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MS POWER POINT 2000 Presentations

LAST UPDATED: 11 March 2009 14:47:16 -0600

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Continuous Slide Show Rehearse your presentation Practice, Practice, Practice Handout

Timing is everything! SAVE TIME AND START YOUR SLIDE SHOW ON THE CURRENT SLIDE

PERSONALIZE YOUR PRESENTATIONS SOUND FILES IN POWERPOINT

PREVENT FONT SUBSTITUTIONS WHEN OTHER PEOPLE VIEW YOUR PRESENTATIONS

QUICKLY COMBINE MULTIPLE PRESENTATIONS INTO ONE` PROTECTED PRESENTATIONS

PRINTING PARTIAL PRESENTATIONS PRINTING ONLY REVISED SLIDES

PRINTING IN BLACK AND WHITE--PART 1 and 2 PRINTING FROM THE COMMAND LINE--PARTS 1 TO 3

POWERPOINT TO HTML MAKING 35MM SLIDES WITH POWERPOINT--PARTS 1 TO 3

MAKE SURE PEOPLE WITH COLOR BLINDNESS CAN READ YOUR PRESENTATIONS

LOVE THAT PRESENTATION--SURE WISH I HAD THE TEMPLATE LOCATING VIDEO CODECS

FADE THROUGH BLACK TRANSITIONS LOOK BAD EXTRA IMPORT FILTERS FOR POWERPOINT

CREATING AN AUTORUN CD OF YOUR PRESENTATION CONVERTING AND UNLINKING LINKS

CREATE MANY PRESENTATIONS IN ONE WITH CUSTOM SHOWS

CONVERTING TO POWERPOINT FROM OTHER PROGRAMS COMPARING TWO PRESENTATIONS

COMBINING SLIDES FROM DIFFERENT PRESENTATIONS--PARTS 1 TO 4 ANIMATE YOUR BULLETS

CONVERT A PRESENTATION TO VIDEOTAPE SYNCHRONIZING YOUR PRESENTATION TO SOUND

BATCH CONVERTING OLDER POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS ANIMATED GIFS IN POWERPOINT

ANIMATED GIFS CAN LIVEN UP YOUR PRESENTATIONS PRINTING IN REVERSE ORDER

ACCURATELY PREDICT HOW YOUR COLORS WILL PRINT NEW POWERPOINT E-ZINE

A GREAT RESOURCE FOR PRESENTERS CENTERED PRINTOUTS ON INKJET PRINTERS

RE-RECORD NARRATION FOR JUST A FEW SLIDES CHOOSING/USING A PROJECTOR

PLAY A SOUNDTRACK OVER A WHOLE PRESENTATION HANDOUTS WITHOUT LINES

CREATE A PLAYLIST FOR POWERPOINT STARTING PRESENTATIONS AUTOMATICALLY

SPEED UP YOUR PRESENTATIONS SLIDE SHOWS IN A MINI-WINDOW

HOW CAN I GO TO A PARTICULAR SLIDE IN MY POWERPOINT 200 SCREEN SHOW

HOW CAN I PAUSE MY PRESENTATION AND BLANK THE SCREEN

HOW CAN I RESTART MY SLIDE SHOW IMMEDIATELY

HAVE YOUR PRESENTATIONS START IN SCREEN SHOW VIEW AUTOMATICALLY

Continuous Slide Show

Ever wish you could just set up your slide show to run continuously without you having to be there to restart it every few minutes? Well, you're in luck: PowerPoint lets you do this. Setting it all up requires a few minutes, but once you've finished, you can just walk away and take that well-deserved coffee break.

First, finalize your presentation with whatever attention-grabbing (but not irritating) features you desire. Then, you need to make the slides advance automatically. To do this, set up slide timings by choosing View menu and selecting the Slide Show menu, choosing Slide Transition, clicking the Advance area's Automatically After x Seconds option, and entering a number in the text box. Depending on your slides' complexity, 5 to 10 seconds might be a suitable time. To standardize this setting across the whole presentation, click the Apply To All button. If you want to set timings for individual slides, just repeat this step for each slide, but choose the Apply button.

While you're at it, you might want to assign transition effects and/or sound effects to all or some of your slides. The Random transition effect provides a good amount of variety. Remember, though, when it comes to sounds, a few sounds go a long, long way! Be sure to save the slide show again at this point.

Next, you need to make the slide show repeat when it reaches the last slide. To make the show repeat automatically, you choose Set Up Show from the Slide Show menu, and, in the resulting dialog box, just select the Browsed At A Kiosk (Full Screen) option. Choosing this option automatically also selects the Loop Continuously Until 'Esc' option. Click OK to set this option.

Finally, start the slide show. Press F5, click the Slide Show button, on the views bar, or choose View Show from the Slide Show menu.

To stop the slide show, simply press Esc.

Rehearse your presentation

Once you've finished developing your slides, be sure to set up a slide show and go through your entire presentation. If possible, get one or two people to attend this "dress rehearsal." The attendees can help alert you if you go too fast or slow and if some of the slides don't come across as well as you'd hoped.

The most common mistake is going too fast. The worst thing you can do is rush through a presentation. Practice is the best way to avoid the problem.

As you rehearse your presentation, make sure you allow for audience questions. When the questions will come isn't always under your control. If you're making a sales presentation to a prospective customer, you can't always defer questions until the end of the slide presentation.

So, try to rehearse before an audience, and tell your audience to ask questions at any time. This helps in two ways: First, you can adjust your slide show in response to some of the questions, and you can get some practice in handling the types of questions you may get from your target audience.

Practice, Practice, Practice

In the previous tip, we recommended that you practice your presentation in front of an audience. If this isn't possible, you should still practice by yourself--preferably in front of a mirror.

If you have only a certain length of time to give your presentation, you should practice using PowerPoint's Rehearse Timings feature, which will allow you to tailor your slides and speaker's notes to the allotted time. With this feature, you can determine not only the total length of your presentation but also the time you spend on each slide. Once you have this information, you can decide where to add text, when to cut short your comments, and whether you really have time for that opening joke.

To use the Rehearse Timings feature, get prepared for final dress rehearsal, then select Slide Show, Rehearse Timings. Your slide show will begin, and a timer will appear in the upper-left corner of the screen. Begin speaking as you would in front of your audience, and advance to the next slide at the appropriate time. If you mess up (and who doesn't the first few times through!), you can restart the slide by clicking the Repeat button (the circular arrow button). You can click the Pause button to suspend the timer for a moment, then click the button again to resume.

Once you've worked your way through the slide show, PowerPoint will inform you how long your slide show took and will ask if you want to record these timings. Note the total time for your presentation and answer Yes at this message box. Then view your slide show in Slide Sorter view--each slide's individual timing will appear underneath the slide. You can use this information to decide where you need to beef up your text and where you need to cut.

Remember, you can modify timings manually, if need be, by changing the Automatically After setting in the Slide Transition dialog box. You open that dialog box by choosing Slide Transition from the Slide Show menu in Slide view, or by selecting the slide and clicking the Slide Transition button in Slide Sorter view.

Timing is everything!

In the last tip, we showed you how to use the Rehearse Timings feature to help you rehearse your presentation so it fits into a specific length of time. But you can use this feature for a couple of other purposes, too.

First, you can actually force yourself to present your slide show in the allotted time by using the rehearsed slide timings when you run your show. To do this, you choose Set Up Show from the Slide Show menu and choose the Use Timings If Present option. When you do, your slides will automatically advance according to the rehearsed timings--and you'll have to speed up or slow down in order to keep up with your onscreen presentation. An added benefit of using timings is that you don't have to advance slides manually--which means you can move freely around the area instead of being chained to your computer.

Second, you can use the Rehearse Timings feature to determine how long to display each slide when you run a slide show in unattended or kiosk mode at a trade show or other venue. This is much better than just taking a wild guess at how long to display each slide! Simply enable Rehearse Timings, then view your show as your viewers would, taking in the slide's text and pictures at a relaxed pace and advancing to the next slide at the appropriate time--not too fast, not too slow. When you've finished, set up your show to run continuously and specify that it use the recorded timings.

Handout?

As you begin developing a slide presentation, you need to decide whether you need handouts. We recommend that you NOT use handouts during your presentation if at all possible. People looking at handouts are people who aren't paying attention to your presentation slides. AND they might not be paying attention to what you're saying.

To keep your audience's undivided attention--yet give them something to remember you by--just pass out the handouts AFTER the presentation.

SAVE TIME AND START YOUR SLIDE SHOW ON THE CURRENT SLIDE

When you're working on a presentation, you can start it in Slide Show view by choosing View Show from the Slide Show menu (or by pressing the F5 key), but that always starts the show from the very beginning. That's tedious when you just want a quick look at the animations on Slide number 100 of a long show and have to plow through Slides 1 - 99 to get there. Instead, use the Slide Show View button at the lower-left corner of your screen to start the slide show at the current slide rather than from the beginning.

PERSONALIZE YOUR PRESENTATIONS

Do you ever find yourself giving the same presentation over and over? It's nothing to be ashamed of--why waste time reinventing the same wheel time after time? Still, wouldn't it be nice if you could personalize your presentation a bit for each different audience? It's really not that difficult.

Suppose your presentation starts out with a title slide that says "Welcome Amalgamated, Inc." and some bullet slides that are called things like "Our relationship with Amalgamated, Inc." and "How can we serve Amalgamated, Inc. better?" In fact, you've personalized every slide in the show with Amalgamated's name. The presentation went over so well with the president of Amalgamated that you'd like to use it again in your pitch to Megabux, Ltd. tomorrow, but you don't have time to change all 100 of your slides from Amalgamated to Megabux.

No problem! Here's what you need to do. First, open your presentation in PowerPoint. Choose Edit, Replace (or press Ctrl-H) to open the Replace dialog box. In the Find What text box, type

Amalgamated, Inc.

In the Replace With text box, type

Megabux, Ltd.

Then, click Replace All. PowerPoint replaces "Amalgamated, Inc." with "Megabux, Ltd." throughout your presentation. Check each slide in the presentation to make sure that PowerPoint hasn't missed any replacements. The Replace feature won't change text that's part of a chart, graphic, or other inserted object. You'll have to fix those yourself. Finally, save your newly personalized presentation under a new name by selecting File, Save As.

PREVENT FONT SUBSTITUTIONS WHEN OTHER PEOPLE VIEW YOUR PRESENTATIONS

If you plan to give other people your PowerPoint presentations to view or just need to show your presentation on a different computer, there's a potential "GOTCHA" to be on guard against: font substitution.

You've combed carefully through your whole collection of fonts looking for the one that best expresses your message, but can you be sure that your presentation will look as magnificent on somebody else's computer as it does on yours? No, you can't.

When it plays your presentation, PowerPoint asks Windows for the font you've chosen. If it's not available, Windows picks the closest font it can find. Sometimes the result is adequate; sometimes it's not even close. And as if that weren't bad enough, when the character widths don't match those of your font, all the text you so carefully positioned can go askew.

The simplest way to prevent this from happening to your presentations is to stick with the basic fonts that are automatically installed on all Windows computers: Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New, and a few others. That doesn't give you much variety from which to choose, so it's not much of a solution.

The good news is that PowerPoint can "embed" the fonts you chose in your PPT files. When someone opens your presentation on another machine where the embedded font isn't already installed, PowerPoint installs it automatically.

To embed fonts in a PowerPoint file, start by choosing File, Save As. Click the Tools button in the upper right of the Save As dialog box, then click Embed TrueType Fonts. Continue saving your file as you normally would.

Note: You may see a warning from PowerPoint when you embed fonts. This can happen for either of two reasons:

* You can only embed TrueType fonts. If you're using some other kind of font, you can use Format, Replace Fonts to substitute a TrueType font before saving. * Not all TrueType fonts are embeddable. If a font hasn't been made embeddable by its manufacturer, PowerPoint can't embed it, so it warns you.

SOUND FILES IN POWERPOINT

PowerPoint 2000 can play back MP3 sound files without any help from additional software, but if you need to share presentations with users who have earlier versions of PowerPoint, MP3s may not play back on their systems.

If you have to be sure your sounds will work on other systems, it's a good idea to stick with sounds in WAV rather than MP3 or other formats.

What if all you have is MP3 sound files? Well, a search on the Internet will turn up a lot of MP3-related Web sites; most of these will have downloads or links to places where you can download software to convert between sound formats. One such shareware MP3-to-WAV converter is MusicMatch Jukebox, which is available from

http://musicmatch.com

QUICKLY COMBINE MULTIPLE PRESENTATIONS INTO ONE`

Occasionally, you may need to combine several people's work into a single presentation, or maybe just combine several of your own presentations to create another new one. You have several ways of doing this, but here's one of the fastest:

Begin by choosing Start, Run. In the Open dialog box, type

POWERPNT -i "file 1.ppt" "file 2.ppt" ... "file XX.ppt"

Note: Substitute the complete drive:\path\filename for your own files in place of "file 1.ppt", etc. If your folders and filenames include no spaces, you don't need to type the quotation marks.

Finally, click OK to have PowerPoint start up, create a new blank presentation, and insert the contents of each of the presentations you called for above. Notice we said "blank presentation." Don't let that startle you. All you have to do to fix that is choose Format, Apply Design Template, and then pick the template you want to apply to the new presentation.

PROTECTED PRESENTATIONS

Once in a while, you'd like to send someone a copy of a PowerPoint presentation, but you really would rather they not be able to edit the presentation or extract any information from it. Unfortunately, PowerPoint doesn't allow you to do this, but there are several workarounds. You can learn more about these from the PPT FAQ page at

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq

One of the programs mentioned there is Prez-Guard, from ALADat, which allows you to password-protect a presentation so that it's viewable but not printable or editable. You can learn more about Prez-Guard and download a demo version at

http://www.aladat.com

ALADat also offers a free Slide Converter Wizard that converts each slide in your presentation into an image file, then imports that into a new presentation. You end up with a new presentation that's not password-protected, so it can be opened and printed. But for all intents and purposes, it's not editable.

PRINTING PARTIAL PRESENTATIONS

How often do you need to make a few changes to several slides in a presentation, then print JUST the changed slides? Every week? Welcome to the club!

Keeping track of which slides you've changed can be a pain. Sure, you can enter the numbers of just the slides you want to print in PowerPoint's Print dialog box, but if you're like us, this never occurs to you until you're staring the Print dialog box in the face WISHING you'd remembered to write down the numbers as you made changes. Besides, if you added, deleted, or rearranged slides, the numbers have all changed anyway.

Here's the easy way out: Switch to Slide Sorter view and click the first slide you want to print. Then, hold down the Shift key as you click each of the other slides you want to print.

Next, choose File, Print and click Selection in the Print dialog box. This tells PowerPoint to print only the slides you've clicked in Slide Sorter view.

Finally, choose any other print options you want and click OK.

PRINTING ONLY REVISED SLIDES

Have you ever had to work on one of those Presentations From Hell? The ones where you get input (and revisions and changes and alterations) from several people--non-stop?

In our previous tip, we showed you how to choose the slides you want to print in Slide Sorter, then print just those slides using the Selected option in PowerPoint's Print dialog box. Here's an even simpler way of tracking which slides do and don't need to be printed:

Before you start revising your presentation, go to Slide Sorter view, press Ctrl-A to select all the slides, then choose Slide Show, Hide Slide (or click the Hide Slide button on the Slide Sorter toolbar).

Next, make your revisions to individual slides. After revising each slide, choose Slide Show, Hide Slide again (to unhide it this time). When you're through making revisions, all but the revised slides will be hidden.

To print only the revised slides, choose File, Print. In the Print dialog box, you'll see a check mark next to Print Hidden Slides. Deselect that option, then choose Print Range: All, pick any other print options you want, and click OK. PowerPoint will print only the slides you revised.

When you've finished printing, it's a good idea to return to Slide Sorter view and unhide all of your slides again, then save your presentation so you'll be ready for the inevitable NEXT round of changes.

PRINTING IN BLACK AND WHITE--PART 1 OF 2

It can be hard to predict what your presentation will look like when you print it to a black and white printer. Will this chart show up at all? Will those colors print identically, or will they look different enough that they can be distinguished? If this is the sort of thing that runs through your brain every time you're about to click OK in the Print dialog box, stop and cancel the print job. We have a much better way of going about this than killing trees with test printouts.

Look on the Standard toolbar. A few buttons in from the right, you'll find the Grayscale Preview button. If you want to know what your presentation will print like, just click this button to have PowerPoint display on screen exactly what it plans to print to your B/W printer. Click the button again to return to your presentation in living color.

If you find yourself bouncing back and forth between the two modes frequently, try putting a Slide Miniature on your screen. Simply choose View, Slide Miniature. Now whenever you go to Grayscale Preview mode, a miniature color version of your slide appears on screen. It disappears again when you turn off Grayscale Preview.

Now you can tell exactly what your presentations will look like in black and white. What if you don't LIKE what you see? We have some good news for you--next time.

PRINTING IN BLACK AND WHITE--PART 2 OF 2

In our previous tip, you learned to predict how presentations will print to a black and white printer. We promised to show you how to sort things out if you don't like what you see in Grayscale Preview mode. We're keeping our promise, and it couldn't be simpler.

Once you're in Grayscale Preview mode and notice that something on your slide doesn't look quite right, right-click it and choose Black And White from the context menu. You'll see a pop-up menu with Automatic selected. Automatic means "Let PowerPoint decide what this object should look like in grayscale printouts." Well, you already know that you don't LIKE what PowerPoint does with it, so choose a different option from the menu. Try several options until you find one that does the problem object justice. The object will print just as it appears on screen.

Note that the changes you make to the object's Black And White settings have no effect whatsoever on how it will print in color or appear on screen in a presentation.

PRINTING FROM THE COMMAND LINE--PART 1 OF 3

Once in a while you may need to print a presentation without first displaying the presentation in PowerPoint itself--for example, as part of a kiosk setup or an automated process.

You can do this easily from a DOS command line or from a BAT file that contains the command line. Here's how:

>From a DOS command line, type

(Drive:\Path\Powerpnt) /p YOURFILE.PPT

Substitute the correct drive and path for PowerPnt.exe above. You may also need to supply the drive and path to your .ppt file if it's not in the current default drive and folder.

Now press Enter. After a short while, you'll see the familiar Print dialog box. Choose the print options you want, then click OK, and PowerPoint will print your presentation.

In our next tip, we'll show you how to make PowerPoint print to a specific printer without displaying the Print dialog box.

PRINTING FROM THE COMMAND LINE--PART 2 OF 3

In our previous tip, we explained how you can have PowerPoint print a presentation from the command line. When you use this method, PowerPoint displays a Print dialog box where you can choose a printer driver and set other print options. Sometimes, though, you might just want to print, no questions asked. If so, here's what you need to do:

First, determine the name of the printer you want to use. Click Start, Settings, Printers. Note the name under the icon of the printer you want to work with. For example, let's suppose it says HP LaserJet 4M. That's the printer name you'll use for the following steps. Write down the exact name, then close the Printers window.

Next, open a DOS command line window and type

(Drive:\Path\Powerpnt) /pt "HP Laserjet 4M" "" "" YOURFILE.PPT

Substitute the drive and path to PowerPnt.exe on your computer; also substitute the exact name of the printer you're using.

If there are spaces in the printer name, you must put quotes around the name. The two sets of double-quotes are also necessary. They tell PowerPoint to use the system defaults for the driver name and output port. Normally you won't need to specify these, so just use double-quotes as "placeholders."

When you press Enter, PowerPoint will print your presentation to the printer you've specified without displaying a Print dialog box.

PRINTING FROM THE COMMAND LINE--PART 3 OF 3

In this series of tips, we've shown you how to print PowerPoint presentations directly from a DOS command line. If you're accustomed to the point-and-click convenience of Windows and Windows programs, this may seem to be a pretty old-fashioned, clunky way to do things, and you're probably right. But once you put the same command line into a .bat file, it opens up some interesting possibilities. You can make PowerPoint print a different presentation from an action button, for example. Let's suppose you have a kiosk-style presentation and want to let the Viewer print an order form that you've created in Orderform.ppt.

To begin, start Notepad and enter

@echo off

Next, enter the command line for auto-printing Orderform.ppt as explained in our two previous tips. You should have something that looks like this:

@echo off C:\Program Files\Office\PowerPnt /pt "HP LaserJet 4M" "" "" Orderform.ppt

Save the file with a .bat extension; for example, you might save it as Printme.bat.

Now start PowerPoint and open your main kiosk presentation. Create an action button and make its action Run Program. For the program to run, choose the Printme.bat file you just saved. Now when you click this action button during your presentation, PowerPoint will automatically open and print Orderform.ppt without actually displaying it.

POWERPOINT TO HTML

PowerPoint has built-in support for converting presentations to HTML for use on the Web, but it doesn't give you much control over the results and tends to make HTML that's not especially friendly to non-Microsoft browsers or older browsers. If you're comfortable doing a little HTML editing and need a more flexible way to convert your presentations to HTML pages, have a look at

http://www.rdpslides.com/ppt2html/

This site offers a demo version of a new template-based PowerPoint-to-HTML converter, along with complete instructions for its use.

MAKING 35MM SLIDES WITH POWERPOINT--PART 1 OF 3

Lately, it seems that everyone's using video projectors instead of 35mm slides to show their PowerPoint presentations. There are plenty of good reasons for this:

The Biggie: You can edit your presentation right up until the moment you take the stage. Convenience: Video projectors keep getting smaller, lighter, and less expensive, while the image quality gets brighter and better with each new generation. Ease of use: If there's already a projector set up wherever you're presenting, you only have to power up your laptop and plug it into the projector, and you're in business. Price: Once you've paid for the projector, it costs you no more to have 100 slides in your presentation than to have ten. Multimedia: Animations, movies, and sounds are all simple to add to your on-screen presentations. There's no practical way of incorporating multimedia into a 35mm slide presentation. Next time, we'll cover 35mm slides.

MAKING 35MM SLIDES WITH POWERPOINT--PART 2 OF 3

Does anybody still use 35mm slides? Yes, and for them, there are equally compelling reasons for choosing this "old technology" instead of the latest whiz-bang computer video projection system.

The Biggie: Image quality. An inexpensive 35mm slide projector projects a brighter, sharper image than even current top-of-the-line video projection systems. Convenience: You can rent a slide projector quickly and inexpensively nearly anywhere in the US. There's generally no need to carry one with you. Ease of use: What could be simpler? Pop your tray of slides onto the projector, turn it on, and it's Show Time. Price: While it costs more per slide to use 35mm slides, you can buy a slide projector AND an awful lot of 35mm slides for the cost of a video projector. Which should you choose? That depends a great deal on your needs. Here are some factors to keep in mind:

If you're presenting to a large audience, 35mm slides will give you clearer, crisper images on screen. You can project them larger as well, so the folks in the back row will be able to see your presentation better. If your presentation changes frequently and on short notice, video projection is the way to go. If you often give presentations outside the major metropolitan areas and need to rent projection on site, 35mm slides may have the edge, since it will be easier to locate (or purchase, if need be) a slide projector. Many presenters play it safe and use both; they use video projection when possible but also carry a set of 35mm slides with them as a backup.

MAKING 35MM SLIDES WITH POWERPOINT--PART 3 OF 3

In a previous tip, we discussed the merits of video projection versus 35mm slides for giving your PowerPoint presentations. Suppose you've decided that 35mm slides are right for you. Now what? How do you set up your PowerPoint presentation? Where can you get slides made?

First, you'll need to find a business called a service bureau--a company that owns and knows how to operate a film recorder, a rather expensive piece of equipment that converts your digital images into 35mm slides. PowerPoint comes with a built-in link to Genigraphics, one of the original slide service bureaus. Click File, Send To, Genigraphics for more information. A search on the Web for "35mm slides" should scare up dozens of slide-imaging service bureaus. You can find one at

http://www.rdpslides.com

It's always a good idea to check with the service bureau for specifics before sending files to be converted into 35mm slides. The service bureau may have special software to use for sending the files, or they may want you to install special printer drivers. In any case, getting slides made from your presentations is usually quite simple. You send the service bureau either the PPT file itself or a print-to-disk file made with their printer driver, and they do the rest.

If you're starting a new presentation from scratch, choose File, Page Setup and choose 35mm Slides from the Slides Sized For drop-down list. By default, PowerPoint sets up your slide pages for On Screen Show; the proportions are different from 35mm slides. If you have an existing presentation that's already set up for On Screen Show, check with the service bureau. Most can accommodate this as well. Avoid using PowerPoint's semi-transparent, textured, and pattern fill effects. These don't print well to 35mm slides.

MAKE SURE PEOPLE WITH COLOR BLINDNESS CAN READ YOUR PRESENTATIONS

A surprising number of people have one of several forms of color blindness. As many as 5 percent to 10 percent of the men in your audience may not be able to distinguish between some of the colors in your presentation, which could mean that they can't read it at all, if you're not careful.

There's an excellent article by Robert Hess on the various forms of color blindness and their effects at

http://msdn.microsoft.com/voices/hess10092000.asp

Hess focuses on how you can use the knowledge presented in his article to make Web sites more accessible to users with color blindness. All of his suggestions apply equally well to PowerPoint presentations.

If you'd like even more detailed information about how we perceive color and other visual information, there's a more academically oriented site here:

http://psych.hanover.edu/Krantz/sen_tut.html

LOVE THAT PRESENTATION--SURE WISH I HAD THE TEMPLATE

Did you ever get a presentation from a co-worker or off the Web and really wish that you had the template it's based on so you could use it for your own presentations? Do we ever have good news for you!

If you have the presentation file, you have the template. Every presentation (PPT or PPS) file contains all the formatting information from the template (POT) on which it's based. Getting to it couldn't be simpler. Let's say you have two presentations, YOURS.PPT and THEIRS.PPT. YOURS has some great content, but design-wise, it needs a boost. THEIRS has just the design that would put YOURS over the top. So here's what you do:

Open THEIRS.PPT; choose File, Save As; and pick Design Template (*.pot) from the Save As Type drop-down list. Give THEIRS a different name if you like (MINE_NOW.POT comes to mind) and save it to the default \Templates folder that PowerPoint proposes. Now close THEIRS and open YOURS. Choose Format, Apply Design Template, and then pick the template (POT) file you just saved. Nice, eh?

There's even a quicker way to accomplish the same thing. Open YOURS.PPT, then choose Format, Apply Design Template. In the Apply Design Template dialog box, choose Presentations & Shows (*.ppt, *.pps) from the Files Of Type drop-down list, then browse to and choose THIERS.PPT. Since all the necessary formatting information is part of THEIRS.PPT, PowerPoint lets you treat it as though it were a template file and applies the formatting to YOURS without your having to save THEIRS in any special way.

LOCATING VIDEO CODECS

Codecs (short for coder/decoders) are bits of software that encode and compress video information into a form suitable for use on computers. While Windows includes several of them, there are many more in use, and not all of them are compatible with one another. You may find that some videos play without problems on your system while others don't. Quite often, the reason for this is that whoever encoded the video file used a codec that's not installed on your machine.

For more detailed information on codecs and lots of download links to additional codecs, visit

http://www.free-codecs.com/Video_Codecs.htm

FADE THROUGH BLACK TRANSITIONS LOOK BAD

If you apply a Fade Through Black transition to your slides, you may discover that the transition plays back fine on some computers and looks bad--or even causes instability or crashes--on other computers.

Unfortunately, there's no known workaround or fix for this problem. All we can suggest is that you test the effect carefully if you're playing the presentation only on your own computer. Try to avoid using it at all if you plan to distribute the presentation to other people.

EXTRA IMPORT FILTERS FOR POWERPOINT

Looking for additional graphics filters for PowerPoint? Microsoft offers extra graphics filters as part of the Microsoft Office Converter Pack available at

http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/

Click Toolbox at the left side of the screen. The Converter Pack is the first item listed on the Toolbox page. The Converter Pack includes import filters for AutoCAD, Targa, and Micrographx Designer & Draw graphics files, along with automated tools for converting from one version of PowerPoint to another. It also includes converters that enable users of older versions of PowerPoint to open PowerPoint 2000's PPT and HTML files.

CREATING AN AUTORUN CD OF YOUR PRESENTATION

In a previous tip, we gave you the URL of a site where Sonia Coleman has posted a detailed tutorial explaining how to create your own autorun CD that includes the PowerPoint Viewer and your PowerPoint presentation. Sonia and the fine folks at ALADat have been hard at work making it even simpler to create autorun CDs. They've released a free program called the Autorun CD Project Creator. This program takes care of most of the fussy (but very necessary) detail work that goes into creating an autorun CD--and does it for you automatically.

Visit

http://www.soniacoleman.com/Tutorials/PowerPoint/Autorun_CD.htm

for details and a link where you can download this handy software.

CREATE MANY PRESENTATIONS IN ONE WITH CUSTOM SHOWS

Suppose you have a really dynamite presentation that you need to give before different audiences. Audience A may be more interested in The Big Picture, whereas Audience B wants all the gory details. In other words, you need to customize the presentation for each audience. You could make several copies of the presentation and customize each, but that can quickly turn into more work than you bargained for. If you later decide to revise a few of the slides that are common to both versions, you'll have to revise them in both copies of the presentation. And if you later add versions for Audiences C, D, E--well, you can easily see how much work this can lead to. Scratch THAT plan.

Instead, use PowerPoint's custom shows. By setting up custom shows, you can keep all your slides in one .ppt file and still show only the slides that are appropriate for a given audience.

To set up a custom show, choose Slide Show, Custom Shows to open the Custom Shows dialog box. Click New, then type a name for the show in the Slide Show Name text box. In the Slides In Presentation list, double-click each slide you want to add to your custom show. If you click any of the slides in the Slides In Custom Show list, you can click Remove to remove it from the list, or click the up and down arrows to change its order within the custom show.

Click OK when you've finished to return to the Custom Shows dialog box. You can create another new custom show or edit any others that you've created. When you've finished, click Close (or click Show to go right into slide show mode and view your custom show).

To set up your presentation to display one of your custom shows automatically when it's launched, choose Slide Show, Set Up Show, then choose the custom slide show you want to use from the Custom Show drop-down list box in the Slides area of the dialog box. Finally, click OK. Now when you start your show, it will automatically display the custom show you picked, using only the slides in the custom show, in the order you want them.

CONVERTING TO POWERPOINT FROM OTHER PROGRAMS

Converting presentations from other formats to PowerPoint can be a trial. Unfortunately, we don't have any magic answers for you, much as we wish we did. However, you can learn more about converting presentations by visiting these sites:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q198/3/39.ASP

http://support.microsoft.com/support/Office/OFF2K/PPTConvert.asp

http://www.rdpslides.com/convert.htm

CONVERTING AND UNLINKING LINKS

In the past few tips, we've explained the various methods of pasting content into PowerPoint and the advantages of each. Suppose you've decided that flexibility is important to you, so you've copied and pasted data from several Excel source files into your PowerPoint presentation. The PowerPoint file became quite large in the process, but size was a secondary concern and you were willing to accept that. Now you need to email the file to an associate whose email system won't accept files over a certain size, and your presentation is way over the top. Are you stuck?

Probably not. Save a copy of your PowerPoint file. Working on the copy of the presentation, click each bit of copy/pasted content in turn, then choose Ungroup from the Draw pop-up menu of the Drawing toolbar (or right-click the content, then choose Grouping, Ungroup). PowerPoint will warn you that ungrouping will lose embedded or linked information and ask you to confirm that you want to convert the object. Just say Yes.

PowerPoint tosses out all that embedded data that made your files so large and leaves you with a bunch of selected objects that together make up a picture of your content. Before you do anything else, use the same commands, but this time choose Group instead of Ungroup, so that all the bits and pieces that make up the picture STAY together. You can always ungroup them again later if you need to edit them.

When you save this presentation, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how much excess weight it's shed.

CONVERT A PRESENTATION TO VIDEOTAPE

Computer-based presentations are great--sharp, high-resolution images, snappy color, good sound and all--but sometimes it's just more practical or convenient to send somebody a videotape instead of a PowerPoint presentation. There's only one problem: How?

Actually, you can use a couple of methods. For example, you can use a scan converter. This gadget converts the signal from your computer's video output jack to the NTSC signal that video recorders need. Scan converters are available in a wide range of prices, from inexpensive home models to pro-grade equipment costing thousands of dollars. They don't require any special drivers; you simply plug your computer's video output into one side of the converter, hook the converter's output to the input jack of your VCR, start the PowerPoint presentation, and roll the tape.

Alternatively, you can use digital video editing software and hardware. This requires a special card that either works with or replaces your computer's existing video card. You can use it to record a PowerPoint presentation video to your computer's hard drive (free up LOTS of space first!) and edit it with special software before recording it to videotape. Of the two methods, this will be more expensive, since it requires special hardware and software. But in return you get better quality and a lot more control over what goes out to tape.

Whichever method you use, keep in mind that the NTSC video signal you record on your VCR can't hold the same high standards of resolution and color that you get from your computer monitor. Keep important details large and away from the edge of the screen (where they might get clipped off in the conversion to video). Also, perform at least one test recording to see whether your chosen colors translate well to video.

COMPARING TWO PRESENTATIONS

Have you ever run into this one: You give a copy of a presentation to an associate or client, and he or she returns it to you with edits to be incorporated into the main presentation but provides no clue as to where or what the changes might be. You need a way of comparing the two presentations quickly to make sure you don't miss any important changes.

In Word, the document revision tracking features solve this problem nicely, but there's no similar feature in PowerPoint. Fear not... here are a few tricks that will help you out:

* Print out copies of each presentation in B/W mode so that the backgrounds disappear and you're left with just the text and graphics. For each slide in the presentation, line up the printout of the original version and the one with the edits and hold them up to a strong light source. If you have a light box for viewing slides, it works perfectly for this, but if not, there's always the nearest window or even your computer screen set to display an all-white document. With the two printouts lined up, you can easily spot any differences between them.

* Better yet, save time, save trees: Open both presentations in PowerPoint, go to the first slide in each, then hold down the Ctrl key while you press Tab to switch quickly back and forth from one presentation to the other. Any differences between the two slides will appear to jump around on the screen, while everything else stays put. Repeat for each slide in the presentations.

How 'bout them apples?

COMBINING SLIDES FROM DIFFERENT PRESENTATIONS--PART 1 OF 4

Why reinvent the wheel? If you have a collection of PowerPoint presentations, you may already have just the slide you need hidden away in one of them. Instead of re-creating it from scratch, why not reuse one you've already created? It couldn't be simpler to do.

If you know which presentation contains the slide you want to reuse, open it in PowerPoint, open the presentation you want to use it in, and put both presentations in Slide Sorter view.

In the presentation you want to copy slides FROM, click to select the slide you want to copy (or hold down Ctrl while you select multiple slides), then choose Edit, Copy or press Ctrl-C. Switch to the presentation you want to copy the slides INTO and choose Edit, Paste or press Ctrl-V to insert the slides into your new presentation.

PowerPoint applies the template of the current presentation to any slides you paste into it, so you don't have to reformat them to get a consistent look.

Good luck!

COMBINING SLIDES FROM DIFFERENT PRESENTATIONS--PART 2 OF 4

In our previous tip, we explained how you can copy slides between two (or more) open presentations. If you prefer not to open and search through your existing presentations one at a time, there's a slicker way to get the job done: Insert, Slides, From Files.

To begin, open the presentation you want to insert slides INTO, then choose Insert, Slides, From Files. Click Browse and navigate to the file you want to insert slides FROM. If you think you'll be using this presentation as a source of slides often, click Add To Favorites so you can open it directly from the List Of Favorites tab without having to browse to it each time.

PowerPoint shows you thumbnails of each of the slides in the presentation you just picked. Click the thumbnail of each slide you want to insert (you can use the scroll bars at the bottom to see more slides). When you've finished picking slides, click Insert (or click Insert All if you want all of the slides in the presentation added to your new presentation).

PowerPoint adds the slides you've chosen to your new presentation and applies its template formatting to them so they have a look that's consistent with other slides.

COMBINING SLIDES FROM DIFFERENT PRESENTATIONS--PART 3 OF 4

In our previous tips, we showed you several ways to copy slides from one presentation to another and pointed out that PowerPoint will apply the current presentation's formatting to any slides you copy into it. Generally, this is a good thing, since you usually want all of the slides in a presentation to have a consistent look. But what if you don't? What if you want a particular slide or group of slides to maintain their original formatting?

Well, that gets a little trickier, but it CAN be done. Here's one way of doing it:

Instead of doing a normal Copy/Paste from one presentation into another in Slide Sorter view, put the original presentation in Slide Sorter view and the new presentation into Slide view. Select a single slide in the original presentation, copy it, then switch to the new presentation and choose Edit, Paste Special. Next, choose Picture or Enhanced Metafile and click OK.

When you do this, PowerPoint puts an image of your original slide on the current slide in the new presentation. Simply scale and move the image to full slide size, and it looks as though you have a slide based on a different template in your presentation. Notice that we said "image." This isn't a slide in the usual sense of the word. You can't edit it as you would a normal PowerPoint slide; it's more a picture of a slide. However, you can do minor edits if you can ungroup the picture; just right-click it and choose Ungroup. You may have to experiment with the different Paste Special methods to find the one that works best for your presentation.

COMBINING SLIDES FROM DIFFERENT PRESENTATIONS--PART 4 OF 4

If you'd like to copy slides from one presentation to another AND keep the formatting from the original presentation AND ensure that the new slides are fully editable, here's how:

Open the presentation you want to copy slides INTO and put it in Slide view. Open the presentation you want to copy slides FROM and put it in Slide Sorter view. Click on the slide you want to copy (you can copy only one slide at a time with this method). Choose Edit, Copy or press Ctrl-C to copy the slide.

Now switch back to the presentation you want to copy the slide INTO; click anywhere in the slide pane, then choose Edit, Paste Special and double-click Microsoft PowerPoint Slide Object. PowerPoint inserts a slide object, an OLE-linked copy of the original slide, in all its originally formatted glory. Size it to fill the slide where it's appeared. You can double-click the slide object to start an in-place editing session--in other words, the slide object remains editable. You can change the text, graphics, and so forth, or even change its color scheme or layout.

BATCH CONVERTING OLDER POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS

If you have older PowerPoint presentations in PowerPoint 95 format and still need to use them in PowerPoint 2000, you can always open them one at a time, wait while PowerPoint converts them to the latest format, then resave them. But that could be quite a burden if you have more than just a few presentations to convert.

If you have lots of them to upgrade, it would be worth trying out the PowerPoint 97 Batch Converter found here:

http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloadCatalog/dldPowerPoint.asp

Although it converts presentations to PowerPoint 97 rather than PowerPoint 2000, these versions of PowerPoint share pretty much the same file format. The only differences are in features that are new to PowerPoint 2000, and that certainly shouldn't be a problem with files from even earlier versions of PowerPoint.

SYNCHRONIZING YOUR PRESENTATION TO SOUND

"How can I synchronize my slide changes to a sound track?"

To be honest, you can't. Not reliably, at least. Today's tip is not so much a "How to" as a "Here's why you can't, so don't beat your head against a brick wall trying" affair.

Sounds will always run at a constant speed on your computer or any other. If the computer's really old and slow, the sound may suffer, but the timing will be consistent. PowerPoint, on the other hand, won't advance to the next slide until it's prepared the slide for display in memory, and that's where the problem arises. The slower the computer, the longer it takes PowerPoint to get the next slide ready. Once the slide has been prepared for display, PowerPoint attempts to cache the display information, so the next time you play the presentation through in a PowerPoint session, it may play back faster than it did the first time through. Result: inconsistent timings even on the same computer.

If you absolutely have to produce presentations that synch up to a sound track, the only way of being reasonably sure they'll work across a wide range of machines is to set the slide timings on the oldest, slowest machine you have. If it works well there, it should work well on newer, faster machines. Good luck!

CHOOSING/USING A PROJECTOR

If you're about to buy or rent a projection system to use with your computer and PowerPoint presentation systems, there's a wealth of solid information and tips at the Web site of projector manufacturer InFocus:

http://www.infocus.com

Naturally, you won't find much information about competing projector brands, but if you're new to projectors and need to learn the basics, this is a good place to start. For example, if you haven't a clue what any of the various specifications mean, check the Glossary of Terms at

http://www.infocus.com/glossary/index.asp

You can also check out its online Projections Magazine at

http://www.infocus.com/projections/index.asp

where you'll find plenty of tips that will be valuable no matter whose projector you finally choose. Once you've absorbed all of that info, check out the competition. Presentations Magazine has past reviews of projection equipment on its site at

http://www.presentations.com/techno/display/index.html

ANIMATED GIFS IN POWERPOINT

Earlier versions of PowerPoint allowed you to import animated GIFs but showed only the first image in the GIF; they wouldn't display the animation. PowerPoint 2000 will let you display animated GIFs in all their hyperactive glory. There are a few caveats to be aware of, however.

Like PowerPoint's other animation features, animated GIFs come to life only when you view your presentation as a slide show. You won't see any animation in Slide, Normal, Slide Sorter, or any of PowerPoint's other views.

Animated GIFs animate only in PowerPoint 2000 itself, not the PowerPoint Viewer. The Viewer supports most if not all of the features of PowerPoint 97, but not features that are specific to PowerPoint 2000. So, until Microsoft releases a real PowerPoint 2000-compatible viewer, your animated GIFs won't be very lively when you display them in the Viewer.

ANIMATED GIFS CAN LIVEN UP YOUR PRESENTATIONS

Unlike previous versions, PowerPoint 2000 supports animated GIF files. These are (usually) small graphics files that contain animation effects that you can pop into your presentation just as you would any other graphic. Just choose Insert, Picture From File and pick your animated GIF. The GIF won't animate while you're editing your presentation, but once you start a screen show, away it goes.

To find animated GIFs you can use in your own presentations, visit the PowerPoint FAQ page at

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq

Scroll down to the Where Can I Find? section, click Animations, and follow the links to Sonia's Animations page. There you'll find links to sources of animations (free and commercial) and instructions for creating your own animations.

ANIMATE YOUR BULLETS

In a previous tip, we mentioned that PowerPoint 2000 supports animated GIFs. Let's toss in another interesting new feature--the fact that PowerPoint allows you to use pictures as bullets. Now stir a little and look what we get--animated bullets!

To begin, select the text you want to add animated bullets to, then choose Format, Bullets And Numbering. Click the Bullets tab, then click Picture.

Click Motion Clips and choose one of the existing clips, or add your own (click Import Clips and browse to the file you want to import). Click to select the clip you want to use, then click OK (or click the topmost icon on the pop-up list that appears). PowerPoint adds the picture or motion clip as the bullet graphic for each paragraph of selected text. If the graphic is too small, choose Format, Bullets And Numbering again and dial in a larger number for the Size: % Of Txt setting.

Note: Animated GIF bullets won't animate while you're editing your presentation but will start moving when you view your presentation as a slide show.

ACCURATELY PREDICT HOW YOUR COLORS WILL PRINT

It can be tricky to predict exactly what PowerPoint's colors will look like on any color printer, but Microsoft has a handy file that will help solve the problem. It's a PowerPoint file that contains a replica of PowerPoint's color picker. All you need to do is open it and print to your printer to get a sample of how each of PowerPoint's standard colors will reproduce--on that printer.

Point your browser to

http://support.microsoft.com/download/support/mslfiles/Printme.exe

When prompted, have your browser save the file to your hard drive. It should take only a short while, since it's only a 25K file. Once you've downloaded the file, locate it in Explorer, or whatever browser you use, and double-click it. It will extract PrintMe.ppt, which you can open and print from PowerPoint to get your sample printout of all PowerPoint colors.

When you make the printout, take an extra moment to choose Start, Settings, Printers. Right-click your printer and choose Properties from the context menu. Jot down (on the printout itself, ideally) all of the current color and resolution settings for the printer driver. If you change these, it can affect the colors you get from the printer, so your sample printout may no longer be valid. You might actually want to run a test printout for each of the printer settings you commonly use.

A GREAT RESOURCE FOR PRESENTERS

There's a ton of useful information, tutorials, downloadable templates, sound files, and software demos at

http://www.presentersuniversity.com

The site is sponsored by Proxima, the video projector manufacturer, but there's none of the hard-sell advertising clutter you might expect from such a site. Hats off to Proxima for a job well done!

PRINTING IN REVERSE ORDER

If you have a printer that shoots out finished pages face up rather than face down, you have a little chore waiting for you every time you print one of your PowerPoint presentations: You have to re-collate the entire presentation to get the pages in the correct order.

What a nuisance! And what an EASY thing to fix:

Next time you print a presentation, don't just press the Print button; instead, choose File, Print to open PowerPoint's Print dialog box. There, choose print options as you normally would, but instead of selecting All, choose Slides in the Print Range area.

When you choose Slides, the text box next to Slides becomes active. In this text box, type the range of slides you want to print out--backwards. For example, if you have 25 slides in your presentation and want to print all of them, you'd type

25-1

When you click OK, PowerPoint will print your presentation in reverse order--and in this case, two wrongs DO make a right. Reverse order printing to a printer that stacks printouts in reverse order... it all cancels out, and your printouts come out in the right order.

Some people are lucky enough to have printers that stack printed sheets face-down in the output tray, so the sheets are all in order once the document is printed. Some of us aren't so lucky and have to manually re-collate every document we print. Slight correction: We have to manually re-collate every document UNLESS we know this little trick.

PowerPoint normally prints presentations in ascending order, but that can be changed. In the Print dialog box, in the Print Range area click Slides, then enter the range of slide numbers you'd like to print--in reverse order.

For example, if you want to print an entire 25-page presentation, enter

25-1

to have PowerPoint start with page 25 and work backwards. You can also enter individual pages or ranges of pages. For example, you could enter

25-15,12,10-8,3

to print pages 25 through 15, page 12, pages 10 through 8, and finally page 3.

NEW POWERPOINT E-ZINE

What's an e-zine? It's an electronic magaZINE, a magazine published on the Web instead of on paper. There's a new one devoted exclusively to PowerPoint, published by Geetesh Bajaj, at

http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/ppezine/index.html

Highly recommended! And don't forget to check out the rest of the site while you're there. Geetesh has assembled one of the best, easiest-to-navigate collections of PowerPoint-related links you'll find anywhere on the Web.

CENTERED PRINTOUTS ON INKJET PRINTERS

Have you ever gone mano-a-mano with your inkjet printer, trying to get it to make centered printouts of your PowerPoint slides?

Take heart. You're not alone. Just about everyone who uses an inkjet printer and PowerPoint has run into this problem at one time or another. It stems from a mechanical limitation of inkjets: Nearly all of them have a large unprintable margin at the trailing edge of the paper (the last part of the sheet to emerge from the printer).

The printer driver tells PowerPoint that it can print an image that's X by Y inches, so that's what PowerPoint sends it. Alas, what the printer driver doesn't mention is that it will put a 1-inch margin at one side of the image but only 1/4 inch at the other side, leaving the printed slide off-center on the page. PowerPoint has no way of knowing there will be a problem, so there's not much it can do to correct it.

You'll have to do that yourself--by printing Notes Pages using a customized Notes Page setup instead of printing slides. Here's how:

Choose View, Master, Notes Master. Then, select File, Page Setup, and set Notes Page Orientation to match your current Slide Orientation. Select and delete any existing placeholders on the Notes Master, except for the slide image placeholder. Select the slide image placeholder, and then choose Format, AutoShape. Click the Size tab of the Format AutoShape dialog box, make sure there's a checkmark next to Lock Aspect Ratio, and then enter the longer dimension of the maximum image size your printer is capable of for the Width of the slide placeholder. You can usually find this information in the printer manual.

Next, make a test printout. Select File, Print, then choose Current Slide and select Notes Pages. Check the printout to see how far off-center the slide image is, then move the slide image placeholder on the Notes Master in the appropriate direction to correct the problem.

It will take a few rounds of trial and error to get it right. Once you have it nailed down, choose Format, AutoShape once again and write down the information on both the Size and Position tabs of the Format AutoShape dialog box so you can enter them quickly in your other presentations when needed.

RE-RECORD NARRATION FOR JUST A FEW SLIDES

If you've ever used PowerPoint's Slide Show, Record Narration feature, you know how convenient it can be for adding spoken commentary to your slides. And you know how excruciatingly annoying it is when you flub your lines on the last slide and have to record the whole narration over again.

So what if we told you that you don't have to do that? Okay. We will. You don't have to do that. Here's what you do instead:

First, save your presentation. Then, save it again to a new name (so there's no chance of accidentally overwriting your main presentation file). Next, delete all the slides in the presentation except for the ones with audio glitches on them. Re-record the narration for just the remaining slides. Save the presentation once more, then leave it open while you also open the original presentation. Put both presentations in Slide Sorter view.

Delete the slides with bad audio from the original presentation, then copy and paste the re-recorded versions of the same slides from the second presentation. Save your original presentation once again. Voila--a perfect sound track!

PLAY A SOUNDTRACK OVER A WHOLE PRESENTATION

"Is there some way I can have a single soundtrack play over a whole PowerPoint presentation or show?"

Yep, there sure is. Start by inserting the sound you want to play. Choose Insert, Movies And Sounds, then click Sound From Gallery, Sound From File, Play CD Audio Track, or Record Sound. Insert the sound you want to use.

Right-click the sound's icon and select Custom Animation from the pop-up menu. Click the Multimedia Settings tab, making certain that the object is selected. Put a checkmark next to Play Using Animation Order.

Click to select Continue Slide Show. This tells PowerPoint NOT to stop playing the sound when you move to the next slide. Under Stop Playing, click After and dial in the number of slides you'd like the sound to play through. If you want the sound to continue through the end of the presentation, dial in a really big number (larger than the number of slides in your presentation).

That's all there is to it. Your sound will begin playing on the slide where you placed it and continue playing through the rest of the presentation (unless you start a different sound playing in its place).

EMAIL AN AUTORUNNING PRESENTATION

Some of the people you correspond with may have PowerPoint but not know how to use it. If you send them a regular PowerPoint file as an email attachment, they'll probably click on it, which will open PowerPoint with your presentation loaded--in Edit mode--where they may not have a clue what to do with it. Not very impressive, you'll have to admit.

What you need is a way to have the attached presentation open up in screen show mode instead. And it couldn't be simpler. All you need to do is rename your presentation file so that it has a .PPS extension instead of .PPT (or open it in PowerPoint and save it as a PowerPoint Show rather than a PowerPoint Presentation).

When the recipient of your email double-clicks an attached PowerPoint Show (.PPS) file, PowerPoint automatically launches the presentation in screen show mode. Now that's impressive!

Additionally, beware that PPS and PPT files can get very large. Therefore, they may be too large for your recipients' email box to hold.

CREATE A PLAYLIST FOR POWERPOINT

If you've used Playlist (*.LST) files to run multiple presentations in the PowerPoint Viewer, you might be startled to find that they don't work with PowerPoint itself. When you open a .LST file in PowerPoint, PowerPoint puts the .LST file text into the presentation's Outline view instead of running the presentations in sequence.

To display a series of presentations in PowerPoint, use a batch (.BAT) file instead. Start NotePad and enter a line like the following for each presentation you want to display:

start \powerpnt.exe /s \

If the path to POWERPNT.EXE or your presentation's PPT file is in a folder with spaces in the name, put quotes around the entire \filename. For example:

start "c:\Program Files\Office\Powerpnt.exe" /s "c:\My Documents\Presentations\My Presentation.PPT"

Save this file with a *.BAT extension, then in Windows Explorer, right-click the file, choose Properties from the pop-up menu, click the Program tab, and choose Minimized from the Run list. Finally, put a checkmark next to Close On Exit and click OK.

You can now run this BAT file to play each of your presentations in sequence.

HANDOUTS WITHOUT LINES

When you print handouts three slides to a page from PowerPoint, you get three lines (presumably for notes) next to each slide on the printouts. There's no way to turn off the lines or cover them up. If you'd like more control over the appearance and formatting of your handouts, try PowerPoint's Send To Word feature.

Choose File, Send To, Microsoft Word. In the Write Up dialog box that appears, select Blank Lines Next To Slides, then click OK. Once Word finishes converting your presentation, you'll see it has created a three-column table, with your slides in the center column and lines in the right column. You can select the lines (they're actually just underscore characters strung together to make lines) and delete them. The easiest way to do this is to click anywhere in the third column of the table (the column with the lines) and choose Table, Select, Column. Next, press the Delete key. Voila, the lines are gone. You can now print your lineless handouts directly from Word.

STARTING PRESENTATIONS AUTOMATICALLY

Is there a way to make a presentation start automatically? It's fairly simple if you use Windows 98 or later. Windows 98 includes the Task Scheduler, which can start programs at prescheduled times. You can use it to start a PowerPoint presentation every XX minutes or hours. There's one hitch: You must first set up your presentation so that it runs once and then quits, and time the presentation to see how long it takes to run completely. This means you can't use Kiosk mode in Slide Show, Set Up Slide Show, since Kiosk mode automatically sets your presentation to loop repeatedly.

To schedule a task, choose Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks. In the Task Scheduler window, double-click Add Scheduled Task to start the Scheduled Task Wizard. Click Next when the first screen of the wizard appears. On the next screen, choose Microsoft PowerPoint from the list of applications, then click Next.

On the next screen, type a new name for the task if you like, then choose how often you want the task to be launched. For this example, choose Daily, then click Next. Select the starting time for the task. For now, pick a time a few minutes from the current time. Click Next. Click Finish to add the task to the scheduler. Now, right-click the newly added task and choose Properties from the context menu.

On the Task tab, you'll notice that the wizard has supplied the complete path to POWERPNT.EXE. If you left it as is, it would simply start PowerPoint on schedule. Since you want it to run a screen show instead, you'll need to edit the Run text box. After POWERPNT.EXE, add the following:

That's a space, /S, and then the full path to your presentation file. That tells PowerPoint to load your presentation and go directly into Slide Show view.

On the Schedule tab, click Advanced. Put a checkmark next to Repeat Task and set the time next to Every to a little longer than the amount of time it takes to display your entire presentation. Be sure NOT to put a checkmark next to any of the Stop options on this or the following tab. The Task Scheduler isn't able to stop a running presentation automatically; any attempt to do so causes PowerPoint or the Viewer to lock up.

Click OK when you've finished entering your settings. The Task Scheduler will automatically launch your presentation at the time you've set, the presentation will run once, then quit, returning you to the Windows desktop. After the Every interval has elapsed, the presentation will start again and continue accordingly. Whew! Did you get all that?

SPEED UP YOUR PRESENTATIONS

Before you "go on" to give that big speech in front of thousands of people (or just a little speech in front of a few folks), start PowerPoint, load your presentation, and cycle through all the slides once.

It can take PowerPoint a little while to prepare each slide for display on screen, and this can produce a noticeable lag while you're giving your presentation. However, once each slide is prepared, PowerPoint caches it (that is, stores a copy of it in memory or on the hard drive in ready-to-use form), so it doesn't have to prepare it for display again.

By running through the entire presentation once, you force PowerPoint to get each slide ready for display ahead of time, cutting down the loading time when you start your presentation for real.

Net result: a faster-moving, smoother presentation. And any supervisor, boss, potential client, etc. will appreciate your foresight.

HOW CAN I GO TO A PARTICULAR SLIDE IN MY POWERPOINT 2000 SCREEN SHOW?

You can jump directly to any slide in your presentation if you know the slide number. Just type the number of the slide and press the Enter key. PowerPoint hops directly to that slide.

You can use either the numeric keypad or the row of number keys above the regular alphabetic keys.

If you don't know the number of the slide you want to jump to, right-click anywhere on the screen. On the resulting pop-up menu, point to Go, then choose Slide Navigator, which shows you the title text of each of your slides. Click the title of the slide you want to jump to, then click Go To. For an even quicker route to the slide you want, right-click the screen, point to Go, point to By Title, then click the title text of the slide you want. Bingo! Instant gratification!

HOW CAN I PAUSE MY PRESENTATION AND BLANK THE SCREEN?

Sometimes you need to pause in mid-presentation to answer a question from the audience or to discuss a side issue. As long as your show isn't set to automatically advance, pausing your presentation is simple: Just don't advance to the next slide!

But what if you want to project something else on the screen--a slide or overhead transparency, for example? Or perhaps you just want your audience to focus on something other the screen for a few minutes--you, for example. You're the star, after all!

The answer couldn't be simpler. At any time during your presentation, press the B key on your keyboard to have PowerPoint display nothing but an empty black screen. Press B again to bring your slide back into view, or press the space bar, N key, or down arrow to advance to the next slide.

If you prefer a blank white screen, use the W key instead.

HOW CAN I RESTART MY SLIDE SHOW IMMEDIATELY?

If you need to restart your slide show from the beginning, hold down both the right and left mouse buttons for two seconds. PowerPoint will make a sound, then return you to Slide 1 of your presentation.

It's a little tricky to get both mouse buttons to click at the same time, and if you accidentally click the right button first, you're likely to see the slide show's pop-up menu. To avoid this, learn to click and hold the left mouse button first, then click and hold the right mouse button immediately afterward. It just takes a few tries to get the hang of it.

SLIDE SHOWS IN A MINI-WINDOW

How many times have you started your slide show for a run-through, only to notice some little problem that needs fixing? You have to stop the slide show, go back to edit mode, make the fix, start the slide show again, and... darn! You find something ELSE that needs a little touchup.

To save yourself some time and energy, hold down the Ctrl key while you click the Slide Show button in the lower-left corner of the screen. PowerPoint displays your slide show in a small window rather than full screen, which is neat, but here's the good part--when you find something you'd like to change, click back in the main PowerPoint window. The screen show window minimizes itself onto the Windows taskbar. Navigate to the slide that needs editing, make your changes, then click the PowerPoint Slide Show button on the taskbar to resume your mini-show right where you left off--with your most recent changes in place.

HAVE YOUR PRESENTATIONS START IN SCREEN SHOW VIEW AUTOMATICALLY

If you double-click a PowerPoint presentation's icon, PowerPoint opens the presentation for editing. Usually this is exactly what you want, but if you're giving a presentation from your computer in front of an audience, it's a little tacky to make them sit there while PowerPoint launches, shows its splash screen, then opens your presentation in Slide view so you can finally start the real show.

It would be SO much more professional looking if PowerPoint simply launched your presentation right into Slide Show mode, and in fact it will do just that if you ask it to. First, open your presentation, then choose File, Save As. Select PowerPoint Show (* .pps) from the Save As Type drop-down list box at the bottom of the Save As dialog box, then click Save. PowerPoint saves your presentation as a PowerPoint Show (PPS) file.

When you double-click a PowerPoint Show file, PowerPoint launches it directly into Screen Show mode without even a hint that you're running PowerPoint at all.

If you prefer, you can accomplish the same thing by simply renaming your PowerPoint presentation file to give it a .PPS extension instead of the usual .PPT extension. The only difference is that if you rename instead of using Save As, you won't have an extra copy of the file on your hard drive (that is, one .PPT file and one .PPS). PPS and PPT files are identical. You can still open your PPS file in PowerPoint when you need to edit it.

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