PowerPoint 2016 User Interface Color Options
How to change your User Interface Colors in Powerpoint
PowerPoint 2016 User Interface Color Options allow you to modify your interface by choosing up to 3 preset color schemes: Colorful (Orange), Dark Grey, White. You can change the ribbon, border and canvas area outside the slide.
Ideally, we, the users, could modify the color scheme to meet our needs – but that’s not something available. All three options are available and can be changed at any time. (Note: This is an Office wide update, so all other Office apps such as Outlook, Word, Excel, etc. will also get the same User Interface color scheme.)
Here’s how to Personalize your PowerPoint 2016 User Interface Color Options
To adjust, go to FILE > OPTIONS > GENERAL tab. Then, go to OFFICE THEME drop down menu.
Colorful (Orange on light grey):
Dark Grey (Only option with no orange):
White (Less Orange on White):
-Troy@TLC
Powerpoint 2016 Image Export Improvements
Two ways to export images from PowerPoint 2016
Image Export Improvements in Powerpoint 2016 have made things more interesting. Depending on previous version used, this may have been an okay result to a not-so-good result. But that has changed for the better with PowerPoint 2016.
Image Export Improvements Option 1
Here is my sample slide to demo the PowerPoint 2016 image export. Single widescreen slide (13.33″x7.5″) with a full frame image.
The original image inserted was very large (for PowerPoint needs) at 5184x3456px.
A great way to export a number of slides as images is through the SAVE AS option. This export option can be used for a single slide, a selection of slides, or an entire presentation.
Go to FILE > SAVE AS > and click the SAVE TO TYPE drop down.
From the available list, select .PNG or .JPG format (personal preference).
Exporting this way creates good image at 1280×720 – the low end of HD resolution.
Image Export Improvements Option 2
To export a single image, not a full slide, multiple images or slides. The advantage is a much higher resolution image.
Select the image, right click and select SAVE AS PICTURE.
Exporting this way creates a much higher resolution image (depending on the original image size). This image exported to 2000x1122px.
Conclusion
The 2 options are available and use based on what is needed. I will also say that when working with very unique page sizes (e.g. 50″x 9″), slide export as images do a much better job than previous versions. Note: there are several 3rd party add-ins that export slides as images in a variety of formats and to any pixel size needed (Here at TLC Creative, all computers have PPTools Image Export installed).
-Troy@TLC
Video Export Size (HD!)
Another behind the scenes upgrade in PowerPoint 2016 is the video export size options. Now true, 1920×1080 HD video can be exported from PowerPoint.
Go to FILE > EXPORT > CREATE A VIDEO
The export size options have been revised to 1920×1080, 1280×720 (the PPT 2013 highest res option), and 852×480.
-Troy @ TLC
FREE Valentine’s Day PowerPoint Template
Everyone at TLC Creative Services wants you to have a wonderful Valentine’s Day this weekend! For your valentine (class, office announcements, etc.), here is a professional, full featured PowerPoint template to download and use – for Free!
Download with this link: Valentines_2016 (1.8MB)
New Auto Layout Designer
Another new feature of PowerPoint 2016, only available to subscription users, is DESIGNER, which is an automatic layout tool. Here is an example of how it works.
- Start with a blank slide – on a Microsoft supplied template (I am using the standard white background new presentation)
- I entered some text in the title placeholder and used the Insert Image option for the content placeholder
- Go to the DESIGN tab and click the new DESIGN IDEAS button
- The right action pane opens the DESIGN IDEAS interface, click LET’S GO
- The Design Ideas pane displays a number of layout options
- Scroll through the options, select any to see and use, these layouts (and several others) were automatically created with a simple click
Fantastic feature for both the designer and non-designer! But at this stage there are a few downsides to the new DESIGNER tool.
- The biggest downside is if you do not have PowerPoint 2016, and a subscription version (eg. Office 365), Designer is not available in PowerPoint.
- The biggest limitation is that it will only work with Microsoft supplied templates. Open the DESIGN tool on a custom template and get the message below.
- If you do not use layout placeholders (eg. add your own text boxes and insert images not through a placeholder insert image icon), and you get the message below.
Overall, a great idea and smooth implementation. But because TLC virtually never uses a Microsoft template (or theme), this feature has very limited use for us – but I am hopeful Designer will continue to expand its capabilities.
-Troy @ TLC
MORPH Now Available in PowerPoint 2016!
Office 365 subscription users have a new feature in PowerPoint called Morph, which was automatically added* (and you may not even know it is there). There is a long list of animation requests, but this feature is a slide transition that creates animation visuals, all without looking at the animation tab. Here is an example animation that took less than 3 minutes to create.
Morph Demo:
[KGVID]https://thepowerpointblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/unnamed-file-2.mp4[/KGVID]
The process is easy. If you have used Mac Keynote’s Magic Move, the concept is similar – but PowerPoint’s Morph has a few distinctions. Slide setup is easy. For this sample, I added an arrow to the first slide, duplicated that slide and moved the arrow to a new position. Then, I duplicated that slide and re-positioned the arrow, flipped it, and recolored it. Finally, I duplicated the slide 1 last time and added in a collection of additional arrows. No animation.
After designing the 4 slides, it just needed to have a few slide transitions. To find Morph, go to the slide transition tab and look for the new transition option.
(1.) Slide 1 = Fade slide transition
(2.) Slide 2 = Morph slide transition
(3.) Slide 3 = Morph slide transition
(4.) Slide 4 = Wipe from Right slide transition
Again, all of this motion is achieved with no animation!
Download this Sample Animation.
*Morph is available as of this post to Office 365 subscription users that has opted in for the Insiders Program (basically Microsoft’s Beta release program).
-Troy @ TLC
Office 2016 Subscription or Not?
Microsoft has released Office 2016, but saying “PowerPoint 2016” can mean several things…
I am sure the goal for Microsoft is to make things simple, so using one name for all platforms made sense – on paper.
Here are a few of the variations:
- Office 2016 Windows Desktop
- Office 2016 Mac
- Office 2016 subscription (Office 365)
- Office 2016 perpetual license (purchased)
Which are you using? Which is best? How do we let someone helping with troubleshooting know what variation is being used? All important because every variation has slightly different features, limitations, bugs, etc.
The biggest decision is Subscription or Perpetual License (I make this assumption, because if you use a Windows computer you are going to get the Windows version, and if you use a Mac you are going to get the Mac version – I am not saying which platform is best). There are some disadvantages to each option. But there is one advantage to the subscription option that makes it, for me, the better option.
Microsoft and Adobe (Creative Cloud) are now offering feature improvements and additions to only their subscription versions. So, if you purchase Office 2016, that is the feature set you will have. Microsoft will continue to update it with security and compatibility items, but new or improved features are not going to show up in a perpetual license version. Very quickly PowerPoint 2016 perpetual and PowerPoint 2016 subscription are going to be very different applications. And I can confidently say, the PowerPoint development team has more exciting features cued up for the next year than we have seen in the past (big number) years.
The next post demo’s one of the new subscription only features!
-Troy @ TLC