If you find the Ribbon taking up to much space, space that would be better used viewing your slides as you edit, there is a great option. Here is the standard Ribbon view.
Right-click to the right of the tabs along the top and there is a “Minimize Ribbon” option.
The result is the ribbon disappears and frees up a lot of editing area.
When you click on any of tabs the ribbon appears. Click away and it disappears again!
– Troy @ TLC
Most people have a handful of presentations that they access routinely. PowerPoint has had the ‘Recent Documents’ feature to make it easier to reopen those presentations – and it is a helpful tool many times. But PowerPoint 2007 has made that feature even more powerful and usable.
Here is the PPT 2007 Start Menu and mine shows 1 Recent Document (okay the list was full, but I cleared it for this tutorial).
The important addition to PPT 2007 is the small thumbtack icon on the right. It is the same icon that has existed since PPT XP on the Master Slides to preserve masters. The one on the Recent Documents does the exact same thing – it preserves that presentation to always be in the Recent Documents list!
By clicking the thumbtack it goes from grey to green – and now you can always open that presentation with ease! (note: works as long as the presentation stays in its original location)
– Troy @ TLC
I am very excited because I finally finished all of the demo’s for the AudioSolutionz webinar that I am doing in just a few days (hey, I have been traveling almost non-stop for the past 3 months – and it has (almost) all been PowerPoint related shows).
The thing that I really became aware of was the best way to add power to PowerPoint is to know what add-ins are available and to know what they do see them demonstrated. That is the really great part about a live a webinar is that it allows me to do more than make a recommendation, I can demonstrate each add-in with real-world presentation examples.
Click here to get details on the AudioSolutionz webinar. Hope to see many of you there!
– Troy @ TLC
I am preparing material for a PowerPoint/Design course and this is screen capture of my images folder from a recent project. My message is that a presentation is more than bullet points and an image can be more effective. I practice that message and this is shows the number of images prepared in Photoshop for a recent presentaiton.
– Troy @ TLC
Everyone is familiar with a movie scene slate:
It is used during filming to allow the editors to identify everything. It is not intended for the audience to see, just the behind the scenes people. Well I use similiar idea when developing presenattions. These are hidden slides that are not designed for the audience.
These are used for speakers, videos, or anything special such as sound effects, stage direction, etc.
– Troy @ TLC
Last week a great article on PowerPoint presentations came out on bMighty by Nilofer Merchant (most likely posted many other places as well). 
The article is “Strategy Matters: Eight Great PowerPoint Myths” which you can read here. It has a good message – don’t use animation for animation, don’t use too much content on a slide, and the presentation is to support the speaker who is to convey the message to the audience (not read the slides or let the presentation tell the story).
My only caution is that the author is not overly objective about the proper use of animation (myth #5) and draws the line on its use by throwing it out… maybe she has seen to many bad presentations.
– Troy @ TLC
As follow up to the previous post. If you have several master slides that do not have the thumbnail icon such as this:
You can select them all, right click any of the selected, choose ‘Preserve Master’:
All of the selected master slides have the thumbtack icon applied simulataneously:
– Troy @ TLC
Multiple master slides are fantastic! But every now and then you have a presentation with multiple masters and go to use one that you know is a part of the file and it’s not to be found – ahhh! Well you can prevent this from happening by first assuring that all master slides are set to be preserved – which is another way of saying ‘do not delete, even if not used’.
Here is my sample presentation with 3 master slides:
Notice that master slides 1 and 3 have a little thumbtack icon:
This indicates the master slide is preserved and will not be deleted unless you specifically remove it (that is good!). There are 2 easy ways you can preserve a master slide and add the thumbtack icon to it.
1. Use the ‘Preserve Master’button on the master slide toolbar:
2. Right click the master slide and from the pop up menu choose ‘Preserve Master’.
– Troy @ TLC
Yes it’s true, if you have PowerPoint – or Word – or Excel, you can get free iStockPhoto images. That rarely used clipart feature has some new tricks. When you search for images the results may be istockphoto images. You can see all of the istockphoto images by just searching for “istockphoto”.
Note: images are istockphoto’s screen resolution version (ie. low res) and raster (no vector/emf).
– Troy @ TLC
The new line spacing tools were a bit confusing until I figured out how to correlate the new layout to the more familiar PPT 2003 tools.
To access line spacing tools in PPT 2003 – go to FORMAT >> LINE SPACING.
To access line spacing tools in PPT 2007 – go to the HOME tab >> PARAGRAPH section >> LINE SPACING button.
In PPT 2003 there are 3 options: Line Spacing – Before – After. In PPT 2007 there are a number of tools combined into one interface (which is good).
All 3 of the PPT 2003 options are in the lower section. Using the BEFORE and AFTER tools are intuitive and work the same in both versions. But LINE SPACING offers a number of options:
For me the key was figuring out that MULTIPLE is the same as PPT 2003’s LINE SPACING tool.
To use, select MULTIPLE. The “at” number is the same as the number in PPT 2003’s tool.
The confusing part is the default number in this box is 3, which is much larger than the typical .5 to 2 range. Adjust to something like .9 and you should see results you are expecting.
– Troy @ TLC