PowerPoint

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|

PowerPoint Animation Thanking U.S. Veterans!

Here is an animation developed using only PowerPoint, and exported as a video (using PowerPoint’s video export). Thank you to all that serve and have served in the U.S. armed forces!

[KGVID]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/unnamed-file-1.mp4[/KGVID]

By |2019-10-31T22:10:41-07:00November 11th, 2016|PowerPoint|

Halloween Stop-Motion Animation #2

Happy Halloween! Here’s another PowerPoint Stop-Motion animation with a fun Halloween theme. All vector art created entirely in PowerPoint, spread across 64 slides.

2016-halloween-frankenstein

[KGVID]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/unnamed-file.mp4[/KGVID]

Download the final slide here. 

 

– Troy @ TLC

By |2019-12-12T15:41:00-08:00October 31st, 2016|Portfolio, PowerPoint|

PowerPoint Layer Order Explained

How do you describe what is on top or bottom for slide content?

Z-ORDER_5

Let’s look at a simple explanation of 2D design. With presentation design, this is very easy to visualize by looking at a chart. A standard bar chart has two axes: left-right (X) and up-down (Y).

Z-ORDER_7

To expand on things, here is a simple explanation of 3D design. In 3D design, there are 3 axes; left-right (X), up-down (Y) and front-back (Z).

Z-ORDER_6

Similarly, PowerPoint slides can have 3 axes for content. Slide content is 2D, which is left-right and up-down. But, it can also be layered on top of each other, which is the Z-axis. So, content that is layered on top of each other is referred to as the “Z Order.” Here is an exploded view of a slide. The Z-order has the text on top, so no other slide content is going to block it – but the text may overlap other content.

Z-Order 02

Z-order is adjusted with PowerPoint’s ARRANGE > ORDER OBJECTS tools. These are the “bring to front” and “send to back” buttons. The SELECTION PANE shows all slide objects in their Z-order with items at the top of the list on top and items lower on the list having the other items on top of them.

Note: PowerPoint cannot have objects on the same layer, so as soon as there is 1 object on a slide, something is always layered on top.

Z-Order 4

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-31T10:09:54-07:00September 8th, 2016|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Section Zoom Photo Collage

One last Zoom demo to wrap up the month of August. Many thanks to Wanda, on the TLC design team, for taking my idea and turning it into a great presentation. Section Zoom 02

The concept is to create a Section Zoom, then stylize the each thumbnail into a photo collage layout.

Section Zoom 04

Here is the slide deck with sections for each photo gallery. It would be very easy to add photos to sections over time, or by multiple people.

Section Zoom 01

The presentation becomes an interactive digital photo album, and the same concept can easily be applied to touch enabled digital signage! Of course, when you see the layered thumbnail layout in action, it is (painfully) obvious there are some modifications needed to Zoom to make this great option actually usable…

-Troy @ TLC

 

By |2016-08-29T09:59:12-07:00August 31st, 2016|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Inception Effect with Zoom

Impractical – yes. A cool thing you can do in PowerPoint – yes!

Using the Zoom tool, you can create a slide that zooms into itself endlessly – an Inception effect. Here is my single slide presentation. First, I use the Zoom > Insert > Slide Zoom, and then I use the Drag-and-Drop way to make a slide a linked Zoom image (the music is what I hear when I think of an endless Inception loop).

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-08-29T09:07:01-07:00August 29th, 2016|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Create A Summary Zoom

The Summary Zoom feature automates a few things:

  • Adds PowerPoint Sections automatically
  • Adds a Summary, or Navigation, slide automatically
  • Automatically adds slide thumbnail images of slides that are navigation links

Here is how the PowerPoint’s help dialog explains Summary Zoom:

Summary Zoom 01

To create a Summary Zoom, go to INSERT > ZOOM > SUMMARY ZOOM

Summary Zoom 02

From the pop up Summary Zoom dialog, click each slide that you would like to start a new section and be added to the Summary Zoom slide.

Summary Zoom 03

A new “Summary” slide is added to the presentation. The Summary slide has a grouped set of images that are thumbnails of selected slides and have all programming added to make them presentation navigation elements. In addition, each slide that was selected in the Summary Zoom dialog is the start of a new section.

Summary Zoom 04

The thumbnail group has some good, and maybe not-so-good, points.

  • Each thumbnail image is exactly what is on the slide it links to.
  • If you update the slide content, the thumbnail automatically updates (dynamic live content)!
  • The thumbnail image shows exactly what is seen on the slide, animated content cannot be taken into account. So if the slide starts blank and then content animates on, the thumbnail will show the animated content. Basically, whatever would print is what will be visible on the thumbnail.
  • The images cannot be ungrouped.
  • The bounding box for the group is much larger than the thumbnail images.
  • Images can be moved, resized, and to a limited degree, stylized, (eg. drop shadow, bevel, reflection, and rotate all work). But Z-order (front to back) cannot be changed. Rearranging and resizing can be tedious within this locked group element.
  • When selected, in edit view, each thumbnail displays a link icon showing it has an active link and where it links to! The arrow (that appears to be indicating backwards or return) means the thumbnail has a link to go somewhere. The numbers show Section number and how many slides are in that section.

Summary Zoom 05

Sumamry Zoo,06 

  • In addition, the link icon visually shows when a thumbnail does not have an active link by removing the thumbnail image and displaying a broken link icon.

Summary Zoom 07

The Summary Zoom is a great new feature. It also introduces some fantastic new tools to PowerPoint (like icon links and dynamic live content updating) that I hope to see expanded into other areas of PowerPoint. Many thanks to Wanda, a TLC staff designer, for developing and testing the demo slide deck used for Summary Zoom. Here is a demo video showing how quickly Summary Zoom and non-linear presenting options can be added to a presentation.

-Troy @ TLC

By |2016-09-18T16:32:57-07:00August 24th, 2016|PowerPoint|

PowerPoint Zoom – Overview of Options

PowerPoint’s newest feature is Zoom. It is a combination of Custom Shows, in-presentation hyperlinks, the Morph transition, and some new features like dynamic live updating content. It is available to Office 365 subscription PowerPoint 2016. Seeing Zoom in use is definitely the easiest way to explain Zoom, but today I want to go over the technical stuff. Check back all week as I have video demos showing how this new tool can be used.

Zoom_01

To get to Zoom, go to INSERT tab > LINKS section > ZOOM drop down.

Zoom_02

There are 3 options:

CREATE SUMMARY: Automatically adds sections to a presentation if they are not present and adds a new navigation slide with links to each section, and links default to go-to-location.

SECTION ZOOM: Only previously created sections are available and links are added to the slide currently being edited, and links default to Show-and-Return.

SLIDE ZOOM: Adds links to any selected slides, and links default to go-to-location.

Zoom_Post1_01

Once a Zoom is added to a presentation, the ZOOM FORMAT tab is available.

Zoom_Post1_02

    • Once a Zoom thumbnail is selected, the additional options become available under the Zoom Tab
    • Zoom Options: Settings include Change Image of thumbnail, Option to return to the Zoom slide (show-and-return), and the length/duration of the zoom transition
    • Stylize with borders or additional Zoom Styles and Effects become available from the drop down menu (basically any photo styling option is available to a Zoom thumbnail)
    • Option to remove the slide Zoom Background and fill with a different color or image from the Fill menu (this is a very cool new feature, look for a blog post on it coming up!)

Legacy PowerPoint

  • Yes, Zoom does work on non-Office 365 PowerPoint (eg. PowerPoint 2016 back to 2007)
  • Instead of the dynamic zoom effect, the destination slide transition is used

– Troy @ TLC

 

By |2016-08-26T12:04:51-07:00August 22nd, 2016|PowerPoint|

Video Demo of Zoom

PowerPoint is adding a new feature named ZOOM.

zoom 1

Zoom leverages the Morph transition and Sections to create a new way to quickly develop non-linear presentations with a new dynamic visual effect. Here is a quick demo of how easy it is to create custom shows within a presentation using Zoom.

[KGVID]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/unnamed-file-2.mp4[/KGVID]

 

– Troy @ TLC

By |2019-10-31T22:13:10-07:00August 11th, 2016|PowerPoint, Software/Add-Ins|

Using Morph for Animations

The PowerPoint Morph transition is PowerPoint’s best new animation feature!

using morph for animations

We have been leveraging the fantastic new transition in lots of presentation projects since its release, including using Morph for animations. Here is another example where we used Morph as the animation effect. Our client wanted to show the above three statements. The real request was to emphasize each as they were addressed. Our first step was to convert the provided bullet list into a dynamic visual; the end result was the above slide.

For the “emphasize each” request, using the Morph transition as our animation, we created a dynamic “flip” animation effect. It also was something that did not look like “PowerPoint.” Below is a video of the final animation effect:

  • After the slide layout was approved, we duplicated the slide 3X.
  • On the first slide, we added the animated entrance effect for the 3 circles and text.
  • On the second, third and fourth slides, we simply horizontally flipped each circle. No animation on these slides. The Morph transition created the nice twirl, or flip, animation.
  • Done!

using morph for animations

 

– Troy @ TLC

By |2025-12-19T13:32:51-08:00August 5th, 2016|Portfolio, PowerPoint, Tutorial|
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