I often see “Continued” or “More” in slide titles to indicate the slide contains a continuation of information from the previous slide. So the title looks like this:
But the “(CONT)” is not part of the topic and is distracting to the title. It takes more effort, but I recommend manually adjusting the font size of this special set of information to not be as distracting and to help provide a hierarchy of information. The adjusted text looks like this:
– Troy @ TLC
For many projects I find myself ungrouping charts for custom animation or any number of other reasons. But what often happens is there is need to adjust the chart… oops it is now 50+ individual text boxes and autoshapes.
My solution is before I break apart a chart is to create a duplicate it.
Then shrink the duplicate to a miniature size.
I then move the miniature version off the slide so it is not seen during a slide show (or I have also ‘hidden’ it under another graphic).
Now I can ungroup the chart on the slide and do whatever the special needs are – and still have a backup option should the data need to be adjusted.
– Troy @ TLC
To insert an instance of Windows Media Player in PPT 2007 there are a few things that need to adjusted in the application first:
1. Office Button >> PowerPoint Options >> Popular Tab
2. Check SHOW DEVELOPER TAB IN RIBBON
3. Okay
Now your PPT 2007 ribbon has a new tab available – the Developer Tab
To insert Windows Media Player from PPT 2007:
– Go to the developer tab
– Click hammer icon
– Scroll to bottom of list and select windows media player
Drag a marque to the size and position you would like the media player (it can be adjusted after inserted) and slide will look like this:
– Troy @ TLC
You can insert a full instance of Windows Media Player on a slide so you have all of the playback controls for a movie. So you have a slide like this:
In PowerPoint 2003:
– Insert >> Object
– From the bottom of the list choose WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER
The media player is now inserted on the slide.
– Troy @ TLC
When was the last time you purposefully used the Insert key on your keyboard??
Have you ever purposefully used it…
This key can also be disabled, and the easiest way is through Microsoft Word.
In Word 2003:
TOOLS >> CUSTOMIZE >> OPTIONS >> CATEGORIES (on left) >> OVERTYPE >> CURRENT KEYS area >> select INSERT and REMOVE
In Word 2007:
Office Button >> Options >> Advanced >> Editing Options >> Use Overtype Mode (it looks like this is not turned off as the default –yeah!)
– Troy @ TLC
As a quick follow up to last week’s animation sample (and response to a number of emails), here is why I used Photoshop to create the reflection vs. using PPT2007’s new reflection feature.
First, I am a HUGE supporter of Microsoft’s investment adding better visual effects tools. Further, the reflection effect in PPT 2007 is great!
But it has a few limitations…
1. Animation – when you view the entrance animation, note that the reflection comes in just a bit behind the actual lens image. This visually adds depth and another level of animation. There is no way to animate on visual effects PPT creates.
2. It’s all about the angle – PPT 2007’s reflection tool really works best on elements that are flat, or horizontal. As example:
This is the Photoshop reflection inserted as a separate image. Note the reflection starts butted up to image, and can be easily adjusted. It also was manually adjusted to have a bit less of an angle to better match the original graphic (see sample below for more visual example).
This is the PPT2007 refection effect. In this case even with it on the closest setting, there is still a gap. The angle is also based on the rectangle of the placeholder, so the reflection angle is more distorted.
Okay, so this was a really close call if it would be worth going to the extra effort in Photoshop to create separate images. But here is a more pronounced example – and what if I need the reflection on the side of the image…
– Troy @ TLC
The animation for this entrance is very straight forward. There are 3 elements:
And there are just 3 animations, each an entrance animation.
1. Lens = Ascend, Fast
2. Reflection = Wipe – From Top, With Previous (but mannually adjusted to begin 9/10th of a second after the lens (set to 0.9), and Fast
3. Lens Flair = Fade, With Previous, Medium
That’s it. All of the effort was really done outside PPT, in Photoshop. Once the elements where one the slide it was pretty easy to apply the few needed animations.
Click here to download a presentation (saved as a .ppt) to see this animated entrance in more detail.
– Troy @ TLC
The first step is preparing the .jpg image. Because the template is not a white background, the white background around the lens needs to be removed.
Option 1 is to use PowerPoint’s “Set Transparent Color Tool”
This tool will ‘work’ because the background to be removed is a solid color, not used in the actual graphic. While this is a quick solution, it has a difficult time providing the quality I like.
You can see the small bits of the background that where left behind.
My solution has been to prepare images in Photoshop. With the lens image I dropped out the background by outlining the image with a ****, deleting the background and then saving the image in .png format with transparency. This image was then imported into PowerPoint.
The next step, also in Photoshop, was to duplicate the image, vertically flip it, reduce the opacity to 15%, and feather out/delete 2/3 of it to create a reflection.
The image was saved out as a .png image and imported into PowerPoint and positioned below the lens image.
The final step, again done in Photoshop, was to create a dynamic lens flair image to add a dynamic and rich feel to the overall image.
Note: this is a transparent image, but shown here on black so it can be viewed easier.
Up next – animating it all!
– Troy @ TLC
I have a multipost sample outlining how an animated entrance was created. For today, you can use this link to view a screen capture of the actual animation (really need to figure out how to embed video into the blog…).
To view click here.
– Troy @ TLC
This is a topic that comes up a lot, with my clients and on the PPT newsgroup.
Basically, only the .wav audio format can be embedded into a PowerPoint presentation. This means the audio file goes with the presentation and nothing but the presentation needs to be distributed. All other audio formats need to be sent along with the presentation for them to work – they are linked.
There is one exception, but it has a number of other issues, and this .swf files. A .swf is a legacy Flash file and it can be embedded into a presentation. As a side note, a .swf is really a .mp3 embedded in a .swf file format.
To give a visual behind this I created a simple 3 slide presentation.
– Slide 1 = embedded .wav
– Slide 2 = linked .mp3
– slide 3 = embedded .swf
You can download it here – 1MB
– Troy @ TLC