PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Indezine News: More about PowerPoint 2013

We talked about PowerPoint 2013 last week, and promised you that you’ll hear from us soon. So here it is — in this issue, we are focusing on how you can participate in the Office Customer Preview, and install Office 2013, which of course includes PowerPoint 2013. First things first — if you head straight to the Office Customer Preview site and see no mention of Office 2013 anywhere on that site, don’t get confused! The Preview site uses the term Office 365 everywhere, and Microsoft’s vision of Office 365 is a set of services you subscribe to — and some Office 365 subscriptions include a desktop license for Office 2013. The free subscription that Microsoft is giving away as part of the Office Customer Preview thus is actually an Office 365 subscription plan with 5 licenses of Office 2013 included.

Read the newsletter here.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Anchor and Unanchor Motion Paths

In PowerPoint, a Motion Path is a path or route along which a slide object animates on your slide. Motion Paths can be either anchored to the slide object, or not. The anchoring (unlocking) and unanchoring (locking) of Motion Paths are rarely explored options, and that may be because these are not too well documented or even intuitive. However, it’s good to know more about anchoring of Motion Paths, since this knowledge can help you create better animations. You have already learned how to add a Motion Path animation to any slide object. We also explained the concept of reversing paths and opening or closing paths. Now, follow the steps below to learn how to access and use the options to unanchor / anchor Motion Paths.

Learn about the anchor options for Motion Paths in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

Office 2013 Preview: Get the MSI Download

We already explored how you can install the Consumer Preview version of Office 2013 using the conventional CTR approach where the entire installation is streamed to your computer. This of course requires that you have lots of time, a fast internet connection — and worse, if you want to install the Consumer Preview on multiple machines, you’ll have to repeat the process for each machine!

Clearly there has to be an alternative option — and indeed there is. This download that runs the setup locally on your system is available as an MSI file. However, be aware that if you choose this download MSI option, you cannot run Office 2013 along with an older version of Office on the same system.

You get this download version by clicking the link right at the bottom of this page — Microsoft really went out of their way to hide this link!

Here’s a step-by-step walk through of the process:

1. Clicking the link provided above asks you to sign in to your Microsoft account — this is essentially your Windows Live account. If you already have a Hotmail, MSN, or XBox Live account, then that’s your Microsoft account. You can sign in with your Microsoft account, or choose the alternative to create a new account altogether just for this beta — that’s what we did.



2. Once you are signed in, you see this page with your serial number provided (we blacked out the serial number for this screenshot). Select a language, and then click either the Download 32-bit Software (shown in the screenshot) or the Download 64-bit Software button (not visible in the screenshot).



3. If you are using a browser other than Internet Explorer, you’ll see a Please wait while the download begins screen, and the download may begin immediately at this point. If you are using Internet Explorer, you will see a Please wait while the Download Manager begins your download screen.



4. Internet Explorer users will next see a Download Manager that lets you pause and resume the download (see the screen-shots below).





5. The entire download is not too large at 625 mb.

In the next post in this series, we will install the downloaded MSI file.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Office 2013, PowerPoint 2013

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Theme Fonts

Each Theme contains several unique facets that set it apart from other Themes. These include Theme Fonts, Theme Colors, and Theme Effects. When you apply a different Theme to your PowerPoint presentation, the fonts, colors, and effects applied to your slides change. Unless you override this on a per slide basis, these changes show up in all slides in the presentation. The resulting slides all look consistent. If you explore examples of the same slide with different Themes applied, you will notice that all the slides differ in terms of colors, fonts, and effects applied. Yet the text content is still the same.

Explore what Theme Fonts are in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Fonts, PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2010, Themes, Tutorials

Step-by-Step Install of the Office 2013 Customer Preview

In previous posts, we have explored about Getting the Office 2013 Customer Preview Beta and Before Installing Office 2013 Customer Preview. Now let’s take you step-by-step through the entire install process. All through this post, you will find screenshots — feel free to click on the actual screenshots to see larger representations.

1. Go to the Office 2013 Customer Preview site, and click the large green Sign Up button.



2. This gets you to the Welcome to the new Office screen — unless you want to Learn more, click the Try now link.



3. You now need to sign into your Microsoft account — this is essentially your Windows Live account — also if you have a Hotmail, MSN, or XBox Live account — then you already have a Microsoft account. You can sign in with your Microsoft account — or do what I did, and create a new account altogether just for this beta.



4. If you successfully signed in (or signed up), you will see the screen shown below. Click the green Get started now button.



5. You’ll now see the Welcome to your account page screen — just go ahead and click the green Install button.



6. You’ll see a message right near your browser’s status bar (at least in Internet Explorer) that asks you if you want to run or save the installation file — go ahead and click the Run option.



7. Next, you will see an indication of the installation beginning, and then connecting to your account — see the two screenshots below.





8. And then you see the screen that believes you will love Office — click the Next button to continue.



9. Now you need to accept the Microsoft license agreement by clicking the Accept button.



10. And now for something you would least expect — a small video clip about the new Office — here are two screenshots from the video.





11. OK, now you must sign in — again! We know you already signed in, but that one was for the installation site — and this one is for your local computer — so press the orange Sign In button. Notice the smiling and frowning faces on the top right — click those to tell Microsoft if you are happy or not!



12. Now you actually sign in — use the new Microsoft ID you created.



13. Now you are welcomed — and you can also choose a patterned theme for your Office 2013 program interface — we just chose the None option. Then click the Next button.



14. You next meet SkyDrive, Microsoft’s cloud storage solution — click the Next button to proceed.



15. Now Microsoft wants you to take a look at some other great stuff while they wrap things up — we just politely clicked the No thanks option.



16. Now the actual installation starts — it seems to start from 14% rather than 0% or 1%. Be prepared for a long wait.





17. And then after an hour and half, our installation was done. We tested this installation on a 4 mbps online connection.



18. Launch your program — we launched PowerPoint 2013. In a few moments, the program was automatically activated.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2013
Tagged as: Office 2013, PowerPoint 2013