PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Shape Intersect

PowerPoint 2013 lets you take a bunch of selected shapes and then apply one of the five Merge Shapes options to end up with some amazing results. However, the Intersect option that we are exploring within this tutorial works a little differently than the Combine, Fragment, Subtract, or Union options that we explore in other tutorials. The Intersect command works only when all selected shapes overlap each other. If any shapes do not overlap, Shape Intersect causes complete deletion of all shapes.

Learn how you can intersect shapes in PowerPoint 2013 using the Intersect command.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Graphics, PowerPoint 2013, Shapes, Tutorials

Adobe Presenter: The Beginnings

The year was 2001, and Flash was becoming more and more omnipresent. Every web site wanted to use Flash assets to appear cutting edge themselves. Some sites used Flash for animations, some used it for video — and then there were sites that even created the site’s menus and navigation features in Flash. And wait — some sites were created entirely in Flash. And with the Flash run-times installed everywhere, things looked great for the Flash format.

And other than the Flash program that Macromedia created, there was almost a scramble to create products that output content to the Flash format. You had programs that created Flash output from 3D graphics, charts, videos, greeting cards, even ebooks!

With so much of Flash everywhere, it seemed crazy for a while that there was no easy way to create Flash files from your PowerPoint slides. There were however many tutorials online that explained how you could export your slide content as vector files that could be re-assembled within the Macromedia Flash interface, then re-animated, and finally exported as Flash SWFs. Even with all this extra work, there were so many users who traveled the path and labored to create Flash movies of their PowerPoint content.

And then came a product called Presedia Producer that changed everything. Presedia was not really a product from 2001 — in fact, it was available and being conceptualized in some form since 1999. But it was in 2001 that I remember discussing Presedia with Keith Kitani. I asked him why he decided to create this new product that converted PowerPoint slides to the Flash format?

Keith responded:

The idea started when Kevin and I were at a sales meeting – the typical event with hundreds of salespeople viewing 20 presentations in 3 days. We felt there had to be a better way to deliver this type of presentation information. We decided to develop a solution so the typical business person could produce high quality web presentations in minutes.

Presentations – specifically PowerPoint – are the most common method for delivering business information. Yet, effective presentations are designed to be accompanied by audio. Slides alone do not provide the complete message.

The web is an ideal way to deliver business presentations with audio, yet no one had developed a good solution for delivering presentations with audio over the web. There were a few solutions available, but each had drawbacks, including the solution within PowerPoint.

Our solution needed to make it easy to create a multimedia presentation. We wanted the typical PowerPoint user to be able to create the web presentation – not just the multimedia designer.

What strikes me about Keith’s response is that more than a decade after he conceptualized and created Presedia, his usage scenario is so valid and relevant even today!

So why are we talking about Presedia and Keith today? That’s because Presedia is what we all know as Adobe Presenter today! But there’s more — Adobe Presenter has had an amazing journey — we will learn more in successive posts of this series!

Filed Under: Add-ins
Tagged as: Add-in, Adobe Presenter, Online Presentations, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Table Options

Create a new table in PowerPoint and you’ll find that it already includes some sort of default formatting — more often than not, you’ll find that the table already has Banded rows and the Header row highlighted. While PowerPoint decides to turn on some of these Table Options, there are some that you must manually enable. All put together, you can play with 6 distinct options that let you control the way through which table elements can be made to stand apart. You can find these options within a group called Table Options.

Learn about Table Options in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2011
Tagged as: Office for Mac, PowerPoint 2011, Tables, Tutorials

Convert Text to Outlines in PowerPoint with a Free Add-in

There are many new features in PowerPoint 2013, but my favorite is the one that lets you convert your text to outlines. This may be an undocumented feature, but it certainly is among the most useful ones! I found this feature quite by accident and was blown away by the amazing potential this one feature brings forth to presentation designers. When I demoed this at the Presentation Summit in Austin two years ago, there were many who later got in touch with me, or emailed me to learn more.

Since then, I created tutorials on this technique on Indezine.com:

Convert Text to Shapes by Intersecting in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

Convert Text to Shapes by Intersecting in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Convert Text to Shapes by Fragmenting in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows

Convert Text to Shapes by Fragmenting in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

You may not even need to follow a step by step tutorial and will be able to achieve the same results with just one click, thanks to a new, free add-in created by my friend, Jamie Garroch.

In fact, Jamie not only created this free add-in. He additionally compiled a list of scenarios in which you will find this add-in useful!

So what results can you expect from this add-in?

Look at Figure 1, below, and you will see a simple Rectangle shape in PowerPoint 2013 that contains some text.

Figure 1: Text to start with

Let’s assume this is a non-standard typeface (font), and you need to share slides containing this content with others. You are sure they won’t have this typeface available on their computers. So how can you ensure that they can see the text exactly as you intended? And also have the added benefit of recipients not being able to edit your text!

With the new Convert Text to Outlines add-in, you just need to click a button in PowerPoint 2013. and presto, your text is converted to a native PowerPoint shape, as shown in Figure 2, below.

Figure 2: Text that looks like text, but is actually a shape now!

So how can you ascertain whether this is really a shape and not text? There are many ways you can do that (try replacing text, and it won’t work!), but the easiest way is to right-click and see if you see an Edit Points option (see Figure 3, below).

Figure 3: Do you see the Edit Points option?

Go ahead and click the Edit Points option, and you will see all the points (vertexes) that hold this shape together, as shown in Figure 4, below.

Figure 4: All those points can be edited

You can actually select any of those points and drag them around to alter your shape. Made a mistake? Quick, undo using the Ctrl + Z keyboard shortcut! Want to learn more? Explore our Edit Points page.

OK, don’t worry about all the handles that you see in Figure 4, above. Those show up only because we were in Edit Points mode to prove that this is indeed a shape. Just click anywhere else and you’ll get out of Edit Points mode and you’ll just see what looks like pristine text, as shown in Figure 2, earlier on this page.

And with this Convert Text to Outlines add-in, the text that is converted to shapes retains the fill and line attributes of the original text. To achieve this magic, Jamie had to create a Text-to-Shape Format Painter element within PowerPoint. This is what makes this add-in really special because even if you did this manually, there’s no real equivalent command in PowerPoint.

Do understand that you must install this add-in in PowerPoint 2013 or a newer version to take advantage of the text to outline features. Although you can install the add-in in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010, the outline conversion cannot happen in those versions of PowerPoint since this capability was only added in PowerPoint 2013.

And even though this add-in will do the text to shape conversion only within PowerPoint 2013, the resultant shapes will work in all versions of PowerPoint.

Filed Under: PowerPoint All Versions
Tagged as: Add-in, Jamie Garroch, PowerPoint, Shapes, Text

PowerPoint and Presenting News: December 31, 2013

In this issue, we first bring you an exclusive conversation with Tom Kuhlman of Articulate who discusses how easily you can use the new Articulate Studio ’13 within PowerPoint. We have some more snowflake graphics for you. PowerPoint 2013 for Windows users can learn about Gradient Slide Backgrounds, and about the Merge Shapes commands including Shape Union. PowerPoint 2011 for Mac users can learn about reusing Excel and Word tables in PowerPoint, and about adding or removing rows/columns in tables. And finally, do not miss the new discussions and templates of this week!

Read Indezine’s PowerPoint and Presenting News.

Filed Under: Ezine
Tagged as: Ezine, Indezine, News, PowerPoint