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

Online Movie Tutorial : Export image from PPT to add PhotoShop Dropshadow

I have just completed a screen capture tutorial that walks through the process of exporting an image from a presentation, opening it in PhotoShop, adding a soft dropshadow, properly saving it out and then inserting back into the presentation. This is a 4 minute narrated online movie, because if a picture is worth a 1,000 words, seeing a real demonstration is worth hours of frustration! To view click here.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:03:10-08:00June 28th, 2006|Tutorial|

Animation from One Photo

Working on presentations is always rewarding when the client or an audience member comments on the presentation. Sometimes I am caught off-guard by what is being praised, something I view as simple but they view as great. Here an example from a recent show.

Part of the project involved using a series of photos of the company product in use to create a walk-in looping presentation. I was given the photos, was to use black background and add some animation and slide transitions – GREAT freedom to have fun! One of the animation techniques I used in various ways was to duplicate the image a number of times, crop each duplicate, position and apply a streaming animation to add a little movement. Here is the one of those slides:

Here is what was done:
○ Duplicate the image four times (to have 5 images)
○ Crop four images down to just the person
○ Resize each cropped image to they became progressively smaller
○ Position in an arch
○ Apply a FADE IN and FADE OUT animation to each
○ Adjust the timing of the animations in the advanced timeline

○ Position the original, full image, and apply a FADE IN animation
The result is a simple slideshow on a single slide that moves the snowboarder across the slide finally resolving to the full shot. After 7 seconds the show auto advanced to the next slide.

The nifty thing is all of the work was done inside PowerPoint using the crop, resize tools and animations tools. Download the presentation here
(note: this is a widescreen 16:9 presentation)

Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:02:48-08:00June 26th, 2006|Tutorial|

Animation with AutoShapes Gone Wild!

I have had this file from fellow PPT MVP “Tohlz” for a while and just got around to viewing it. Wow!

The content is nifty, the animations great, but what really impressed me was that the entire presentation/movie is made from a complex use of PowerPoint autoshapes! This includes the 3D effects, the highlights, everything. I would develop this using a couple dozen PhotoShop created .png images and call it a day, but making them all with autoshapes creates a small file size and shows lots of creative thinking!

Made Only With PPT Autoshapes
View it out at the “Evolution Warriors” here.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:01:44-08:00June 24th, 2006|PowerPoint|

The PowerPoint & OfficeArt Team Blog

I just received an email from one of the developers at Microsoft about their Office 2007 blog. Because Office 2007 is now in public beta they are able to talk about more of the nifty stuff it has. They are planning 3+ posts per week specific to PowerPoint 2007 and the new Office Art capabilities, which should prove to be good stuff to read. Visit them at https://blogs.msdn.com/powerpoint.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:00:59-08:00June 21st, 2006|PowerPoint|

From Word –to- Bullets –to- Visuals

Here is a good example of the process of developing an audience-friendly presentation. One that visually shows the concept, does not overwhelm the audience with words/statistics and supports the speakers message.

(1) Client provides an outline of the presentation content written in paragraph form. I added the red slide markers.
MS Word Outline

(2) First draft is distilling the paragraphs into bulleted information, which the client reviews and verifies the needed message is intact.
Bulleted PPT

(3) The bullets are then distilled into visual elements. The goal is to minimize the number of words, while adding visual elements that support the remaining text and help convey the message.
Visual PPT
In addition, slides have animations that allow the speaker to lead the audience through the message of the slide.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:00:39-08:00June 19th, 2006|Portfolio|

Double-Click Launches WRONG Version of PPT

If you have multiple version of PowerPoint installed on your computer, you most likely just experienced this issue (or you are about to). The latest round of updates & patches for Office reset the registry entry for Office, so it reverts to Office 2000 (if installed). What this means is that the quick-launch, when you double click an icon, opens the document in Office 2000. Kind of frustrating, but here is the fairly quick and easy solution:

(1) Close PowerPoint.

(2) Go to START >> RUN >> BROWSE

(3) Go to MY COMPUTER >> C: >> MY PROGRAMS and open the most current version of Office (the one you want quick launches to open)

(4) Inside the Office Folder locate the PowerPoint .exe file (careful NOT to select the PowerPoint Viewer) and click okay.

(5) The Run menu has automatically added the path to PowerPoint, at the end of this information (outside the quote mark) add /REGSERVER

(6) You will get an INSTALL, then a CONFIGURE dialog. When it is done, you are back to the quick launch doing what you expect 🙂

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T14:00:08-08:00June 17th, 2006|Tutorial|

Selling Power Magazine Article

A few weeks ago an interview I had with Selling Power Magazine was posted. It is based on the Pre-Show Checklist I posted back in March. The article goes into a bit more detail, giving samples of why each item is important to address and is overall a great write-up.

Click here to visit Selling Power Magazine and read the article (requires free registration). Or search for “Prevention” from the home page.
Click here to see the original post and link to PDF on the TLC website.

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:59:44-08:00June 15th, 2006|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

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|
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