PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Solid Fills for Slide Backgrounds in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

PowerPoint’s Slide Backgrounds can be filled with a solid color, a gradient, a texture or a picture, or even one of PowerPoint’s built-in patterns. We explored a generic walkthrough on changing the Slide Background in our Format Slide Background in PowerPoint 2016 tutorial. This tutorial explores how you can use a solid color as the fill for your Slide Background — solid color fills have the advantage of showing a large expanse in just one color. This does keep the slide uncluttered and draws the audience’s attention away from the background to the foreground elements — and that’s a good thing! Unless you use a bright orange, a fluorescent yellow or some other striking color as a background for your slide! So do choose your colors with caution – neutral colors such as white, grey, black, blue, and green always work better.

Learn how to apply solid fills to Slide Backgrounds in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Background, Fills, Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Templates, Themes, Tutorials

Conversational Office 2016: Conversation with Heather Ackmann

  Heather Ackmann is a Microsoft MVP and full-time author and trainer for AHA Learning Solutions, specializing in Microsoft Office, business professional, and soft skills training videos and educational materials. In her spare time, she enjoys blogging at Heather Ackmann and crocheting hats and scarves for her children who refuse to wear hats and scarves.

In this interview, Heather talks about her new book, Conversational Office 2016.

Geetesh: Heather, can you tell us more about your new book, Conversational Office 2016. What is this book about, and why does it have the word “conversational” in the title?

Heather: Well, before we get into Conversational Office 2016, I think you first need to understand the publisher, Conversational Geek. This book, or rather “minibook,” is part of a larger series of minibooks published by Conversational Geek created by another Microsoft MVP, J. Peter Bruzzese and Nick Cavalancia.

I remember when Peter first came up with the idea (he’s always coming up with ideas and sometimes they are hard to keep track of), we were working together at TrainSignal. He was always reading and writing, both professional and some creative stuff, and I being a former literary magazine editor, we had a lot to talk about when we got together. When he told me about the idea for Conversational Geek, I think I told him he would never make any money off of it. I am so glad I was wrong.

Peter’s vision for the series of books was born out of a larger frustration with technical books and whitepapers. As an author, he was well-acquainted with the hard long hours it would take to write 1,000-page mega-books that nobody reads, and as an IT professional he found it annoying that industry white papers would lure in people, dangling the promise of new information and a solution to his IT woes, only to find himself reading a 10-page fluff piece put out by a desperate marketing department. Basically, he was tired of lecturing and being lectured to. He wanted…no, he needed something more conversational and fun, something with humor and cartoons, something that he could pull up on an airplane ride and ingest and give him an expert perspective on a technology, industry, and piece of culture that would normally take years of work to absorb and fully appreciate its contribution and dent in the larger space of things.

And that is what Conversational Office 2016 attempts to do. It’s meant to be the start of a conversation, me talking to you, about how I see Office 2016 shaping the application space and business world as it stands. It is not a how-to book; there are plenty of those books out there collecting dust. Sure, the book does cover and introduce the newest features of Office 2016. But it also explains a lot of terminology, concepts (like the “cloud”), and common points of confusion amongst Office consumers—but in a fun and honest way.

Geetesh: In your opinion, what is the major takeaway for a reader of Conversational Office 2016?

Heather: Perhaps the most valuable thing this book does, as far as I am concerned, is to give a thorough explanation of the difference between the Office 2016 applications you get from an Office 365 subscription vs. the traditional out-of-the-box installs of Office 2016.

Being completely honest, I’m supposed to be an “expert”—I spend all day and sometimes all night thinking about Microsoft Office—and some of the stuff, the marketing and support articles from Microsoft, has even me confused. I can only imagine how much more confusing it would be to someone who only casually follows the buzz, or not at all.

And that confusion is really quite tragic, because Office 2016 is the most exciting version of Office in a while, and not for any single new feature or set of features, but because of where Microsoft Office is heading. We are in for some major changes with how we as end-users interact and consume productivity software. And if you just heard/read that last sentence, and have no idea what I am talking about, then this book is for you—it’s design is to take a complete newbie to a technology and make them capable of understanding and holding their own informed conversation at a party about a given piece of tech.

Conversational Office 2016 is completely free to download here.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Books, Heather Ackmann, Interviews, Microsoft Office, PowerPoint

Format Slide Background in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

PowerPoint 2016 provides twelve default Slide Background Styles, much like the previous two versions. Apart from these Styles, you can continue changing the default Slide Background to something else such as a solid color or gradient, a pattern or a texture, or, even a picture. In this tutorial, we’ll explore these options that can be accessed within the Format Background Task Pane.

Learn about different options available to format the Slide Background in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Background, Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Templates, Themes, Tutorials

Standing Out in a Sea of Voices: Conversation with Jim Endicott

Jim Endicott is an internationally-recognized consultant, designer, speaker specializing in professional presentation messaging, design and delivery. Jim has been a Jesse H. Neal award-winning columnist for Presentations magazine with his contributions to the magazine’s Creative Techniques column. Jim has also contributed presentation-related content in magazines like Business Week, Consulting and Selling Power, as well as a, being a paid contributor to a number of industry-related websites.

In this conversation, Jim discusses his Standing Out in a Sea of Voices ebook.

Geetesh: Jim, can you tell us about your ebook, Standing Out in a Sea of Voices? What is contained in this book, and what motivated you to create it?

Jim: My business started out in 1998 as a small presentation design company.

At the time, the professional design community was focused on the world of print and avoided like the plague anything having to do with creating a presentation. Since I had managed a stable of designers in a computer graphic service bureau, it seemed like a good place to explore being an entrepreneur after getting laid off from a high-tech company in Portland, OR.

To be honest, the bar for presentation visuals was set really low then (not much better in some places now). So I was able to make a good living at it for many years. But our clients still struggled with how to shape a clear message so we added messaging services in 2000 and that segment of the business grew quickly. It didn’t take long, however, to sense something in the ‘success equation’ was still missing and I had to ask the most important questions….

• Did they actually close the deal?
• Persuade an audience?
• Influence an important change?
• Effectively align a company towards a future goal?

At that point, it was clear we had to work with the presenters themselves to help them be a more effective conduit for delivering the presentation. Over the last 10 years, that part of the business has eclipsed everything we do.

So this small mini-book, Standing Out in a Sea of Voices, is really a chronicle of all the lessons learned throughout this amazing 18 year journey. A well-designed PowerPoint all by itself can’t make a presenter successful. Neither can just a good message. And as many of us have observed, just being a polished communicator can create a momentary ‘flash in the pan’ of enthusiasm, but often without real substance and change.

Being heard these days and creating meaningful change is about helping presenters be their best in all these areas and guiding them through the journey we went on. That’s why I put together this resource.

Geetesh: How can one get a copy of Standing Out in a Sea of Voices?

Jim: You can download a free copy of the book from our site.

See Also: Making the Complex Simple: by Jim Endicott

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Books, Interviews, Jim Endicott, Opinion, Presentation Skills

Slide Background Styles in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

When you create a new presentation in PowerPoint 2016, you may typically see a single slide with a white background. Alternatively, if you open any of your existing presentations, the background of the slides may be in a different color or fill depending upon the Theme that the presentation is based upon. You can always change this slide background to a picture, a solid color, a pattern, or even a gradient. However, even without exploring all those options, there are twelve Background Styles that PowerPoint offers for every presentation by default. These styles are all coordinated and also designed to work well as a set of complementary backgrounds.

Learn about different Background Styles available for slides in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Background, Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Templates, Themes, Tutorials