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

PowerPoint’s ‘Inspect Document’ Feature

Here is one of the new features that has been overlooked by most. Some of its functions were possible in prevous versions, some were possible using add-ins. So I have a mini-series of posts on what the INSPECT DOCUMENT feature in PPT 2007 can do for you.

To access:
Office Button >> Prepare >> Inspect Document

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:06:43-07:00July 8th, 2009|Tutorial|

4th July Text

I had a few emails asking about the 4th of July post. I did most of the work in Photoshop compositing the red/white rays with the fireworks. Then in PPT 2007 I added the TLC logo, a radial gradient shape under the logo to help it have contrast and be visible and finally created the text using PPT 2007 gradient fill options.

The text is a custom font (Albert, which is license restricted so not embedded – will default to some other font on your computer…). I added a custom 3 step gradient, bold outline and near opaque drop shadow (needed on the visually busy background used in previous post). The slide can be downloaded here.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:07:09-07:00July 6th, 2009|Portfolio, Tutorial|

Difference Between ‘Header/Footer’ and ‘Slide Number’ Buttons

One of the great things about PowerPoint is there is almost always more than one way to do things. And almost always the multiple ways of doing things are found in different areas of the program. But one that can be confusing is the ‘Header/Footer’ and ‘Slide Number’ buttons.

I guess the confusion is that they open the exact same dialog box. They are located on the same tab. And located on the same section.

It does not matter which you use. As example, it’s okay to click the ‘Header/Footer’ button and turn on the page numbering. I believe it is just another example of statistics leading the development process. Statistics probably showed a lot of users (tested or observed) where unaware of how to setup page numbers. The obvious answer was to add an easy to identify button labeled ‘Page Number’ – problem solved.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:07:29-07:00July 3rd, 2009|Tutorial|

Anoto – A Pen For Presentations

At last years PPTLive conference I spent some time talking with the Anoto people about their new product and how it could be used for presenters. Well the product has launched and I look forward to talking more with them about presentation solutions.

Anoto makes an ink pen that captures the writing and wirelessly (bluetooth) can make it show up onscreen.

For presentations, think of this as the ‘ink’ features on steriods. The idea is to print out your slides, then for each slide draw any notations on your printout and they show up onscreen – all without having to have a computer in front of you. You could be sitting with the audience with only a clipboard and your pen – as long as you are within range of the receiver.

The Boston Globe recently did a story on Anoto which has more information.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:07:57-07:00July 1st, 2009|Resource/Misc|

Mountain Biking in a Live Fire Area

Had a great ride the other day and I faithfully followed by Garmin Edge 305 GPS (allows you to download trail maps so you don’t get completely lost) and about 8 miles into my ride I come across this sign:

I think it means I was on a really really great trail!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:08:54-07:00June 29th, 2009|Personal|

Clear Text Styles

So you are working in PPT 2007 and enjoying the great design tools like the ability to stylize any text (because all text is WordArt now).

I start with this:

Then we stylize it to look like this:

But later we decide we want it back to standard text – like this:

How do you do that….

Select the text >> go to the Draw-Format tab >> click the drop down to show the full menu of the preset styles >> at the very bottom is the ‘clear wordart’ option (remember, ALL text is now wordart)

Done!

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:09:41-07:00June 25th, 2009|Tutorial|

Lunch with Ric B.

Last week between events I was able to stop by the Microsoft Mountain View campus for a few hours and have lunch with Ric Bretschneider. It was one of the first summer sunny days in the area and we enjoyed a great alfresco meal at Michael’s on Shoreline.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:10:04-07:00June 23rd, 2009|Personal|

HPV CDROM UI

Multimedia projects are wonderful because they are so visual. But what do you do when the presentation is to be distributed on a CDROM – burn file(s) to CDROM and distribute?

Here is an example from a recent project where I developed a simple UI (user interface) application that launches when the CDROM is inserted.

– The background is the PowerPoint Title slide layout for a coordinated look.
– The Play button opens the presentation from the CDROM
– The Install button runs a custom scripted installer that creates a folder on computer, copies files to folder, adds shortcuts to the presentation on the desktop and start menu, and finally includes an uninstaller that deletes all the files.
– The Exit button closes the UI.

Overall, a pretty basic project. But it adds a professional initial look to your distributed presentation.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T10:10:23-07:00June 21st, 2009|Portfolio|
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