PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Sound Across Slides

If you want some music playing continuously without any interruption when you move from one slide to another, then you should first make sure that the music clip you are using is suitable for this purpose. A soft music clip that spans across your slides can make the flow between slides smooth, as long as the sound is not jarring or distracting for your audience. Also, if a presenter is going to speak along with the slides — then it goes without question that you don’t want to add a sound that spans across slides. Not only will this make the audience inattentive, but the speaker will be at a distinct disadvantage too. Yet, if you are showing a bunch of successive slides that include pictures — and no speaker is accompanying the slides — then adding a music clip to span across slides may be a good idea — here’s how you go about doing this task in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Learn how to loop a sound clip across slides in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Set as Default Text Box

Imagine this scenario: you place a text box on your slide — then you change the color of the font, reduce or increase the font size, set autofit options, tweak the margins, etc. At this point of time you are happy with your settings. Then you add another text box in the next slide — and you realize that this new text box needs to look the same as the text box you created earlier! No — you do not have to change all settings again — you change the defaults within the active presentation so that any new text box you insert has the format abilities you want.

Learn how to set a formatted text box as your default text box in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Insert Audio (Sound)

PowerPoint 2011 for Mac enables you to work with various types of sound files such as MP3, WMA, or WAV. However, inserted sounds are always embedded within your presentation, which is different from the default behavior in previous versions of PowerPoint which always linked sound files rather than embedding them. This has a plus side since you now no longer have to worry about linked files getting misplaced or lost. On the flip side, this can balloon file sizes. Having said that, it is still a good practice to keep your sound files in the same folder in which you save your PowerPoint 2011 presentation — even before you insert them.

Learn how to insert audio or sound in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

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

Learn PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: Resize Text Boxes Accurately

Resizing text boxes works in almost the same way as you would resize any other slide object in PowerPoint — select it and you will see eight handles on the four corners and four sides — you then drag any of these corners to resize. The problem with this approach is that the resized text box you end up with is not accurate. If you do not need accuracy, then you need not read the rest of this tutorial — however there might be times when you need your text box sized exactly as the size of another slide object on the same slide.

Learn how to resize text boxes accurately on a slide in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

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

Remove Background from Pictures in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows

Among PowerPoint 2010’s newest and most magical abilities is the Remove Background option that lets you remove the background from an inserted picture. This can be a great feature if you want to remove a sky, a wall, any backdrop, or something else in a photograph so that the slide background shows through within the removed parts of the picture.

Learn how to remove a part of your picture to make a transparent background in PowerPoint 2010 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint 2010
Tagged as: Graphics, Pictures, PowerPoint 2010, Tutorials