PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

PowerPoint Text Effects – 04

We have brought together 12 different text effects for you to use with any text in PowerPoint 2007, 2010 or higher on Windows (and also PowerPoint 2008, 2011 or higher on Mac). The sample presentation contains these Text effects in varieties of styles. Some of them may work better with only larger text – play around to see which one of these works for you. Of course none of these effects are suitable for body text, so you can use them for headings, such as slide titles. Copy the formatting of required sample text with the Format Painter, and then click on your text where you want to copy these effects.

Download and copy these text effects to use them in your own presentations.

Filed Under: Presentation Bank
Tagged as: PowerPoint, Presentation Samples, Text

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Adding Animation to Slide Objects

We have already explored what animation is, and what are the guidelines to be considered before you add an animation to a slide object within PowerPoint. You can animate any slide object that is selectable on your slide — these slide objects include pictures, shapes, text, bulleted lists, SmartArt graphics, charts, etc. Once the slide object is animated, you can tweak the animation to control how the slide object appears, moves, and disappears in the Slide Show view. Before you tweak, you must first add an animation to the slide object.

Learn how to add animation to a slide object in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

Show Emotion

By Claudyne Wilder

Why do presenters in business believe that they need to be monotone, without effect or emphasis? What is wrong with showing a little emotion when you are speaking? No, no! too many presenters respond.

Although I don’t want to be monotone, I just can’t get too emotional.

Image: StockUnlimited

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed Under: Guest Posts
Tagged as: Claudyne Wilder, Emotion, Guest Post, Opinion, Presentation Skills

Learn PowerPoint 2010: Resize, Rotate, and Flip Videos

In this series of tutorials on working with videos in PowerPoint 2010, you have already learned about correction adjustments for videos, recoloring video clips, and applying Video Styles, Video Effects, Video Shapes, and Video Borders that can help you enhance the look of your inserted videos. These options will make your video clips look better and focused — and will provide you with ideas to make your video clips stand apart. Yet, there are some very basic video editing options that can be even more significant. These include how you can resize, rotate, and flip your inserted video clips. Resizing can help you change dimensions of your video clips, while slight changes in rotation values can draw attention. Flip, the last of these options though is something you will almost never use — unless you want to do something drastically different!

Learn how you can Resize, Rotate, and Flip video clips in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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

Cliff Atkinson, Beyond Bullet Points, and Legal Presentations

Cliff Atkinson sent me a copy of the third edition of his Beyond Bullet Points book, and when you open the book, you’ll find that the obvious change in this new edition is a whole new chapter right at the beginning which talks about how a multi-million dollar court case was won by using the principles discussed in Cliff’s Beyond Bullet Points book.

To paraphrase the entire case in a few small paragraphs can be a challenge — let me try – and of course, you can get a copy of Cliff’s book to read this entire incident in full detail.

Merck & Co., a well-known pharmaceutical company developed and marketed a drug called Vioxx. Vioxx was marketed as something that would help those affected by arthritis as a pain relief drug. It was found later that Vioxx could also cause fatal heart attacks. You can read more about the Vioxx debacle on USA Today’s site.

One of the victims was Bob Ernst, whose wife Carol sued Merck. Carol’s lawyer, Mark Lanier worked with Cliff to use the principles outlined in the Beyond Bullet Points book to create a compelling presentation to convince the jury—something that played a pivotal part in Carol winning the case in a court in Angleton, TX. The presentation program used was Microsoft PowerPoint, and as an outcome of the case, the court ordered a compensation of $253 million. A few years later, this case is still pending, but that’s not the reason behind this post—the reason behind this post is that an outcome of this huge scale was possible in the first place, and it was a victory for those who use presentation software such as PowerPoint in the legal domain.

I asked Cliff about the use of his Beyond Bullet Points approach for presentations in the legal domain, and this is what he says:

I had originally written the Beyond Bullet Points book for a business audience, so I was surprised when a trial attorney approached me to ask my help in applying the approach to an opening statement for a big legal trial. But he won a $253 million verdict and attributes a large part of the success to his blockbuster presentation, which even made headlines in The New York Times and Fortune magazine. In retrospect I can see why attorneys are so interested in investing tremendous resources on their presentations – they win or lose their cases based on how effectively they communicate their message to their audiences. Because of this context, trial attorneys have much to teach presenters in all professions – especially in terms of the arts and sciences of the psychology, persuasion and physiology of communicating to audiences during high-stakes presentations.

Thank you so much, Cliff!

    Cliff Atkinson is an acclaimed writer, popular keynote speaker, and an independent consultant to leading attorneys and Fortune 500 companies. He designed the presentations that helped persuade a jury to award a $253 million verdict to the plaintiff in the nation’s first Vioxx trial in 2005, which Fortune magazine called “frighteningly powerful.” Cliff’s bestselling book Beyond Bullet Points (now in its 3rd edition) was named a Best Book of 2007 by the editors of Amazon, and it expands on a communications approach he has taught at many of the country’s top law firms, government agencies, business schools and corporations.

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: Books
Tagged as: Books, Legal, PowerPoint