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

The Presentation Podcast Episode #44 Released Today!

 A new episode of The Presentation Podcast with Troy, Nolan, and Sandy is available today! Check out the latest episode, #44 – Year-End Thoughts.

The 24th episode of The Presentation Podcast is the final conversation of 2017! Troy, Nolan and Sandy end the year with a great conversation about the big things that influenced their design, studios, and presentation software use this past year.

By |2017-12-14T09:55:15-08:00December 19th, 2017|Resource/Misc|

Adobe Experts Productivity Tips

Lori and I  were featured in a great PowerPoint Productivity Tips list (Lori tip #16, Troy tip #18) a few months ago, which is something definitely worth reading (see blog post with link to full article here). Recently, Paul at Acuity Training in the UK sent me a link to an Adobe Experts Productivity Tips article they posted, and it has some great power user tips and hacks, definitely worth bookmarking. Full article here.

Adobe Experts Productivity Tips

Troy @ TLC 

By |2017-12-14T12:37:14-08:00December 14th, 2017|Resource/Misc, Software/Add-Ins|

Want A Perfect PowerPoint Circle, Square, Triangle?

Perfect shape 1

Sometimes just knowing a hack can save a lot of time. So this is one of those tips included in our TLC Creative PowerPoint training programs where someone always exclaims “Really!!” The tip is how to immediately add a perfect shape (same on all sides), ie. a circle, square or triangle. The solution is so simple, there is nothing complex to forget. Ready,

Click the desired shape in the shapes gallery

Perfect shape 2

Click on the slide. Note: just a simple click, no click and drag, no modifier keys, nothing, just click on the slide.

Perfect shape 3

Done! A perfect, equal sided, square, circle, triangle, etc. is added to the slide

—

 

And the shortcut to the shortcut!

Hold down the CTRL key and click on desired shape in the shapes gallery

Perfect shape 5

Perfect symmetrical shape is automatically added to the slide!

Perfect shape 6

Troy @ TLC

By |2017-10-20T07:34:14-07:00December 12th, 2017|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

The Presentation Podcast Episode #43 Released Today!

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast with Troy, Nolan, and Sandy is available today! Check out the latest episode, #43 – “O365 Features We Use.” 

Office 365 is Microsoft’s subscription based software and service that goes beyond the Office apps by encompassing SharePoint, Teams, Groups, Unified Communications with Skype and much more. Troy, Sandy and Nolan talk about they each use Office 365 for their studios and the ‘secrets’ to making the most of it.

By |2017-12-04T11:15:25-08:00December 5th, 2017|Resource/Misc|

Spotify and Sleep Timer Hack!

This has nothing to do with PowerPoint or presentations, but it is an amazing tip for those that use Spotify and have noticed it is missing a sleep timer option (which I have!). 

Scenario 1: You are deep into developing an amazing PowerPoint presentation and have some great inspiration music playing. You have a meeting to attend, so having the music stop would be a great reminder to save your work and leave (and much less jarring than an alarm going off).

Scenario 2: You are in noisy hotel and having music to mask the noise would be great, as long as you have a sleep timer to turn the music off in a few hours.

Unfortunately, the Spotify app does not have a sleep timer function. Luckily, this great hack leverages the built-in iOS timer to control Spotify.

[KGVID width=”272″]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/unnamed-file-2.mp4[/KGVID]

Action Steps, on iPhone or iPad

  • Search for “Timer” and open it, or, open the Clock app and go to the Timer icon at the bottom.
  • Set the time for music to play.
  • Change the “When Timer Ends” (and this is the secret setting!) to STOP PLAYING by scrolling to the very bottom of the list of options.*
  • Click START
  • Go back to Spotify, enjoy the music and let iOS turn off the music when the timer runs out!

*Note: This feature also works with Apple Music, Spotify, and all other audio enabled apps.

Happy listening!

By |2019-10-28T09:54:24-07:00November 30th, 2017|Resource/Misc|

Using PowerPoint Creatively

Some amazing results can be achieved by using PowerPoint creatively. This slide developed by the TLC Creative Services design team is a great example.

To develop this slide, we started with this mountain range image.

Using PowerPoint Creatively 1

Then, we used PowerPoint’s Remove Background feature to eliminate the sky area.

Using PowerPoint Creatively 2

Then we searched VideoBlocks for a timelapse clouds video and selected this video.

By positioning the video behind the mountain range image, we did not worry about the green grass and horizon (they are still there in the above slide, but hidden by the mountain).

Using PowerPoint Creatively 3

Last step was adding the stylized text. Complete!

Troy @ TLC

By |2025-01-02T13:23:05-08:00November 28th, 2017|Portfolio|

PowerPoint Illustration – Thanksgiving Cornucopia!

Amber, on the TLC Creative design team, loves Adobe Illustrator and PowerPoint. We challenged her to build a full vector illustration in PowerPoint. The result is an amazing Thanksgiving cornucopia!

  • 478 slides
  • Everything about the cornucopia (took me 3 times to get that spelled correct!) developed inside PowerPoint
  • Exported as a video with no transition and .01 second timing to create the stop motion animation effect

Thanksgiving Cornucopia

 

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family!

Troy @ TLC

 

By |2025-05-28T16:09:59-07:00November 23rd, 2017|Portfolio, PowerPoint|
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