PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Indezine News: January 8, 2013

In this issue, we explore how you can search for Creative Commons pictures that you can download and use in your PowerPoint slides and elsewhere without breaking any laws — you get free images that you can legally use. We then look at why it’s a good idea to buy a license for Office 2010 or 2011 now, even if you want to upgrade to the new Office 2013 when it is released this quarter — that’s because you get the newer version free! Our usual series of PowerPoint tutorials for both Windows and Mac looks at charts and Slide Masters this time.

Read all this and more in Indezine News.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Duplicate, Rename, and Edit Slide Layouts

All PowerPoint presentations contain one or more slides — and all slides are typically based on one of the available Slide Layouts (we call these just layouts for the rest of this tutorial). You can either choose a layout when you add a new slide — or even change the layout of your existing slides. Our sample presentation has 9 layouts but if your presentation has fewer or more layouts, that’s perfectly acceptable since the number of Slide Layouts available depends upon the active Theme of your presentation — what’s important though is that you will see the same number of layouts in both the New Slide and Layout galleries.

Learn how to duplicate, rename, and edit slide layouts in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Masters, PowerPoint 2010, Templates, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Picture Fills for Chart Series

When a new chart is inserted in your PowerPoint presentation, you will find that it takes the fills and border types based on the Theme of your presentation. You can change the fills and borders of charts as required. Other than that, you can always use pictures as fills. For example, imagine a chart that shows fruit exports and each column of the chart is filled with pictures of a particular fruit type rather than the conventional solid color fills or geometric patterns? Also, if you wanted to show how the export of grapes has increased over the years, your column chart would have all columns filled with pictures of grapes stacked one over the other? In PowerPoint 2011, you can always do just that with your charts as explained in this tutorial!

Learn how to use a picture as a fill for your chart series and also how to stack or scale the picture fill in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

Axes in PowerPoint Charts

The axis is the measuring scale that is typically placed towards the left and bottom of your chart. Normally, the axis on the left is called the Primary Vertical Axis and the axis placed at the bottom is called the Primary Horizontal Axis. Two more axes can be placed for most chart types — these would be the Secondary Vertical Axis towards the right side of the chart’s Plot Area, and the Secondary Horizontal Axis above the chart. In common everyday usage, both the Horizontal axes may be called the X axes, and the Vertical axes may be called the Y axes. Additionally, the Horizontal axes are also called Category axes, and the Vertical axes are sometimes called Value axes. In addition to X and Y axes, some chart types such as 3D charts can also have a Z Axis — known within the PowerPoint interface as a Depth Axis. Commonly this may sometimes be called the Series axes.

Learn about the various chart axes in PowerPoint.

Filed Under: PowerPoint All Versions
Tagged as: Charting, PowerPoint, Tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Vary Colors by Point for Charts

When a chart contains only one series and several categories, then by default individual chart segments may use the same fill color (such as individual columns in a column chart) or varying colors (such as segments in a pie chart), depending upon the chart type you are working with. If your chart uses the same colored series in all of the categories, it can make your chart look dull — it also does not provide a proper way for your audience to compare the individual series’ elements.

Learn how you can change the color of category elements (series) in a chart.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Charting, PowerPoint 2010, Tutorials