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

Office 2010 Available – In 5 Versions

Office 2010 is officially available to all, and I highly recommend upgrading. Microsoft has released Office 2010 in 6 versions/bundles. The good news is PowerPoint is in all versions!

Pricing ranges from $150 to $680. Microsoft has a free upgrade from Office 2007 promotion going and I have seen deals as low as $60 using the promo!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T11:27:06-07:00June 15th, 2010|Resource/Misc|

Design For Speed Slide

This is from a recent presentation project.
Designing For Speed Sample Slide

The slide started with 2 original images:

In photoshop I dropped out the background of each and saved as .png images with transparency.

Then each image was inserted to the slide, a simple FADE IN animation applied to the top image for the transformation.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T11:28:32-07:00June 9th, 2010|Portfolio|

Las Vegas Themed Template

Flying to Las Vegas today to coordinate the presentation graphics for a show. In the spirit of Vegas, here is a previous show’s template I developed that was in Las Vegas, with a visual Las Vegas Blvd/Strip theme.

From the top:
1. Content
2. Title
3. Full Frame Content (no logo or title area graphics)
4. Specialty slide for section dividers
5. Theme graphic (no text)

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T11:29:59-07:00June 6th, 2010|Templates/Assets|

Why Can’t I Move The Logo on the Master Slide?

Here is my sample slide:

I decide the logo, on the master slide, needs to be moved down for more content area.

When go to VIEW >> SLIDE MASTER and try to move the logo I cannot click and select it.

Because the master slide view opened to the layout slide.

If I click the Master Slide above the layouts I can select the logo, move it and it will update on all of the layout masters.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T11:32:15-07:00June 2nd, 2010|Tutorial|

The New View of ‘Arrange All’ Presentations!

PPT 2010 now displays each presentation in its own instance of the application. What does this mean?

Here is a real world example (eg. my current project), where I have 2 screens and a separate presentation for each. In designing I need to view the presentations side-by-side. To do this it is the same as before: VIEW >> ARRANGE ALL. This is a screen capture of one monitor.

But the big difference is each presentation is contained in its very own application. Each has its own ribbon!

This is just one example of the new feature – and I am using it every day.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T11:32:35-07:00May 30th, 2010|Tutorial|

Email Through Cell Phone Can Be Bad

Don’t get me wrong, I live by my cell phone and definitely do more email than talking. I actually do almost as much texting as talking. But the small keyboard and onscreen touch keyboards combined with intuitive word completion (where the phone guesses at your words) is creating a bad communication experience.

As example – this is a recent email received (not a text message, but email) that was typed on a mobile phone:
“Is there something I’m supposed to so or the presenter?”

Translation (after a phone call to figure out the original message) = “Got your email and just want to confirm there is nothing I need to do at this time while we wait for the presenter to review the presentation proof.”

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T11:32:56-07:00May 28th, 2010|Personal|

Toggle Normal Edit view and Slide Sorter View

In the lower right corner are the shortcut buttons to change the view (normal, edit, slide show – and reading in PPT 2010), plus the zoom tools.

In my sample I am in the Slide Sorter view:

If I want to edit an individual slide, I select the slide and click the far left button for Normal/Edit view.

But the Slide Sorter button is also a toggle. When in Slide Sorter view, click the slide sorter button again and you change to the Normal view. Click it again and you go back to Slide Sorter.

This works in PPT 2007 and 2010. Not really a time saving shortcut as the buttons are literally next to each other – but it is a little known feature.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T11:33:17-07:00May 26th, 2010|Tutorial|

PPTXtreme Add-ins and Windows 7 with PPT 2010

I am a huge fan of the PPTXtreme PowerPoint add-ins. They make much of my development time up to 5X more efficient and in some cases make the impractical, practical.

With PPT 2007 a few of the add-ins lost functionality. Namely ‘Color Picker’ and ‘Photoshop Import’ (which is one of those HUGE time saver add-ins for me).

Now with my new computers running Windows 7 and PPT 2010 I have the sad reality that none of the PPTXtreme add-ins function… I did some experimenting to try and find a solution like I did with Vista (where I installed outside the ‘Programs’ folder and then manually added permissions). The bad news is nothing, for me, got these add-ins functioning.

The good news is, it is not entirely PPT 2010 that is the conflict. Here is PPT 2010 opening and a selection of the PPTXtreme Add-ins loading – and working.

In this case it is PPT 2010 installed on a Windows XP Pro OS. My install tricks for Vista have no effect in Windows 7, so the sad reality is Windows 7 + PPT 2010 leaves PPTXtreme unavailable.

I have talked with the PPTXtreme developer and fingers crossed that there may be a round of development going into the add-ins as soon as this summer to update compatability (which would hopefully mean a fall time release).

Stay tuned for a hopeful update later this year.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-16T11:34:17-07:00May 24th, 2010|Software/Add-Ins|
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