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

Zoom In on the Advanced Animation Timeline

I know I have covered this as part of other tutorials, but here a quick recap of this highly useful trick.

Here is the situation: you want to create a “waterfall” animation for your text (where each line fades in, overlapping the previous fade in animation). You apply the animation, view timeline in Advanced view and go to slide each animation bar but get frustrated with it jumping around…

Try this: click on the word “SECONDS” at the bottom. Choose “ZOOM IN” and do this 2-3x’s. Now the animation pane has been zoomed in and the animation bars are much wider – making it easier to slide them precisely where you want!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:49:08-08:00June 11th, 2006|Tutorial|

Perspector 3 Update

This week Steve Hards from Perspector sent me an notice that they have released a minor update to its recently released version 3. The update installs on top of existing versions and in addition to fixing some minor bugs, has a huge upgrade to the image quality!

Perspector is a 3D add-in that allows you to convert any object or text on a slide to a true 3D element. It has a great library of 3D template objects which can be easily modified to match your slide.


Check out Perspector and download the update here.

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:50:04-08:00June 7th, 2006|Software/Add-Ins|

Animation Sample – Move and Grow

This is a quick animation sample that I created based on yesterday’s posted tutorial. Here I start with a small image and combine a MOTION PATH with a GROW EMPHASIS and finally a fully size image FADE IN. The result is some visually dynamic onscreen action, that overcomes one of PowerPoint’s raster graphic limitations.

Click here to download the PowerPoint file (500k).

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:50:27-08:00June 5th, 2006|Portfolio, Tutorial|

Grow-Shrink Animation – Part II

This is a continuation of the Part I post on May 22. In this tutorial PowerPoint presentation I make a photo shrink and then grow back to its 100%, without any resolution loss. Okay, so it is a tutorial on how to use animation to fake it, but the results are great and it is a technique I use on many projects.

Click here to download the PowerPoint file (900k). The entire animation sequence is broken down into individual steps over 10 slides.

And there is a forthcoming part three, which is another technique for making an image grow, without resolution loss.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:51:10-08:00June 3rd, 2006|Tutorial|

Xcelsius PowerPoint Ready Samples

PPT MVP, Glenna Shaw, has added some new Xcelsius samples and downloadable “templates” for all to use in their presentations. Even more fun, is that all of the samples are working on her site as web-page items. Play with them and download from here.

If you are unfamiliar with Xcelsius, have some good MS Excel skills, and want to really make charts and graphs POP in a presentation, this is an incredible application to use. Click here to visit the Xcelsius website.

Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:51:29-08:00June 1st, 2006|Software/Add-Ins|

Steve Jobs 1984 Presentation

I prepare lots of presentations for company executives, for lots of big events. The presentations are like mini-Hollywood productions: animations, photography, precise timing to coordinate with the speakers script, wide-screens, multiple screens (up to 160′ of screen!), etc.

But take a journey back in time and it is almost amazing to me what was high-tech and “unbelievable.” Click here to view Steve Jobs original keynote speach unvieling the Macintosh computer.

Note: the computer display during the presentation is not connected to anything but shot with a camera that is projected.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:51:49-08:00May 30th, 2006|Personal, Resource/Misc|

Perspector 3 adds 3D Shapes to PowerPoint


Yesterday I downloaded and installed the latest version of Perspector – version 3, which was released earlier this week. The update (from version 2) went smooth and in experimenting it is easy to see that it now has even even larger library of 3D elements and some really impressive charts. Check out all of the details at the Perspector website!

Glen Miller, has some great tutorials and samples using Perspector. Click here to see some real world samples of Perspector in use.

~ Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:53:02-08:00May 26th, 2006|Software/Add-Ins|

Office 2007 – Beta 2

Yesterday was the official release of Office 2007 Beta 2. Anyone is free to download (for free) and see what all the news is about. Of course being a beta, not everything is working 100%, but the new User Interface has to be experienced as words cannot explain it sufficiently. Even more impressive is seeing the new charts and tables engine in action!

The download is 550MB, so have a fast connection. Click here to go to Microsofts Beta download site (wait for the flash animation to finish and click the “Try Now” button).

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:53:23-08:00May 24th, 2006|PowerPoint|

Enlarge an Image (Part 1)

There are some great animation effects that can be achieved using the “Emphasis” animations. One of the more frustrating is the Grow/Shrink emphasis. I have a developed a two part tutorial to go into details on how best to use this animation effect. Download Part I here (1 MB PPT file).

Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:53:41-08:00May 22nd, 2006|Tutorial|
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