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

VIsta & PPT 2003 Jumping Objects

A problem I have encountered on Vista computers here (Vista Ultimate) and several others I have spoken with have experienced is truly frustrating. Note: this may be caused by Logitech or Wacom drivers, but I have not had time to test to verify.

In PowerPoint 2003 you go to click on any object – image, text box, autoshape, etc. – and it jumps up and to the right. It’s not your unsteady hand, but a Vista “incompatability.” There is an easy solution up next.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:58:58-08:00May 13th, 2007|Tutorial|

VIsta & PPT 2003 Adv. Animation Pane

This one almost had me uninstalling Vista. this one invovles the Custom Animation pane open and set to view the Advanced Animation view (where the animations are shown on the timeline).

The problem (seen on multiple computers) is when you click and drag the animation bar to a new position, it basically disapears until you unclick. The result is loosing all ability to easily and accurately fine tune animations.

Again, there is a solution which is in the next post 🙂

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:57:58-08:00May 11th, 2007|Tutorial|

PPT 2003 and Vista

I am now feeling confident running Vista and all of my applications. But it may not be my recommendation for the person unwilling to research hacks and settings to overcome the many situations that come up. On my primary system I have all versions of PowerPoint installed. In many instances client needs determine the software used. Although PowerPoint 2007 is wonderful, I am living in a PowerPoint XP-2003 world.

So if you have upgraded to Windows Vista and use PPT 2003, I have a few fixes to problems. The next two posts will explain usability problems and the third will cure both!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:57:26-08:00May 9th, 2007|Tutorial|

Informm Presentation Professional Survey

Infocomm is doing a follow-up to last years survey where they collected input from presentation professionals. I entered my info, which took about 6 minutes and the best part is this year they are making the results available to all that participate (must enter an email address at end of survey).

Click here to go to the survey.
Note: All submissions due by May 19th.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:57:04-08:00May 7th, 2007|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

PPT 2003 to 2007 Commands

If you have installed PowerPoint 2007, you know the User Interface with its new Ribbon layout is very different! Keep this Microsoft website handy as you begin to relearn how to do everything.

This interactive Flash page allows you to click and choose almost any feature in a PPT 2003 simulation and then it shows where to find the same command in PPT 2007. Click here to try it.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:56:05-08:00April 12th, 2007|Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

Backstage

On a recent project in Dallas (the one that took me 10.5 hours on the plane to arrive from San Diego (should be a 2.5 hr flight)), the event photographer took this photo and emailed it me – thanks Sal!

The nice side lighting is actually a combination of another laptop monitor and the 12×9 screen in front of me. Despite the great photo, I am as usual working in the dark…

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:55:24-08:00April 10th, 2007|Personal|

Existing Presentation to Widescreen (pt 2)

For the best quality layout and graphics when converting an existing presentation to widescreen I go through several steps. Note: 1-4 assure that new widescreen presentation maintains all formatting such as fonts, custom bullets, default color scheme, header/footer, etc.

1. Open existing presentation

2. Save As (name)_WideScreen.ppt

3. Delete all slides

4. Change page size to needed widescreen size

2. If background artwork is developed in Photoshop, modify in Photoshop to create new version of artwork that is setup for new widescreen aspect ratio

3. Update the master slide(s) with modified artwork and adjust formatting to fit widescreen layout

Now I have a widescreen template of my presentation.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:54:14-08:00April 6th, 2007|Tutorial|

Existing Presentation to Widescreen

So you have an existing presentation, created as a standard 4×3 aspect ratio (10″x7.5″). But you have a wide screen for your next meeting. EASY, from the previous post you know to go to FILE >> PAGE SETUP and modify the size — DOHHH, everything is messed up now!

Here is a standard 4×3 presentation (10″x7.5″)

After changing the Page Setup to 16″x9″ you end up with this

Note:
– Imported graphics and autoshapes all distort
– Standard PowerPoint text keeps its aspect ratio

There is no instant or easy way to do this… but in the next post I will give a few suggestions.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T15:53:22-08:00April 4th, 2007|Tutorial|
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