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

DVD Menu

Well I have been asked several times in the past few weeks what I have been working on, for examples of projects and if I really do anything… Hmmm, the website is a bit out dated and the blog has lots of tutorials but few samples. I can see where these statements are coming from as there is little current online proof that I really do work on lots of projects.

So most of this month will be dedicated to showing some examples of recent projects (at least the ones I can, as many are under NDA – and where needed I will substitute the TLC logo in place of company/event logos).

To kick things off – here is a DVD menu layout designed for a recent project (yes that’s greeking text to protect the innocent – me).

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T11:08:33-07:00February 2nd, 2009|Portfolio|

Pecha Kucha (Tonight)

Pecha Kucha is something that sounds fun and may be a great skill builder for presenters. Basically Pecha Kucha forces presenters to create an on-the-fly presentation. They are given a topic, 20 slides, and 20 seconds per slide. It was created in Tokyo, Japan in 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

If you are in the NorthEast, head over to the free Calypso Communications event in Portsmouth NH. Click here for a story outlining the event and Pecha Kucha.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T11:09:22-07:00January 29th, 2009|Resource/Misc|

Resize Preview To Fit-to-Screen: PPT vs. Photoshop

To quickly get the “big picture” you may need to see the whole slide or image. There are some great keyboard shortcuts to do this, but they are different in PPT 2003, PPT 2007 and Photoshop.

PowerPoint 2003:
Option 1: Use the drop-down menu and choose FIT

Option 2: Install the PPTools free StarterSet and click the magnifying glass icon

PowerPoint 2007
Click the ‘Fit to Window’ button in the lower right corner

Photoshop:
CTRL + 0 (zero)

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T11:09:46-07:00January 27th, 2009|Tutorial|

Resize and Keep Aspect Ratio: PPT vs. Photoshop

Another great feature is resizing (enlarging or shrinking) images and autoshapes from any corner and have it maintain the same aspect ratio.

This feature is available in PowerPoint and Photoshop, using the SAME key combination.

PowerPoint: SHIFT + adjust with mouse

Photoshop: SHIFT + adjust with mouse

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T11:10:07-07:00January 25th, 2009|Tutorial|

Resize From Center: PPT vs. Photoshop

A great feature is resizing (enlarging or shrinking) images and autoshapes from their center point.

This feature is available in PowerPoint and Photoshop, but using different key combinations.

PowerPoint: CTRL + SHIFT + adjust with mouse

Photoshop: CTRL + ALT + adjust with mouse

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T11:10:30-07:00January 23rd, 2009|Tutorial|

Change Photoshop Ruler Measurement

I have been using Photoshop since version 2 (the dark ages of computer design) and just had Lori point out a cool feature I never knew existed!

I know PowerPoint is our topic, but I work in Photoshop virtually everyday preparing images for templates and presentations. In this case I was moving back and forth between PPT images that are measured in pixels and a print layout that was measured in inches. So, I was constantly going into the preferences and changing the rulers until Lori came over and pointed out a better way.

If you RIGHT-CLICK the ruler in Photoshop, it can instantly (and easily) be changed!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T11:10:49-07:00January 21st, 2009|Tutorial|

“Just Rename It To .PPSX”… (doesn’t work)

In the old days (PPT 95 through 2003), the only difference between a presentation and a show was the extension. So if you had a presentation and wanted it to open in slideshow view, just the file extension had to be renamed. But in the new world (now 2 years old) of PPT 2007 that does not work.

1. Here is our test file – a .pptx (PPT 2007 presentation)

2. Manually change the file extension (.pptx), changing the “T” to an “S”, and Windows gives this confirmation dialog

3. The icon changes to the PowerPoint Show icon and the extension is .ppsx

4. But when you try to open the file you get this error

5. Why? Because any Office 2007 file with an “x” in the file extension is really a .zip file with lots of individual files inside it. Changing the extension does not directly change the file any longer, so the quick fix of ‘just rename it’ no longer works…

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-16T11:11:15-07:00January 19th, 2009|Tutorial|

Group to Adjust Line Length in PPT 07

Okay so the ‘little’ bug in PPT 2007 is driving you crazy! The fix is on the way with SP2 for Office 2007 (really), but you need to adjust the length of your straight lines today.

Here is a PPT 07 line

To adjust length AND maintain same angle you hold down the SHIFT KEY + CLICK on end of line and it zooms out to infinity

One solution is to duplicate the line, group the 2 lines together, then adjust the length of the group

The original line stays in the same position, the length was adjusted, the angle was maintained! Now ungroup and delete the duplicate line leaving you with the adjusted line (made shorter in this example)

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T12:03:05-08:00January 15th, 2009|Tutorial|
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