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MS POWER POINT 2000 Making slidesLAST UPDATED: 11 March 2009 14:47:15 -0600 Translate this page
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Alignment Charts Animation More Animation Much More Animation AutoShapes More AutoShapes Menu Avoid Confusion Graphics Measurements Flip Shapes Expand Slide Some Keyboard Shortcuts Change your Backgrounds Titles Change your Backgrounds More backgrounds HOW TO EDIT AUTOSHAPES HOW CAN I GET THE OLD POWERPOINT 97 SLIDE VIEW BACK YES, MASTER! LEARN KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS THE EASY WAY CHANGE POWERPOINTS DEFAULT FILE LOCATION SPEED YOUR WORK WITH POWERPOINTS TEAR-OFF MENUS ENTER YOUR TEXT--FAST! MAKE THE FORMAT PAINTER TOOL EARN ITS KEEP GETTING FONTS UNDER CONTROL USE YOUR POWERPOINT GRAPHICS IN OTHER APPS MULTI-CLIPPING EURO KIDDING!!! HOW TO SAVE HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGES FROM POWERPOINT POWERPOINT SPEEDUP TIP HOW TO USE POWERPOINT 97S TEMPLATES IN POWERPOINT 2000 TEXT-IN-A-SHAPE CREATING YOUR OWN TAB FULL OF DESIGN TEMPLATES MORE AUTOSHAPES E-MAIL LINKS IN YOUR POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS WORKING TOO HARD WHAT DO ALL THESE TOOLBAR BUTTONS DO SETTING DEFAULT TEXT FORMATTING SETTING DEFAULT AUTOSHAPE FORMATTING TAKE CONTROL--WITH THE CTRL KEY THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX FOR BETTER ANIMATIONS WINDOWS, TELL ME ABOUT THIS .PPT FILE ZOOMING AROUND IN SLIDE SORTER VIEW WORKING WITH POWERPOINTS SPECIAL FOLDERS WHY ARE MY POWERPOINT FILES SO BIG--PARTS 1 and 2 WEB PAGES SANS LINKS USING PICTURE FILLS IN GRAPHS USING PANTONE COLORS IN POWERPOINT USE YOUR GRAPHICS AS A WATERMARK THE CASE OF THE MISSING TOOLBAR TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR TEXT SHADOW COLORS SPEEDUP TIP FOR SLIDE SORTER STUPID TOOLBAR TRICKS--PARTS 1 and 2 SPEED UP YOUR WORK WITH MACROS SPEED KEYS FOR WORKING WITH PRESENTATIONS ROTATING CLIP ART SPEED KEYS FOR POWERPOINTS FILE DIALOG BOX SEND YOUR PRESENTATIONS TO WORD RUNNING MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF POWERPOINT REPEATING AN ACTION WITH SPEED KEYS REFORMATTING HYPERLINK TEXT--PARTS 1 and 2 REARRANGE YOUR TOOLBARS REARRANGE YOUR BUTTONS PASTE SPECIAL, LINK PASTE SPECIAL, AS PICTURE MOVIE CREDITS-STYLE TEXT MOVE COMPLEX GRAPHICS FROM CORELDRAW TO POWERPOINT MOVE BASIC GRAPHICS FROM CORELDRAW TO POWERPOINT MACROS IN TEMPLATES MAKE MACROS RUN AUTOMATICALLY MAKE IT SIMPLER TO FIND YOUR FILES MACROS THAT RUN AUTOMATICALLY LINKING AND EMBEDDING--A QUICK SUMMARY MACROS IN TEMPLATES LINKING AND EMBEDDING--A QUICK SUMMARY KEEP THE LINKS, BUT SHED THE WEIGHT INSERTING SPECIAL CHARACTERS--PARTS 1 TO 4 INDENTS FOR UNBULLETED TEXT--PARTS 1 and 2 INDENT SETTINGS AND THE RULER INCHES VS. CENTIMETERS I KNOW I PUT THAT SLIDE SOMEWHERE--PARTS 1 TO 6 HYPERLINKS ON EVERY PAGE HYPERLINK BUTTONS BY THE DOZENS GRADIENT ODDITIES GIVING TABLE CELLS A PICTURE BACKGROUND FILE DIALOG BOX SHORTCUT KEYS ELIMINATE BACKGROUNDS IN BITMAP IMAGES--PARTS 1 and 2 AUTOSHAPES CHANGE SIZE CREATING BUTTONS FOR YOUR MACROS COPYING, PASTING, LINKING--WHATS IT ALL ABOUT COPYING CONTENT--A QUICK LOOK UNDER THE HOOD ALIGNING BULLETS AND TEXT CHANGE POWERPOINTS UNITS OF MEASUREMENT ADJUSTING LINE SPACING--PARTS 1 and 2 ACCESSING YOUR MACRO BUTTONS YOU REALLY MUSTNT WORK SO HARD! STILL WORKING TOO HARD SCALING TEXT BOXES LINKS PRODUCE MACRO VIRUS WARNINGS LINKING TRICKS CHANGE POWERPOINTS DEFAULT TAB SPACING TEXT IN AUTOSHAPES WRAPPING TEXT AROUND GRAPHICS USE NONSYMBOL FONTS FOR SYMBOLS OR BULLETS SIMPLIFIED SLIDE NAVIGATION TEXT ALIGNMENT SHORTCUTS A HANDY PRINTING MACRO GET FINER CONTROL OVER TAB STOPS
AlignmentSure, it's easy enough to align your PowerPoint text by clicking the appropriate button on the Formatting toolbar. But if you spend LOTS of time realigning text, then you might want to learn these handy keyboard shortcuts. The best thing about them is you can align text without having to lift your hands from the keyboard. Instead, simply make sure the cursor is in the paragraph you want to align, then use one of these shortcuts: · Left-align = Ctrl-L · Right-align = Ctrl-R · Center = Ctrl-E · Justify = Ctrl-J
ChartsPie charts are an excellent way to show the relationship of a whole to its parts--for example, you might graph each salesperson's share of the total monthly sales by using a pie chart. The whole pie would represent the total monthly sales, and each slice of the pie would represent an individual salesperson's share. PowerPoint makes it easy to create a pie chart from scratch. To begin, double-click the chart placeholder in an autolayout that includes a chart, or click the Insert Chart button on the Standard toolbar. When the datasheet opens, delete the default information by dragging over all the occupied cells and pressing Delete. Then, enter a single row or column of data and the corresponding headings. At this point, you'll see a fairly odd-looking column chart. This is normal. To convert the chart to a pie chart, click the Chart menu and choose Chart Type. Choose Pie from the Chart Type list on the left side of the Standard Types tab, then choose one of the chart sub-types from the palette on the right side of the tab. Click the Press And Hold To View Sample button at the bottom of the box to see a preview, and click OK to return to the chart. If your pie chart consists of a single slice, you'll need to reorient it. To do this, pull down the Data menu and choose either Series In Rows or Series In Columns--one of these two options will give you the results you want. When your chart appears as you want it, just click somewhere away from the chart to return to your slide. Should you need to edit the chart, just double-click it to reopen the chart editor.
AnimationHere's another in our series of animation tricks. In this installment, we'll make a piece of clip art come together a little at a time--like Alice in Wonderland's Cheshire Cat, only in reverse. To try this, click the Insert Clip Art button on the Drawing toolbar (or select Insert, Picture, Clip Art). In the Insert Clip Art dialog box, choose the Animals category, click the picture named Magic (the magician and rabbit), and choose Insert Clip. Dismiss the dialog box to return to your slide. Now, right-click the picture, choose Grouping, and select Ungroup. When the dialog box appears, click Yes to convert the picture to PowerPoint objects. Next, select Slide Show, Custom Animation. When the dialog box opens, every object that makes up the picture will be selected, which is just what you want. At this point, click the drop-down arrow in the Effects tab's Entry Animation And Sound area and choose Dissolve. Then, click the Order & Timing tab and choose the Automatically option in the Start Animation area. Finally, click Preview, and watch as PowerPoint slowly draws the magician, then the rabbit, then the hat. If you're satisfied with the drawing order, just click OK to return to the slide. Be very careful not to move any of the objects, and don't regroup the objects into a complete picture. Check out your animation in Slide Show view by clicking the Slide Show button on the views bar or by pressing F5.
More AnimationIn the last tip, we showed you how to animate all the objects in a clip art picture in a single step. For our example, we used a complex piece of clip art--the Animals category's Magic picture, which has 59 separate objects. And we animated those objects in the default order, which is the order the artist drew them on the slide. Fortunately, the default order works well for that picture. Normally, you apply animation effects one at a time. In that case, the animation order follows the order in which you animated the objects. But if you decide you want to change the animation order, you'll be happy to know it's very easy to do. Simply open the Custom Animation dialog box by choosing that command from the Slide Show menu. Then, click the Order & Timing tab and select the appropriate object in the Animation Order list. As you click each entry--which will probably have a vague name like Freeform 7 or Circle 8--the Preview window shows where the associated object appears on the slide. Once you've selected the object you want to reorder, just click either of the Move option's arrows once for each position you want to move the object--click the up arrow to make the object animate sooner, or click the down arrow to make the object animate later. Be sure to click the Preview button to verify the order you've set. When you're satisfied, click OK to return to the slide.
AutoShapesIf you do much drawing in PowerPoint, you're probably familiar with the tool palettes connected to the Drawing toolbar's AutoShapes button. You click AutoShapes, point at a category, and then choose a shape from the resulting palette. If you're drawing one or two shapes, this method isn't too bad. However, it gets pretty tiresome if you need to draw a number of shapes from the same one or two categories. For example, when drawing flowcharts, you have to repeatedly click the AutoShapes button, point at Flowchart, choose the relevant shape, and then draw the shape. Same thing when you're drawing the connecting lines, except with the Connectors category. Well, here's a news flash--you can cut out lots of these repetitive steps by "tearing off" the tool palettes. Here's how you do it: Click AutoShapes, point at the category, and when the tool palette appears, click the colored bar at the palette's top edge and drag the palette away from its current location. Doing so will "undock" the palette, creating what PowerPoint calls a "floating toolbar," complete with a toolbar name in the header bar and a Close button. Use the tools to your heart's desire, and when you've finished, just click the Close button (the X button in the upper-right corner). The tool palette will return to its former location, nested under the AutoShapes button and category name.
Much More AnimationFor the most part, PowerPoint makes you animate individual objects. A few days ago we showed you how to animate individual parts of a clip art picture all at once. The trick there was to make sure each object was selected before you opened the Custom Animation dialog box. If you've never animated text in a numbered or bulleted list, you might wonder how you do so--do you animate each bullet point individually or do you select all the pieces of text as you did with the clip art picture? Fortunately, you don't have to do either. As long as your list items exist as individual paragraphs inside a single text box, PowerPoint makes it real easy on you. To animate individual bullet points inside a text object, just right-click inside the bulleted or numbered list and choose Custom Animation. On the Effects tab, choose an effect (something like Fly >From Right, Zoom In, Wipe Down, or Peek From Top are good choices here) and, if desired, a sound. You can choose to hide or dim each previous bullet when a new one appears by selecting an option from the After Animation palette. Next, select a Grouped By setting--the default option is 1st Level Paragraphs. This is the most vital setting with numbered or bulleted lists--be sure to preview the current setting to make sure it works the way you want. Now, click the Order & Timing tab, and determine when the animation should start--when you click the mouse, or immediately after a certain number of seconds. Finally, click OK when your list is set up the way you want it.
Avoid ConfusionAs you develop a slide presentation, you need to be careful to avoid confusing your audience with objects on the slide that are counter to their perception. For example, let's suppose you have a photograph of a West Coast city that includes an ocean view. Think about it for a second: Where do you expect the ocean to appear--on the left or the right? If the ocean appears on the right side of the picture, many people will be momentarily confused, even if they don't know why. We're all accustomed to viewing maps with the North at the top. This leaves the East Coast on the right and the West on the left. So, a picture of the West Coast showing the ocean on the left is no problem but, if the ocean appears on the right, people feel slightly uncomfortable.
GraphicsPowerPoint offers some powerful graphics-editing capabilities. For example, if you have a clip art picture that you could use a portion of, all you have to do is separate what you want from what you don't, and get rid of the portion you don't want. For example, let's say you want to keep only the dog portion of the Veterinary Medicine picture in the Animals category. First, insert the picture in your slide by clicking the Insert Clip Art button on the Drawing toolbar or by pulling down the Insert menu, pointing at Picture, and choosing Clip Art. Select the category, click the picture, and choose Insert Clip. Back on the slide, right-click the picture, choose Grouping, and select Ungroup. Answer Yes to verify that you want to convert the picture to PowerPoint objects. Next, click somewhere on the slide away from the picture to deselect every object, then click on an individual object you'd like to get rid of and press Delete. Continue this process until all the unwanted parts have been deleted. Finally, select the remaining parts of the picture, right-click, choose Grouping, and select Group. Doing so will make the remaining picture act as a single unit.
More AutoshapesPowerPoint offers dozens of built-in shapes you can draw with. In addition, PowerPoint lets you reshape many of the built-in autoshapes--you simply drag the yellow reshape box on those shapes that have them. Sometimes, however, you just have to draw your object freehand, from scratch, by using the Curve, Freeform, and Scribble tools on AutoShapes' Lines palette. With the Curve tool, PowerPoint starts a new arc every place you click on the slide. With the Scribble tool, you hold down the mouse button and draw the shape as you would with a pencil. The Freeform tool combines the clickability of the Curve with the drag-and-draw nature of the Scribble. Once you've drawn your freehand shape, PowerPoint also lets you edit it. All you have to do is click the shape to select it, then right-click and choose Edit Points. When you do, PowerPoint will place selection handles at each change of direction on the shape. You can move a point by clicking a handle and dragging. You can add a point by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the line where you want to add the point. To delete a point, hold down Ctrl and click on an existing point (the cursor will change to an X to let you know it's in delete mode).
MeasurementsBy default, PowerPoint's unit of measurement is based on whatever you've chosen as the standard measurement in your Windows setup. For most of us, that means inches--the PowerPoint rulers display in inches, and the guides display distances in inches or decimal portions of inches. If you prefer, you can change PowerPoint's unit of measurement to centimeters. Here's how: First, click the Start button on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen. Point at Settings and choose Control Panel. Double-click the Regional Settings icon and click the Number tab. The second-to-last option on the tab is Measurement System. Click this option's drop-down arrow, choose Metric, and click OK. When you return to PowerPoint and view the rulers, you'll find that it now displays in centimeters instead of inches. To go back to using inches, simply reselect the U.S. option in the Measurement System drop-down list.
Flip ShapesWhen you add an autoshape to your slide, PowerPoint will automatically color it a medium shade of green with a thin black border. When you add text to a slide, it will appear in 24-point Times New Roman. These are the default formats set for PowerPoint shapes and text by the programmers. If you wish to change these defaults--either or both of them--you'll be happy to know that it's a pretty easy thing to do. To change the default formatting of any shape you add to a slide, just double-click a shape to open the Format AutoShape dialog box, make your line and color modifications, and, in the lower-left corner of the Colors And Lines tab, click the Default For New Objects check box. Click OK to return to your slide. From now on--until you change it--this formatting will apply to every new autoshape you insert on a slide. To change the default formatting of text, select any text or text object; choose Format, Font; select the font style, size, color, and effect you want; then click the Default For New Objects check box in the lower-right corner of the Font dialog box. Click OK to return to your slide. From now on, your text will carry the new default formatting. It shouldn't surprise you to learn that there's an even easier way to set new defaults for shapes and text--using the "default by example" method, which doesn't require you to open any dialog boxes. Simply set the shape AND text formatting you want by adding text to an autoshape or by adding formatting to a text box. Format both the text and the shape as desired, then right-click the object and select Set AutoShape Defaults. Should you wish to return to the default settings but you can't remember what they are, simply choose Format, Apply Design Template and reapply the existing presentation template. Since the template carries its defaults, its settings will override your new defaults.
Expand SlideOne of the really nice features in PowerPoint 97 was the Expand Slide command, which you could use to split a long bulleted list of text onto two slides. Even though this command was extremely easy to use, it didn't give you any control over where the split occurred. One can assume that's why this command didn't make it into PowerPoint 2000. The new version does, however, offer a similar, if less automatic, capability. In PowerPoint 2000, YOU decide where to split the list. Then, YOU perform the necessary keypresses. Here's how: In Outline view or in the Outline panel in Normal view, place the cursor at the end of the first line you want to move to the next slide. Then, click the Promote button (the one with the arrow facing to the left). When you do, that line will be promoted to the next level--to a slide title, obviously, on the next slide. To convert that line to a normal bullet point, click the mouse at the beginning of that line, press Enter to add a blank line, and then click the Demote button to demote your text to the next level down--to a bullet point. If this seems like the long way around, well, it is. But it's the recommended method (if you can find the suggested technique in the Help system). Occasionally, the Assistant will let you know that your list is too long and will prompt you to allow it to split the text onto two slides. By all means, let it! We couldn't find a way to make the Assistant do this with any consistency, however, so it pays to know the manual method. Of course, you CAN just divide your bulleted list over two slides as you're entering the information... but that's just TOO easy!
Some Keyboard ShortcutsYou might have noticed that during your onscreen slide shows, the pointer will disappear if you don't move it for five seconds or so. This feature lets you spend time on a slide without having to worry about the cursor obstructing important information on your slide. But what if you want to make the pointer remain onscreen all the time? Or if you want to make the pointer disappear before five seconds elapse? Fortunately, PowerPoint offers a few keyboard shortcuts you can use to control the appearance--and disappearance--of your slide show pointer. These commands are also available on the right-click menu or the button in the lower-left corner of the screen during a slide show--but using the shortcuts is less intrusive. - Press Ctrl-H to hide the button and the pointer immediately. - Press Ctrl-A to display the pointer as an arrow and to display the button. - Press Ctrl-U to automatically hide the button and pointer in five seconds.
Change your BackgroundsSometimes, your custom background is so colorful that you can't pick a contrasting color to use for text. This usually happens when you use a picture for your background--fireworks, a garden scene, widgets and gadgets, or coffee beans (to name a few). We have a great alternative to spending half a day trying to find just the right shade for your text. Here's what you do: Type your text in the text box, then double-click the text box's border to open the Format Text Box dialog box. For the Fill Color option, choose white or a pastel shade of the predominant color in the section of picture behind the text box, then click the Semitransparent option. Choose Preview to verify your color choice, and click OK when you're satisfied with it. The Semitransparent setting uses the chosen color in every other pixel of the text box; the background shows through the remaining pixels. The result is that your background picture appears as a watermark behind the text box. Now all you need to do is choose a complementary text color that contrasts with the semitransparent color. Not only is your text legible but the text box is a design element as well. Pretty cool!
More AutoShapes MenuIf you don't find the autoshape you need among the hundreds of basic shapes, flowchart elements, connectors, lines, callouts, and so forth that are available on the AutoShapes button's categories and palettes, be sure to choose the last command on the AutoShapes menu: More AutoShapes. Clicking this button opens the More AutoShapes dialog box, which looks suspiciously like the Clip Art Gallery. But don't be fooled-- More AutoShapes offers most of what's available as clip art, but it also has lots more simple pictures--musical notes, puzzle pieces, office furniture, and other conceptual images. Just navigate through the categories (the same as in the Insert Clip Art dialog box plus several additional ones) and choose the shape you want to place on your slide. When you return to the slide, you can reformat many of these shapes by double-clicking them and changing the settings in the Format AutoShape dialog box.
TitlesA lot of folks use uppercase text for titles. This is actually a sort of psychological holdover from the typewriter days. The only way to really make a title stand out in those days was to make it uppercase. Uppercase letters are often less attractive than lowercase and usually more difficult to read--not to mention the fact that Internet users in your audience will tend to think of all caps as "shouting." Try to avoid using all caps in your titles (or anywhere in your slides). Concentrate instead on choosing an attractive and easily readable font and font size.
More backgroundsDesign templates are a nice way to add graphic interest to your slides and to pull a whole presentation together. But sometimes you have a slide where the template graphics interfere with the other information. In those cases, you might want to get rid of the template graphics for that particular slide. Fortunately, this is very easy to do. Just scroll to the slide in Slide view, right-click it, and choose Background. In the Background dialog box, click the Omit Background Graphics From Master check box, then click the Apply button. Apply makes the change only to the current slide; Apply To All would remove the template's graphics from the entire slide show. You might wish to take this technique a step further and even remove the background color(s) and/or shading from the slide. While you're working in the Background dialog box, click the drop-down arrow underneath the slide preview and choose white (or another appropriate color) from the available colors on the resulting palette. Again, click Apply to change the background color only on the current slide. Occasionally, you might want to remove the background color and/or shading but leave the template graphics on the slide. This is also an easy task. In the Background dialog box, make sure the Omit Background Graphics From Master option is deselected and choose a neutral color for the drop-down option underneath the slide preview. Be sure to click the Preview button and make sure you like the effect. Then, click Apply.
HOW CAN I GET THE OLD POWERPOINT 97 SLIDE VIEW BACK?Slide view in PowerPoint 2000 isn't the same as Slide view in earlier versions. If you prefer the old Slide view, you can get it back easily. Hold down the Control key while you click the Slide View icon at the lower left of your screen. To return to the new PowerPoint 2000 style Slide view, simply click the same icon again. You can also customize the View menu choices to include the old-style Slide view. Right-click any toolbar and click Customize on the pop-up menu that appears (or choose Tools, Customize from the menu bar). Next, click the Commands tab of the Customize dialog box and click View in the Categories list. Locate the Slide entry in the Commands list, then click Slide and hold down the mouse button while you drag it to the View menu. The cursor changes to an arrow with a plus sign. When you reach the View menu, the menu drops down. Drop the Slide item where you'd like it to appear on the View menu. Finally, click the Close button in the Customize dialog box. You can now choose View, Slide to put PowerPoint into the old-style Slide view.
LEARN KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS THE EASY WAYPerhaps you're working on a laptop with a cranky pointing device, or maybe you just like to use the keyboard instead of the mouse. PowerPoint has plenty of keyboard shortcuts to speed your work, but it can be difficult to find them in the first place--and to memorize them once you've found them. PowerPoint 2000 has a kinder, gentler way of teaching you these handy shortcuts. You can have it show you the applicable keyboard shortcut for each of the toolbar buttons when it pops up ScreenTips, those handy little text boxes that pop up when you hover the mouse pointer over one of the toolbar buttons. Begin by right-clicking any toolbar and clicking Customize on the pop-up menu that appears (or choose Tools, Customize from the menu bar). Next, click the Options tab of the Customize dialog box and select the Show ScreenTips On Toolbars option. Then, select the Shortcut Keys In ScreenTips option and click the Close button. Now move your mouse pointer over one of the toolbar buttons and hold it there briefly. The usual ScreenTip text pops up, but now it also includes the keyboard shortcut for the command as well (if any--not all toolbar buttons have keyboard shortcuts).
CHANGE POWERPOINT'S DEFAULT FILE LOCATIONYou don't really HAVE to store your PowerPoint files in My Documents if you don't want to. And you don't really HAVE to browse to a different folder every time you save if you prefer to save your presentations in some other folder than My Documents. You can have PowerPoint automatically save to any folder you like, on any drive you like. First, choose Tools, Options. Next, click the Save tab in the Options dialog box. In the Default File Location text box, enter the complete drive and path to the folder where you'd like to store your presentations. Make sure that the folder has already been created before you do this. There's no Browse button here to make it simple to point to the folder you want, but PowerPoint will warn you if you type a nonexistent or incorrect folder path. Now when you open or save a presentation, PowerPoint will automatically look first in your new default folder.
HOW TO EDIT AUTOSHAPESIt's a lot simpler to edit a drawing or shape that's already created than it is to create one from scratch using PowerPoint's drawing tools. The Edit Points tool gives you some powerful editing capabilities for this, but there's one little problem: It's not available when you select an AutoShape. Here's what you need to do if you want to edit an AutoShape. First, click your AutoShape to select it. Choose Edit, Cut or press Ctrl-X to cut the AutoShape to the Clipboard. Next, select Edit, Paste Special to open the Paste Special dialog box. Choose Picture (Enhanced Metafile) from the As list box, then click OK. The AutoShape reappears on your slide. Right-click the AutoShape, point to Grouping, then select Ungroup from the pop-up menu. PowerPoint displays this message box warning: This is an imported picture, not a group. Do you want to convert it to a Microsoft Office drawing object? Click Yes. The object is no longer an AutoShape but a fully editable drawing object. You can now use the Edit Points tool or any of PowerPoint's other drawing tools to edit the object as you like.
SPEED YOUR WORK WITH POWERPOINT'S TEAR-OFF MENUSIt's quite easy to get to any of PowerPoint's many drawing and formatting features via the various pop-up menus and toolbars, but sometimes you find yourself repeatedly clicking this, pointing to that, and choosing something from a pop-up menu. That can get old VERY quickly. The next time you're in that situation, take a closer look at the pop-up menu. Many of them have a thin gray bar at the top. For example, click the Draw button at the bottom left of your screen and point to Order. Whenever you see this gray bar, it means that you can "tear off" the pop-up menu to convert it to a floating toolbar. Simply click and hold on the gray bar while you drag it to wherever you'd like it. The pop-up menu becomes a floating toolbar that you can position wherever you like. It stays on screen until you dismiss it by clicking the X in the upper-right corner. You can also dock it with your other toolbars by dragging it atop one of them, just as you can do with any other floating toolbar.
YES, MASTER!When you want to make a change to the master template your presentation is based on, you can always open the View menu and choose Master, Slide Master or whichever other master you want to work with, but here's a faster way. First, hold down the Shift key while you click one of the view icons at the lower left of your screen to go directly to the corresponding Master view. For example, hold down Shift and click the Slide View button to go directly to the Slide Master view. You click the same button without the Shift key held down to return to Slide view. And here's another little trick: While you're in Slide Master view, press the PageDown key to go to the Title Master view. The PageUp key returns you to Slide Master. Some templates don't include a Title Master. If yours doesn't and you'd like to add one, here's how. Hold down the Shift key while you click the Slide View button as described above. That takes you to the Slide Master. Then, choose Insert, New Title Master (or press Ctrl-M). Your template now includes a Title Master that you can format as you like.
MAKE THE FORMAT PAINTER TOOL EARN ITS KEEPThe Format Painter tool's a great way to pick up the formatting (fill, outline color, etc.) you've used on one object and apply it to another. Just select the object whose formatting you'd like to pick up, click the Format Painter tool (it's the paintbrush icon on the Standard toolbar), and then click any other object you'd like to apply the same formatting to. There's only one problem: It's a one-shot deal. As soon as you apply the formatting, the Format Painter tool goes inactive. To use it again, you have to re-select an object and pick up its formatting attributes so you can apply them to another object. If you want to apply the same formatting to a lot of objects, this isn't very productive. Instead, select the object whose formatting you want to pick up, then DOUBLE-CLICK the Format Painter tool. Then you can click any other object you want to apply the formatting to. You can apply formatting to as many other objects as you like. When you've finished, press the Esc key or click the Format Painter tool again.
USE YOUR POWERPOINT GRAPHICS IN OTHER APPSYou've created a magnificent chart or drawing in PowerPoint and now you need to use it on your Web site, so you need to convert it to JPG or GIF format. No problem! First, choose File, Save As. In the Save As dialog box, pick the format you want from the Save As Type drop-down list box. In this case, you'd pick either JPEG File Interchange Format (* .jpg) or GIF Graphics Interchange Format (* .gif). Next, enter a name in the File Name text box and click Save. The name you type here becomes either a filename or a folder name, depending on the option you choose next. PowerPoint displays a message box that asks Do you want to export every slide in the presentation? Click Yes if you want to export all of the slides in your presentation to sequentially numbered files, or click No to export just the current slide. If you clicked Yes in the previous step, PowerPoint exports all the slides in your presentation to files named Slide1, Slide2, Slide3, and so on. The file extension depends on the export file type you chose earlier. If you clicked No, PowerPoint simply exports the current slide to the filename you typed earlier. For example, you have three slides in a presentation. You choose Save As, specify JPEG, and type Website as the filename, then click Yes because you want to export all of the slides to JPEG format. PowerPoint creates a folder called Website and in it saves Slide1.JPG, Slide2.JPG, and Slide3.JPG. Or let's say you only want to export one slide to JPEG. In this case, you'd perform the same steps but click No when PowerPoint asks if you want to export the entire presentation. In this case, it would export just the current slide to a file called Website.JPG.
HOW TO SAVE HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGES FROM POWERPOINTPowerPoint lets you save either single slides or your entire presentation to file formats like JPG, GIF, and PNG, but when you do this, you may find that the images it exports are fairly low resolution. Small text may get a bad case of the "jaggies," and thin lines may disappear altogether. You need to export at higher resolutions, but PowerPoint doesn't include any options for this in the Save As dialog box, so you're stuck, right? Wrong! Little-known fact: PowerPoint does these exports at 96 dpi (or 120 dpi if your computer uses the Large Fonts display setting). This means that the size of the exported image will be 96 dpi times the page size dimensions. You can't change the 96-dpi part, but you CAN change the page size, and that's exactly how you can get higher resolution images from PowerPoint. First, save your file. You want to have it safely saved to disk in case something goes amiss. Next, choose File, Page Setup. In the Page Setup dialog box, decide what resolution you want the final image to have--how many pixels high by how many pixels wide. Let's say we want to end up with an image that's 800 pixels high. Divide the number of pixels desired by 96 dpi to get the page size in inches--for example, 800 / 96 = 8.33 inches. Change Height in the Page Setup dialog box to this size in inches. Finally, calculate a new value for Width that will maintain the original slide proportions using this formula: New Width = (Original Width X New Height) / Original Height Enter the new Width in the Page Setup dialog box, then click OK. The appearance of your presentation shouldn't change at all, since you changed the size but not the proportions of the slide page. Now you can choose File, Save As and save to JPG or other image formats as you normally would. You'll end up with a file or files that are very close to the size you wanted (though they won't always be precisely the number of pixels across or high that you expected).
ENTER YOUR TEXT--FAST!When you really need to crank out a presentation in a hurry, enter the text for your slides first, then worry about fine-tuning the formatting on each slide. You can enter all the text like greased lightning this way. First, start a new presentation or insert a new slide into an existing one. Next, press Ctrl-Enter--this automatically selects the Title placeholder for editing. Enter your title text. Press Ctrl-Enter again--this selects the Body Text placeholder for editing. Enter your body text or bullet points. Finally, press Ctrl-Enter again--since there are no more text placeholders on the current slide, this creates a new slide and selects the Title placeholder for editing, so you can begin entering the new title text immediately.
GETTING FONTS UNDER CONTROLYou've probably had this happen: You receive a presentation from somebody else, you open it to have a look, and right away you notice that something's not quite right. The text looks misplaced or perhaps it doesn't line up exactly where it should. Most often, this is because whoever created the presentation used a font that's not installed on your system. When you opened the presentation, PowerPoint substituted some other font in its place. If the substituted font isn't an extremely close match for the missing font, the appearance of the presentation will suffer. The next time this happens, choose Format, Replace Fonts. You'll see a Replace Fonts dialog box with two drop-down list boxes. The upper list box shows you all the fonts needed by the presentation and displays a question mark icon to the left of any fonts that are needed but not available on your computer. When you see a font with a question mark icon, you can do one of two things: - Install the font, if you have it. There's no need to close the presentation or quit PowerPoint. As soon as you install the font, PowerPoint will recognize and use it. - Substitute a different font that you know is a close match for the needed font. Click the missing font in the upper list box, then open the lower list box, which shows all the fonts installed on your computer, and choose the font you'd like to use in place of the missing one. Click Replace to have PowerPoint substitute the new font wherever the missing font is used in the presentation. Note that fonts in graphs, Word tables, and other OLE objects will not be replaced.
HOW TO USE POWERPOINT 97'S TEMPLATES IN POWERPOINT 2000PowerPoint 2000 doesn't include all the same templates as PowerPoint 97. What if you have a favorite PowerPoint 97 template you'd like to use in PowerPoint 2000? Here's how. First, start PowerPoint 2000 and open your PowerPoint 97 template (POT) file just as you'd open a regular (PPT) presentation file. Without changing anything, immediately choose File, Save As. In the Save As dialog box, choose Design Template (* .pot) from the Save As Type drop-down list box. As soon as you do this, you'll notice that the proposed folder in the Save In drop-down list box changes to Templates. If you're curious, pull down the list box to investigate where this mysterious Templates folder lives. You'll find that it's off your \Windows folder in \Application Data\Microsoft\Templates. Finally, click Save to save the template to this new location. The next time you start a new presentation, you'll see the new template listed in the General tab of the New Presentation dialog box. It will also be included in the choices PowerPoint 2000 offers you in the Apply Design Template dialog box when you choose Format, Apply Design Template. Why can't you just copy the original PowerPoint 97 template file to \Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates instead of opening it in PowerPoint 2000 and re-saving it? You can, but we recommend this method instead because there have been a few subtle changes in the template file format in past versions of PowerPoint. Opening older template files in PowerPoint 2000 and re-saving them ensures that they get updated to the latest format.
CREATING YOUR OWN TAB FULL OF DESIGN TEMPLATESIn an earlier tip, we showed you how to update earlier-version PowerPoint template (POT) files for use in PowerPoint 2000 by opening them and re-saving them to the default \Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates folder. After you do this, the converted templates appear in the General tab of the New Presentation dialog box you see when you choose File, New. Wouldn't it be nice if you could categorize these templates to make it easier to find the one you need? Well, you can! In fact, you can add your own tabs to the New Presentation dialog box. Here's how. Let's say that you want to create new tab called My Templates. In Windows Explorer, browse to the \Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates folder. Create a new folder under \Templates called My Templates. Then, copy your template files into the new \My Templates folder. The next time you choose File, New in PowerPoint 2000, you'll see your new My Templates tab in the New Presentation dialog box, and when you click My Templates, you'll see all the templates you copied into the \My Templates folder. Note that until you copy at least one template into your new folder, PowerPoint will not display a tab for it in the New Presentation dialog box.
E-MAIL LINKS IN YOUR POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONSNowadays it seems like everything you see--Web sites, e-mail, Word documents--has an e-mail link you can click to send comments directly to the person who created the document. Wouldn't it be nice if you could do that in your PowerPoint presentations, too? Well, what's stopping you? You probably already know that you can add hyperlinks to just about anything on a slide in PowerPoint. Simply select the object you want to turn into a hyperlink. Right-click the object and choose Action Settings from the pop-up menu. In the Action Settings dialog box, click Hyperlink To and pick the type of hyperlink you want from the drop-down list box. Now here's where the e-mail fun starts. Choose URL from the drop-down list box and you'll see the Hyperlink To URL dialog box. Type your e-mail address in the text box using this format: mailto:[your e-mail address here] Substitute your real e-mail address for [your e-mail address here], of course. For example, if your e-mail address is me@here.com, you'd type this in the Hyperlink To URL dialog box: mailto:me@here.com When people view your presentation in Slide Show mode and click on this e-mail hyperlink, PowerPoint automatically starts their e-mail program and fills in your address for them. All they have to do is type in their message and click the Send button.
WHAT DO ALL THESE TOOLBAR BUTTONS DO?If you're strictly a menu-driven PowerPoint user, you're missing out on all the shortcuts offered by the buttons on PowerPoint's many useful toolbars. You probably know that already, but perhaps you're having trouble figuring out what all those little pictures on the toolbars are supposed to mean. There's a nice, painless way to gradually wean yourself off the menus and onto the toolbars, if you like. As you choose your favorite menu commands, take a closer look at the menus themselves. Notice that quite a few of them have little icons next to the menu text. Each of these icons matches one of the icons on PowerPoint's toolbar buttons. Find the matching toolbar button icon, and you've found out which toolbar button does the same thing as the matching menu command.
MULTI-CLIPPINGPowerPoint--and in fact all the Office 2000 programs--has a new version of our old friend, the Windows Clipboard, the place where text and graphics go when you copy them (with Edit, Copy or Ctrl-C) and where they come back from when you paste (Edit, Paste or Ctrl-V). As you know, the Windows Clipboard can hold only one item at a time. If you select and copy some text, then select and copy a graphic, the graphic replaces the text on the Clipboard and you can no longer paste the text you first put there. The new Office 2000 Clipboard is a very different animal, though. To see what we mean, use Clip Gallery to insert several pieces of clip art. For each clip you insert, select it, then press Ctrl-C or choose Edit, Copy. When you do this the second time, the Office Clipboard toolbar appears and you'll see that it contains two icons, one for each picture you've copied. The more pictures (or text or just about anything else) you copy, the more icons you'll see on the toolbar, up to its limit of 12 items. Now click any of the icons to paste back into PowerPoint, or switch to a different Office 2000 application and paste the contents of the Office Clipboard there.
EURO KIDDING!!!No, no kidding. PowerPoint now supports the Euro symbol(€). If you're in a Euro kind of mood, try this. Type some text into a placeholder or a text box. Where you want to insert a Euro symbol, hold down the Alt key and type 0128 on the numeric keypad. Format the text in a font that includes the Euro symbol. The Euro symbol is included in Arial, Courier New, Tahoma, and Times New Roman, among others. You may want to try these to start with, especially if you're not familiar with the Euro symbol, then try out some of your other fonts to see if they include Euro symbols as well. If Alt-0128 doesn't produce a Euro symbol when using these fonts, you may need to install additional software on your system. For links to this software and lots more Euro information, see http://www.microsoft.com/EURO/default.htm
THINK "OUTSIDE THE BOX" FOR BETTER ANIMATIONSSometimes PowerPoint's built-in animation settings don't do everything you'd like them to. For example, it's fairly simple to create a slide that "builds" a piece at a time, but what if you want to start with the full slide, then remove it piece by piece? First, create the complete slide as you want it to appear to begin with. Choose Insert, Duplicate Slide. PowerPoint inserts a copy of the current slide, then switches to it. Select and delete any objects or text you want to have disappear in the second stage of your "build" sequence. Now keep inserting duplicate slides and removing more items until you're left with only the items you want to appear in the final slide in your sequence. Finally, set your slide transitions the way you'd like them and view your new animation sequence in Slide Show view.
POWERPOINT SPEEDUP TIPWhen you installed Office, you may have gotten a few extra little bits and pieces you didn't expect. Office normally installs a little program called Microsoft Office FindFast Indexer. This little guy loads when you start Windows and hangs around in the background waiting for a time when you don't appear to be doing much, then it wakes up and starts to index everything on your hard drive so that file searches in PowerPoint's Open dialog box will be faster. As you might guess, that can take quite a while. And as may not be so obvious, FindFast might just decide to kick up its heels at times when you'd really rather it didn't. If you've ever noticed that your PC's hard drive seems unusually busy and that the PC's responding very slowly, chances are that our buddy FindFast is busily cataloging your hard drive and slowing down your work in the process. Time for a reality check: How often do you USE file searches from PowerPoint's Open dialog box? Most of us don't even know the feature is there, much less make regular use of it. If that description fits you, too, you may want to turn off FindFast indexing so that it doesn't intrude at inconvenient times. It's simple to do. First, right-click the Windows taskbar in an area that's unoccupied by any icons or minimized programs. Choose Properties from the pop-up menu. Click the Start Menu Programs tab in the Taskbar Properties dialog box. Click Advanced. Next, you'll see an Explorer window with the Start Folder and Programs folders visible in the left pane. Click the plus (+) sign next to Programs. When the Programs folder opens, locate the StartUp folder and click it. The contents of the StartUp folder will appear in the right pane of the Explorer window. Locate the icon for Microsoft Office FindFast Indexer and drag it out of the StartUp folder to your desktop or to some other folder for safekeeping. That way, you can always drag it back into the StartUp folder if you change your mind later. You have to restart Windows to effect this change.
TEXT-IN-A-SHAPEHave you ever fought with the problem of centering text atop a shape and keeping it that way? You draw the shape, then draw a text box, carefully line it up, and format it. Next thing you know, you've moved the shape or the text accidentally or you need to change the text and everything's all off center or out of whack. Been there? Done that? If so, you're working FAR too hard. There's a much simpler way to go about this common task. Simply draw a new shape or select the shape you'd like your text to appear inside, then start typing. Really! That's all there is to it. PowerPoint automatically centers the text on the shape as you type it. Of course, if you type a LOT of text, it will run over the edges of the shape, but don't worry about that. Finish typing, then press the Esc key. Choose Format, Format AutoShape. In the Format AutoShape dialog box, click the Text tab, then click Word Wrap Text In AutoShape, then click OK. PowerPoint wraps your text to fit the shape.
MORE AUTOSHAPESYou're no doubt familiar with the wealth of AutoShapes--instant building blocks for your custom-made drawings--that PowerPoint offers. But did you know that there's a wealth of searchable clip art directly available from the AutoShapes pop-up menu? Let's have a closer look: First, click AutoShapes at the bottom of your screen, and choose More AutoShapes from the pop-up menu. In the resulting "mini-Clip Gallery" window, you can click the category of clip art you're looking for and browse the available selections. When you find a clip you like, click it, then choose Insert Clip (the top icon on the pop-up menu) to insert it into your PowerPoint presentation. The other pop-up menu selections allow you to preview a larger version of the clip, add the clip to other categories so you can keep the clip art arranged in a way that makes sense to you, or search for other clips with similar keywords or concepts. Click the Change To Full Window button (or press Ctrl-Shift->) to get access to more options like keyword searches for clip art and importing other graphics files into PowerPoint's clip art collection.
SETTING DEFAULT TEXT FORMATTINGHave you noticed that no matter what text formatting your PowerPoint template calls for, PowerPoint seems to apply completely different default formatting to new text boxes you add to your presentations? And you have to reformat each and every text box you add? That USED to annoy us no end, until we learned this simple trick for setting PowerPoint's text defaults the way WE wanted them. First, make sure that there's NO text or other object selected. Select Format, Font and select the attributes you'd like in the Font dialog box. If the text formatting toolbar is visible, you can use that instead if you prefer. You can also change the default text alignment; choose Format, Alignment. Now add a new text box using the Text Box button or by choosing Insert, Text Box. Your new text will automatically take on the formatting you specified in the previous steps. Any time you want to change the default text formatting again, simply make sure that nothing is selected, then use PowerPoint's text formatting tools to set the defaults however you like them. Note that these text defaults are stored with your presentations, not in PowerPoint itself. That means two things: * Each presentation can have its own set of text defaults. * You'll have to set the text defaults you want for each new presentation you create (but PowerPoint's templates also include text formatting default information, so if you save a custom template with the text formatting you want, any new presentations you create from this template will automatically have the text formatting defaults already set up for you).
SETTING DEFAULT AUTOSHAPE FORMATTINGIn a previous tip, we explained how you could set default formatting for text boxes so that any new boxes you add will automatically be formatted just the way you want them. You can also set defaults for AutoShapes, rectangles, circles, lines, and so on. Let's take a look. Add a rectangle (or any other simple shape) and format it to taste--change its fill color, line color, line thickness, or any of the other options available in the Format AutoShape dialog box or the Drawing toolbar. Once you have the shape formatted just the way you want it (and any shapes you draw afterward), right-click the shape and choose Set AutoShape Defaults from the pop-up menu. Any new shapes you draw, including AutoShapes, will automatically take on the default formatting you just specified--until you change it again.
TAKE CONTROL--WITH THE CTRL KEYIn an earlier tip, we showed you how you can use the Ctrl key to get finer... well... control over the placement of your tab stops in PowerPoint. The Ctrl key is useful in quite a few other ways as well. For example, to duplicate and position objects at the same time, hold down Ctrl while you drag an object. When you release the mouse, PowerPoint creates a duplicate of the object, leaving the original in its original spot. Hold down both Ctrl and Shift while dragging an object to have PowerPoint constrain your dragging motion to strictly horizontal or vertical (depending on which direction you start dragging). To precisely position objects, hold down Ctrl while you use the arrow keys to nudge the object left, right, up, or down. PowerPoint has an invisible "grid," and normally each press of an arrow key moves the object one grid space. When you hold down Ctrl, it temporarily turns off the grid and moves objects one pixel at a time. The closer in you zoom, the more control you have. If you'd rather move objects with your mouse, hold down the Alt key while you drag the object. This also turns off the grid temporarily.
ZOOMING AROUND IN SLIDE SORTER VIEWWhen you switch to Slide Sorter view, PowerPoint normally shows you three or four slides per row by however many rows or partial rows fit on your screen. Most of the time, that's fine, but sometimes you'd like to get a closer look at the slides with which you're working. At other times you may want to back off a bit and get the "big picture." Either way, it's easy. Just change your Zoom level to see more or fewer slides on screen at a time. Choose View, Zoom, then either click one of the preset zoom levels (100, 66, 50, and 33 percent) or dial in your own Percent setting. You can't choose a higher zoom level than 100 percent or a lower level than 33 percent. The lower the zoom percentage, the smaller the slides in Slide Sorter view will appear, and the more of them you'll see on screen at once.
WORKING WITH POWERPOINT'S SPECIAL FOLDERSIn the past few tips, we've talked a lot about shortcuts, and we've mentioned the special folder icons that appear on the left side of PowerPoint's File dialog boxes. Now we're going to bring it all together. These special folders aren't really all that special. They're just regular folders that PowerPoint happens to include in its File dialog boxes as a convenience. In the previous tips, you learned how to create shortcuts to your files and put them wherever you like to make it much easier to get at your files quickly. You can do exactly the same with these "special" folders in PowerPoint's File dialog boxes. The trick is knowing where these folders are so you can work with them. Here's a list of the folders PowerPoint shows you and where you can actually find them: My Documents: \My Documents (on the same drive as \Windows) Desktop: \Windows\Desktop Favorites: \Windows\Favorites History: \Windows\History (You can't add files or shortcuts yourself, but any file you've recently worked with will appear here automatically.) Web Folders: You can't add files, folders, or shortcuts to Web folders, just links to Web pages. To really streamline access to your presentations, graphics and other files, here's what we suggest: Decide whether you want to work with My Documents, Desktop, or Favorites. For example, let's say you choose Favorites. Move all files out of the Favorites folder using Windows Explorer. Instead of files, put shortcuts to the folders where your files are stored in the Favorites folder, again using Windows Explorer. Now when you choose File, Open or Insert, click Favorites on the left side of the File dialog box, choose any option but Preview from the Views button on the File dialog box toolbar, then browse your folders to find the file you're looking for WITHOUT having to wait while PowerPoint displays previews of the wrong file. Note: You can still preview a file before opening it if you like. Simply click it once, then switch back to Preview mode temporarily.
WORKING TOO HARDIt never fails to amaze us: You wouldn't believe the number of presentations we've seen where the user has started PowerPoint, then laboriously bludgeoned the default blank presentation into some new format. We've done this ourselves--deliberately--when we wanted a clean slate to start creating a new custom template. But if you're creating presentations this way, you're simply working too hard. PowerPoint will save you tons of time if you work with it rather than against it. When you start a new presentation, don't accept the default blank presentation to work with. Instead, choose Format, Apply Design Template, and browse through the dozens of pre-made templates that come with PowerPoint. If none precisely meets your needs, choose the one that comes closest to the color scheme you have in mind. Then, you can always choose View, Master, Slide Master or Title Master and do the following: Delete any design elements you don't like. Add your own graphics to the Master backgrounds so they'll be repeated on each slide in your presentation automatically. Change the formatting, position, size, and color of the Title and Text placeholders. Remember: Any changes you make to the Title and Slide Masters will control what ALL of the Title and regular slides in your presentation look like. And all without you having to change a thing on the individual slides. Work smarter, not harder!
WINDOWS, TELL ME ABOUT THIS .PPT FILEHave you ever looked at all the interesting things PowerPoint tells you about your presentation when you choose File, Document Info? And if you have, have you ever wished you could see all that good stuff without having to start PowerPoint and open your presentation? Wish no more. It couldn't be simpler! Browse to your presentation file in My Computer or Windows Explorer. Right-click the file and choose Properties from the context menu. Voila! Here's the same information PowerPoint shows you, but in a fraction of the time. This is especially useful when you've just received a presentation from someone and want to find out what fonts are needed so you can install them before opening the presentation. The Contents tab of the Properties sheet will reveal all.
WHY ARE MY POWERPOINT FILES SO BIG--PART 1 OF 2PowerPoint files can get awfully large simply because of the number of photos, sounds, and other large files embedded in them, and there's not really a lot you can do about that. Big, complex, media-rich presentations equals big PowerPoint files. On the other hand, sometimes your files will seem to grow all out of proportion to the size of the graphics and other media you've included in them. If the size of your PPT file is way larger than the total sizes of all the graphics and media files you've added to it, chances are you can shrink it down to a more reasonable size. First, choose Tools, Options; select the Save tab; and deselect the Allow Fast Saves option. Fast Saves may be quicker, but they're inevitably larger (and may cause your files to become corrupted--so now that you've turned off Fast Saves, LEAVE it off). Next, still on the Save tab, make sure that Save PowerPoint Files As is set to PowerPoint Presentation (and specifically NOT PowerPoint 97-2000 & 95 Presentation or any of the older versions of PowerPoint). Click OK to dismiss the Options dialog box. Then choose File, Save As; give the presentation a new name; and save it. The size of the new file should now be more in line with what you'd expect, given the combined sizes of all its content files.
WHY ARE MY POWERPOINT FILES SO BIG--PART 2 OF 2In our previous tip, we explained how to ensure that your Save options are set correctly to make the smallest possible PowerPoint files, or at the very least, files that are not appreciably larger than the combined sizes of all the graphics and media files you've included in them. What if you need even smaller files? There are ways... Have a look at the graphics, especially photos, scans, and other such bitmap files you've inserted into your presentation. If they're larger than they need to be, your PPT file will be unnecessarily large, too. Assuming that your presentation needs to look good on a monitor or projection video screen, your images don't need to be any larger than the video resolution to which your computer is set. To check this out, right-click the Windows desktop and choose Properties from the context menu. Click the Settings tab of the Display Properties dialog box. Note both the Display Area setting (which will be 800x600, 1024x768, or a similar set of numbers) and the Color Palette setting (which will be True Color, High Color, 256-color, or something similar). Close the dialog box without changing anything. When it displays your images, PowerPoint can't show them in any higher quality mode than your video settings allow, so there's no point to using images of higher resolution or color quality than your video display can handle. Open your image in any photo-editing software and change its resolution to match your display resolution (you may have to change the software's measurement units from inches to pixels first). If you're set up for 256 colors, you may also want to reduce the number of colors in the image to match. When you save the changed image, you'll generally find that it's a great deal smaller than the original. And your PowerPoint files using these edited images will be smaller as well.
WEB PAGES SANS LINKSIs there some way of turning off all the extra frames and outline links that PowerPoint provides by default when you save your presentations as Web pages. To some degree, you can: Choose Tools, Options. Select the General tab, then click Web Options. In the Web Options dialog box, deselect the option Add Slide Navigation Controls, then click OK. Click OK once more in the Options dialog box. Choose File, Web Page Preview to see the results. You may need to edit the resulting HTML files to provide some alternate means of linking from one Web page to the next, since without the links PowerPoint normally supplies, there's no way to move from slide to slide in the Web view of the presentation. Microsoft has a KnowledgeBase article with more information and other workarounds here: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q237/4/02.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0
USING PICTURE FILLS IN GRAPHSAre you getting bored with basic bar and pie charts? Let's face it--they haven't changed much since Og scratched the first one onto his cave with a pointed stick. Say, what if you could fill the bars with pictures instead of plain-old flat color fills? Well, you can! Here's a simple example: Insert a new slide into your presentation; base it on the Chart AutoLayout. Double-click the chart placeholder, then when PowerPoint's default chart appears, right-click the front face of any of the 3D bars. Then, select Format Data Series from the pop-up menu. On the Patterns tab of the Format Data Series dialog box, click Fill Effects. On the Picture tab of the Fill Effects dialog box, click Select Picture and choose the picture with which you want to fill your bars. Once you've selected a picture, you can set other options, such as: Whether the picture is applied to any of the front, sides, and/or top of 3D bars. Whether PowerPoint should stretch the picture to fill the bar or stack multiple copies of it, one atop the other. If stacked, what scale factors it should use; by choosing the right scale factor, you could make each picture represent a specific amount of whatever it is that the bar chart measures. Click OK to see your chart in all its newfound glory. And notice that you can also choose gradient, texture, or patterned fills for your charts, just as you can with any other object in PowerPoint.
USING PANTONE COLORS IN POWERPOINTMany artists and graphics designers use color specifications and tools developed by Pantone, Inc. when specifying colors for printed pieces. You may occasionally need to duplicate these colors in your PowerPoint presentations. Pantone has developed an inexpensive add-in for Microsoft Office (including PowerPoint) that enables you to choose these special Pantone colors as easily as you'd choose colors from PowerPoint's own color dialog boxes. There's a free 15-day trial available. Find more information about the Pantone OfficeColor Assistant at http://www.pantone.com/catalog/officecolor_ss.htm The download links on that page are broken, though, so if you decide you'd like to try the demo, visit http://www.pantone.com/contests/officecolor.asp Note that PowerPoint uses RGB colors only, while genuine Pantone colors use special printing inks. The colors supplied by the Pantone OfficeColor Assistant match as closely as possible, but may not be exact replicas due to differences in the reproduction method, your monitor, your printer settings, and other factors. This is simply a limitation of the medium, not a fault of the Pantone OfficeColor Assistant.
USE YOUR GRAPHICS AS A WATERMARKIf you really want to reinforce your brand or company identity with a presentation, you'll probably want to include your logo on every slide. It's simple enough to switch to View, Master, Slide Master and choose Insert, Picture, From File and select the graphic you want to insert. Since you're inserting it onto the Slide Master, it will appear on every slide in your presentation automatically. There's nothing at all wrong with that, but if you want to be a little more subtle about it, consider turning your graphic into a "watermark"--in effect, a shadowy reminder of its presence, rather than a hit-you-over-the-head, here-I-am shout. To create a watermark, select the picture once you've inserted it (on the Slide Master or on an individual slide). The Picture toolbar should appear automatically, but if not, choose View, Toolbars and put a checkmark next to Picture. Click the Image Control button on the Picture toolbar (it's the second one from the left). From the drop-down menu that appears, choose Watermark. Voila! Instant watermark graphic. If you don't like the effect that watermark gives you, experiment with the next four buttons to the right on the Picture toolbar. You can use them to increase and decrease the contrast and brightness of the picture until you get just the effect you want.
THE CASE OF THE MISSING TOOLBARIn our previous tip, we showed you how you can reset your toolbars back to right-out-of-the-box factory freshness. But what if you've closed a floating toolbar (by clicking the "X" in the upper-right corner)? Is it gone for good? Not a chance. To bring any missing toolbars back from the dead, right-click the menu bar or any existing toolbar. The resulting pop-up menu lists all the toolbars that are appropriate for the view you're in. Only those that are currently visible have a checkmark next to them. You can click to add (or remove) the checkmark and make them visible (or invisible).
TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR TEXT SHADOW COLORSPowerPoint handles text drop shadows differently than it handles shadows on other objects. When you format your text with shadows, PowerPoint applies the shadow according to this logic: If the slide background (or text box fill color, if any) isn't white and the text color isn't black, the text gets a black shadow. If the text color is black, the text gets a white shadow. Otherwise, the text gets a gray shadow. Pretty limiting, eh? If you'd like a little more variety in your PowerPoint life, skip PowerPoint's text shadowing and shadow your text with the Drawing toolbar's Shadow settings instead. You can choose any color you like for your text shadows AND control the depth and direction of the shadow as well. The only limitation is that your text box has to have a fill color of None for this to work. Otherwise, your shadow settings will be applied to the text box, not the text itself.
STUPID TOOLBAR TRICKS--PART 1 OF 2Here are a few neat little toolbar tricks that Mama never told you about: Double-click the blue title bar area of a floating toolbar to send it back to wherever it came from--that is, to wherever it was docked before you dragged it away to make it float. Look carefully at PowerPoint's pop-up menus, such as the Draw, AutoShapes, Fill, Line, and Text Color menus. Notice that these, and a few others--including some of the individual AutoShapes types and Drawing options that pop up from the main pop-up menu--have a thin blue or gray bar across the top of the pop-up menu. This indicates that it's a "tear-off" menu. When you see one of these bars, you can position your mouse pointer over it, at which point it will turn blue. You can then drag the pop-up menu into your working area, turning it into a floating toolbar that sticks around rather than disappearing after every use.
STUPID TOOLBAR TRICKS--PART 2 OF 2Like regular floating toolbars, the floating tear-off toolbars we mentioned in our previous tip can dock themselves when you double-click their title bar. But since they were never really docked before, they'll probably dock themselves just under PowerPoint's menu bar, pushing all your other toolbars down to make room. That isn't particularly useful, but you can always drag them to a new docking spot if you like. When you tear off one of these toolbars, it appears in two places--wherever you left it floating and wherever you found it in the first place. If you dismiss the floating version by clicking the "X" in the upper-right corner, the original is still in its default location. If you don't like PowerPoint's wide, one-row floating toolbars, hover your mouse pointer over the edge of any floating toolbar until you see a two-headed arrow cursor. Then, click and drag to make the toolbar square, tall, narrow, or any other shape that suits your fancy. PowerPoint rearranges the buttons on the toolbar to fit the new proportions.
SPEEDUP TIP FOR SLIDE SORTERWhen you're working in Slide Sorter view, it can take PowerPoint quite a while to draw all of the slide thumbnails, especially if the slides have a complex background or are heavily formatted. If you're just reordering the sequence of slides in your presentation, you may not need to see more than just the slide title to be able to tell which slide is which. PowerPoint will do this for you--if you ask it nicely. If you already have the Show Formatting button on your Slide Sorter toolbar, you're in luck. It looks like a pair of A's, one plain, one italic. If the Show Formatting button isn't there, you'll have to do a bit of customizing to put it there. Right-click any toolbar and choose Customize. Next, select the Commands tab and click Outlining in the Categories list. Locate Show Formatting in the Commands list (it's at the very bottom of the list) and drag it to the position where you want it to appear on the Slide Sorter toolbar. Click Close to dismiss the Customize dialog box. Now you can click Show Formatting to toggle Slide Sorter slide formatting on and off at will. Click. It's off, and PowerPoint shows you a simple black-and-white version of your slides with just the slide titles in a simple, easily readable default font. Click again, and you see your slides in all their fully formatted colorful glory.
SPEED UP YOUR WORK WITH MACROSHave you ever found yourself doing the same thing over and over again as you work with a presentation? For example, changing the fill or line color of a zillion objects because the boss decided that orange fills with green lines would be just the thing for the upcoming St. Patrick's day meeting? We can't help the boss's color sense, but we CAN show you a kinder, gentler way of making all those changes: Macros! Let's not even talk about what macros are and how they work--that can come later. Instead, we'll jump right in and create one you can use right away. Here's how: First, start a new presentation and draw some rectangles to work with. Give them any fill and line color you like. Now click one of your rectangles to select it. Next, choose Tools, Macro, Record New Macro. When the Record Macro dialog box appears, give the macro an easy-to-remember name--how about MakeEmUgly, considering what you're about to do to your pretty rectangles? Don't worry about the other settings in the dialog box. Just accept the defaults and click OK. A new little toolbar appears. It's too small to see the full name, so you'll have to trust us: It's the Macro Recorder toolbar, and it will record what you do in PowerPoint until you stop it. For now, just click its title bar and drag it out of your way. Change the fill and line color of the rectangle to whatever the boss wants. When you're done, click the square button on the Macro Recorder toolbar to stop recording. Next, you'll test your new macro. Select another rectangle, then choose Tools, Macro, Macros or press Alt-F8. You'll see your macro listed in the Macro dialog box. Either click to highlight it, then click Run, or just double-click its name to run it and watch while your rectangle is instantly "uglified." Stay tuned for more macro tips. Next, we'll show you how to make it even easier to run the macros you record.
SPEED KEYS FOR WORKING WITH PRESENTATIONSHere are a few more keyboard tricks for getting around in your presentation and getting out of the jams you sometimes get into when your fingers are moving faster than your mind: Esc allows you to "escape" out of most actions if you decide not to complete them, including menu choices and dialog boxes. And in case it's too late to use the Esc key... Ctrl-Z will undo an action once it's been completed. In fact, it will undo several actions, allowing you to try out, then back out of a complex series of operations, up to the maximum number of Undos. (To specify this number, choose Tools, Options and click the Edit tab. The Maximum Number Of Undos setting is at the bottom of this dialog box.) Ctrl-Y will redo an action that you've undone in case you change your mind about changing your mind. F6 switches from one pane to the next (for example, if you're working in the Outline pane, F6 moves you to the Slide pane, then to the Notes pane, then back to the Outline pane). Shift-F6 also switches panes but in reverse order. F6 rotates through the panes clockwise; Shift-F6 moves counterclockwise. Enjoy this information, good friends.
SPEED KEYS FOR POWERPOINT'S FILE DIALOG BOXYou may have seen them before, but you can never get enough of the good ol' shortcuts. Here are a few keyboard quickies that will make navigating the File dialog box even faster: Alt-1 (or click the Back button) to go back to the previous folder you viewed while in the File dialog box. Alt-2 (or click the Up One Level button) to open the folder one level up from the current folder. Alt-3 (or click Search The Web) to open the Web search page in your browser. Alt-4 (or click the Delete button or press Delete) to delete the currently selected file or folder. Alt-5 (or click the Create New Folder button) to create a new subfolder in the currently open folder. Alt-6 (or click the arrow next to the Views button) to switch between List, Details, Properties, and Preview views. Alt-7 (or click the Tools button) to choose options from the Tools menu. Note: Position your mouse cursor over each of the buttons on the toolbar and hold it still for a second or so. The ToolTip text that appears will indicate the name of the button and tell you what it does.
SEND YOUR PRESENTATIONS TO WORDIn response to an earlier tip about printing multiple slide "thumbnails" on a single page, a suggestion that PowerPoint's Send To Word feature might be worth investigating. And indeed it is, so investigate it we will. You can send the information in your PowerPoint presentations to Word in a variety of formats. PowerPoint even shows you what each choice will look like in Word. Open a presentation in PowerPoint and choose File, Send To, Microsoft Word. The Write-Up dialog box appears, and you'll see all the available choices there. The first two choices--Notes Next To Slides and Blank Lines Next To Slides--create a three-column table in Word. Each slide in your PowerPoint file becomes a row in the table; the first column contains the slide number, the second contains the slide itself, and the third contains your notes, text, or blank lines, depending on which Send To Word option you chose. Once your PowerPoint presentation has been sent to Word, you can select and reformat the Word table in any way you like. For example, you might want to delete the first column altogether, then change the row height to fit more slides on a page.
RUNNING MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF POWERPOINTIn general, it's not a good idea to have two versions of PowerPoint on a single computer. If you need both versions (for example, while you convert your old .ppt files to PowerPoint 2000), always install the older version first, then the newer one. We don't have enough space to cover all the ins and outs of the process. Luckily, Microsoft has a tech support article that discusses the best strategy to follow and the problems you might encounter with two versions of PowerPoint on the same computer. To get a copy of the article, send email to The subject of your email should read Q218861 Send the email and within a few minutes, Microsoft will email you back the article.
ROTATING CLIP ARTYou can rotate shapes and graphics that are drawn in PowerPoint but are unable to rotate clip art that is inserted via the Clip Gallery. Our suggestion may not work with all of PowerPoint's clip art, since some of it is bitmap rather than vector graphics, but here's a simple way to solve this problem: Once you've inserted the clip art, right-click the clip and choose Grouping, Ungroup from the context menu. You'll see a message box asking you to confirm that you really want to ungroup the picture. Click Yes. If the clip art is vector rather than bitmap graphics, PowerPoint will convert it to several different objects; they'll all be selected, so you'll see lots of sets of selection handles. Immediately right-click any of the new objects, choose Grouping from the context menu, then click Group to convert the objects into a single group. Since the objects that made up the clip art originally have been converted to PowerPoint drawing objects, you can now rotate them just as you can with other objects drawn in PowerPoint originally.
REPEATING AN ACTION WITH SPEED KEYSNeed to apply the same formatting to a whole bunch of different objects quickly? Try PowerPoint's Repeat keys--F4 or Ctrl-Y. For example, to apply the same fill color to several rectangles, select the first one, change its fill color, and then select each additional rectangle in turn and press F4 or Ctrl-Y. PowerPoint automatically applies whatever formatting you last selected to the currently selected object. In fact, you can apply the formatting to the first object, then hold Ctrl while you click each of the additional objects to select them all at once. Then, press F4 to apply the most recently selected formatting to all of the selected objects at once. Saving time is a good thing.
REFORMATTING HYPERLINK TEXT--PART 1 OF 2Whenever you select some text and turn it into a hyperlink, PowerPoint reformats it to suit its idea of what a "proper" hyperlink should look like. If your idea of an ideal hyperlink and PowerPoint's are at odds, here's what you can do to make sure that your ideas win: If you just want to change the color of the hyperlink text, choose Format, Slide Color Scheme and click the Custom tab. Double-click the color square labeled Accent And Hyperlink, then pick any color you like for the text. Click Apply to change just the hyperlink text in the current slide or Apply To All to change your whole presentation. (Note: This will apply the same new color to anything that's been assigned the Accent color as well, so use with caution.) Next time, we'll cover more in-depth hyperlink reformatting.
REFORMATTING HYPERLINK TEXT--PART 2 OF 2In our previous tip, we explained how you can change the color of hyperlink text with just a few simple clicks. Today we'll give you the goods on other reformatting tricks. If you want FULL control over what your hyperlink text looks like, here's the drill: Instead of using regular text, start by drawing a rectangle. While the rectangle is still selected, start typing. Any text you type will be neatly centered in the rectangle. Format the text to taste, then right-click the rectangle and choose Action Settings. In the Action Settings dialog box, click Hyperlink To and type in the URL to which you want to link. Click OK. Finally, right-click the rectangle again, but this time choose Format AutoShape. Set the rectangle's Fill and Outline colors to No Fill and No Line, respectively, then click OK. You now have an invisible, but clickable, rectangle that will take you to the URL you specified earlier--and neatly centered in it, text PowerPoint hasn't meddled with.
REARRANGE YOUR TOOLBARSYou say you don't like the way the toolbars are arranged in PowerPoint? Don't get mad--get even. It couldn't be easier to customize the toolbars to suit your particular needs and working style. We'll show you how. For starters, look closely at the left edge of each of the docked toolbars, where you'll see a vertical gray bar. Move the mouse pointer over it and the cursor turns into a four-headed arrow. When you see that cursor while your mouse is over a toolbar, it means that you can move the toolbar around. PowerPoint "previews" what the toolbar will do when you let go of the mouse button, so keep your mouse button held down until you get the effect you're after, then release it. You can dock toolbars at the top, left, right, or bottom of the screen, though toolbars that include drop-down list boxes--such as the Zoom percentage tool--don't work well when docked to the side of the screen. You can also drag toolbars completely away from the sides of the screen. When you do this, they're called "floating" toolbars, because they float above your slide or other PowerPoint view. Once you've "floated" a toolbar, move it by clicking and dragging the blue title bar area at the top of the toolbar.
REARRANGE YOUR BUTTONSPowerPoint's toolbar buttons make it easy to access commands with just a click of the mouse, but they can be a bit overpowering. So many toolbars, so many buttons--do you really NEED all of them? Most of us don't, but we can't completely dismiss any of the toolbars, because each of them seems to have one or two buttons that we use all the time. Wouldn't it be nice if we could move just the buttons we want onto the toolbar we want? Good news--we CAN. Hold down the Alt key while you click and drag a button from one toolbar to another. That's all there is to it. If you'd rather get rid of some buttons on a toolbar and leave the rest of them alone, hold down the Alt key while you drag a button off the toolbar and into an area where there aren't any toolbars, then release the mouse.
PASTE SPECIAL, LINKWhen you paste content into your presentations, you normally embed the entire file. For example, if you paste one chart from a 10-MB Excel workbook into your PowerPoint presentation, your presentation file will contain the entire workbook's data--and the PPT file will grow by 10 MB. That's a lot of overhead to carry for just a few charts. While you can also paste as a picture, as explained in a previous tip, that doesn't allow you to edit or update the information later. If you need to edit the information in the original program and have it update itself in PowerPoint automatically, consider "Paste Linking" it instead. Here's how you do a Paste Link: First, you must save the information to file in the source program--Excel, for example. Next, select the content you wish to paste link and copy it (choose Edit, Copy or press Ctrl-C). Switch to PowerPoint and choose Edit, Paste Special; select the Paste Link button; and click OK. PowerPoint inserts a link to your information into your presentation. A link is a tiny bit of data that tells PowerPoint, "You can find the source file here, and this is the portion of it to use here." Whenever you open your presentation, PowerPoint will ask if you want it to update the linked information. Click Yes to have PowerPoint verify that the information is up to date in your presentation and update it from the original file if necessary.
PASTE SPECIAL, AS PICTUREIn our last few tips, we've explained how you can paste content from other programs and keep it editable. Sometimes, though, that's the last thing you want. What if you need to preserve the appearance of charts, graphs, or tables but prevent others from editing the information? That's where Paste Special, As Picture comes in handy. Instead of doing a normal Paste, choose Edit, Paste Special, then choose one of the Picture options in the resulting dialog box. PowerPoint then pastes a picture of your content into your presentation, not the actual content itself. This usually results in far smaller PowerPoint files, so it's easier to send the files on disks or via email. And when you send the file to somebody else, you're not giving them your data, just a picture of it, so they can't edit it or use it in ways you don't approve of.
MOVIE CREDITS-STYLE TEXTIf you'd like to create a presentation that includes movie-style "crawling" credits text, here's how you go about it: First, type your text, all of it, in a single text block and format it to suit. Don't worry if the text runs off the bottom of the slide. As a matter of fact, it WILL run off the bottom if you have enough text to make a crawl effect that works well. Right-click the text and choose Custom Animation from the pop-up menu. In the Custom Animation dialog box, click the Effects tab. Put a checkmark next to the text object that represents your text box (it will show up as selected in the preview window when you do this). Choose Crawl, From Bottom as the Entry Animation effect. If you want the entire text box to go by at one time, choose Introduce Text: All At Once, and remove the checkmark next to Grouped By. Click Preview at any time to get an idea of how the effect will look on-screen during playback. Click OK once you have the effect you want. Finally, move the whole text block completely off the top of the slide. Now when you play your presentation, the text will crawl or scroll from the bottom of the screen and disappear off the top. If you'd prefer to have it disappear somewhere below the top, draw a rectangle that extends from the top of the slide down to where you want the text to disappear. Give the rectangle no outline and a fill that matches the background. Don your black cape and Darth Vader helmet, and let the show begin!
MOVE COMPLEX GRAPHICS FROM CORELDRAW TO POWERPOINTIn our previous tip, we mentioned that some graphics may not transfer reliably from CorelDRAW to PowerPoint when you export them as WMF or EMF. The same thing holds true for most other drawing programs that are capable of producing complex drawings. What to do then? Export a bitmap, that's what. Converting your complex graphic into a bitmap simplifies it tremendously, so PowerPoint won't have any problems dealing with it. Here's how to save the graphic as a bitmap from CorelDRAW. The procedure will be different in other drawing programs, but the general idea is the same. Select the portions of the drawing you want to move into PowerPoint (or select everything if you want to export the entire graphic). Choose File, Export. In the Export dialog box, pick a file type from the Save As Type drop-down list box. We recommend Portable Network Graphics (PNG) for the best quality, or JPG for the smallest files (though at some sacrifice in image quality). Enable the Selected Only option, give the file a name, and then click Export. In the Bitmap Export dialog box, choose an appropriate number of colors for the export. Choose 1 to 1 in the size area and leave the Width and Height settings alone. Under Resolution, select Identical Values, then set an appropriate resolution for the export. We recommend 75dpi for images that will be used in a screen show on an 800 x 600 display. Choose 150dpi (or pick Custom, then dial in 100-120dpi) for shows on a 1024 x 768 display. 150dpi should work well for most printouts. If you aren't sure how the image will be displayed or printed, 150dpi is a safe choice, though it will result in larger PPT files. If you need to make the background transparent later in PowerPoint, choose None under Anti-aliasing. Otherwise, experiment with Normal or Super-Sampling to see which gives you the best results. Finally, click OK to have Draw export your graphic as a bitmap, then switch to PowerPoint and choose Insert, Picture, From File to import the new bitmap into your presentation. We mentioned transparent backgrounds a few moments ago. What's up with that? Find out in our next tip.
MOVE BASIC GRAPHICS FROM CORELDRAW TO POWERPOINTCorelDRAW is a powerful and popular drawing program--one that many PowerPoint users consider an essential part of their software arsenal. It lets you create complex, sophisticated drawings that would be beyond the capabilities of PowerPoint's drawing tools and includes a huge selection of clip art you can use in your PowerPoint presentations. The only hitch is that a simple copy and paste from CorelDRAW to PowerPoint doesn't always work and can sometimes hang one or both programs when you try it. Instead of copy/pasting from Draw to PowerPoint, select the part of the drawing you want to move into PowerPoint; choose Draw's File, Export command; pick WMF or EMF as the export format; enable the Selected Only option; and perform the export. Once you've saved the CorelDRAW graphics to WMF or EMF, you can switch to PowerPoint; choose Insert, Picture, From File; pick the file you just exported; and get a trouble-free imported graphic. But--there's always a "but," it seems--sometimes WMF/EMFs don't work all that well. WMF and EMF are fairly simple-minded graphics formats, so some of Draw's fancy fills and other effects simply aren't supported. In our next tip, we'll show you what to do when your graphics are too smart for WMF/EMF.
MAKE MACROS RUN AUTOMATICALLYIf you want your VBA macros to load and run automatically when PowerPoint starts up, you need to create an add-in that includes an Auto_Open subroutine. This routine will run as soon as the add-in loads, which you can set to occur as PowerPoint loads. There's a detailed set of instructions for creating an add-in in the VBA section of the PowerPoint FAQ Site: http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq
MAKE IT SIMPLER TO FIND YOUR FILESIn previous tips, we've explained how you can turn off file previews to speed up your work in PowerPoint. Creating folders that contain no files, just subfolders where the files are stored, is one way of doing this, but what if you don't really WANT to keep all your files and the folders that contain them in a single folder like My Documents? To that, we have a simple answer: Think links. Windows lets you create special link files that are really just shortcuts to actual files and folders on any of your drives (or even on the Internet in some cases). These link files are tiny, since they contain only the location and name of the real file that they "point" to. But when you double-click or open a link, Windows and your programs treat it just as though it were the real file itself. You can even have links that point to folders rather than files. With a little thought, you can set things up so that your files are stored wherever it's most practical to keep them, but you can open them from wherever it's simplest. For example, we create presentations for many clients and have to keep track of a LOT of PowerPoint files. We keep them all on a network drive so that we can easily back up all our work. On the network drive, there's a \PPT folder for all our PowerPoint work, and in it there are folders for each year, \1998, \1999, \2000, and so on. All of the 1999 files for client XYZ are in \1999\XYZ. Each individual job is in its own folder under that, so the first job we did in 1999 would be in \1999\XYZ\XYZ001. That's all very nice and logical, but it means we have to spend a lot of time burrowing down through multiple levels of folders. So instead, when we need to work on a project, we create a link to its folder where we can get at it much more quickly. For example, let's say we need to add some slides to our XYZ001 project. First, we locate the XYZ001 folder in Windows Explorer, right-click it, and hold down the right mouse button while dragging it to our desktop. Then we release the mouse button and choose Create Shortcut(s) Here from the context menu. Windows creates a link, or shortcut, to our real file folder. Shortcut icons have a curved black arrow in the lower-left corner so you can tell them apart from icons that represent real files. To work with the real files in the real folder, all we have to do is open the shortcut on our desktop and double-click the file we want to open. When we're done with the project, we simply delete the shortcut from the desktop. Remember, the shortcut isn't the file itself. Remove the shortcut, and your files are unaffected.
MACROS THAT RUN AUTOMATICALLYTips reader GK wrote to say that he wanted to learn how to make his Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macros execute automatically when PowerPoint starts up. This is a very handy thing to know how to do if you've written several useful macros that you always want to have available. As GK learned, there's a complete set of instructions for this at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/ARTICLES/Q163/4/61.asp If the instructions in this article are a little beyond you, yet you still want to have your macros load automatically in PowerPoint, or you need to distribute your macros to other people, visit http://www.rdpslides.com/pptools/ and read the information about the user-customizable toolbar you'll find there.
MACROS IN TEMPLATESIn a previous tip, we mentioned that to use a macro, it has to be available in the current presentation or at least accessible to PowerPoint on your machine. But what if you have a few macros that your colleagues could use? Think templates. A macro stored in a template (.POT) file becomes part of any new presentation based on that template. Create your macro in a new presentation, format it, then choose File, Save As and select Design Template (*.POT) from the Save As Type drop-down box. Give the new template a name and save it. PowerPoint will put it in its \Templates folder by default--which is exactly what you want it to do. Now you can choose File, New and pick the template you just created. Your new presentation will automatically include any macros saved with the template when you created it. And you can hand this template out to others who might want to use your macros as well. The only hitch: NEW presentations based on this template will "inherit" any macros that are stored in the template. However, when you APPLY the template to an existing presentation, that won't happen. You can get around this, though. Create a new presentation (we'll call it NEW) based on your template that includes macros. Open another presentation (we'll call it OLD) that you'd like this new template applied to, macros and all. Put both presentations in Slide Sorter view, select all the slides in OLD, then choose Edit, Copy. Switch to NEW and choose Edit, Paste to add copies of all the slides in OLD to NEW. You now have a new presentation with all the contents of OLD, but also with all the macros from your template.
LINKING AND EMBEDDING--A QUICK SUMMARYThe past several tips have included a lot of information about the various ways of getting content from one application to another. Each method has advantages and disadvantages. Keeping them all sorted out can be tricky, so we'll conclude the series with a table that summarizes what's been covered. METHOD: Paste EMBEDS: Entire source document in PPT file FILE SIZE: Size of PPT file + source document EDITABLE: Yes METHOD: Paste Special/As Picture, Metafile, or Enhanced Metafile EMBEDS: A vector graphic, unless the source contained bitmap images FILE SIZE: Size of PPT file + size of metafile version of source content, usually small EDITABLE: Yes, if ungrouped in PowerPoint, but only as PowerPoint drawing objects METHOD: Paste Special/As Picture, Bitmap EMBEDS: A bitmap graphic FILE SIZE: Size of PPT file + size of bitmap version of source content, usually larger than metafile EDITABLE: No METHOD: Paste Special/Link EMBEDS: A pointer to the source data plus a metafile representation of it FILE SIZE: Size of PPT file + size of metafile version of source content EDITABLE: Yes if source file is available to PowerPoint. If source file isn't available, editable as drawing objects if ungrouped.
KEEP THE LINKS, BUT SHED THE WEIGHTSuppose you have a big, big Excel workbook that has some data you want to include in your PowerPoint presentation. You want to keep the data editable as Excel data, but you don't want to include the entire workbook in your PowerPoint file (because of the size or because you don't want other people to have access to all the data, just a portion of it). Here's a clever trick suggested by PowerPoint MVP Brian Reilly: Open your workbook in Excel, then create a new blank workbook also. Select and copy the data you want to use from the main workbook, then switch to the new workbook and choose Edit, Paste Special. Under Paste, click All so that Excel copies the data, formulas, and formatting. Click OK. Now copy and paste the information from the new workbook into PowerPoint, and you'll end up with JUST the data you want embedded in your PowerPoint presentation--easily editable, but it won't include the entire original workbook.
INSERTING SPECIAL CHARACTERS--PART 1 OF 4Your legal advisors just reviewed your presentation and they insist that you add a registered trademark symbol (a superscript TM) next to every instance of the company name in the presentation. AND they want you to put a copyright symbol (superscript C in a circle) next to every mention of the product. And the presentation's due in 15 minutes! First: Don't panic. This is going to be easy. Here's what you need to do to add the trademark symbols: Get a copy of the trademark symbol on the Clipboard. Click anywhere in a text block, then choose Insert, Symbol. Locate the TM symbol, click it, click Insert, and then click Close. PowerPoint has added a TM symbol at the insertion point in your text. Double-click the TM symbol to select it, then choose Edit, Copy (or press Ctrl-C). Now choose Edit, Replace (or press Ctrl-H). The Replace dialog box appears. Type your company name--exactly as it appears throughout your presentation--in the Replace What text box. Type it again in the Replace With text box, then without pressing any other keys, press Ctrl-V to insert a copy of the TM symbol. Click Replace All, and PowerPoint replaces every occurrence of your company name with your company name PLUS a TM symbol. Finally, do the same thing with your product name, only this time substitute a copyright symbol when you visit the Insert, Symbol dialog box.
INSERTING SPECIAL CHARACTERS--PART 2 OF 4In our previous tip, we showed you how to use PowerPoint's Replace feature to add trademark symbols to your company name and copyright symbols to your product name automatically, every time either name appears in your presentation. Now we'll show you how to add the same symbols in the first place to save this extra step in presentations you create. Wherever you'd like to add a copyright symbol, type (C) a letter "C" in parentheses. PowerPoint automatically converts this to a copyright symbol. To get a trademark symbol, type (TM) For a registered trademark symbol (an R in a circle), type (R) Note that you can type the letter or letters in either upper or lower case. PowerPoint converts either to the correct symbol for you. In our next tip, we'll show you how to create your own "shorthand" for other symbols you may want to include automatically in your presentations.
INSERTING SPECIAL CHARACTERS--PART 3 OF 4In our previous tip, we explained how you can use PowerPoint's built-in "shorthand" codes to insert copyright, trademark, and registration symbols into your presentations. But what if you need to use some other symbol on a regular basis? Well, the bad news is that PowerPoint only has shorthand for the three symbols we've already shown you how to insert. The GOOD news is that you can create your own shorthand for other symbols. Here's how: Suppose you need to insert the symbol for yen, or Japanese currency, frequently. To begin, choose Insert, Symbol. Locate the yen symbol in the Symbol dialog box, click it, click Insert, and then click Close. PowerPoint inserts a yen symbol into your presentation. Double-click the yen symbol you just inserted to select it, then choose Edit, Copy (or press Ctrl-C) to copy it to the Clipboard. Now choose Tools, AutoCorrect. Make sure the Replace Text As You Type option is selected. In the Replace text box, type the shorthand you'd like to use for the yen symbol. Avoid using real words here, since that might confuse PowerPoint (and you) if you later need to use the real word. Since yen is also an English word, use something else instead--xyen, for instance. PowerPoint has already filled in the With text box with whatever was on the Clipboard. The yen symbol is already there, so just click Add, then click OK. Now whenever you type xyen PowerPoint automatically converts it to a yen symbol. Neat, huh? PowerPoint lets you type either (c) or (C) to get a copyright symbol, but it's fussy about capitalization for shorthand symbols you enter yourself. If you set up an AutoCorrect shorthand entry that converts XYen to the yen symbol, you'll have to type it exactly that way for PowerPoint to recognize it. In other words, PowerPoint is case sensitive when it comes to shorthand symbols.
INSERTING SPECIAL CHARACTERS--PART 4 OF 4In this series, we've shown you some neat tricks for inserting special symbols into your PowerPoint presentations. Before we move on to other PowerPoint tips, there are a couple more bits of information you'll want to know about these symbol tricks. For starters, the same tip for creating "shorthand" codes for often-used symbols works identically (and equally well) in Excel and Word. In fact, all three programs share the same set of AutoCorrect shorthand codes. When you add AutoCorrect items to PowerPoint, they're automatically added to your AutoCorrect lists for Excel and Word. And AutoCorrect items added in either of those programs becomes part of your PowerPoint bag of shorthand tricks as well. PowerPoint can be fussy about capitalization for shorthand symbols you enter yourself. If you set up an AutoCorrect shorthand entry that converts "xYen" to the yen symbol, you'll have to type it exactly that way for PowerPoint to recognize it. "XYEN" and "xyen" won't do. If you put the original shorthand entry in parentheses when you create it, PowerPoint isn't so fussy about capitalization, but then you have to type the parentheses whenever you want to insert a symbol. You're not restricted to normal text when adding symbol shorthand to your AutoCorrect list. Choose the symbol from any font you like when you first insert it using the Insert, Symbol command, then select and copy it to the Clipboard from PowerPoint. When you choose Tools, AutoCorrect, you'll see another symbol in the With text box, but leave it as is. PowerPoint will insert the correct symbol from the required font when you use this AutoCorrect shorthand entry later.
INDENTS FOR UNBULLETED TEXT--PART 1 OF 2When you choose not to use bullets for the text in your bulleted text slides, PowerPoint will kick you in the shins. Well, okay, it won't really, but it WILL indent every line of text after the first one in each paragraph on your slide--and let's face it, that's ugly. Here's how you can kick it back (the indented text, not PowerPoint)! If you don't already have a slide that suffers from this problem, create one to work with. Make a new bulleted text slide, add some text to the bulleted text placeholder, and then select all the text. Next, choose Format, Bullets And Numbering. On the Bulleted tab, click None, then click OK. PowerPoint removes the bullets from your text. Now the first line of each paragraph starts where the bullet used to be, while each subsequent line starts where the text used to start. Here's how to fix it: On the ruler, drag the lower indent pointer for each text level to the left until it lines up with the upper indent pointer. That sets the indent for the second line of each paragraph equal to the indent for the first line. Problem solved! Well, not quite. Sometimes you want some of your text bulleted and some not. What then? Stay tuned... Next time we'll let that cat out of the bag.
INDENTS FOR UNBULLETED TEXT--PART 2 OF 2Last time we chit-chatted about bulleted text and the pesky indentations left behind when you "unbullet" bulleted text. What if you want some text bulleted and some left alone? Fret not. The answer is here. Suppose you have two paragraphs of text at the same indent level; the first needs a bullet, the second doesn't. This is easiest to do if you first enter, then format your text. Select the second paragraph and remove the bullet formatting. Once you do that, the text jumps to the left to line up with the left side of the bullet above. To line it up with the text above instead, click at the beginning of the second paragraph and press Tab. That moves the first line of text over to match up with the start of the line of text above. Neat, huh?
INDENT SETTINGS AND THE RULERHaving trouble getting the left edges of your text lined up the way you'd like on your bulleted text slides? You're not alone. PowerPoint gives you quite a bit of flexibility, but it's not immediately obvious how to access it. The text ruler is the key to getting your indents perfectly aligned to taste. If you don't see the ruler, choose View, Ruler. Now click on a block of bulleted text to see the ruler settings for that block. Notice that several little pointers (arrowhead-shaped gray buttons) appear when the text is selected. There will be one set of pointers for each outline (or indent level) in the text block. If you don't already have two or three levels, add them now. The pointers at the top of the ruler (and pointing downward) control where the left side of your bullets line up or, if you've formatted the text to No Bullet, where the left edge of the text itself appears. The pointers at the bottom of the ruler (and pointing upward) control the distance from the bullet to the beginning of the text. They also control how far the second line of text in each paragraph is indented. In addition, the bottom pointers have small square buttons beneath them. When you drag one of these buttons left or right, it moves both the upper and lower pointers together as a unit. Hold down the Ctrl key while you move the bullets if you don't want them to jump in fixed increments. Stay tuned--in upcoming tips, we'll show you how to use these pointers to align your text and bullets efficiently.
INCHES VS. CENTIMETERSIf PowerPoint is measuring your world in inches and you'd like it to think in metric, you have only to change your Windows settings to make all of your measurements neatly divisible by ten. Choose Start, Settings, Control Panel, then double-click the Regional Settings icon. In the Regional Settings dialog box, click the Number tab, then locate the Measurement System option and select your preference: U.S. or Metric. If you want centimeters, choose Metric. Finally, click Apply, then close Control Panel. When you restart PowerPoint, your ruler units will be in centimeters.
I KNOW I PUT THAT SLIDE SOMEWHERE--PART 1 OF 6The Sales Department wants another complicated organizational chart, and they want it NOW. Twelve divisions, four subdivisions each, this is going to take... hey, wait, didn't you just DO a chart like that for them two months ago? If you could just find the slide, it would save you hours of work. If... that's always the problem, isn't it? In the time it will take to dig through your files, paw through piles of printouts, and maybe even resort to opening old PowerPoint files at random out of sheer desperation, you could probably re-create the chart, right? Wrong! Not if you let PowerPoint do the dirty work for you. PowerPoint will search individual files, whole folders full of files, or even your entire hard drive to locate slides that contain the information for which you're looking. Its search capabilities are quite powerful, and you have a lot of options. In this series of tips, we'll delve into the world of PowerPoint's wonder. Stay tuned.
I KNOW I PUT THAT SLIDE SOMEWHERE--PART 2 OF 6Last time, we mentioned the might of PowerPoint's search features. Let's look at the simplest, most direct method first. Choose File, Open. In the Open dialog box, click Tools and choose Find from the drop-down menu. When the Find dialog box appears, select Contents from the Property drop-down list box, choose Includes Words from the Condition list box, and then, in the Value text box, type some text you know is on the slide you're looking for. In the Look In area, tell PowerPoint where to look for the slides and optionally choose Search Subfolders. The drop-down list box gives you some common locations from which to choose. Finally, click Find Now. PowerPoint searches every .ppt, .pps, .pot, and .html file in the folder and shows you only the files that contain the text for which you're searching. Now all you have to do is double-click to open any file to see if it's the right one. Tip: The more narrowly you can target the search, the fewer files PowerPoint will list. Choose search text that's likely to be in the file you're after but not many other files. And if you know roughly when the file was last modified, pick the appropriate option from the Last Modified drop-down list box to narrow (and speed up) the search even further.
I KNOW I PUT THAT SLIDE SOMEWHERE--PART 3 OF 6In a previous tip, we described how you can use PowerPoint's Find feature to locate presentations that contain specific text. If you've tried out that tip, you've seen that the Find dialog box has many more tricks up its sleeve than just searching for the text in your shows. Way more, in fact, than we can cover in a short tip, but we can at least give you some ideas for experimenting on your own. When you visit the Find dialog box, you'll see a box at the top that lists all of your search criteria. By default, it's simply all PowerPoint files, which is too broad a category to be very useful. To narrow your search, you'll need to add more criteria--search conditions--in the Define More Criteria area of the dialog box. There you'll choose the additional properties you want to search for (such as keywords, comments, and author) and pick the specific conditions the search must match (including words, words near other words, and so forth). Then, for the Value entry, fill in the specific text or numbers for which you want to search. Finally, click Add To List to put your newly defined condition on the list of conditions PowerPoint will use when you start the search.
I KNOW I PUT THAT SLIDE SOMEWHERE--PART 4 OF 6Last time, we mentioned PowerPoint's ability to perform modified searches based on search conditions. To open the Find dialog box, click File, Open. In the resulting Open dialog box, select Tools, Find. Note that for each search condition, you can specify And or Or (in the Define More Criteria section). For example, if you want to locate presentations about either elephants or zebras, you pick Or for both of these conditions when you set them up, and PowerPoint will find any presentations that have either term. If you want only presentations that deal with BOTH elephants and zebras, choose And so that PowerPoint finds only presentations that include both terms. Once you have the search conditions set up just the way you want them, click Find Now to set the search in motion. Or, if you think you might need to use the same set of conditions in the future, click Save Search first. As you'd expect, you can retrieve saved searches later when you want to use them again.
I KNOW I PUT THAT SLIDE SOMEWHERE--PART 5 OF 6In previous tips, we showed you how PowerPoint can quickly locate presentations based on content searches. If you want to use just a few slides from the presentations it finds for you this way, you still need to open them, then copy and paste slides into the presentation on which you're working. Or do you? Actually, you don't. If you know you need only a slide or two from another presentation, don't start the search by choosing File, Open. Instead, choose Insert, Slides From Files, Browse. You'll see the same Open dialog box you're used to, and you can use the same search options you've learned about from our previous tips. When you choose a file to open, PowerPoint returns you to the Slide Finder dialog box. Once there, click Display to see thumbnails of the slides in the presentation you picked. Click each of the slides you want to insert into your current presentation. As you click each slide, PowerPoint puts a blue rectangle around it to indicate that it's selected. To deselect a slide, simply click it again. When you've finished picking slides, click Insert. Poof! PowerPoint inserts each selected slide into your current presentation. Or, if you prefer, click Insert All to insert all the slides into your presentation at once.
I KNOW I PUT THAT SLIDE SOMEWHERE--PART 6 OF 6Here's one last addition to our series of tips about PowerPoint's Find features. We've explained how you can narrow (and speed up) your searches by looking for presentations with specific document properties like Author, Last Edit Date, and so forth. These properties are built into PowerPoint (and the rest of your Office documents), but there are literally dozens of other properties with which you can work. You can even create your own custom properties if the built-in ones provided don't quite meet your needs. To get an idea of what's available, choose File, Properties. On the Summary tab of the Properties dialog box, you can edit the Author, Company, Keywords, and several other useful properties. And on the Custom tab you can fill in values for many other properties (like Client, Checked By, Document Number, and so forth). You can even create your own custom properties, but unfortunately you can't search for these, nor can you search on all of the built-in properties. Best bet for efficient searches: Use the properties in the Summary tab in ways that make sense for the kind of searches YOU most often need to conduct. If you like, you can have PowerPoint prompt you for document information whenever you save a presentation. Choose Tools, Options, then click the Save tab and make sure the Prompt For File Properties option is selected.
HYPERLINKS ON EVERY PAGEWhen you're setting up hyperlink buttons for a presentation, you often need to put the same button on every page--for example, you might want a forward and back button to go to the next or previous slides. You can create the needed buttons on each page (tedious, very tedious). Or you can create one set of buttons, then select and copy them from page to page (not quite so tedious, but still boring). Or you can create your buttons once and have them appear on every slide in your presentation. Automatically. AND they'll appear on every new slide you add to the same presentation. How to work this miracle? It couldn't be easier! First, choose View, Master, Slide Master to get to the master slide. Create your buttons there and assign actions. Close the Master view or choose View, Slides. That's all there is to it. Since your buttons are on the slide master, they'll appear on every slide in the presentation automatically (except any slides that are based on the Title Master, but you can easily copy the same buttons to the Title Master to fix that little problem if it arises).
HYPERLINK BUTTONS BY THE DOZENSIn a previous tip, we explained how to create hyperlink text formatted to your specs rather than the way PowerPoint thinks they should look. The method we showed you works well, but considering the number of steps involved in creating just one hyperlink, you'd be in for some seriously mind-numbing tedium if you had many such links to create. Luckily, there's a simple way to create lots o' links in record time. First, create one rectangle-with-text hyperlink, as we explained in the previous tip. For each additional hyperlink you need, simply select the first one; choose Edit, Copy (or press Ctrl-C); and then go to the slide where you want to create another hyperlink. Choose Edit, Paste (or press Ctrl-V) to put a copy of the original hyperlink on the slide. At this point, all you need to do is edit the text and the URL of the newly created hyperlink. Edit the text as you would any other text in PowerPoint. To edit the URL, right-click the rectangle and choose Hyperlink, Edit Hyperlink.
GRADIENT ODDITIESIf you find yourself trying to change the color of a gradient-filled AutoShape using the Colors dialog box and it just doesn't seem to be working, here's what may have caused the problem in the first place. If you click the Fill Color arrow on the Drawing toolbar, then click More Fill Colors, Custom, and OK without changing anything, the color you end up with may not be what you expected. This appears to be corrected in the first Office 2000 service pack, but if you're still using the original release, don't use the Drawing toolbar to change the color of gradient-filled AutoShapes. Instead, double-click the AutoShape to bring up the Format AutoShape dialog box. There, click the Colors And Lines tab and use the Color options to set the color you want.
GIVING TABLE CELLS A PICTURE BACKGROUNDAdding picture backgrounds to table cells can give your PowerPoint tables an out-of-the-ordinary appearance that really livens them up. To apply a picture as a table cell background, use PowerPoint's Picture Fill feature. Select the cell to which you want to apply the picture background, then choose Format, Colors And Lines. On the Fill tab of the Format Table dialog box, click the Color drop-down list box in the Fill area and choose Fill Effects. Click the Picture tab in the Fill Effects dialog box, then click Select Picture and choose the picture you want to use for a fill. Click OK twice, and PowerPoint will fill the table cell background with the picture you chose. And this trick is by no means restricted to table cells. You can use picture fills on any of PowerPoint's AutoShapes, in MSGraph charts, and elsewhere.
FILE DIALOG BOX SHORTCUT KEYSHere are some timesaving shortcut keys you can use in PowerPoint's File (Open, Save, etc.) dialog boxes. Choose File, Open from the menu bar and try them out for yourself: Alt-1 takes you to the top-level folder of the drive on which Windows (and usually your other software) is installed. Alt-2 takes you up one folder level. Alt-3 starts your Web browser and lets you search the Web for information. Alt-4 deletes any selected file or files. Alt-5 creates a new folder. Alt-6 cycles among the various file views in the dialog box (List, Details, Properties, and Preview). Alt-7 opens the Tools pop-up menu. Use the arrow keys to highlight the option you want from it, then press Enter to choose it. How 'bout them apples?
ELIMINATE BACKGROUNDS IN BITMAP IMAGES--PART 1 OF 2In our previous tip, we explained how you can convert complex graphics in CorelDRAW and other drawing apps to bitmaps for use in PowerPoint and alluded to how you might need to eliminate the background after inserting the image into your PowerPoint presentation. Before we delve into that, here's a little... er... background on backgrounds in bitmap images. Bitmap images are always rectangular and consist of a series of rows of colored dots. If the image happens to be a rectangle to start with, then you shouldn't have any problems. There won't be any different-colored background with which to contend. But if the image is a circle, then the part of the rectangular image that the circle doesn't cover will be in some other color, and it will cover up whatever's beneath it on your PowerPoint slide. That's a problem. PowerPoint has a solution: When you select a picture, PowerPoint's Picture toolbar pops up. If not, choose View, Toolbars and select Picture. The next-to-last button on the right side of the Picture toolbar is the Set Transparent Color tool. You can use it to make any single color in a bitmap image transparent. Just click the tool, then click on any color in the image. The pixel you clicked and ALL other pixels in the image that are EXACTLY the same color disappear--you can see right through them to whatever's underneath the image on your slide. Notice the emphasis on ALL and EXACTLY? If your image has a white background and some white areas that are really part of the image, both become transparent. All PowerPoint knows is that both areas contained white pixels, so it makes them all transparent. Conversely, if your image is a scan of something on a white background, the background might not disappear completely when you use the Set Transparent Color tool, because it actually has white pixels, not-so-white pixels, nearly white pixels, and a gazillion other shades of sorta-white pixels. All PowerPoint can do is make any EXACTLY matching pixels transparent. In our next tip, we'll show you some tricks for dealing with these problems.
ELIMINATE BACKGROUNDS IN BITMAP IMAGES--PART 2 OF 2In our previous tip, we described a few of the problems you might run into with PowerPoint's Set Transparent Color tool. You can avoid most if not all of these problems by planning ahead while you're editing your original graphic before exporting it and bringing it into PowerPoint. To prevent the Set Transparent Color tool from making too much of your graphic transparent, you need to ensure that the background color is consistent and unique. That is, the entire background should be of the same color, and that color should be different--if only slightly--from any other colors used in the actual image you're working on. That way, when you select a color to make transparent, PowerPoint will make all of the background (and only the background) invisible. In a drawing program like CorelDRAW, simply draw a rectangle that covers the area of the drawing you plan to export, assign it the color you want to use for the image background, then send it to the back of the drawing so it's behind all of the other drawing objects. Include the background rectangle in your selection before you export the image to a bitmap. If you're working with your graphic in a paint program like Corel PhotoPaint, Adobe Photoshop, or JASC PaintShop Pro, you can usually use a flood fill tool to assign a unique color to the background. (Try adjusting the tolerance settings if the background isn't one pure color--for example, with scanned images.) If at all possible, make the background identical or very similar to the background color your PowerPoint slides use. This will eliminate, or at least minimize, any "fringing" around the image.
CREATING BUTTONS FOR YOUR MACROSIn our previous tip, we showed you how to record macros to automate your work in PowerPoint. But let's face it, unless your macro does something especially complex, it can be more work getting the macro to run than it is just to DO whatever the macro's supposed to do. But don't let that stop you. Instead, try this little trick for making your macros as easy to use as PowerPoint's own toolbar buttons. First, choose Tools, Customize, then click the Commands tab when the Customize dialog box appears. Scroll down the Categories list on the left of the Customize tab until you locate the item called Macros. Click to highlight it, and you'll see the macros in your currently open presentation appear in the Commands list on the right side of the dialog box. Click your macro and hold down the mouse button while you drag it to any of PowerPoint's toolbars (or use the options on the Toolbars tab of the Customize dialog box to create your own toolbar for your macros). A new button appears on the toolbar, labeled with the name of your macro. If you like, you can give it an icon instead. While it's still highlighted on the toolbar, click Modify Selection and choose Default Style from the pop-up menu. Click Modify Selection again, choose Change Icon, and pick any of the available icons for your macro. Close the Customize dialog box. Assuming you created the macro we suggested in the previous tip, you now have a toolbar button that will change the color of the currently selected object. So click to select a rectangle or other object (or several at once), click your new toolbar button, and voila! The colors change. Stick with us. We have plenty of little macro tricks up our sleeve.
COPYING, PASTING, LINKING--WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUTAnyone who's used Windows programs knows that it's easy to copy and paste text or graphics from one program to another. You simply select the content you want to transfer; choose Edit, Copy (or press Ctrl-C) to copy it; switch to the program where you want to use the content; and choose Edit, Paste (or press Ctrl-V). You may have noticed that there's also a Paste Special item on the Edit menu of many programs. But if you're like most people, you've never had reason to investigate since good old copy and paste gets the job done most of the time. In the next few tips, we'll look at what goes on behind the scenes when you copy and paste content, examine some of the options on the Paste Special menu, and show you why they might be a better choice in some circumstances. For example, have you ever noticed how large your PowerPoint files get when you copy and paste information into your presentations from a large Excel spreadsheet? That's because PowerPoint embeds THE ENTIRE SPREADSHEET in your file when you do an ordinary copy and paste from Excel. If you want smaller PowerPoint files and need to view and/or print, but not edit, the content from within PowerPoint, choose Paste Special and select Picture (Enhanced Metafile) or XXX Object (where XXX is the name of the program you copied the content from) instead of simply pasting. You'll learn why this is the case and how to use the various copy/paste options in our next few tips.
COPYING CONTENT--A QUICK LOOK UNDER THE HOODWhat happens when you copy and paste text, graphics, and other content between Windows programs? More than you might imagine, but not so much that it's complicated to understand. And having a good basic working understanding of it will help you use PowerPoint and your other programs much more efficiently. When you select and copy content from a Windows program, the program puts the content on the Windows Clipboard, a kind of temporary holding area for information in your computer's memory. While the standard Windows Clipboard can contain only one piece of content at a time, it can include several copies of the content in different formats. For example, information copied from Excel might land on the Clipboard as unformatted text (just the letters and numbers), formatted text (letters, numbers PLUS font, size, and other text formatting information), a Windows Metafile or Enhanced Metafile picture, a bitmap picture, or an Excel "OLE object" of some sort (depending on what content you copied in the first place). When you switch to PowerPoint and choose Edit, Paste, you let PowerPoint choose which of these Clipboard versions of the original content it wants to use. By default, it will pick the most complete information it can, usually the OLE object. This isn't a bad thing, really, since it preserves as much of the original information as possible and gives you the most flexibility in using and editing that information later. However, if you choose Paste Special instead, PowerPoint lets you choose from among the various versions of the copied content on the Clipboard. It might be that, for your needs, one of these is more appropriate than embedding the whole source document in your PowerPoint file.
CHANGE POWERPOINT'S UNITS OF MEASUREMENTIf you're of a scientific turn of mind--or you're just thinking Euro this week--you might like to have PowerPoint talk to you in metric rather than in inches. While you can't change this setting in PowerPoint itself, you can change it in Windows. Since PowerPoint picks up and uses your Windows settings for units of measurement, you need to change your Windows settings if you'd like to "go metric." Here's how: First, select Start, Settings, Control Panel. Double-click Regional Settings in Control Panel. Click the Number tab of the Regional Settings dialog box. Then, change the Measurement System option to Metric and click Apply. Finally, close Control Panel. The next time you start PowerPoint, it will be speaking centimeters.
AUTOSHAPES CHANGE SIZEWhen you open presentations created in earlier versions of PowerPoint--particularly PowerPoint 95 and previous versions--you may find that AutoShapes in the presentation change size. Similarly, AutoShapes may change size when saved from PowerPoint 2000 or 97 to PowerPoint 95 (and earlier formats) and viewed in the earlier version of PowerPoint. To see why this happens, draw a rectangle in PowerPoint 2000. Give it a dotted outline rather than the normal solid outline, and make the outline very thick. Next, zoom in on the rectangle. Notice that PowerPoint centers the outline thickness on the edge of the rectangle; half of the width of the outline is inside the rectangle, half of it is outside. PowerPoint 95 and earlier put the outline of an object entirely within the object itself, so outlined objects will be slightly smaller than in PowerPoint 2000. Or, when you open a PowerPoint 95 file in PowerPoint 2000, outlined objects will be slightly larger. You won't notice this problem when viewing PowerPoint 2000 files in PowerPoint 97 or PowerPoint 98 (Macintosh), but if you need to save files to PowerPoint 95, it would be a good idea to check them afterwards in PowerPoint 95. That way, you can make sure that this slight size discrepancy hasn't caused any problems.
ALIGNING BULLETS AND TEXTIn our previous tip, we gave you the rundown on what each of the gadgets on the text ruler does. Now we'll put that knowledge to work. It gives a nice, professional-looking "finish" to your text slides if you can get each indent level's bullets to line up with the start of the text at the next higher level. PowerPoint won't always do this for you automatically, but it takes only a moment to set it up for yourself. Click anywhere in the text box you want to work with, then hold down the Ctrl key while you drag the second upper indent pointer to the left so it lines up right over the first lower indent pointer. That will line up your second-level bullets with the left edge of your first-level text. Then do the same for each of the rest of the upper indent pointers; line each one up with the lower indent pointer for the previous-level text. HINT: You can do this for any text block in your presentation, but if you want to make the same adjustment to all of your bulleted text, it could be VERY tedious. Instead, choose View, Master, Slide Master and make your adjustments to the bulleted text placeholder on the Slide Master. Any changes you make there will affect all the bulleted text slides in your presentation UNLESS you format them individually. Formatting changes you make to individual slides override the formatting you do on the Slide Master.
ADJUSTING LINE SPACING--PART 1 OF 2When you have a lot of text slides in a presentation, it seems inevitable that some will have more text than will comfortably fit on a slide and some that leave a few lonely-looking lines at the top of the slide. You can always bump the text size up and down to fit the text to the slide, but it looks less than professional to have the text size jump up and down from slide to slide. Adjusting the spacing between lines of text often looks better. To adjust the line spacing for a whole block of text, click the text once to get an I-beam insertion cursor, then press the Esc key. This selects the entire text block. Next, choose Format, Line Spacing to open the Line Spacing dialog box. Here, you can make three different spacing adjustments: Line Spacing increases or decreases the amount of space between every line in the text block. Before Paragraph increases or decreases the amount of space between each bullet point and the PREVIOUS one. After Paragraph increases or decreases the amount of space between each bullet point and the FOLLOWING one. You can use the Up or Down arrow to make spacing adjustments or type the value you want directly in the text boxes in the Line Spacing dialog box. And you can make your adjustments in your choice of units, Lines or Points. Click Preview to see the effect of your changes. Tip in a tip: If you want your slides to look their best and be as legible as possible, avoid decreasing the line spacing too much--for example, don't set it to less than one line.
ADJUSTING LINE SPACING--PART 2 OF 2In our previous tip, we showed you how to adjust line spacing for an entire block of text. But sometimes you need to apply line spacing to some but not all of the lines in a text block. Suppose, for example, that you have first- and second-level bullet points and want the second-level bullets to sit closer to the first-level bullet they belong with and a little further away from the first-level bullet point that follows. It couldn't be simpler: For each first-level bullet point in the text you're working with, click the point to get an I-beam text cursor; choose Format, Line Spacing; and increase the Before Paragraph space setting to taste. Don't forget that you can use the Preview button to see the effect your changes will have when you click OK. By increasing the Before Paragraph setting for each first-level bullet point, you're putting a little more "air" between it and the previous text. So the previous second-level bullet points will appear to "belong to" the first-level bullet point above them and not sit too close to the first-level bullet point that follows.
ACCESSING YOUR MACRO BUTTONSIf you've been following our previous macro tips, you may have noticed something odd: You can record macros in any of your presentations, but when you close the presentation, the macro isn't available any longer, and you can't find it on the Tools, Macros menu either. That's another reason to create toolbar buttons for your macros. Unlike previous versions, PowerPoint 2000 seems to remember what presentation a macro is stored in when you create a toolbar button for it. When you click the toolbar button, PowerPoint 2000 opens the PPT file that contains the macro (behind the scenes--you don't actually see the file open). It runs the macro, then closes the PPT file. As you might imagine, this takes a little more time than running macros from an already-open presentation. If you'd rather not bother with creating toolbar buttons for each of your macros, or just want to speed up your macros, there's another approach. Create all of your macros in a single presentation and call it something like MyMacros.ppt. Then whenever you start PowerPoint (or at least whenever you want to run your macros), open MyMacros in addition to the file you're working on, and all of your recorded macros will be available for use, either from toolbar buttons you've created or from Tools, Macro, Macros.
YOU REALLY MUSTN'T WORK SO HARD!If you have a lot of text to enter in your PowerPoint presentation, take a tip from the pros. Don't keep adding new slides, then clicking first the Title and then the body text placeholder before typing your text. Sure, there's nothing really WRONG with doing it this way, but there's a much faster way: Use the outliner! Switch to the outline pane, located at the bottom left of PowerPoint, and type the title for your first slide. Press Enter, then press Tab to indent the next line under the title. PowerPoint automatically converts this new line into the first line of your slide's body text placeholder. Type the first line of the body text, then press Enter again to start a new line. If you want the new line to be indented, press Tab, or press Shift-Tab to "unindent" the text a level, just as you would if you were entering text on the slide itself. When you've finished entering the text for this slide, press Enter once more, then press Shift-Tab until you've "unindented" the new line as far as it will go. Notice that a slide icon now appears next to it. When you begin typing on this line, it will add a new slide to your presentation, and the text you type will become its title. You're on a roll now! Keep on typing until you've entered all the titles and bulleted text for your entire presentation. You'll notice that you never had to remove your fingers from the keyboard to mouse around on the screen. Don't worry if some of your slides aren't formatted quite correctly. It's much easier to fix the formatting in one pass through the presentation after you've entered all the text than it is to tweak the formatting on each slide as you enter it.
STILL WORKING TOO HARDIn our previous tip, we explained how you can save yourself a lot of time and trouble by going with the flow--letting PowerPoint's predesigned templates and Title/Slide Master features do most of your formatting work for you. Here's another trap we often see PowerPoint users fall into: They may start with a nice template as we've suggested, but when it comes time to add text to their slides, they'll add a new slide and choose either the Blank or Title Only Auto-Layouts, then add a text box manually or try to force the slide's Title placeholder into displaying bulleted text. Big mistake. But an easy one to fix. Trust us--we've done it ourselves! The Title placeholder is there for a reason, and one reason only: It wants to be a title, and any attempt to format it into something else will have you pulling your hair out sooner or later. If you need body text, bulleted or not, start by choosing one of the Auto-Layouts that includes a body text placeholder. If you do that, most of your formatting work is done for you before you start. All you usually need to do is start typing in your text, using Tab (or Shift-Tab) to indent (or remove the indent from) bullet points as desired.
SCALING TEXT BOXESWhen you resize a text box or an AutoShape that contains text in PowerPoint, the text itself doesn't change size--just the object that contains the text. Sometimes, that's exactly what you want to happen, but more likely it's not. Usually you want the shape and the text in it to scale up or down at the same time. And there's a little trick that will let you do just that. Select the object you want to scale, then choose Edit, Copy or press Ctrl-C. Choose Edit, Paste Special (sorry, there's no keyboard shortcut for this one) and choose Picture, then click OK. PowerPoint pastes in what looks for all the world like a duplicate of the shape you just copied, but it's not quite the same. Try resizing it by dragging one of its corner handles, and you'll see what we mean. Unlike the original shape, this one's text scales up and down as you change the size. Perfect. If you need to edit the text later, simply ungroup the object. Note that this trick works with tables and spreadsheet information pasted from other programs as well.
LINKS PRODUCE MACRO VIRUS WARNINGSWhen you add an action button to your presentation and link it to Other File, it may work perfectly on your own machine. But when you distribute the presentation to other people, they may get a message box like this when they click the link: Opening <The file's name appears here> Some files can contain viruses or otherwise be harmful to your computer. It is important to be certain that this file is from a trustworthy source. Would you like to open this file? After an introduction like THAT, how many people WOULD go ahead and open it? Not us. So we click Cancel, get an error message, and never see the great info in the file to which you hyperlinked. If you know the path to the file you want to link to and the path to the app that it will open in, you can create a Run Program link instead. For example, you might create a Run Program link to C:\Program Files\Office\EXCEL.EXE C:\My Documents\My Info.XLS When the user views your presentation and clicks that link, Excel will launch with your My Info worksheet loaded--so long as the user has Excel and a copy of My Info.XLS in the paths pointed to by your link. And there won't be any virus warning backchat from PowerPoint. Obviously, this trick is most useful for presentations you'll play back on your own computer, since you have control over the links and the paths of files to which they point. Sometimes you can't avoid using hyperlinks to Other File, though. In that case, your best bet is to supply a text file or other instructions along with your presentation so that users know what to expect when they click the links. That's often enough to allay their "startle factor" fears and convince them that it's OK to click OK.
LINKING TRICKSCreating links from one slide to another or even from one presentation to another is pretty straightforward in PowerPoint. Right-click the object you want to add a link to, choose Action Settings from the context menu, and pick the type of link you want to add in the Action Settings dialog box. But there's a lot more you can do with links if you're willing to do a little outside-the-box thinking and use links in ways even PowerPoint's designers may not have considered. We'd like to introduce you to Taj Simmons, a gentleman who's been thinking and linking outside the box for so long he may not remember where the box IS any longer. Pay him a visit at http://www.pptbackgrounds.fsnet.co.uk/ Click PowerPoint Tips, then click Tutorials. Two cover advanced PowerPoint linking, and as a bonus, one of the best explanations we've seen of how to properly size bitmap images for use in PowerPoint.
CHANGE POWERPOINT'S DEFAULT TAB SPACINGBy default, all text boxes in PowerPoint have tabs every inch. To see this illustrated, choose View, put a checkmark next to Ruler, and then click in any text box. You'll see little "nubbins" every inch along the ruler. These are PowerPoint's default tabs. They control tab spacing unless you explicitly add tabs yourself. If you want to change the spacing from the defaults, click and drag any of the "nubbins" to the right or left. The distance between the one you drag and the one to its immediate left determines the new default spacing for tabs. For example, if you drag one so that it's 1/2 inch rather than 1 inch from the one to its left, PowerPoint will fill the text ruler with tabs at 1/2-inch intervals.
WRAPPING TEXT AROUND GRAPHICSPowerPoint can't wrap text around graphics automatically the way some more sophisticated drawing and desktop publishing programs can, but don't let that stop you. With a little help from you, it can do a pretty good job of faking it. To wrap text around a graphic to the right of the text, click where you want the first line of the text to break and press Shift-Enter. Then, do the same for each of the subsequent lines of text, forcing a line break with Shift-Enter wherever necessary to keep the text from overlapping the graphic. To wrap text around a graphic to the left of the text, use Shift-Enter to force line breaks as needed, then enter spaces to force the following line of text to move to the right. Since both of these methods involve a fair amount of manual work, make sure that the graphic in question isn't likely to undergo any further editing changes that will affect its size and shape. THEN do the text wrapping.
USE NONSYMBOL FONTS FOR SYMBOLS OR BULLETSWhen you choose Insert, Symbol or use Format, Bullets to change the bullet character used for text, you can choose only fonts that Windows recognizes as Symbol fonts. Normally, you can't use symbols or bullets from fonts that aren't on the drop-down list, and the list includes only symbol-type fonts and the text's current font. However, if you want to use some other TrueType font, you can. Type its name in the Font or Bullets From box, then press Tab. The display of available characters below will update with the new font, and you can choose the character you want. This trick doesn't seem to work with Type 1 (aka PostScript) fonts.
SIMPLIFIED SLIDE NAVIGATIONSometimes you don't NEED lots of fancy links in a presentation. Sometimes all you want is a simple way to go forward and backward one slide at a time. If you'll be giving the show on your own computer or one you can temporarily control, it couldn't be simpler. Choose Tools, Options, then click the View tab of the Options dialog box. Deselect the option Popup Menu On Right Mouse Click, then click OK. Now when you view your presentation in screen show mode, you can left-click to the next slide or right-click to return to the previous slide. Unfortunately, this setting is stored in PowerPoint itself, not in your PPT file. If you send your presentation to somebody else, it won't work the same way unless the recipient happens to have PowerPoint set up identically. So here's what you do: Choose View, Master, Slide Master. Draw a rectangle that fills the left half of the slide completely. Right-click it, pick Action Settings from the context menu, then assign a mouse click action of Hyperlink To: Previous Slide. Click OK. Next, right-click the rectangle and drag it to the right side of the slide; when you release the mouse, choose Copy Here from the pop-up menu that appears. This creates a copy of the original rectangle. Now, assign the copy of the rectangle a Next Slide action setting, just as you assigned Previous Slide to the original rectangle as explained above. Give both rectangles NO fill and NO line so that they disappear. If there is a Title Master in your presentation, copy both rectangles to it as well. You now have two invisible rectangles that will be present on every slide in your presentation. Good luck!
TEXT IN AUTOSHAPESNeed a quick way of producing lots of shapes with text in them? PowerPoint makes it easy as pie, assuming you're drawing circles--or a piece of cake if you're making squares. First, draw your shape; then, while the shape is still selected, just start typing. PowerPoint automatically centers your text within any currently selected AutoShape as you type it. You can then format the text any way you like, either by selecting it with the I-beam cursor or by clicking the shape itself. Don't forget that our recent tip regarding Ctrl-L (to left-align text), Ctrl-R (to right-align text), and Ctrl-E (to center text) works with text in AutoShapes as well.
TEXT ALIGNMENT SHORTCUTSTo quickly change the alignment of text in a text box, text placeholder, or AutoShape, click anywhere in the text. When you see the I-beam text editing cursor: * Press Ctrl-L to left-align the text. * Press Ctrl-R to right-align the text. * Press Ctrl-E to center the text. When you use these shortcuts with text in the body text placeholder, they apply to: * The current bullet point (i.e., paragraph) the I-beam cursor is in if no text is selected. * All of the paragraphs containing selected text, if text is first selected. * All of the text in the placeholder if the placeholder itself is selected (i.e., you click anywhere in the text, then press Esc to select the placeholder, or click on the border of the placeholder rather than within its text). When you use the same shortcuts on a title placeholder or on text in an AutoShape, they apply to all of the text in the shape. It doesn't matter how much text is selected first.
A HANDY PRINTING MACRODid you ever wish you could set up a particular set of print options and then STORE them so you could apply the same options automatically to any of your PowerPoint presentations? Well, you can--with macros--and we're about to show you how. Start a new presentation, then choose Tools, Macro, Record New Macro. When the Record Macro dialog box appears, give the macro an easy-to-remember name; we'll call it PrintMYway for this example. Now choose File, Print and select appropriate print options in the Print dialog box. Click OK. Once PowerPoint finishes printing, stop the macro recorder. You now have a macro that will allow you to use PrintMYway any time you like. Save the presentation so you don't lose the new macro. Now you can use the tricks we showed you in our previous tips to assign this new macro to a button on one of your toolbars. That way, it's easily accessible at any time.
GET FINER CONTROL OVER TAB STOPSIf you do much work with custom tabs in PowerPoint, you've probably noticed that the tab stops move in fixed increments when you nudge them with your mouse. Generally, this isn't a big problem, but once in a while you need finer control over precise positioning. And you have it, if you want it! Simply hold down the Control key while you adjust your tab stops. This takes the tab stops "off the grid" and lets you put them wherever you like.
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