PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Indezine News Released

During the last issue, we discussed about how a smile can be a liability to a speaker, especially if he smiles all through a long presentation. Read our Thin Smiles, Thinner Audiences story this time to learn more. Yet, that does not mean that you should not smile — a smile is a very useful part of your personality, and a great asset when it is sincere and genuine. And when you smile, your slides need to smile too. Yes, slides have emotions — they can cry, they can smile. They can be grumpy, dirty, and confused — or they can be organized, efficient, and clean! In the next few issues, we will explore slide emotions and see how the right emotive slide can make a difference to your presentation.

Read the newsletter here.

Filed Under: Ezine
Tagged as: Ezine, PowerPoint

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Creating Anchor Points for Connectors

At the time of attaching a connector to any slide object, you might have noticed that connectors can only be attached to an anchor point that appears on the slide object. Most of the time, the default anchor points may work well for you — however, in certain scenarios, you may want additional anchor points at a particular location on the slide object. The good news is that you can add new anchor points for slide objects such as shapes and text boxes using the technique explained in this tutorial.

Learn how to create Anchor Points for connectors in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

PowerPoint Creative Projects: Conversation with Peggy Duncan

    Peggy Duncan works with teams and individuals to help them spend less time working but get more done. Peggy travels internationally training on organization, time management, advanced PowerPoint, Word tips, email management with Outlook, do-it-yourself search engine optimization, and getting started with video and YouTube channels. Peggy is an award-winning video blogger at SuiteMinute and the author of Just Show Me Which Button to Click! in PowerPoint 2007.

In this discussion, Peggy discusses how she uses PowerPoint for creative projects other than just slide design.

Geetesh: You use PowerPoint for more than just slide creation, especially for image editing. Tell us what makes PowerPoint such a great image editor, and what types of images you can create within this slide program?

Peggy: I was struggling with Photoshop trying to create, I think at the time, a web banner. It was painful. I remember thinking how easily I’d be able to perform the same tasks in PowerPoint, so I just tried it. I resized a slide and designed from there. I went on to create the background for my YouTube channel, DigitalBreakThroughs, postcards, CD labels…whatever I needed.

PowerPoint is the right tool for the job. It just works for me. It’s so flexible and can do almost everything I want: sizing to fit my needs, formatting the background, manipulating pictures by rotating, shaping, adding depth with shadows, and so much more. Plus, there was no learning curve because I already knew the software. I was able to transfer the skills I use to produce presentations to my projects.

Geetesh: How do you export images from PowerPoint, and do you use any add-ins to make the process easier?

Peggy: When I wanted to use PowerPoint to design a business card or anything that I’d send to a traditional printer, I had the problem of low resolution produced in native PowerPoint (96dpi). I think I was on a Microsoft forum and read about ImageExport from the PPTools website. I use this powerful and affordable add-in to either produce an entire slide, a full presentation, or an image on a slide in high resolution.

Here’s a video from my YouTube channel that shows how I use PowerPoint to create all sorts of marketing collaterals.

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: Design, Interviews, Peggy Duncan, PowerPoint, Presentation Skills

Animated Slide: Rotated Circles with Background Fill

Here’s a picture that has six friends celebrating. And we used six circles to highlight faces of friends to create a rotated circle animation. To make this work, all six circles contain a slide background fill, so as to grab the content off the slide background. Simultaneously, the rest of the background fades out so that the area within the circles is highlighted. The background picture was sourced from Microsoft’s Office.com site. To see how the animation plays, download the presentation or scroll down this page further to see a YouTube movie of the animation.

Download and use this presentation.

Filed Under: PowerPoint All Versions
Tagged as: Animation, PowerPoint, Presentation Samples

Learn PowerPoint 2010: Acquire or Create a Digital Signature

You have already explored what a digital signature is, and how a digital signature can be important for use in PowerPoint presentations. To digitally sign a presentation, you need a digital certificate. If you try to digitally sign any presentation without a digital certificate in PowerPoint 2010, you are prompted to acquire or create a digital signature. In this tutorial we will explore how you can both acquire or create a digital signature.

Learn how to acquire or create a digital signature in PowerPoint 2010 for Mac.

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