The PowerPoint® Blog Archives - Page 5 of 228

The Global Pingu Slide

Every once in while, TLC Creative gets to work on some really cool (pun intended) PowerPoint presentations. We recently teamed up with a client to help them make a big, bold statement about the rapidly growing global fanbase of a certain penguin.

Who is this cute penguin, you ask? He is a stop-motion show with a huge cult following. His cute, quirky charm has fans from all over the world saying “Noot! Noot!” Originally intended for children aged 3-6, this show has also attracted parents and caregivers from all over the world who often watch the show along with their kids. The show is simple, funny, and relatable to any age, which helped the global fanbase explode.

Our job was to create a unique and creative Microsoft PowerPoint slide segment that emphasizes this penguin’s popularity around the world. Once we brainstormed our idea, we had to find the right look by going through a ton of client-supplied art assets (one of the more fun aspects of our job for sure), locating a suitable background image of the show’s setting, and just the right image of our little black-and-white hero.

Note: for our post here and to respect confidentiality, we changed out some of the art due to proprietary rights. However, we made the swap quickly with this AI-generated image from Adobe Firefly:

Next, we added a claymation-style globe and some “pop” icons, and our penguin character was ready to be placed all over the planet.

For the animation, we kept it simple. Just zooms, appears, and disappears. Once the animation was dialed in on the first penguin character, we used the PowerPoint Animation Painter tool (a huge time saver) to duplicate the animation sequence to the other character images.

Finally, the timing of each penguin pop was adjusted in the Animation Panel, and a single audio clip was added and timed to play again and again, every time our penguin appeared. It was a little trial-and-error, but the result was totally worth it.

In the end, we were able to create something super fun that did more than just look good. The result was a quick, eye-catching moment to clearly communicate that fans all over the world love this little black-and-white guy. And at TLC Creative, we think he’s going places for sure. Noot! Noot!

-Mike and the TLC Creative Design team

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-06-25T12:58:59-07:00June 25th, 2025|PowerPoint|

Morph .SVG vs. Morph PPT Shapes

At TLC, we love to morph! This transition is one of the most powerful features in PowerPoint and is an amazing tool for setting up the visual part of a story. Morph gives us the ability to seamlessly animate shapes and objects from one form to another. Morph can be used on photos, text and shapes, and objects, however, this blog post focuses on shapes. Specifically, an internal question we have asked ourselves: which is better for PowerPoint Morph, SVG or PowerPoint Shapes?

PowerPoint has the ability for presentation designers to use both built-in PowerPoint shapes and imported .SVG objects (Scalable Vector Graphics) to create these animations.

Let’s take a look.

Note: these slide examples are from an ultrawide project, so the slides are not the default 16×9 aspect ratio. They are 3840 x 1080px (vs. the common 1920 x 1080px). As example:

Let’s first look at the quality of PowerPoint shapes, that shape shift from a star to a heart, using a Morph transition:

Notice how the star does a true shape shift to a heart – this looks good!

But, here is an example of the same Morph using imported .SVG vector art (shape color fills changed for easy comparison).

Did you see it? The SVG objects can’t quite do a true shape shifting morph. The shapes change, but it is more of a fade – this is good, but not great.

So our internal design team asked the question: what happens if the .SVG art is ungrouped to become a PowerPoint shape? We took the .SVG art from the previous example and converted it to a PowerPoint shape by: selecting the star > right click > choose Convert to Shape.

PowerPoint now sees the star as a PowerPoint object, not imported art. For this demonstration the color of the converted star was changed to blue to clearly differentiate.

Here is the same animation with the imported .SVG graphic converted to a PowerPoint shape.

And we’re back! Once converted to a shape, PowerPoint now recognizes it differently and goes back to a true shape shift.

Although SVG and PowerPoint shapes are both vector objects, when using morph, there are very slight differences. While the basic movements and sizing of PowerPoint and SVG vector shapes are the same during a morph, SVG objects might not perform as desired when changing from shape to shape.

-The TLC Creative Design Team

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-07-03T08:30:22-07:00June 23rd, 2025|PowerPoint|

A Look Back to Animating a Panoramic Photo in PowerPoint from January 2011

Back in 2011, we had a great post here on The PowerPoint Blog with a very cool trick: animate a super-wide panoramic image across a regular slide to create a smooth, cinematic movement. Fast-forward to today, and it’s still a great effect to add energy to your slides—especially with so many widescreen displays and virtual presentations in play.

What makes it timeless? It’s simple, visual, and super effective. No fancy software needed—just PowerPoint and a smart animation. The PowerPoint features have improved over the years, but this technique still delivers a modern, professional feel.

Read through the January 11, 2011 post for great example and tutorial of animating a super wide panoramic image with a combination of slide transitions and motion paths. The same thing can accomplished in PowerPoint today! But today, we would create this animation a bit different, and a bit faster. Let’s show how we can do this as only 2 slides with image cropping (not available in 20111), and a morph transition (also not available in 2011) to accomplish the same visual. Here’s how:

1. Here is our panoramic image for this tutorial

2. Add image to slide #1 and align to left of slide

3. Crop to slide size

4. Duplicate slide and adjust crop by moving image so right edge is now displayed

5. Add Morph transition

6. Adjust duration (we are going to make it 10 seconds because our image is extra wide)

7. Done!

This is from our Look Back series rediscovering previous blog posts with relevant PowerPoint Tips, Tricks and Examples. The original January 11, 2011 blog post can be found here.

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-05-21T07:27:30-07:00June 20th, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

New Podcast Episode Available! “Enhancing Your PowerPoint Experience: Customizing Out of the Box PowerPoint”

New episode of The Presentation Podcast now available!

In Season 10, Episode 224 of The Presentation Podcast, hosts Troy Chollar (TLC Creative Services), Sandy Johnson (Presentation Wiz), and Nolan Haims (Nolan Haims Creative) take a deep dive into customizing PowerPoint. Their discussion is a goldmine for anyone looking to streamline their PowerPoint workflow, leverage hidden settings and features, and create more in less time. Listen on your favorite podcast app, or at The Presentation Podcast site here.

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-06-19T07:33:23-07:00June 18th, 2025|Resource/Misc|

How to Have Multiple Presenters Run Slides in a Teams Meeting

During a Teams meeting, multiple presenters can run and share control of the same PowerPoint presentation! This can be a very handy feature especially when multiple people are presenting the same deck. There are some guidelines to be aware of, so let’s get started.

There are three ways to open a PowerPoint presentation from Teams: Open in Teams, Open in Browser, and Open in Desktop App. For this post, we’re focusing solely on using the “Open in Teams” option (this also works in “Open in Desktop” but controlling the presentation could be tricky).

Opening the presentation in Teams keeps the presentation within the Teams app, making it easier to manage control when multiple presenters are involved and is the best choice when different team members are presenting different sections of a PowerPoint deck. One person runs the slides, and each presenter can take control when it’s their turn to speak, ensuring a smoother flow without having to share and unshare.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Schedule the Meeting: Go to your Teams calendar and create a new meeting (either by clicking the day/time you want within the calendar or simply clicking the new event button in the upper right-hand corner of your calendar tab) and invite all participants. Note: you can also do this through your Outlook calendar, but for our demonstration here we’re going to stay within the Teams environment.

2. Add Co-Organizers:

Open the meeting options in Teams

Click on Meeting Options > Roles

Add co-organizers using the dropdown menu

Note: You cannot add a participant as a co-organizer until after they have accepted the meeting invite

3. Choose who can present:

Go to Meeting Options > Roles

Choose who can present – options include Everyone, People in my org and guests, Specific people, and Only organizers and co-organizers

If selecting Specific People, add the names of the presenters

Note: during our testing, we ran into some snags when selecting and trying to add Specific People. We found “Only organizers and co-organizers” worked well consistently.

4. Allow Control Sharing:

Open the Teams admin center by navigating to https://admin.teams.microsoft.com/ (you need to be an admin of the Team to check this setting)

Expand Meetings and select Meeting Policies.

In most cases, click Global (Org-wide default), and scroll down to Content Sharing, then toggle Participants can give or request control to On.

During the Meeting:

1. Share your Screen with the presentation open in show mode.
Note: the “Present in Teams” option for sharing does not allow you to pass control of a presentation during a meeting (hoping Microsoft will add this feature).

2. Make Someone a Presenter:

Open the participant list by selecting People in the meeting controls.

Hover over a participant’s name and click More Options > Make a Presenter.

3. Share or Request Control:

When a presenter is already sharing, they can click Give Control to pass control to another participant.

Attendees can also click Request Control to ask for control of the presentation.

Once attendees (or co-organizers) have control of the presentation, everyone will see a small bubble with the presenter’s Teams profile photo or initials next to the cursor.

To advance the slides (or go back) the presenter simply needs to click on the right or left side of the slide in their Teams meeting window or use the right and left arrow keys or space bar.

Important Notes:

In recurring meetings, changes to Meeting Options will apply to all future occurrences.

Updates made to roles during a meeting only apply to that specific meeting instance.

If a participant exits and rejoins, they will retain their assigned role unless it’s changed.

By default, meeting participants can give control of their shared screen to another participant.

We believe the setup outlined here will help ensure your presentation runs smoothly, whether you’re the only one presenting or sharing control with others. Following these steps makes it easy to manage multiple presenters and maintain flow throughout the meeting. Have a great meeting!

-The TLC Creative team

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-06-26T07:45:31-07:00June 16th, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

A Look Back, and an Updated Version of our “It’s a Small Social Media World” Animation

We pulled the original PowerPoint slides from our archives and did a makeover to the animation. In 2014, we posted 4 slides we designed as part of a client presentation. Great layouts, clean messaging, and engaging animation!

Here is the 2019 version of the slides and animation:

For 2025, the first thing was updating the social media logos and icons to companies that are still available (that is a good history lesson!).

Next was revising some aspects of the animation – although the original motion was great (!) it was a complex combination of motion paths and other animations. Morph was introduced in 2016 – 2 years after we created this animation. So our updated version leverages morph for almost all of the motion and animation.

Because we are continuously integrating video into presentations as design elements, we updated the slide styling with 2 embedded videos that are seamlessly integrated into the design (eg. the videos are part of the graphics and not seen as a “video”).

And here is our 2025 version of “It’s a Small Social Media World”:

-The TLC Creative design team

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-06-26T07:46:22-07:00June 13th, 2025|PowerPoint|

The “Waterfall” Animation Technique

At TLC Creative, we use a technique we call the ‘waterfall’ to make animations feel smooth, connected, and dynamic. It’s all about overlapping animations—not stacking them, but letting each start just before the last begins.

Let’s build our waterfall using five simple shapes. You’ll see how just a few clicks can create a professional-looking sequence!

For starters, a typical animation has every element set to “Click” on the slide:

Or “After Previous” is set for every element:

Let’s create an animation “waterfall” which is an effect only available in PowerPoint (not Google Slides, Keynote, or Canva).

1. Remove all animations (if needed) and then Apply a “Fade” Animation to all elements:

Select all of the shape elements

Go to the Animations tab

Choose “Fade” from the animation gallery

2. Open the Animation Pane

This will give you more detailed control. You’ll now see an animation entry for each box shape.

3. Change the animation Start to “With Previous” as this is key to the waterfall effect:

Select each animation (you can select them together)

Change the animation Start from “On Click” to “With Previous”

Why? This makes each shape element animate with one another, not waiting for a click or full completion.

4. Adjust the Delay for Each Animation

Now the magic happens!

Select the second box and set a Delay of 0.30 seconds.

Set the delay for the third box to 0.60 seconds

Set the delay for the fourth box to 0.90 seconds

Set the delay for the fifth box to 1.10 minute

Each shape element now starts with the previous one but is delayed just a bit — producing a staggered, overlapping fade-in.

This process can be a bit tedious – but the PowerPoint animation effect is worth the effort! However, the design team here at TLC Creative kinda cheats. We use the ToolsToo PowerPoint add-in to automate the animation settings process to make overlapping (aka waterfall) animations!

Let’s continue the tutorial! Using ToolsToo, here’s what we do:

Set the last shape element to the time you would like the animation to end

Select the shapes in the order they will animate in, clicking on the final box last

Navigate to the ToolsToo tab

Ensure the “Stagger Animation” is selected

With all shapes still selected, click “Animation Resequence”

Now all of the shape animations are spaced out evenly in an animated sequence! (So much faster this way, right?)

Animating slides is my happy place, so… happy animating waterfall animations!

-Christie and the TLC Creative Design Team

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-06-26T07:47:18-07:00June 11th, 2025|Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

PowerPoint Video in a Custom Shape!

Want to make your PowerPoint videos stand out and grab some extra attention? Videos do not need to be limited to the standard rectangle. Imagine a video playing inside a circle, a star, a speech bubble, or even a custom shape! It really adds a creative touch that feels way more immersive.

Typically, all videos are inserted onto a slide as a rectangle.

Videos can be cropped, resized, and positioned anywhere on the slide – all using native PowerPoint features. Videos can also have styling effects applied; drop shadow, outline, recolored, etc. – also all using native PowerPoint features.

Change the Shape

Now for the fun part. Change the rectangle into something else. Native to PowerPoint is the ability to change to any of the shapes in the Shape Library; circle, triangle, parallelogram, 3D cube – pick whatever you like! Select the video > go to Video Format > open the Video Shape selection > pick a shape!

All of the PowerPoint shapes work flawlessly, automatically masking a video to that shape. So don’t hold back! Video shapes, just like the rectangle, can be customized with a border or effect. How about an oval video?

Or how about a thought bubble (using PowerPoint’s preset thought bubble shape)?

TIP: use the CROP tool to resize and reposition the video within the new shape.

Add a Video to a Custom Shape

The basic PowerPoint shapes are nice, but what about a complex shape with multiple parts or a logo? With the use of the Merge Shapes tool and a vector graphic as the custom shape, virtually anything is possible. For example, let’s make a video play inside this shape.

First, add the video to the slide (Insert > Video)

Add then add the custom vector art to the slide.
- NOTE: This must be a vector art file (eg. .SVG)
- TIP: If the Merge Shapes step below does not work, select the shape(s), copy, delete (yes, it’s okay to delete), then “Paste Special” and select “SVG”

Resize and move both the shape and the video to the desired placement. Keep the vector art on top of the video.

Select the video first, then hold Shift and select the shape (the order you select the shapes is critical to this working).

Go to Merge Shapes > Intersect.

Now your video takes the shape of whatever you picked. Use the Crop tool to adjust the size and position of the video as needed.

And that’s it! It’s a great effect, all done within PowerPoint, and can definitely level up your slide and impress the audience!

-Mike, and the TLC Creative design team

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-06-26T07:48:09-07:00June 9th, 2025|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

A Look Back – 40 lines of PowerPoint Amazing Animation

During the crazy year that was 2020, we at TLC Creative had several internal design challenges. This particular challenge was to create a dynamic PowerPoint animation – using just 40 lines. The premise was simple: take five slides, integrate exactly 40 lines, and build something visually captivating and animated – in under two hours of design time.

Making it Happen

The rules were flexible and open to interpretation to encourage lots of creativity, while keeping the focus of the slideshow on the lines themselves. Each line could vary in color, length, position, arrangement, width, etc. All that mattered was that the 40 lines were the centerpiece of the animation!

The result of the design team’s creations was a mesmerizing two-minute sequence, built entirely within PowerPoint, that showcased the power of simple design elements when thoughtfully animated.

The Update

If you go back to the original blog post, the animation from five years ago was rendered in 480p resolution (not certain why – but it was). We remastered it in full 1080p, to bring a fresh level of clarity to the line movements and transitions – along with a fun upbeat music track.

What began as a small challenge turned into a showcase of how a tool like PowerPoint can be pushed to create Adobe-style animations!

Final Thoughts

This project gave us a reminder that creativity thrives under constraints. Sometimes, setting a few boundaries can create the perfect environment for creative breakthroughs!

-Troy and the TLC Creative Design Team

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-06-26T07:48:49-07:00June 6th, 2025|Portfolio, PowerPoint|

New Podcast Episode Available! “Beyond 16:9: The Art and Science of Ultra-Wide Presentations”

New episode of The Presentation Podcast now available!

Ever wondered how those stunning ultra-wide presentations you see at big corporate events, concerts and trade shows come to life? In the latest episode Troy Chollar is joined by Lori Chollar for an all TLC Creative Services conversation. And the topic of the day? Ultra-wide presentations! These presentations are becoming increasingly common, as more events use LED walls along with multi-projector setups, the opportunity to use PowerPoint for content that is beyond 16:9 grows. Troy and Lori share their biggest insights when it comes to creating these kinds of templates and presentations, with many tips for setup and design in this unique presentation format! Listen on your favorite podcast app, or at The Presentation Podcast site here.

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-05-30T14:15:19-07:00June 4th, 2025|Resource/Misc|