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

Yes, We Can Copy PowerPoint SECTIONS!

PowerPoint’s Sections are not new (introduced with PowerPoint 2010), but they are very unutilized. Just this past month, the updates to PowerPoint (for Office 365 subscription version) included the ability to copy sections to another presentation, or different location in the same presentation. While there are more improvements needed to help PowerPoint Sections become a truly easy to use and helpful organization resource, this is a great improvement (and it lets us know the Microsoft Dev Teams are looking at Sections and making progress on improving them!).

As an example, if there are sections in the deck, copying the entire section is easy.

  • Find the Section name either in Slide Sorter View or the left thumbnail Panel
  • Click the section, which highlights all the slides in the selected section
  • CTRL + C to copy the section
  • Go to other presentation (or other location in same presentation) and CTRL + V to paste in the section name and all of its slides!

Here is my sample presentation with sections. I am going to copy the RED FLOWERS section into a new presentation.

PowerPoint Sections

PowerPoint Sections

Notes:

  • Right-click dialog on a section name does not have copy or paste commands, so must use keyboard shortcuts. But you can right-click the insert location and use the standard PASTE OPTIONS in the right-click dialog.
  • Drag-and-drop copying does not work (yet)
  • Currently only able to select one section at a time
  • If pasting into a presentation that does not have sections added, the pasted in section – and its name – are added to presentation and all slides above go into an automatically created section. But all slides after the insert point are added to the new (pasted in Section)

Troy @ TLC

By |2016-12-12T15:56:55-08:00December 12th, 2016|Tutorial|

Quickly Open The Windows Task Manager

Keyboard shortcuts are fantastic time savers. Recently, I was reintroduced to a Windows keyboard shortcut while I have been watching the PowerPoint performance on some animation/image/video heavy presentations. What I want is the Windows Task Manager to be open on one screen so I can see how the computer is processing the presentation.

windows task manager

The fastest way to open this dialog box is with a 3 key, keyboard shortcut: CTRL + SHIFT + ESC

windows task manager

 

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-29T15:21:13-08:00November 30th, 2016|Software/Add-Ins|

Online Time Calculator

This one of those great, free, online apps that just makes life easy for certain projects.

Online time calculator

There is not much to the webpage (in design or content) – which means no annoying ads. So, what would this simple online time calculator app be good for? – Math! For example:

You have 9 videos and need a total run time – drop in the 9 times and it provides a total. Reorder to get the best combination to have a break at the 10 minute mark. If you have 9 presenters, 90 second transitions, a 2:00 minute opening video, and anything more – drop in the times for each and get a total run of show. If you have 10 autorun slides, each with a 1 second transitions, and you look at the animation pane for the animation duration – drop in all the times and you get a total presentation duration.

This is a simple and good resource to have when needed. I recommend bookmarking the Time Calculator webpage for any future needs.

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-29T15:06:40-08:00November 28th, 2016|Software/Add-Ins|

NXPowerlite Black Friday 50% Off Deal

nx-1

TLC Creative Services has been a long-time user of NXPowerlite to quickly optimize presentation files to manageable sizes – without losing image quality (see this post on the TLC’s custom NXPowerlite settings). Microsoft’s internal image compression has improved a lot over the past few generations of PowerPoint, but I still find 3rd party tools do a better job. No sponsorship here, just letting everyone know that the NXPowerlite Black Friday sale is a good deal to take advantage of if you do not have an add-in to optimize presentation files.

NXPowerlite Black Friday

The Windows Desktop version is regulary $50. Purchase Friday, November 25th at 50% off. $25 is a great value and a smart addition to any designer’s toolbox. Go here for the Neupower sale page.

nx-3

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-29T15:12:23-08:00November 23rd, 2016|Software/Add-Ins|

PowerPoint Change Shape

All PPT shapes are vector (meaning they can be resized with no quality loss and are very small in file size). One great feature of PowerPoint (that has been in many versions but hasn’t been discovered by everyone), is the ability to change shape to any other shape – AND maintain all format styling and animation!

Here is an example, a rectangle with gradient fill, text styling and cast shadow.

1. Select any shape on a slide.

Change Shape 1

2. Go to the FORMAT TAB.

Change Shape 9

3. Click the EDIT SHAPE drop down menu.

Change Shape 8

4. Select the CHANGE SHAPE menu

Change Shape 7

5. From this PPT shape gallery, select the new desired shape – for this example, we are choosing the heart shape.

Change Shape 11

6. The rectangle changes to a heart shape – and the color file, drop shadow, gradient, text font-color-styling and animation are all still there!

Change Shape 2

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-20T09:50:40-07:00November 18th, 2016|PowerPoint, Tutorial|
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