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powerpointŪ assistance
The tips, ideas, and helpful suggestions below are offered as is with no guarantee that each will work for every user as described. These tidbits have been collected from various sources and copyright/trademark property -- if any -- are protected by respective owners. I hope you find these items useful.
resize a graphic
The resolution of Web graphics is always set to 72 or 96 pixels per inch. These are standard screen resolutions which also apply to PowerPoint® or any other software used to display images on a screen of some sort. Anything larger only makes the file size needlessly big and slows down rendering onscreen. The best way to resize a graphic in PowerPoint is to hold down the Shift key and use your mouse to adjust the image to the desired size by grabbing one of the corner anchors.
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Show Your Slides out of Order During a Presentation
If you're in the middle of a Microsoft PowerPoint® presentation and want to open a slide out of order, just type the slide number and press ENTER. This works best when you know the number of the slide you want. (Hint: It's a good idea to print out a copy of your presentation for reference.) If you don't know the slide number, there's another method you can use: Right-click the slide, point to Go on the shortcut menu, point to By Title, and then click the slide title you want.
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Create Bitmap Images of PowerPoint Slides
Want a quick way to send a single PowerPoint slide to someone? Try this: Convert the slide into a bitmap image. You can resize, crop, and paste it into an e-mail message or an Office document. Here's how. Open the slide you want use as an image. On the View menu, click Notes Page. The slide will appear on the notes page as an image.
Right-click the slide image, and then click Copy on the shortcut menu. The image is now stored on your Clipboard, and you can paste it as a resizable object into any Office document.
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Write on a Slide During a Presentation
To use the annotation pen during a slide show:
Open the presentation in Slide Show view. Right-click in the window, point to Pointer Options, and click Pen. When you're done using the pen, press ESC.
All annotation pen markings are cleared when you leave the slide, so don't use the annotation pen to make notes you'll use later. Use the Meeting Minder or Speaker Notes for any notes you want to save.
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More Design Options for Your PowerPoint Presentations
In PowerPoint® 2002 you can use multiple slide masters in a single presentation. The slide master is an element of the design template that stores information, including styles, placeholders, and color schemes.
With it, you can make global changes -- such as replacing a font style -- across all the slides in your presentation. When using multiple slide masters, remember that if you want to make a global change to your presentation, you need to change each slide master.
to insert a slide master:
From the View menu, point to Master, and then click Slide Master.
Do one of the following:
To insert a slide master that uses the default styles in PowerPoint®, on the Slide Master View toolbar, click Insert New Slide Master.
To insert a slide master by adding a new design template, on the Formatting toolbar, click Design, point to the design you want, click the arrow, and select one of the options on the shortcut menu.
to replace or add slide masters:
From the View menu, point to Master, and then click Slide Master.
On the toolbar, click Design. If you want to replace selected, rather than all, masters in the presentation, select the masters in the thumbnails on the left. In the Slide Design task pane, point to the design template you want, click the arrow, and then do one of the following:
To replace selected masters with masters for the new design template, click Replace Selected Designs. To replace all the current masters with masters for the new design template, click Replace All Designs.
To add a new design template and its masters to the presentation, click Add Design. All the design templates you're currently using appear in the Slide Design task pane under Used in this presentation. You can apply them to slides when you're working in normal view.
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Create a Photo Album Presentation in PowerPoint® 2002
Did you know you could use PowerPoint® version 2002 to create a photo album? Here's how:
On the Insert menu, point to Picture, and then click New Photo Album.
In the Photo Album dialog box, you can choose to add pictures from your hard disk or a peripheral device, such as a scanner or digital camera. To add a picture from a file or disk, do the following:
Under Insert picture from, click File/Disk. Locate the folder or disk that contains the picture you want to add to your photo album, click the picture file, and then click Insert.
Repeat Step 2 for as many pictures as you want to add to your photo album. Or to capture them all at once, hold down the CTRL key, click each picture file you need, and then click Insert. Next, specify the look of the album under Album Layout. Then click Create.
If you want to change or update your photo album after you have created it, use the Format Photo Album dialog box from the Format menu.
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PowerPoint® Animations
Forget about complicated animation programs. PowerPoint® 2002, can add animation for professional-looking presentations.
to apply a custom animation:
In normal view, display the slide that has the text or objects you want to animate. Select the object you want to animate. On the Slide Show menu, click Custom Animation. In the Custom Animation task pane, click Add Effect, and do one or more of the following:
If you want to make the text or object enter the slide show presentation with an effect, point to Entrance and then click an effect. If you want to add an effect to text or an object that is on the slide, point to Emphasis and then click an effect. If you want to add an effect to text or an object that makes it leave the slide, point to Exit and then click an effect.
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Cut PowerPoint® Graphics Down to Size
Add a few images -- a photo here, an illustration there -- and the size of your PowerPoint® presentation can become huge. You could compress images manually, but there's a simpler way: PowerPoint® 2002 can do it for you.
On the Picture toolbar, click the Compress Pictures button. If you don't see the Picture toolbar, point to Toolbars on the View menu, and then click Picture. To compress all pictures in the presentation, click All pictures in document. Under Change resolution, select how you intend to use your presentation by clicking either Web/Screen or Print. To further reduce file size, select the Delete cropped areas of pictures check box. Click OK. If you compress pictures or delete the cropped areas, you won't be able to restore your pictures to their original resolution or size.
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Save Your Fonts with Your Presentation
If you're preparing a presentation that you plan to distribute to others, be sure that you check this option by clicking on the Tools button in the File/Save As dialog box. This will work for most TrueType fonts on the Windows platform.
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Displaying Keyboard Shortcuts in Tool Tips
If you'd like to see the available keyboard shortcuts for menus, commands, and toolbar buttons, go to Tools/Customize, click on the Options tab, and click on "show shortcut keys in screen tips".
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Getting Rid of Short Menus
Forgetting user reaction to this feature when it was introduced in Word years ago, the Office team decided to try it again.? Unfortunately, it's still annoying. To see all of your options when you click on menus, go to Tools/Customize, click on the Options tab, and uncheck "menus show recently used commands".
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Preview Fonts in the Toolbar
If you'd like to see previews of the actual fonts in the font selection of the formatting toolbar, go to Tools/Customize, click on the Options tab, and click "List font names in their font", click Close.
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Making Auto-Fit Text Stop Auto-Fitting
Turn this feature off by going to Tools/Options, click on the Edit tab, and uncheck "autofit text to text placeholder", click OK.
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Getting Rid of Tri-Pane View
Unfortunately there is no way to permanently avoid this improvement, but you can quickly get rid of it by holding down the CTRL key when you click on the Slide View button.
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Using Ctrl-Drag to Copy
Make a copy of any object by holding down the CTRL key while you drag on the object.? You will then "drag off" a new copy.
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Making Slides Print Correctly
PowerPoint® has certain defaults to determine how it prints each object on the page.? You can see over-ride these defaults. Go to View/Black and White; this will show you a gray-scale preview of how your slide will print. To change the print settings for any given object, right-click on it, then click "Black and White", and then choose the appropriate print option for that object.? Master objects can be selected by going to the Master page View.
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Preview Slide Show Effects
While editing a presentation, hold down the CTRL key while clicking the slide show view button; this will open a tiny preview window showing that slide in slide show mode.
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Setting the Default Text Style
If you want to change the style of the text that appears when you type things that aren't the title or the slide body, do the following:
Make sure no objects are selected. From the Format menu, select Font. Make all the changes that you want there, and click OK. From that point on, new text will be created in that style. To Set the formatting for the title or slide body objects, go to the Slide Master and format these objects on the master.
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Using Different Backgrounds within one Presentation
Users of PowerPoint® 2000 and lower will only have two background designs automatically supplied with the Masters (counting both the Slide Master and the Title Master).? However, you can have any design you want on any slide. From the Format menu, select Background. Check the box that says "omit background items" and this will make the slide ignore the Slide Master's design. You are now free to add whatever design you want to this slide. If you want to do this to many slides at once, go to the Slide Sorter, select the slides, and then use the Format menu command. Remember though that if you choose to do something like put a photographic background on many of your slides instead of doing it once on the Master, that your file size may increase dramatically. PowerPoint® 2002 supports multiple background masters.
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Using More than One Guide
If you like using guides, but wish there were more, you can create additional Guides by simply holding down the CTRL key while dragging on an existing Guide. This will create a new guide. To get rid of guides, just drag them off the edge of the slide.
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Using Guides to Measure
Make the Guides visible by using View/Guides. Then, hold down the SHIFT key while you click-and-hold a guide; the tooltip for the guide will display 0:00. As you move the guide, the distance the guide covers from the beginning of the drag will be displayed in the units of your ruler. In this way you can measure distances between objects, place guides at specific places, etc.
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Creating Pages with Slides and Descriptive Text
If you want to create printable pages that have notes or descriptive text associated with each slide, PowerPoint® has a feature designed to do just this called Notes Pages, or Speaker's Notes (depending on which version you're using). To view the Notes page for any slide, go to the View menu and select Notes Pages. You will see an image of your slide there, and a placeholder for adding your script, notes, or any other text you wish. You can cut-and-paste text from Word here if you like. To print these pages, bring up the Print dialog, and at the bottom of the dialog where it says "Print What:", select Notes Pages. These pages were originally designed to be used as audience hand outs (with space for the audience to take notes) but were also used by many as speaker's notes: the text block would have the script of the presentation, to be used by the speaker, or for sales binders to educated sales people.
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Making Presentation Files Smaller
Prior to PowerPoint® 97, there was no internal file compression code inside of PowerPoint®, and files could get pretty big quickly. The most common cause of large files is the addition of large bitmaps. PowerPoint® 97 compresses these bitmaps, but previous versions do not. To keep your presentations as small as you can, try reducing the resolution of your bitmaps, which will bring their size down tremendously. For viewing on screen, the bitmaps don't need to be more than 96 dpi; they won't print nicely until they're up around 150 or higher, but the screen always displays at 96 dpi, so if the primary viewing medium is the screen, there's no point in having the bitmaps be a higher resolution. Also, the bitmap format can make a big difference to your file sizes. JPEG and PNG both have good internal compression code. GIF has some, but not as good as JPEG. BMP files are the largest; TIFF files will also be very large.
Sometimes, as you're working on a presentation, you'll notice that the file seems to get bigger for no reason.? To get rid of this "bloating", save the file using "File/Save As" and give the file a new name.? This can reduce the file size up to 50%.
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Building Presentations for Distribution to Others
If you're making a PowerPoint® presentation that you intend to distribute to lots of different people, here are some important things to watch out for that will cause problems:
1. Stick with the fonts that come installed on your computers; Fancy fonts that appear on your machine will cause problems if everyone else doesn't have them.
2. Avoid embedding sounds and videos: these will not go from Mac to Windows gracefully, and you have to be very careful about how you insert the files in order to get them to "travel" properly. See the FAQ section for more information on this.
3. Try looking at the presentation on a different platform (Mac and Windows); be prepared for some visual changes in your file -- the version or platform may not support some features you've used, so be sure to check your file on several different machines and versions before you distribute it!
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Change Text Case
If you have text that is in the wrong case, select the text, and then click Shift+F3 until it changes to the case style that you like. Clicking Shift+F3 toggles the text case between ALL CAPS, lower case, and Initial Capital styles. You'll be surprised how often you use this once you get the hang of it!
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Nudging Objects
You can use the arrow keys to move objects very small distances. This is a big win for those laptop users who no longer have mice. Select the object, then use your arrow keys. Each press of the key will move the object on "grid unit" (1/12th of an inch, don't ask why); if you hold down the ALT key while nudging, or if you have the grid turned off, you can move the objects one pixel at a time.
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Subliminal Messages
Create a text object. With the text object selected, click on the Animation Effects button on the tool bar (the one that looks like a yellow star), and then click on the "flash once" button. Go to slide show and see the message quickly flash and then disappear.
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Edit Drawings
Anything you draw with the pencil tool, you can edit. To get the object into "points mode", either double-click on the object, or select it then hit the Enter key. You will then see points at every vertex, which you can move. You can add points by holding down the shift key and clicking, you can subtract points by holding down the ALT key while clicking, and you can of course just drag points around.
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Soft Shadows
You can create "soft" shadows for square or round objects that sit on a solid color background. Make a copy of the object, then change its fill to be shaded from black to the background color, with the shading set with black going from the center out to the background color at the edges. Make this object about 150% bigger than the original object, and put it behind the object. This will give you the effect of "soft" shadows.
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Select Small Objects
Hit the ESCAPE key to insure that nothing is current selected, then repeatedly hit the TAB key, which will toggle you through a selection of all of the objects on a slide. This is useful for selecting very small objects, or objects that are covered up by other larger objects.
