PowerPoint and Presenting Blog
Thoughts and impressions of whatever is happening in the world of PowerPoint.
See Also:
PowerPoint and Presenting Notes
PowerPoint and Presentation Glossary
![]()
David Halpin is a seasoned executive with over 15 years of core product development experience at manager, senior manager and executive staff levels. He has managed geographically distributed, multi-faceted teams, which delivered world-class software solutions to F1000 customers. Halpin joined Quickoffice in 2006 to help lead and grow Quickoffice's development operations, globally.
In this conversation, David discusses the new QuickOffice Pro HD release that adds new features for working with PowerPoint files in the iPad.
Geetesh: Tell us about Quickoffice Pro HD’s new PowerPoint editing features.
David: PowerPoint has long been an important part of Quickoffice’s mobile Office suite, given the team’s commitment to user productivity. We are constantly reviewing consumer feedback regarding additional features to shape software updates that address top requests. Many of our customers said they could benefit from even more tools to improve their presentation capabilities on the road. This spurred our Quickoffice Pro HD update on April 10, which brought the ability to create and edit 2007-2010 PowerPoint files.
We expanded the number of shapes users can select to over 100 shapes in five different categories, which will provide users even more options when creating slides. Users can also view, create and edit numbered lists in PowerPoint, a highly used formatting option that creates easy-to-read slides.
Most importantly, the Quickoffice Pro HD update brings an improved rendering and visual interface, allowing colors, shapes and text to appear crisp and clean for any viewer.
All of these new features and improvements, combined with five additional localizations – Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese and Dutch – create an enhanced, polished experience for the Quickoffice user, and should come as a welcome update to anyone that needs to utilize PowerPoint while on the go.

Geetesh: Tell us about features supported in the new Quickoffice Pro HD.
David: As more users work across multiple platforms and devices every day, we wanted to provide the most seamless experience to our customers that takes into account this evolving way of working. That’s why we recently launched Connect by Quickoffice, a new service that integrates the company’s market-leading mobile Office editors with our cloud platform.
Connect not only maintains a single interface, but also integrates connections into the most popular cloud services, allowing users to access any file and then continue their work throughout the document lifecycle. Connect synchronized the content across all of a users devices. Connect also enables remote access into any device and aggregated search across all cloud services and connected devices, regardless of operating system. Now, customers can take advantage of all the latest PowerPoint and other Office tools on each of their devices, without missing a beat. Connect includes a native mobile application for iPad, iPhone, Android tablet and smartphone, a desktop client for PC and Mac, as well as a web portal, for comprehensive file and account management. Connect is available as an all-in-one monthly subscription service.
And, not to be overlooked, Quickoffice also added native iPad email client support to Quickoffice Pro HD, delivering a top user request.
Categories: interviews, ipad, powerpoint
Labels: interviews, ipad, powerpoint
![]()
Imagine this scenario: you chose what you thought was a perfect picture. So you insert the picture, and then enhance it using the cool picture editing options available in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac. You may have gone further -- for example, you could have applied some of the Adjust Picture options, added a border, applied some Picture Effects, etc. You went ahead and added a perfect combination of both the Fade and Zoom animations, and also timed it to happen at the speed you want. And then you discover a better picture, or your boss asked you to change to another picture. You also need to retain all the effects and animations! You could delete the original picture and start all over again, and yes, that is a long process! Or you can change any existing picture into another with just a couple of clicks.

Learn how to change one picture into another in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
Categories: office_mac, pictures, powerpoint_2011, tutorials
Labels: office_mac, pictures, powerpoint_2011, tutorials
![]()
Animation is movement and a fine art at the same time -- using animation's powerful capabilities of attracting attention, you can effectively illustrate a concept, a process, or anything else. However there's a thin dividing line between mere movement and utter confusion. Imagine a training session where the presenter moves around the room explaining a concept -- as he or she moves, the eye of the audience members follows him or her. There is a clear focus in the room, and the subject of that focus is the presenter. Now imagine another situation where the presenter and all the audience members in the room start moving in disparate directions just for the sake of movement -- at this point of time, the movement has given way to chaos. The distinction between movement and chaos works similarly on PowerPoint slides -- at any point of time, movement needs to have focus and direction, and more importantly, a reason to move!

Learn to build and sequence animations in PowerPoint 2010.
Categories: animation, powerpoint_2010, tutorials
Labels: animation, powerpoint_2010, tutorials
![]()
This sample presentation contains 12 different text effects that you can use with any text in PowerPoint 2007, 2010 or higher on Windows (and also PowerPoint 2008, 2011 or higher on Mac). Text effects range all the way from subtle to edgy, and from clean to grunge style. Some text effects may work better with larger text – play around to see which one works for you although none of these effects are suitable for body text. To use these effects, click on any of the sample text containers with the Format Painter button, and then click on the text where you want to copy these effects.

Download and use this slide for your own presentations.
Categories: powerpoint, presentation_samples, text
Labels: powerpoint, presentation_samples, text
![]()
In this series of tutorials on working with pictures in PowerPoint 2011, you have already learned about adjusting picture options, and applying Picture Styles, Picture Effects, and Picture Borders that can help you to enhance the look of your inserted pictures. These skills will make your pictures look better and will provide you with ideas to make your pictures stand apart. Yet, there are some basic picture editing skills that are very significant -- these include learning how you can resize, rotate, and flip pictures.

Learn how to resize, rotate, and flip pictures in PowerPoint 2011.
Categories: office_mac, pictures, powerpoint_2011, tutorials
Labels: office_mac, pictures, powerpoint_2011, tutorials
![]()
Once you add animation to any slide object, you can set its animation speed and change its animation event. Other than speed and event, you can also alter the delay caused before the animation actually starts. So why would you add a delay? There are several reasons and primarily a delay can be beneficial if you want to maintain a time limit between two animations -- as in having the second animation occur 10 seconds after the first one has concluded. Of course, that was just a simple example and animation delay can be helpful in many other scenarios. This delay is calculated in seconds.

Learn about Animation Delay, a new option introduced in PowerPoint 2010.
Categories: animation, powerpoint_2010, tutorials
Labels: animation, powerpoint_2010, tutorials
![]()
Have you seen a running stitch effect around an object -- especially an embroidered one? It's possible to create all sorts of such fancy effects, right inside PowerPoint -- without using any other program. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create this effect step-by-step -- and this should work in almost any version of PowerPoint released in the last 10 years.

Explore creating a dashed line border around a shape to create almost an embroidered edge effect.
Categories: templates, lines, outline, powerpoint, tutorials
Labels: fills, lines, outline, powerpoint, tutorials
Microsoft and the Office logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
