PowerPoint

How to Present with Presentation Live

PowerPoint’s Live Presentations are bound to be a game changer for virtual and remote meetings. As promised, today is about the process of setting up a Live Presentation.

Currently the presentation must be open in PowerPoint online (I am hopeful that the ability to open a OneDrive/Teams hosted presentation in desktop PowerPoint will be an option soon). TIP: to move a file to OneDrive and open in PowerPoint online, here is a very quick how-to: Open the presentation, go to File > Share > Share with People, and enter your Office email if PowerPoint is not logged in to your profile. Go to office.com/launch/powerpoint, find your presentation, and open in PowerPoint online.

In PowerPoint online, use the SIMPLIFIED RIBBON (more on this in the next post). Go to the SLIDE SHOW tab. Then go to PRESENT LIVE drop down menu. Choose between either Only people in your organization for added security and private meetings, or Anyone for a larger audience that may not be signed in to your organization.

Click Present Live and you’re live! A PowerPoint live screen will overlay the presentation. This is the QR code attendees can scan, or the URL to add to a browser. The “___ have joined” is a nice addition and provides a nice analytic. Stay on this page for as long as needed to ensure everyone gets in. Click anywhere on the slide and the welcome screen is removed and displays slide 1 of the presentation.

 TIP: display the welcome screen and QR code any time during the presentation. In the pop up Slideshow Toolbar in the lower left, click the “Live” button and choose “Show Welcome Screen again.” Or use the copy the link to email or message it to anyone.

People viewing the presentation do not need a Microsoft 365 subscription. If viewing on a mobile device, they need at least iOS version 11, or Android version 8. Presenters must run from an updated version of Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Opera. TIP: Safari will not run a Presentation Live presentation, but it can be viewed on Safari. And PowerPoint Live, for both presenting and viewing, works on both Windows and Mac.

Come back to the next post, which is a list of potential “gotchas” to be aware of with Presentation Live.

Troy @ TLC

By |2020-06-24T10:10:08-07:00June 24th, 2020|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

PowerPoint Presentation Live is LIVE!

A feature I’ve been excited for since the Microsoft team first teased it to the MVPs last year is finally here. Microsoft has been taunting us with the new Live Presentations feature, and it’s ready for you to try out – just in time for all the virtual meetings and conferences going on!

So what is it? PowerPoint Live Presentations is a new way to share a PowerPoint presentation. The presenter can now put the presentation right on their audiences’ devices. And it adds some new presentation capabilities for the audience. Anyone invited can watch the presentation you are presenting live on their mobile device or computer screen, they can go back to see any previously-presented slides (but not get ahead of you), give live feedback, and most amazing, see live transcription of your presentation – in virtual any language! And each person viewing can choose the language of their choice for the transcription!!

On the next post I am going to walk through the process of starting a presentation as a Live Presentation. But the basics are:

  • Presenters must have a Microsoft 365 subscription
  • The presentation must present from PowerPoint online (note: truly run PowerPoint only, not a OneDrive presentation opened in the desktop app or Teams)
  • Any viewing does not need a Microsoft 365 subscription (yay!)
  • The viewer just needs the QR code or URL (see the next post for how to and a demo)

The viewing/audience experience:

  • During the presentation, the slides display and update in real time
  • It is slides and voice, no webcam
  • Everyone watching can independently view previous slides (but can’t go past the slide you’re currently on)
  • Everyone watching can choose 1 of 60+ languages to have your talk automatically, and in very close to real time, transcription
  • The audience can “react” to each slide with a set of emojis such as “thumbs up,” “laughing,” or “puzzled” that appear briefly on the presenter’s screen (I am not certain I see this feature liked in professional corporate presentations, but it is going to be a hit with those younger than me!)

After the presentation ends:

  • The audience screen pops up a short survey with categories such as Slide Design and Speaker Skills
  • The presenter receives an email with a summary of the feedback; how many reactions, which slide received the most reactions, and the audience evaluation (anonymous and compiled)

The live transcription, available in 60+ languages, is a technology marvel. I have the opportunity to be a part of several corporate meetings each year that have live audio translation. While the Presentation Live transcription is not going to replace that, it is amazing and will make presentations far more accessible to multiple language audiences.  The Presentation Live transcription is text only, not audio. It is fast, I would say pretty good, and in our internal tests, the bilingual members of our TLC creative team said that the other languages are pretty spot on.

[videopack id=”14381″ width=”464″]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/PresentationLive-3.mp4[/videopack]

We’re pretty exited about the capabilities and possibilities of PowerPoint Live Presentations. Stay tuned as we spend the next few posts going more in depth on the Presentation Live features!

Troy @ TLC

By |2021-05-17T12:59:58-07:00June 22nd, 2020|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

PowerPoint Synchronize – a new and exciting presentation feature!

Microsoft has just added a new feature to PowerPoint! This feature allows you to make changes to slides while presenting – and it is amazing!! The important thing is the presentation must be accessed from OneDrive or SharePoint. If you are a Microsoft Teams user, when you add a file to the FILES section, you are set, and I am going to use Teams for my example.  

In Microsoft Teams, and on the side menu bar, navigate to the “Files” button  

Click Files and on the next menu, click upload and go through process of moving the presentation from your computer to OneDrive (it is seamless and easy when done through Microsoft Teams) 

Here is the sample 2 slide presentation  

To demonstrate, here is the file opened from Microsoft Teams. 

In the SLIDE SHOW tab is a new option, KEEP SLIDES UPDATED. Keep Slides Updated, or PowerPoint Synchronize, is where teamwork comes into play. While presenting a slide show, another person can make edits from a separate computer, and those edits will be in the active slide show! Remember, for this to work the file needs to run from a OneDrive location, be shared with at least one other person, and the “Keep Slides Updated” option enabled.

Here I am presenting the first slide.  

There is an error on the next slide with the chart listed as 2019, but it really is 2020 (no one experiences wrong info in their slides!). But the deck is shared with our colleague and they have got us covered. 

While we talk about slide 1, my colleague updates slide 2 on their computer so when I go to slide 2 it has the correct year – all while I was in slide show and presenting!  

Troy @ TLC

By |2020-06-03T19:24:32-07:00June 3rd, 2020|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Presentation Bandwidth of Screen Share vs. PowerPoint Online Present

This is on the technical, and geeky, side of presentations. In our current environment of remote presenting, we have been addressing questions and supporting remote meetings non-stop. Remote presenting has lots of technical obstacles, that are now the responsibility of each presenter to deal with (vs. showing up at a conference and knowing a professional AV team was in control of everything technical and you, as a presenter, just needed to focus on getting on stage and presenting).

I am sharing a video from Microsoft that demonstrates PowerPoint specifically. In my discussions over the past year with the Microsoft PowerPoint team I have been hearing about the advances they have accomplished in remote presenting and collaboration. Well, I am a believer and integrating PowerPoint Online presenting into several virtual meeting workflows.

The big takeaway is presenting to a remote audience, using a PowerPoint presentation uploaded to (OneDrive, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams) has amazing bandwidth savings for high quality visuals, video and animation over presenting a presentation shown as a shared screen.

Troy @ TLC

By |2025-05-12T10:20:03-07:00May 26th, 2020|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

New PowerPoint Feature – YEAR!

You are probably wondering what the title of this blog post means… Well PowerPoint has a new feature, something that has been requested for year. And it makes me very happy to finally have it!

PowerPoint has added to the date footer list a new option. The ability to just list the year.

Where I see this simple addition being invaluable is for corporate PowerPoint templates (also Word and Excel templates). Every year the template automatically updates to display the current year! If you are not cheering, I am guessing your company template does not include a copyright statement – that needs to be manually updated each year (or updates automatically because your company paid for a very cool, but not cheap, add-in).

Here is a quick example of adding a copyright statement preset on the bottom of all slides in a corporate template. The year automatically updates so the copyright information is always current. For this example I am manually adding text in front of the year “(C) TLC Creative Services”. TIP: text can be added any of the footer placeholders and variable part, in this instance the date, remains coded to update. Works for source and page number footers.

Additional information:

  • This is a four digit year (e.g. “2020”)
  • It was release with Win32 build 16.0.12527+ and Mac build 16.35.2002+
  • It will display on all endpoints (Win32, Mac, mobile, web), including legacy builds (yay!).
  • It may not display on legacy builds that are localized to other languages, and in those instances it defaults to display the first datetime field type (eg. 4/20/2020 would display in the above example)

Troy @ TLC

By |2020-04-20T15:05:40-07:00April 23rd, 2020|PowerPoint|

PowerPoint Adds HEX Colors

Note: as of today, I see this new feature on the Office Insider build (early beta), but not yet on the Monthly Targeted build (enterprise beta) or Standard build (stable, no beta). So you may not have this available in your install just yet.

In the most recent Microsoft 365 Office update there is a new option in the color dialog – HEX colors (yay!). 

Select a shape, outline or text and choose MORE FILL COLORS

In the COLORS dialog, under the RGB values is a new option for HEX values.

Is HEX colors important? Yes and no. Anything expands the use of PowerPoint is good (in my opinion). Hex color values are primarily thought of in web design. For me, the addition of adding a Hex color directly in PowerPoint is time saver, because my biggest use is gathering colors from a corporate style guide where the colors are listed in PMS and HEX values.

My summary of RGB vs. Hex:

  • RGB sets each color as a value or Red-Green-Blue mixed, set as a number range of 0-255 for each. So a color can be a 3 digit to 9 digit value.
  • Hex is a set 6 digit value that based on a grid of 16 million colors. The 6 digit value is made up of both numbers and alpha letters.

 

Example of a Hex color chart:

Close up of a section of a Hex color chart, showing each color has a 6 digit value

 

Last note: the Hex color value was just added to PowerPoint desktop this week, but it has been in the PowerPoint for Web app for several months. The web app has a different color dialog (which I like). It prioritized the Hex value and does not include the HSL color option.

Troy @ TLC

By |2020-03-16T12:07:10-07:00March 19th, 2020|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

Animated .GIF of the TLC Creative Logo – Created in PowerPoint

I wanted to compare the image quality of an exported animated .gif and an exported .mp4 video. Jake, on the TLC Creative design team, created this simple and effective seamless loop animation of the TLC Creative Services logo. No PowerPoint animation or slide transition, just 6 slides of the logo elements in different positions and drop shadows in corresponding sizes.

Animated .GIF

.MP4 Video

[videopack id=”13819″]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/unnamed-file-1.mp4[/videopack]

Troy @ TLC

By |2021-05-20T13:29:17-07:00March 5th, 2020|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

Create Animated .GIFs in PowerPoint!

Microsoft has added a feature to PowerPoint, export as .GIF. 

Export a single slide, or a series of slides as an animated .gif. Our tests have done a good job with capturing animations, slide transitions and timing – all with good size files.

The Export as Animated GIF is very similar to the Export as Video.

  • Go to FILE > select EXPORT
  • Select CREATE AN ANIMATED GIF
  • Select a size and quality option

 

 

 

By |2020-02-26T18:31:23-08:00February 26th, 2020|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Use PowerPoint Text as Part of Background Design

PowerPoint is flexible. This is both a design idea and PowerPoint how-to. The end goal is to add a light/ghosted pattern of text across the background of the template or set of slides.

This could be created in Photoshop, Illustrator, or PowerPoint!

1. Start with creating the text to fit the slide. Insert a text box, add the word or phrase. Pick font and guess at best size. Set the text box settings to DO NOT AUTOFIT, zero margins, and check WRAP TEXT IN SHAPE.

2. Copy the text and paste – paste – paste to fill the entire slide. Adjust font size and line breaks to have a slide full of the background message.

 

3. Add the background image – your choice of adding as inserted image and send to back or set as slide background.

4. For the sample background in this demo, I want to coordinate with the gold confetti. Update text color to a gold.

5. Select the text box and adjust the text transparency to 88%.

6. Final result is a custom slide background design effect created in PowerPoint.

By |2020-02-07T07:09:42-08:00February 7th, 2020|PowerPoint, Tutorial|
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