The PowerPoint® Blog Archives - Page 8 of 230

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 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|

Morph is the New “Tweening”

If you’ve been designing presentations for a while, you’re already familiar with Morph transitions. It’s the PowerPoint transition that creates animations to smoothly move objects from one slide to another. It can be a shape or color change, words and text that magically rearrange, or photos and tiles that fly in across the screen, doing whatever you tell them to. Whether it’s changing location, becoming other objects or shapes, rotating, or spinning, Morph transitions can make it happen!

Since 2016, PowerPoint has been offering this amazing feature that simplifies the old tweening process between objects.

What is Tweening?

For years, tweening – short for “in-betweening” – was the way to animate graphics in video, games, and presentations. The term actually goes back to the early days of hand-drawn animation.

It’s the process of creating images that go between keyframes – a keyframe being the start or end rendering of an animation. In hand-drawn animation, the main artist would draw the keyframes, and the start and end looks. Then the “inbetweener” artist would draw several frame-by-frame animations to create a smooth movement connecting the start and end looks (aka Keyframes).

Today, the legacy term “tweening” is still in use. Adobe Flash (now Adobe Animate) adopted the term and process pre-2000. It is also used in Adobe After Effects. With Flash, the artist set the start and end keyframes, and the software accomplished the “in-between” animation frames.

Furthermore, Flash had three different types of tweens, depending on what type of motion animation you needed.

The Classic Tween: Just a basic move, scale, or rotate.

The Motino Tween: Added additional motion and effects within the move, scale, or rotate.

The Shape Tween: Changed one shape to another. The definition of this is literally Morph!

What is Morphing?

So how does PowerPoint Morph compare to tweening? Well, basically Morphing is a form of advanced tweening: a simple-to-use transition effect that animates smooth movement and transformations of objects, photos, and text between slides.

For those with old-school Flash experience, the one thing PowerPoint’s Morph is missing is the ability to see the “in-between” frames and modify them (with additional keyframes). It’s the cost of simplification, where more of the software is empowered to make the decisions.

Essentially, with PowerPoint, the motion is smooth because Morph understands structure, whereas tweening uses numeric values. Think of it this way: Tweening says, “Move from A to B.” Morphing says, “Become B.”

Why is Morphing the New Tweening?

Well, first, Morph just feels more natural. It’s simple to use. And it fits into presentations seamlessly. When things Morph from one shape to another, you’re not jumping from slide to slide or screen to screen; you’re watching things actually change.

This enhances presentations because it’s easier on the brain. Sudden changes on screen can be kind of jarring and distracting. Morphing helps ease you into what’s coming next by showing the transition, not just the end result.

The best part is that moving content with Morph just looks really cool. For PowerPoint, Morph adds a modern, professional vibe without making things overly flashy. It gives presentations a “wow” factor with minimal effort.

Here is an example of PowerPoint Morph (aka tweening) by the TLC Creative presentation design team. Only 4 slides, each is a keyframe. Slide 1 is the start keyframe. Slide 2 is the end keyframe for the slide 1-to-2 animation, AND the start keyframe for the slide 2-to-3 animation. Slide 3 is both an end keyframe and start keyframe, and slide 4 is the end keyframe for the slide 3-to-4 animation (This is probably the most complex aspect of Morph, and all you really need to do is set up the 1st slide, adjust on the 2nd slide, set to Morph transition, done).

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-06-26T07:49:51-07:00June 2nd, 2025|Resource/Misc|

A Look Back at Presenting in Teams 2021 vs 2025

A few years of use and improvement is always fun to review and compare the before-and-after! We are reflecting on our December 20, 2021 post series, “Teams – Presenting with PowerPoint”, which was a 4-part series on Teams PowerPoint Presenting.

This was Teams in 2021:

And this is Teams in 2025 (pretty much the same interface, although I have updated my preference from the Teams dark mode to light mode):

Overall, it’s the same UI and layout with several feature updates. Here are our summary notes on Teams PowerPoint Presenter View improvements and newer features.

Edit Speaker Notes Directly in Presenter View

We can now edit speaker notes during a presentation; something very recently added to most builds of Desktop PowerPoint. Presenter View continues to (only) have basic text formatting, including keyboard shortcuts like bold (Ctrl+B) and italics (Ctrl+I).

Teleprompter View with Auto-Scroll

In Teams PowerPoint, speaker notes can auto-scroll like a teleprompter, something also available in Desktop PowerPoint’s record feature, but not available while actually presenting. The adjusted Presenter View layout and speaker notes auto-scrolling is great for the smooth delivery of presentations!

Enhanced Magnify Capabilities

Zoom, as in to enlarge, into parts of your slide while presenting. Desktop PowerPoint Presenter View has a zoom/magnify icon that magnifies the slide content at a fixed 200% larger. Teams Presenter View makes the magnification adjustable, up to 400%!

Cameo Integration

Presenter View now shows a live preview of your camera feed when using the Cameo feature embedded into slides. Cameo is a really great PowerPoint multimedia feature that has not received enough attention, or use, yet. The Teams Presenter View integrates Cameo into a seamless experience, and coordinates with the actual Teams meeting with the option to remove/turn off the Teams webcam of the presenter so attendees see the Cameo-enabled webcam directly in the slides.

Private View Button Now Visible and Prominent

The Private View button, previously hidden or buried in settings, is now clearly accessible in Presenter View.

▶️ Tip: USE THIS FEATURE. It prevents meeting attendees from advancing through slides on their own or downloading the full deck—a security must for confidential presentations. Go to Slideshow > Set Up Slide Show and ensure the checkboxes for “Browsed by an individual” and “Allow viewers to navigate” are unchecked.

“Present in Teams” Button Now Built Into PowerPoint

PowerPoint now includes a Present in Teams button directly in the desktop app and web version. This lets you present slides natively in Microsoft Teams without screen sharing, launching into Teams Presenter View automatically.

▶️ Bonus: Your audience sees crisp slides, while you keep full Presenter View control

Present in Teams Button in Desktop App

Provides full Presenter View, including access to speaker notes, slide thumbnails, and upcoming slides.

Present in Teams Button on Web Browser

In a Teams meeting go to “Share” and a list of available presentations is seen in the “PowerPoint Live” section, which means the presentation will open up in Teams Presenter View.

In PowerPoint desktop app the top right corner has a “Present in Teams” button which opens up in Teams Presenter View.

In PowerPoint Online click the “Present” dropdown and select “Present in Teams” to open the presentation in Teams Presenter View.

That’s our observations on Team Presenter View updates and improvements. Overall, many good things as Microsoft Teams continues to mature.

-The TLC Creative design team

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-06-26T07:50:34-07:00May 30th, 2025|Resource/Misc|

Edit a Teams Based PowerPoint File – It’s Easy!

Opening a PowerPoint file from Teams in the desktop app is a common task, but we’ve had some questions about the exact steps involved. Let’s clarify the process with a straightforward walkthrough, along with some helpful tips. First, it’s important to understand that a file in Teams is actually a SharePoint file. Teams serves as an interface to SharePoint, making it easier to access files without navigating to the SharePoint site directly. However, the files are still stored in SharePoint, and the process for opening them remains the same.

Teams gives you 3 (yes 3!) ways to open a PowerPoint file:

Open in teams – Opens the file directly within the Teams interface
Open in browser – Pops the file open in your default browser in PowerPoint for web
Open in desktop app – This is the option we’re looking for, as the desktop app allows you to use the full features of PowerPoint AND any add-ons that you’ve enabled

Here’s how to open a PowerPoint file with the full features and power of the desktop app:

Go to the file in Teams and select it
Click the three-dot menu (“More Options”)
From the dropdown menu, choose Open in Desktop (or it may say Open in App)

TIP: Update the Teams open default by clicking “Change default” in the drop-down menu and selecting Desktop and hitting save. Now whenever you click a PowerPoint file in Teams it (should) open in the desktop app automatically.

That’s it. The presentation is now stored on Teams, ready for collaboration editing, AND open in the PowerPoint Desktop App!

-The TLC Creative Design Team

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-05-27T07:56:21-07:00May 28th, 2025|Resource/Misc, Tutorial|

TLC Creative’s Teams External Guest Invite How-to

TLC Creative was an early adopter of Microsoft Teams, and we remain a fan today. We love the collaboration it brings to the table, allowing us to work more efficiently and gain feedback more effectively, whether collaborating with our internal team or co-authoring a presentation with clients.

And while Teams is excellently proficient in many areas (file collaboration, chats, meetings, and @mentions…to mention a few), when it comes to inviting clients into your bubble (tenant) or vice versa, this is where things often go awry.

Being positive, Microsoft is continuously improving Teams. In the future, we hope things will “just work” – but it is not at that level of functionality yet (but we are looking ahead to the “Hero Link” process!). Because things do not always work smoothly today, we invested internal TLC time to work through many of the issues and then created a how-to guide to help overcome this “outside tenant” frustration.

We are sharing our internal Teams tutorial to (hopefully) help your clients connect with and collaborate better with you. Full disclosure, we are mostly PC-based when using Teams, so the nuances of Mac Teams are not captured in these steps.

This guide is written under the assumption that you have a Microsoft Teams account and have already created a “New Team” – which is set up as a “Private” Team. Here are our steps to connect an external person to your Teams project, from the perspective of your client:

1. Once the private Team is created, click “Add Member” to generate the email that is sent to each person added to the Team.

2. Instruct your client to use the “Open Microsoft Teams” button in the email they received (Note: the email will come from an automated address: noreply@email.teams.Microsoft.com.).

3. We recommend using the Teams desktop app. The invite email has a button to download and install if needed.

If the Microsoft Teams app is already installed, this pop-up dialog will appear to open with the invite credentials. Click the “Open Microsoft Teams” button.

4. Once Microsoft Teams is open, a pop-up dialog to sign in with an email address is required next. This email address must be the same address that the Teams invite was sent to.

5. Enter the email address (this is the email address of the person being invited to the Team) and click the “Next” button.

6. There may be an additional pop-up asking permission to use Teams. Click “Yes” or “Agree” (after you’ve read and truly do agree, of course).

7. The external person has now been added to the project team!

8. This is the key step! To access the project team, your client needs to change Teams to your company (in this example, it is changing Teams to the TLC Creative connection).

- In the upper right, click your “Account” button (the circle with your initials inside).

- From the list of available accounts, select the company that invited you…for example, if you were to receive a Teams invite from TLC Creative Services, you would click on “TLC” in the menu.

- Then on the left, go to “Teams”
- Locate the project Team name and click to expand
- Click “General”
- Click “Files” at the top of the right side, or “Posts”, and from that dropdown menu select “Files”

9. Your client should now have access to all project files, to open and edit files, upload new files, etc.

10. TIP: To open a PowerPoint presentation (or a Word or Excel doc), Teams has 3 options: PowerPoint for Teams, PowerPoint for Web, and Desktop PowerPoint. Our team uses the full power of the Desktop version. See our earlier blog post on how to open presentations from Teams in the Desktop app: MS Teams – Open in App – The PowerPoint Blog.

Hopefully, this how-to reference minimizes some of the frustrations we encountered with a Microsoft Teams workflow. Wishing you productive collaboration with your clients and excellent results with your presentations!

-Lori @ TLC Creative Services

By TLC Creative Services, Inc.|2025-05-22T08:26:28-07:00May 26th, 2025|Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|