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

Remove Text Margins – in 1 Click!

Here is something I do dozens, if not hundreds of times per day. Select a text box > open the Format Shape pane > find the inner margin settings.

Then change all to zero’s

Recently I added this amazing icon to my QAT

It is the “Remove (inner margins) from Selection” feature now in Brightslide.

The Brightslide “Text Margins” has 3 options for removing inner margins; from selected shape (this is the one added to my QAT), from every text box on every slide (wow!) or from all Master Layouts (which means any text box associated with a master placeholder will have the inner margins set to zero, but all individual text boxes on slides not connected to a master layout will remain as set).

And the Brightslide PowerPoint add-in suite is FREE from the super people at BrightCarbon!

Troy @ TLC

By |2022-05-23T18:42:09-07:00May 25th, 2022|PowerPoint, Software/Add-Ins|

You’re a Pill!

For a recent project (can we all say “pharma deck”) I needed a medication/pill icon.

  • Option 1, which i will admit is my primary option, is to open the Noun Project in PowerPoint, find the icon, copy to slide, modify as needed (because the icons are editable .svg graphics!).
  • Option 2, go to Adobe Illustrator and quickly create the needed pill icon (and shortcut the process by selecting – copying – pasting into PowerPoint – which is an editable .svg graphic!).
  • Option 3, add a PowerPoint shape, give it a color fill and add text (into the shape – not as a text box on top of the shape!) that labels that shape as a “Pill”. This is a common solution when formatting a 200+ slide deck and have a time constraint budget.

But on this recent project I created option 4, which is really spending some additional time on Option 3 and making it great! Here are a few of my full editable, resizable, recolorable, ready to use “pill” PowerPoint shapes.

The pill shape is simply a rounded rectangle PowerPoint shape with the rounded corner adjuster moved inward to create fully rounded ends to the rectangle.

It is also a 2 color gradient, with 4 color stops.

The tricky part is manually entering the middle color stop positions vs. click-and-drag. Set both to 50%, which eliminates any gradient soft edge and completes the 2 color pill icon.

For my presentation, I also moved away from a flat icon styling to a slight 3D bevel look by using PowerPoints 3D shape option.

Download the PowerPoint Pill Shape on a slide HERE

Troy @ TLC

By |2022-05-18T18:22:49-07:00May 23rd, 2022|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Still Waiting for the Office Refresh?

I just worked with another designer that noted that their Office had not yet updated to the new “Windows Refresh” – the updated app styling. Sure enough, PowerPoint on their computer had the “rectangle” interface still.

The solution, at this time because the “refresh” has rolled out to all Office 365 accounts now, is to click the “Upcoming Features” megaphone icon.

Scroll down the Coming Soon content, find the “Try the Experience” toggle, turn it on, and restart PowerPoint.

The app interface for all Microsoft Office should now be on the most recent, “rounded corner” interface 😊

Troy @ TLC

By |2022-05-18T17:52:44-07:00May 19th, 2022|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

New Presentation Podcast Episode!

What’s it like to design presentations on the Mac? Longtime Mac users Jole Simmons and Mike Parkinson join Nolan for a conversation about the good, the bad, and the ugly on using PowerPoint and Keynote and Google Slides on a Mac. What are the disadvantages and what are the advantages to Windows? Is the animation timeline really that important? Is it more expensive or less? And how does Keynote stack up next to PowerPoint?

Listen here.

 

By |2022-05-14T15:32:57-07:00May 17th, 2022|Resource/Misc|

Presentation Podcast Release

This episode has a backstory. As projects continue to spin up with wonderful client requests, internally at TLC Creative Services, we have been revisiting our rate sheet, project timelines and project terms. The Presentation Podcast’s focus on the business of presentation design is a great resource, that I found myself (Troy Chollar) using. This episode we revisit a conversation Sandy, Nolan and myself had back in 2017 were we discuss presentation project Deposits, Terms and Rates. Virtually every part of the conversation is relevant today, so much so that it is worth bringing back to the surface episode 28 and hopefully encouraging you to evaluate your project options and assuring things are advantageous for both sides of the project; the designer and recipient. Enjoy.

Listen to the conversation here.

By |2022-05-01T18:12:45-07:00May 3rd, 2022|Resource/Misc|

Open PowerPoint in Safe Mode

Working on a Teams based presentation, PowerPoint (the full desktop app) became “stuck” when opening the presentation. Rather than restart the computer and clear whatever was caught in memory I opted to restart PowerPoint in safe mode. Safe mode is opening an application without add-ins, web-based features and other things that are often the cause of PowerPoint crashing.

On a Windows computer, open the search bar and enter “powerpnt /safe” (yes, PowerPoint is spelled wrong, and note the space). Click the top search result.

PowerPoint opens in a bland colorless UI. Note the file name has “Safe Mode” next to it, indicating this is a very limited feature option for PowerPoint. Limitations include:

  • No QAT
  • No add-ins (installed or web-based)
  • The ribbon is the default layout, no customizations are loaded
  • Features like auto-correct are not available
  • The Recent files and pinned files are not available

No guarantees using Safe Mode will solve issues, but if you need it, it is an option. Also, same process works for Word, Excel, Outlook.

Troy @ TLC

By |2022-03-19T10:07:28-07:00April 7th, 2022|Resource/Misc|

Present to Succeed Conference Next Week!

Next week, April 7-8, 2022 is the Present to Succeed conference! Listed as the “biggest online presentation skills conference.” It has a great line up of presenters and a great price – plus all sessions are available for on-demand replay (to registered attendees) for 30 days with the Standard access price, and lifetime for the higher access options.

2022 will be my second time being a part of the presenting team! This year my talk is in the “Presentation Tools” category and titled “9 Powerful Business Presenter PowerPoint Template Tips”.

Get details and register at the conference website.

TIP: the conference agenda is listed in CET time zone – Central European Time. For me, in California, that means the live sessions are 12:00am – 9:00am (making me happy about the on-demand replay!)

Troy @ TLC

By |2022-03-19T10:24:36-07:00April 1st, 2022|Resource/Misc|

3D Sphere – Using PowerPoint Gradients!

With creative use of PowerPoint shapes and gradients 3D objects can be created directly in PowerPoint! Note: these are 2D shapes with a 3D appearance, not true 3D models.

For the final blog post in this PowerPoint gradients series, is a step-by-step process for creating this 3D sphere.

Download the step-by-step slides here.

Troy @ TLC

By |2022-03-28T21:00:33-07:00March 31st, 2022|PowerPoint|
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