonts you have simply added to your CC account. “Installed Fonts” are fonts you’ve added AND installed on your computer (this is an important distinction).  

To find more fonts to use, you can browse fonts via the Adobe Fonts website by clicking on the “BROWSE MORE FONTS” button: 

You can find all fonts in the Adobe library here. Filter fonts by tags like “calligraphic”, “clean”, “rounded”, along with serif, sans serif and other properties.  

Once you find a font you’d like to use, click “ADD FAMILY”. This will add the font to your CC account: 

You’ll be prompted to open the CC app back up. Then you can find the font(s) that you’ve added there. And here is the second gotcha: you can’t use the new fonts in PowerPoint until you click “install family”. This will allow you to not only use the font in PowerPoint, but across other apps on your computer!  

The computer now has the installed Adobe fonts available to ALL apps, including PowerPoint! However, you’ll need to restart PowerPoint for the fonts to be recognized. 

On the list of gotchas – PowerPoint does not have a warning when fonts are used in a presentation but not installed on that computer. So, knowing an Adobe font is needed, is not obvious when a presentation is opened. 

And one final gotcha: anyone wanting to view or edit a presentation using an Adobe font must have an Adobe CC account and install the font on their computer through that CC account. For designers and some corporate users this won’t be much of an issue. This is because the Adobe CC suite is widely in use by this group (just remember to install the Adobe CC font). However, for many corporate users, using a presentation with Adobe CC fonts will be an issue if they do not have an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. 

-Jake @ TLC

By |2024-09-06T17:57:24-07:00October 8th, 2024|PowerPoint|
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