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

How To Correctly Capitalize Each Word

Capitalize My Title is an online app that applies the professional typesetting rules to title capitalization. You paste in a sentence and get back the same sentence updated to each word capitalized based on Title Case, AP/APA/Chicago/MLA style, UPPERCASE, lowercase, and more.

The top tabs select which typography rules to follow (I recommend APA or Chicago as these are the most common/universal)

The bottom set of tabs is the selection of Capitalization option.

  • Title Case
  • Sentence Case
  • UPPER
  • Lower
  • First Letter
  • AIT CaSe

“Title Case” is the option I recommend using, as this is where many do not know the rules and ultimately have slides with content that is not aligned to the professional typesetting standards. A good rule of thumb is to capitalize words that are more than 3 letters long, unless it is the word at the beginning of a sentence, and unless that word falls into one of the many special instance rules.

1. Manually type or paste text into app. Text is automatically updated based on the top tab option and bottom tab option. 

Note: tabs can be changed and see if any of the different rules or titling options change the results. As example: on this sample sentence I would capitalize “Out” but the official rules do not…

Tips for PowerPoint text

(From Christie on the TLC Creative design team) The first item I check on any presentation is going through all my titles to ensure consistencies. A helpful tip for medical presentation is to look for any disease, medical terms, drug names, etc. that should never be capitalized. Because the web app will not recognize these words, after I go through all slide titles using the “Capitalize My Title” website, I do a quick review to double check the specialty words are capitalized correctly as it was intended since the 

Troy @ TLC

By |2019-06-24T09:53:30-07:00August 8th, 2019|Software/Add-Ins|

Podcast 83

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast is available today! This episode join Troy Chollar of TLC Creative, Lori Chollar of TLC Creative. Richard Goring of BrightCarbon, and Tara Sheffield of SlideRabbit for a conversation about the experience of taking (and passing!) the Presentation Guild, Specialist Level Presentation Certification. , Nolan, and Sandy is available today!

Episode, 83 – We Took The Presentation Professional Certification – and Survived! is a must listen to for anyone considering taking the new presentation industry certifications. Listen in on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and Soundcloud – just search for “The Presentation Podcast” – or go direct to the episode page here: https://thepresentationpodcast.com/podcast/83

 

 

By |2019-08-06T06:16:04-07:00August 6th, 2019|Resource/Misc|

Skype For Businss Official Retirement Date Set

Well, after the previous post, this is timely, although not eminently soon.

I just received an email from Microsoft announcing Skype for Business is officially being retired and we must move to Teams. The good news is, it is almost 2 years away (July 31, 2021)! I am hopeful that the Microsoft Teams interface will be streamlined (eg. to not take up nearly an entire monitor) before we are forced to switch over.

Troy @ TLC

By |2019-07-31T14:58:28-07:00August 2nd, 2019|Software/Add-Ins|

Give Me Back My Sykpe for Business!

Microsoft is making the move to Microsoft Teams. But if you looking to stick with Skype for Business a bit longer, Microsoft does not make it is easy to find. These steps worked for us (as of today):

– Log into your O365 account

– Click settings GEAR

– Click INSTALL SOFTWARE

– Ignore the list of installable apps and click SKYPE FOR BUSINESS link on the left

– Pick 32 or 64 bit (match to your version Office) and install

– You have Skype for Business again! Previous settings should be preserved, but you may need to log in and adjust app preferences if not retained.

Troy @ TLC

By |2019-07-31T14:51:05-07:00August 1st, 2019|Resource/Misc|

Windows Emoji Keyboard

Microsoft Windows added a very cool emoji keyboard, or at least a dialog to point and select emoji’s. To open, click the Windows Key and the period key.

Click any emoji and it will be added to virtually any app text box selected (😎🤷‍♂️👍, see I just added three emoji’s to this blog post – but being over the age of 35 I have no idea what I just said…). 

There are 3 tabs; Emoji (full color), Kaomoji (traditional ASCII emoji’s), and Symbols (well, symbol characters)

Troy @ TLC

By |2019-07-24T16:52:12-07:00July 30th, 2019|PowerPoint, Software/Add-Ins|

The Microsoft Office Insider Newsletter – Get It.

The Microsoft Office Dev teams have been doing a good job of getting new release and Tips & Tricks posted on the Microsoft Office blogs. But it is a separate blog for every product and some products have more then one blog… I really like the Microsoft Office Insider (Email) Newsletter, which is a nice summary of the hottest news and announcements on the many Office blogs compiled into a nicely formatted HTML email. 

I find this a great resource for reading not only about PowerPoint and Excel features that are a part of my daily work life, but seeing info about other apps I generally do not subscribe to their blogs, such as Android and IOS releases, Dynamics, and others. You can sign up to have the free Microsoft Office Insider newsletter show up in your inbox here.

Troy @ TLC

By |2019-07-13T15:34:26-07:00July 24th, 2019|Resource/Misc|

The 7 Most Used Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons licensing is an important item to understand as “CC” licensed images are used often in presentations. I have found one of the large misunderstandings of many designers is that “Creative Commons” licensing does not always mean the image is free to use, free from attribution needs, and free to own. This is a very high level overview of Creative Commons and I am calling out the 7 most used Creative Commons licensing options.

Here are a few soundbytes of info, and as much detail into legal use, where to use, how to use I am including (eg. basically none): 

  • The best, short, definition of Creative Commons I found and like to use is: “Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.“
  • Copyright is the exclusive legal right, given to the legal owner of the art piece to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, AND to authorize others to do the same.
  • Copyleft is approval to use, modify and distribute an art piece freely on condition that anything derived from it is has the same rights (eg. anything created from a Copyleft art piece is also Copyleft).
  • Share-alike is used by Creative Commons and virtually the same as Copyleft; approval to use, modify and distribute an art piece freely on condition that anything derived from it is has the same rights.
  • The official website for Creative Commons is CreativeCommons.org.
  • The Creative Commons Wikipedia page is a great resource on the topic.

Creative Common licensing is visually represented by rectangle logos like these. Inside the rectangle, each circle icon has an exact meaning and logos can have 1 or several of the Creative Commons attributes, or clauses, assigned to it.

The icon tells us a lot about that image. The Creative Commons “CC” logo is on left of every logo. To the right are icons representing the clauses, or rules, that apply to that image.

Here is a quick primer on the 4 most common licensing clauses:

ATTRIBUTION (BY). You can copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works if they give the author or licensor attribution.

SHARE ALIKE (SA). You can distribute derivative works only under a license identical (“not more restrictive”) to the license that governs the original work (Share Alike and Copyleft are similar concepts).

NON-COMMERCIAL (NC). You can copy, distribute, display, perform the work, and make derivative works only for non-commercial purposes.

NO DERIVATIVE WORKS (ND). You can copy, distribute, display and perform only using the original image (eg. “verbatim copies of the work”). 

Here are the 7 most common Creative Commons licenses we encounter:

CC0, Free content with no restrictions, globally (note: it is C-C-Zero)

BY, Needs attribution

BY-SA, Needs attribution and ShareAlike

BY-NC, Needs attribution and only for non-commercial use

BY-NC-SA, Needs attribution, ShareAlike, and only for non-commercial use

BY-ND, Needs attribution and only original art (no derivatives)

BY-NC-ND, Needs attribution, only for non-commercial, and only original art (no derivatives)

By |2019-07-13T14:31:42-07:00July 22nd, 2019|Resource/Misc|

Stylized WordCloud Generator by wordart.com

WordArt.com is an online app that creates unique stylized word art.

Think of a word cloud, a common presentation request, but created in the shape of an image. The site offers a variety of customization tools ranging from custom fonts and specific colors to a wide range of art images to create the word cloud in.

This is not an entirely no cost site, but PNG and JPEG files are free to download. PDFs and scalable SVGs are available as part of the $4 to  $299.99 plans.

For our presentation needs, the sites free options are perfect. You do need to create an account to access. 

1. After logging in click the “create” button.
2. The next window is the workspace. On the left is the customizing area to add text and styling. The first tab “words”, is where to Add, remove, reorder and import words.


3. At any point to review the art, simply click the “Visualize” tab to generate the finished work.

4. The shapes tab is where you can pick any shape provided as well as upload your own
(.png and .jpg, not vector formats).

5. A variety of fonts are readily available to use, as well as the option to add a custom font under the “Add font” button.

6. Under the layout tab, are different text orientations

7. The Style tab is where you can customize the colors of the text and the background colors. NOTE it is especially important to remember to click the “Make Transparent” button before saving the art as a PNG, otherwise when exporting as a PNG it will retain the white background.

8. After all customization, click the “Visualize” button to generate the word cloud. You can click the button several times to get a different result.

9. Under the download tab are several options. 2 free standard PNG and JPEG options. The HQ options have payment options.

Troy @ TLC

By |2019-07-09T12:28:44-07:00July 18th, 2019|Software/Add-Ins|

The Presentation Podcast Episode 82 – What We Actually Use (Hardware, Software, Business Tools)

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast with Troy, Nolan, and Sandy is available today! Episode, 82 – What We actually use (Hardware, Software, Business Tools). Listen in on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify and Soundcloud – just search for “The Presentation Podcast” – or go direct to the episode page here: https://thepresentationpodcast.com/podcast/82

By |2019-07-13T11:38:29-07:00July 16th, 2019|Resource/Misc|
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