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

Windows 11 Date Calculator!

I am getting familiar with Windows 11 and discovered this gem. I am assuming it is new with Windows 11, but maybe it has been there for awhile and I have been missing out!

Here is the Windows calculator (I seem to use it multiple times each day).

Clicking the upper left menu shows the list of various types of calculators. I discovered the DATE RANGE calculator function, and I am thrilled!

Select DATE CALCULATION. Pick a starting date and an end date from calendar pickers. The bottom row instantly displays the number of days in the range selected. No more counting days in the Outlook calendar!!

Troy @ TLC

By |2021-11-04T06:47:40-07:00November 11th, 2021|Resource/Misc, Software/Add-Ins|

Convert Keynote file to PowerPoint File Online, Free and Fast!

Do I know Apple Keynote for Presentation design? Absolutely!

Is Apple Keynote your main presentation design app? No, not for a long time.

Can I give you a Keynote file? Absolutely, but all of our Mac computers are at the studio and everyone is working remote, so I will convert the file to PowerPoint.

Now, the big question is, how do you convert an Apple Keynote file to PowerPoint if you do not have a Mac computer available? The answer is easy – and free – and fast – and very accurate conversion! I use cloudconvert, an online file convert app. The website lists they support “nearly all audio, video, document, ebook, archive, image, spreadsheet, and presentation formats.” And I have used this resource for many file types – and just last week, for converting another Keynote presentation to PowerPoint format so I could integrate a presenters slides into the master show presentation (which is being run in PowerPoint).

Go to cloudconvert.com

In the CONVERT menu select PRESENTATION and KEY (Keynote)

In the TO menu select PPTX (PowerPoint)

Click SELECT FILE

Click CONVERT

When done processing, download the .pptx version of the presentation to work with (knowing the conversion process does not provide a full feature PowerPoint template file, no matter how good or bad the Keynote file is setup).

Troy @ TLC

By |2021-11-04T06:48:15-07:00November 9th, 2021|Resource/Misc, Software/Add-Ins|

Your vs. You’re

When we put out a hiring listing Lori and I have the task of evaluating 200+ resumes. One of our rules is if there are typos in the cover letter or resume, that person is removed from the review process.

In a recent email, a solicitation, this one did not make it past the first paragraph before I deemed it ready to delete. Then I went back to it to capture the above screen capture for this blog post!

The email contained several spelling, punctuation, and content errors… I have read the statement multiple times and I not certain if the meaning was “you are” (you’re) or that I was physically scaling (which just is a creepy weird thing) – either way, this is a poor prospecting email and I am guessing does not receive much traction in people following up.

Troy @ TLC

By |2021-11-04T06:45:42-07:00November 5th, 2021|Personal|

SlideWise – Turn Off Auto-open

Starting with Slidewise v1.2, the default is for Slidewise to auto open with each presentation opened. For some, this is good. For me, I want to focus on the slides and open Slidewise when I need it. So, how do we turn off the auto open setting?

Go to the SLIDEWISE tab and click the PREFERENCES button to open the Slidewise Preferences dialog. The middle option, “show the slidewise pane when opening a presentation” is checked. Now, for me, unchecking this, click OK and closing PowerPoint to lock in the settings, did not work. Opening the next presentation, Slidewise again auto launched – frustrating.**

**Note: in talking with the good people at Neuxpower (developer of Slidewise), this behaviour of the Preferences not sticking was a v1.2 bug and resolved with v1.3 and above. Because I have already applied the below registry update, and then updated to v1.3, I cannot confirm the preference settings now stick and work, so the below may be informational and not needed at this point! (as of this post date, slidewise v1.3 is available)

I am guessing my experience is not isolated as Neuxpower has a specialty action tool to force Slidewise to not open. Go to the Neuxpower website’s Slidewise support page here.

Download the “DisableAutoOpen.reg” installed that will change the Slidewise OS registry to force it to not auto launch (there is also a download installer that re-enables the auto launch in the registry if needed). Follow the instructions on the webpage to install.

Troy @ TLC

By |2021-10-26T08:44:18-07:00October 29th, 2021|Software/Add-Ins|

Slidewise v1.3 is Here!

First, if you work with presentations from others, I highly recommend having Slidewise installed. For those not familiar with this add-in, Slidewise is the asset manager that PowerPoint has been missing (and it is not for a lack of everyone asking Microsoft for a presentation asset manager!).

As example, this slide deck uses 3 fonts, has 4 images, has 1 audio file, and 1 video file. All of these details instantly summarized in a single window – the Slidewise info pane. In addition, we can instantly see the file size of everything and expand to see individual assets.

Neuxpower has released v1.2 and v1.3 in rapid succession, and things just get better with each version! Here are a few of my observations on the new version:

The HOME tab now has a show/hide button to bring up Slidewise (same button as on the Slidewise tab, just now also available on the Home tab)

There is now a separate Master slide tab to identify what slides use what master layout. As example, this sample slide deck has 1 master slide, and only 1 master layout. Slidewise displays this in the SLIDE MASTERS tab (1 slide master, 25 slides using the 1 master layout)

And my favorite feature, which has been in Slidewise since release, is it’s REPLACE FONT system! First, find random fonts with Slidewise identifying the exact slide and exact object where the font is used (amazing!). In addition, the Slidewise Replace Font system is not limited by the single-byte vs double-byte file issue that PowerPoint’s native replace font cannot.

If you have Slidewise, I definitely recommend installing the updated v1.3. Download here.

Get all the info about slidewise at the Neuxpower website here.

Troy @ TLC

By |2021-10-22T08:33:22-07:00October 27th, 2021|PowerPoint, Software/Add-Ins|

“Show” Computers for Event Presentations

Running presentations for a corporate event. Just a fun photo of my view.

  • Top left computer (on a riser/stacker) is the primary show computer that have the daily master show presentation, and dual output of presenter view to the presenter confidence monitor to view presentation notes
  • Top right computer (on a riser/stacker) is the backup show computer loaded with the same daily master show presentation and run in sync so there is a backup system should anything go awry (always have redundancy for live events!)
  • Lower left device is an ipad mini running a presenter timer app – connected to the second presenter confidence monitor
  • Right of the lower right computer is a D’San cue light for presenters to control their presentations (note: this unit can have the remote turned on/off) to prevent slide advances when a presenter is not on stage)
  • Lower right computer is the production computer, because there is always presentation edits and requests during the event and the show computers are dedicated to the live event, so an “offline” computer is where tasks are completed (note: using MS Teams to host presentations, opened in the desktop app, enables updates to the active presentation)

Troy @ TLC

By |2021-10-05T04:19:57-07:00October 25th, 2021|Personal, Resource/Misc|

Live Streaming from the Presentation Summit

From the 2021 Presentation Summit, where TLC Creative Services was onsite with the AV equipment and AV techs coordinating the live stream of all sessions. Here we are in one of the two smaller rooms (“Artistry” and “Science” tracks).

  1. The presenter computer, with the PowerPoint file was at the “presenter table” enabling each presenter to be hands on with their computer and content.
  2. The presenter computer, or an event theme, was the content for the local projection screen (and the conference director, Rick Altman, presenting at this session)
  3. Reference computer, logged into the virtual meeting platform as an attendee (if we see the live stream, we know you can see the live stream!)
  4. Audio capture for live stream (audio board captured and environment mic of in-room audience captured)
  5. ATEM Mini Pro video switch for multi-camera setup into virtual meeting (live camera only to virtual attendees, not in ballroom projection)
  6. Virtual Broadcast Studio computer with all media connected control of virtual meeting live stream layouts and content
  7. ATEM TV Studio switch of computer content, output to local projector and virtual studio
  8. Professional audio board for in-room audio and send to virtual studio
  9. Multi-view of all connected cameras to enable live stream tech to switch camera views with knowledge of what each camera is capturing
  10. HDMI capture of computer output into virtual studio (HDMI to USB-C)
  11. 3 camera shoot in each ballroom (2 Sony Alpha series cameras and 1 GoPro)
  12. Live Stream tech making it all happen!
By |2021-10-19T14:11:23-07:00October 22nd, 2021|Resource/Misc|
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