PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Create a Hyperlink to a New Email Message in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

We already explored how you can link from an anchor object to any slide within the active presentation. However, this sort of linking is only the beginning of the possibilities for linking that PowerPoint 2013 for Windows provides. To take this to the next level, we will learn how you can link from an anchor object to create a new email message.

Learn how you can create a new email message with a hyperlink in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Email, Hyperlinking, Microsoft Windows, Office 2013, PowerPoint 2013, Tutorials

Slide Layouts within Slide Master View in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

While changing the Slide Layout of any given slide(s) in PowerPoint 2016, you typically access the Home tab of the Ribbon and click the Layout button. This brings forth the Layout drop-down gallery. The number of Slide Layouts that you see within this gallery may differ depending upon the Theme of your active presentation. However, with PowerPoint’s default Office Theme applied, you may see 9 layouts.

Explore Slide Layouts within Slide Master view in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Slide Layouts, Slide Master View, Slide Masters, Templates, Themes, Tutorials

Illuminate: Conversation with Patti Sanchez

    Patti Sanchez is a communicator with nearly 25 years of experience leading transformative marketing initiatives for brands and causes, and the co-author of Illuminate: Ignite Change Through Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies, and Symbols. As Chief Strategy Officer for Duarte, Inc., Patti facilitates workshops and counsels clients on how to create authentic connections with their audiences through persuasive presentations.

In this conversation, Patti talks about Illuminate.

Geetesh: Patti, tell us more about the experience of writing Illuminate. And how do you believe that reading Illuminate will help others?

Patti: Nancy and I complement each other really well: she’s the visionary and I’m the empath. She envisions where we need to be in the future, and I anticipate what it will feel like for people to go there. When we set out to write Illuminate, we combined these two passions of ours to help leaders navigate the monumental task of getting their people on board to undergo and bring about major change.

Anyone in the role of change-maker in some way knows that effectively communicating is vital to the success of a venture. After decades of helping leaders communicate well during high-stakes moments, we know the power of the spoken word. But we also know that communicating well in one moment isn’t enough to drive the adoption of truly bold and transformative ideas. We wrote Illuminate to fully support today’s leaders at every stage of their change journey, including the good times and the bad times, the victories and the failures, the moments to be proud, and the moments to be humble. Each of these moments is an opportunity to bring people closer together and embolden them to see their venture through to a successful conclusion.

Geetesh: Do you want to share an experience about an influence, a response, or anything else that happened while writing this book? And how did that make a difference?

Patti: Writing Illuminate was very meta – we found that we were applying the principles and models to our own company. As we wrote the book, our company went through an internal restructuring that disrupted nearly every role in the organization, all while business was booming and our people were already stretched thin. So we imagined how our people would feel as the new future of Duarte, Inc., would play out in their daily lives. We asked ourselves what we should say, show, and do to make the transition less challenging and more exciting. In other words, we took our own medicine!

So Illuminate‘s readers should know that we were testing the book’s ideas at the very time we were developing them, applying our models to our own business, and refining our ideas. The result of all of this is a book with a methodology rooted in real-life situations and examples that can guide readers through their own change communication challenges.

You May Also Like: Illuminate: Conversation with Nancy Duarte

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, Duarte Design, Interviews, Nancy Duarte, Patti Sanchez, PowerPoint, Presentation Skills

Change Background Styles in the Slide Master in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

In PowerPoint 2016 for Windows, the Slide Master influences the layout and look of all slides in your presentation. Make changes to the Slide Master and those changes reflect on your presentation slides. For example, you can apply another Background Style so that all Slide Layouts and slides in your presentation use this changed slide background. In this tutorial, we will explore how you can choose from any of the 12 available Background Styles to apply to the Slide Master.

Learn how to change Background Styles within the Slide Master in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2016
Tagged as: Background, Microsoft Windows, Office 2016, PowerPoint 2016, Slide Master View, Slide Masters, Templates, Themes, Tutorials

Illuminate: Conversation with Nancy Duarte

  Nancy Duarte is CEO of Duarte, Inc. and the author of Resonate, Slide:ology, and the HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations.

Her latest book, Illuminate: Ignite Change Through Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies, and Symbols, co-authored with Patti Sanchez, shows how the world’s greatest leaders use powerful communication to move people and ideas forward. She has a passion for teaching others about the power of persuasive presentations to drive change in the world.

In this conversation, Nancy talks about Illuminate.

Geetesh: Nancy, what does Illuminate as a book mean to you as an author? What is its raison d’etre? And how was it to co-author this book with Patti?

Nancy: My firm has been in the Silicon Valley for 28 years now, and my medium-sized organization has been through 5 reinventions, which has led to changes in our industry over the decades. It’s been a challenge to constantly innovate and reinvent the organization while at the same time keeping the employees excited about their unknown future.

For years, clients would call to have us help with their next great presentation. Then, they started to say that it wasn’t about just spreading the idea. For them, it was about a movement. This meant that we would once again have to shift our firm into understanding what it means to communicate in a way that moves people en masse.

So my co-author Patti and I studied what made great movements work. After three years of intense research and writing, we found that the most successful movements are a lot like the structure of epic tales, and at moments along the way, people need speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols to stay motivated.

Geetesh: For a reader, what would the biggest takeaway from Illuminate be?

Nancy: Great leaders are torchbearers. They illuminate just enough of the path into the dark and scary unknown to dissipate fear and motivate their travelers to make the journey with them. When the principles in Illuminate are put into practice, you will empathetically understand the people you’re leading and keenly understand what change feels like to them. This book helps leaders orient themselves in how to communicate change during five different stages of transformation, and design the right moments along the way to keep their travelers motivated.

You May Also Like: Illuminate: Conversation with Patti Sanchez

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, Duarte Design, Illuminate, Interviews, Nancy Duarte, Patti Sanchez, PowerPoint, Presentation Skills