PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Learn PowerPoint 2007 for Windows: Open and Close Paths

The Shapes Gallery in PowerPoint consists various shapes, both open and closed. Most of the shapes in this gallery are closed shapes, for example, a Rectangle, an Ellipse, and a Triangle. There are also a few open shapes such as the straight point to point line. Also, there are some drawing tools let you draw both open and closed shapes — these are the Freeform Line, Curve, and Scribble tools. In addition, you can convert any closed shape into an open shape and vice versa, as you will learn in this tutorial.

Learn how you can open and close paths for shapes in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: PowerPoint 2007, Shapes, Tutorials

Dynamic MUSIC: Conversation with Kurt Dupont

    Kurt Dupont, based out of Belgium heads PresentationPoint, a company that creates several amazing PowerPoint add-ins. After his Computer Science studies, Kurt started with Andersen Consulting (Accenture nowadays) in Brussels. After 3 years he moved to the Brussels Airport Terminal Company that runs the Brussels airport – this last placement inspired the start-up of Take-off (now known as PresentationPoint) in 1998.

In this conversation, Kurt discusses Dynamic MUSIC, an add-in that lets you play music tracks and playlists in PowerPoint.

Geetesh: Tell us about Dynamic MUSIC, your add-in for PowerPoint — and what motivated you to create this product?

Kurt: Sure Geetesh. We PowerPoint users all know that you can insert an MP3 file on your slide, or play MP3 files over multiple slides in your slideshow. And many people use PowerPoint for information screens. Think about companies, factories, hotel lobbies, exhibitions, schools and so on. They all present news, statistics, time schedules and more on a large television screen to inform employees and visitors.

In some environments, they can even add music to their presentation. Think about advertising slides in a shop to promote products and services. They easily can add background music to their presentation. Maybe background music carefully selected to bring the viewers in a certain mood. Think about salsa music accompanied with nice hotel offers at a travel agency. Or romantic music at a restaurant. A good marketer knows that adding the right music to your ads, improves ad quality and customer satisfaction because of the influencing atmosphere.

Now with our Dynamic MUSIC add-in, you can add folders and folders with music files to your presentation. The music files are of course not embedded into the presentation. It is just a playlist with references to the songs or albums. Set up a new playlist and add your music files. When you then start your slide show, the music files are played continuously until the slide show stops. Of course, you can choose to play the songs in a fixed or (more preferred) random order.

Geetesh: Can you share some information about the other PowerPoint add-ins that are part of your Dynamic ELEMENTS series?

Kurt: Next to our DataPoint add-in for data-driven presentations and our digital signage iPoint product, we are now setting up a new product line called Dynamic ELEMENTS, where we offer easy add-ins with common functionality that more people can use. The first one was Dynamic TIME and now we have Dynamic MUSIC. In the very near future, we will bring out new add-ons to display news of an RSS feed and another one to display weather information for your chosen area. All Dynamic ELEMENTS add-ins exist of the add-on to add the extra functionality to your PowerPoint but also a nice PowerPoint template with many slides that you can use directly on your computer screen. Extra functionality in a professional, design template.

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: Add-in, Dynamic Music, Interviews, Kurt Dupont, Music, PowerPoint, PresentationPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Insert Video from Facebook

The last option within our tutorials of the Insert Online Video series is bringing in videos from Facebook. There is a prerequisite though — to insert video from your Facebook account you will first have to add Facebook as a connected Service within your Microsoft account — this needs to be done only once.

Learn how to insert video from your Facebook account in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: PowerPoint 2013, Tutorials, Video

Learn PowerPoint 2007 for Windows: Add or Delete Points (Vertexes) for Shapes

You learned what Edit Points in PowerPoint are and how this option influences the look of shapes in PowerPoint. Even though the Edit Points option edits vertexes and give you control over how you want a shape to look, sometimes you might find it difficult to edit a certain segment in a shape because there are no points available to manipulate? Or there may be far too many points! PowerPoint provides a simple solution for this problem — you can add and delete vertexes (points) from a shape.

Learn how to add or delete points (vertexes) for a shape in PowerPoint 2007 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2007
Tagged as: PowerPoint 2007, Shapes, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Insert Video Using Embed Code

The next option in our Insert Online Video in PowerPoint 2013 series is inserting video from a Video Embed Code. Here you can use embed code from any site and paste into Insert Video dialog box to insert the video clip into your slide. Technically, this option should work with YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, and most other sites. In reality, this option seems to only work with YouTube! And with YouTube, you don’t even need code since PowerPoint 2013 allows you to directly search and insert video clips from YouTube.

Learn how to insert video using Embed Code in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: PowerPoint 2013, Tutorials, Video, YouTube