PowerPoint Blog
Labels: outline, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007, text, tutorials
I already covered this concept using PowerPoint 2003, and now will be exploring the relationship between text boxes and text placeholders in PowerPoint 2007. But maybe someone just said stop, and asked me these questions: Aren't text boxes and text placeholders the same? Are they really different? And why should I bother even if they are different?
All these are valid questions, and the answers to them form one of the most important foundations in learning to create more structured presentations.
Read more here...
Categories: outline, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007, text, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
As you work with SmartArt within PowerPoint, you'll find that you need to add some more components to your SmartArt graphics -- maybe there's a change required in an organization chart, or you need to add a new shape within your diagram to reflect some other change. Fortunately, SmartArt lets you maintain the changes happening in the world around with just a click or two! This is normally achieved by adding extra shapes to your existing SmartArt graphics.
Learn more here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
Although SmartArt contains text, it is not too easy to edit, add, or delete text contained within a shape inside a SmartArt graphic. Thankfully, the Text Pane available to edit text in a SmartArt graphic makes it a whole lot more intuitive! This page explores options for working with the Text Pane for SmartArt graphics in PowerPoint 2007.
Learn more here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
In a previous tutorial, I showed you how you can insert SmartArt in PowerPoint 2007. However that works only when you are creating a new slides. Many times you may alraedy have your slides that contain bulleted text. This tutorial shows how you can convert such bulleted text to a SmartArt graphic in a jiffy within PowerPoint 2007. Follow these steps to convert existing bulleted text on a slide to a SmartArt graphic in PowerPoint 2007.
Learn more here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
SmartArt is the name of the new diagram component within PowerPoint 2007. This tutorial shows you how you can insert SmartArt graphics within PowerPoint 2007. If you are new to this, do take a look at the What is SmartArt? and SmartArt Samples pages.
Learn here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
On this page you can see some samples of SmartArt created within PowerPoint 2007. Each sample has a caption that tells you the name of that particular SmartArt graphic variant.
Look here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
SmartArt is a new component within PowerPoint 2007, and replaces the diagram options in previous versions of PowerPoint. Other than that, SmartArt also allows you to replace boring bullet points with info-graphic content using text-within-shapes that's more logical to view and present.
Learn more here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
We already explored creating these three circles next to each other in PowerPoint 2003, and now we'll do the same thing in a much easier way in PowerPoint 2007: The first circle should be filled-in full (entirely), the second circle should be half full, and the third and last circle should have no fill (empty). The first and third circles are easy -- all you need to do is ensure that the first circle has both an outline and a solid fill, and that the third circle has only an outline with no fill. The second circle though is an easy challenge that I'll teach you in this one page tutorial using PowerPoint 2007.
Learn to create a half circle in PowerPoint 2007...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
PowerPoint 2007 makes it easier to draw a semi-circle than in previous versions, but it still isn't as intuitive. However, the steps in this tutorial will make it easy for you.
Learn here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, tables, tutorials
Tables can be animated within PowerPoint 2007 too -- but either the entire table can be animated -- or nothing! Yes, that's a case of extremes -- either you have it all or don't have it. To get over this problem, the workaround is to ungroup the table so that your table gets converted to a collection of shapes. And although this does not work as well as it does in PowerPoint 2003, you still can animate every individual shape as you want.
Learn how you can ungroup tables in PowerPoint 2007 here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, tables, tutorials
Labels: add-in, authorstream, interviews, powerpoint_2007, youtube
Umesh Sharma is the Product Head at authorSTREAM, an online slide sharing site integrated with social media. Based in Chandigarh, India -- Umesh's profiles includes developing product roadmaps and managing media interactions. In this conversation, Umesh discusses the new authorSTREAM Desktop product.
Geetesh: Tell us more about the new authorSTREAM Desktop product – what is it's raison d'ętre?
Umesh: To help create more compelling content with PowerPoint -- easily and fast. It so happens many times while creating a PowerPoint presentation that we need visual content like images and videos. You have the words but its really difficult to get graphics to convey the power of the message, or similarly, say you have seen a YouTube video added to your favorites that you thought you would use in some presentation some day. authorSTREAM Desktop does exactly that for you: it helps you search and insert content like images and YouTube videos without making you to leave PowerPoint. We will be adding more features in this direction in subsequent versions.
Ease of upload to authorSTREAM is another reason to use authorSTREAM Desktop. With authorSTREAM Desktop installed, you can upload large PowerPoint files along with all linked media files easily, which otherwise is not easily possible via a web upload. Under the hood, we are using an FTP upload, which is much faster than web (HTTP) uploads.
Geetesh: How does authorSTREAM Desktop handle the copyright issues involved in a product of its nature – do you warn users that some of the search results may not be usable? Tell us more.
Umesh: At the moment, we have an alert at the top search task-pane. In addition, clicking on the title of an image or video in search results will take you to it's source page, which in most cases should contain licensing details. Mostly, image copyrights don't really affect a user for 'fair use' - personal, non-profit or educational and amongst a small group of viewers. However, we do understand that showing users all that there is to the licensing of the image would be more usable. We have plans to include results, which carry these details (Creative Commons or any other) in the next versions of the software.
See Also: authorSTREAM Desktop: Search Bing, YouTube, and Upload to authorSTREAM
Categories: add-in, authorstream, interviews, powerpoint_2007, youtube
Labels: authorstream, powerpoint_2007, youtube
authorSTREAM has introduced the new authorSTREAM Desktop product that installs as an add-in to PowerPoint 2007 for Windows. The product is entirely free, and when successfully installed, it shows up as a new tab in the Ribbon of PowerPoint 2007 as shown in Figure 1, below.
Figure 1: The authorSTREAM tab in the PowerPoint 2007 Ribbon
Although there are several buttons on this tab, there are three tasks that this add-in lets you achieve:
The image and video searches open up as a separate task pane called Search and Insert, as shown in Figure 2, below:
Figure 2: authorSTREAM Desktop Image Search
Video searches work in the same way, as shown in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3: authorSTREAM Desktop Video Search
Inserting YouTube videos does not actually insert the video clip inside PowerPoint -- it places a reference to the clip on the YouTube site, and you need to be online to view the clip. YouTube video clips only show in slide show mode within PowerPoint -- in editing mode, as shown in Figure 3 above, they show up as a box placeholder.
You upload PowerPoint presentations to your authorSTREAM account using the prominent Upload PowerPoint button in the Ribbon tab (refer to Figure 1).
The whole experience of using this add-in is easy and intuitive. However, do remember that most images and videos on Bing and YouTube and copyright protected -- and you ought to use caution before inserting anything that you find while searching!
Harman Singh of authorSTREAM has put up this video walkthrough of authorSTREAM Desktop -- you'll find this embedded below:
Categories: authorstream, powerpoint_2007, youtube
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
In an earlier tutorial of this PowerPoint to PDF series, I have shown you how to use the Office 2007's Save as PDF option, which is an easy way to convert a PowerPoint presentation to a PDF. But this option does have some limitations -- primarily you can only save your slides as PDFs. You cannot save your handouts as PDFs, or print multiple slides on a single PDF page. For that, you'll need to use Adobe's PDF Print Driver.
Learn how to create PDFs now...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
This is the final part of the PowerPoint to Secure PDF series in which I show you how to do more than just create a secure PDF from your PowerPoint slides. You learned how you could create PDFs that played full screen and also had transitions! Now, it's time to make your PDF entirely secure with password access.
Follow these steps to get started...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, tutorials
PowerPoint 2007 offers two password choices. The first one is a Password to Open option that lets you type a password in the field, and the next time you or anybody else opens the file, PowerPoint will prompt to enter the password. The second is a Password to Modify option that lets you type a password in the field to make the presentation readable and visible, but not editable.
Learn more now...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
In the previous tutorial of this PowerPoint to Secure PDF series, I showed you how to set PDF to play in full screen mode. If your PDF is playing full screen, and you want it to look like a presentation, it's a great idea to add slide transitions so that it mimics a PowerPoint presentation.
Learn more now...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
SmartArt graphics are a new feature in PowerPoint 2007 (and Office 2007). Like charts, these are info-graphics but the similarities end there. Whereas charts are based on figures, the foundations of SmartArt graphics are based on logic, which helps convey relationships, hierarchies, and flows through a combination of simple shapes and text. Organization charts and cycle relationship drawings are all common examples of SmartArt graphics.
Learn more here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
If your PDF contains plenty of graphics, media, and animation, you might want it to open in full screen for visual impact, and to mimic a conventional PowerPoint slide show. If a PDF is set to play in full screen mode, it hides all menus, toolbars and other panels to make the page as large as possible on the screen or projected display. This tutorial is part of the PowerPoint to Secure PDF series.
Learn more now...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
This tutorial is part of the PowerPoint to Secure PDF series. In this tutorial I'll show you how to reorder slide pages in Adobe Acrobat Pro. Changing the order of pages in a PDF is very easy, using the drag-and-drop capability within Acrobat's Navigation tab.
Learn more now...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
This is part of the PowerPoint to Secure PDF series -- in the last tutorial in this series, I showed you how you can add new slide pages to existing PDFs in Adobe Acrobat Pro -- this page shows you how you can delete slide pages in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Follow these steps...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
In this PowerPoint to Secure PDF series, you first learned how you can export individual PowerPoint slides to PNGs -- thereafter you learned how you can create a PDF from exported PNGs, and also how you can quickly create a single PDF from multiple PNGs. Now, I'll show you how you can add more content to the PDFs you created.
Follow these steps...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
This tutorial is part of the PowerPoint to Secure PDF series -- in the previous tutorial, I showed how to create PDFs from a single exported PNGs. In this tutorial we'll explore options in Adobe Acrobat Pro to insert multiple PNG files.
Follow these steps...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Creating PDFs from exported PNGs forms the next sequence of the PowerPoint to Secure PDF tutorial series. Before you proceed, make sure that you have the slides exported as PNGs from within PowerPoint. You'll also need to have Adobe Acrobat Pro installed on your system -- this is a different animal than the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can download a trial version of Adobe Acrobat Pro from the Adobe site -- at the time of writing, version 9 of Adobe Acrobat Pro was current. If you have a different version of Adobe Acrobat Pro, the process will be still similar.
Read more now...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
PowerPoint allows you to save your slides to many graphic file formats, which can later be used in other applications as required. This series of tutorials shows you how to create a new secure PDF with slides exported from PowerPoint. Of course, you can create your PDFs straight from PowerPoint but that process allows you to copy text and graphics individually from within the PDF. Compared to that process, this tutorial uses flattened slides that don't have any selectable or editable text. Get started by exporting your slides as individual PNGs from within PowerPoint.
Learn more now...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: office_online, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
It's awesome that PowerPoint 2007's Help is integrated to Office Help online, and that new articles are added all the time by the PowerPoint Content Publishing Team. However, there are times when you want to share something in PowerPoint Help with a friend or colleague. Here's a quick tip to show you how you can do that.
Learn more here...
Categories: office_online, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
The Save to PDF option is not built within PowerPoint 2007, or the other programs in Office 2007 by default. However, you can easily download a small add-in that makes it possible to save PDFs from within PowerPoint 2007 by following the steps in the Getting Office 2007's Save as PDF Add-in tutorial. Once you have downloaded and installed the Save as PDF Add-in, follow these steps to use it in PowerPoint 2007.
Learn more here...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Although PowerPoint 2007 and other Microsoft Office 2007 applications do have the capability to save their outputs as PDF, this option is not built in within PowerPoint or the other programs by default. However, you can easily download a small add-in that makes it possible to save PDFs within PowerPoint 2007. PowerPoint itself helps you install the add-in for the first time you attempt to create a PDF, as I explain next.
Learn more here...
Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: positioning, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
You can ungroup a slide object only if they are grouped in the first place. Before starting this tutorial, make sure you have a group of slide objects. Thereafter, follow these steps to ungroup objects in PowerPoint 2007 or higher versions.
Learn more now...
Categories: positioning, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: powerpoint_2007, themes, tutorials
If you already installed Theme Builder and created a new theme by playing around, you might get disappointed to learn that PowerPoint complains about the theme files you created being corrupt.
Learn how to get over this problem...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, themes, tutorials
Labels: books, interviews, powerpoint_2007, programming
Vivek Thangaswamy is a Software Solution developer and technical author based Chennai, India. He specializes in Microsoft enterprise application architectures and server-based product integrations. Vivek is a Microsoft MVP and he completed his Bachelor of technology degree in Information Technology and is currently pursuing a MBA in Finance. In this conversation, Vivek discusses his newly released book: VSTO 3.0 for Office 2007 Programming.
Geetesh: Tell us more about your VSTO for Office 2007 book, and what is the profile of your typical reader?
Vivek: Although there are numerous web resources available for VSTO, there are very few books available on this suject. I find it is always nice to refer to a book as and when required. When choosing a book for a new technology, readers always look for one that teaches from the ground level. In my VSTO 3.0 for Office 2007 Programming book, I start from the basics and make readers competent enough to take control over the VSTO programming. This book addresses all segments of the audience including beginners, intermediate users, and VBA programmers -- it is also a good resource for VBA programmers who want to learn VSTO. I make them comfortable with C# programming in VSTO, which info is not available in any other resource that I am aware of. The entire book was written in a style that calls for short and crisp content to make learning easier and faster. Full examples are provided using the latest Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite, and the code snippets are done using C#.
You will learn about VSTO, how VSTO compares to VBA, and features and limitations of the current version of VSTO, including its architecture. Each individual Office application is handled precisely in separate chapters of the book, including InfoPath and Excel. The book covers new ground by exploring VSTO programming for PowerPoint, Visio and Project, again that's something I haven't found covered elsewhere. You learn new concepts like Ribbon programming, application level solutions, and document level solutions for Microsoft Office 2007. Object models for each Office application are covered.
As part of a team with Packt Publications, I aimed to create a quality book for budding developers.
Geetesh: Tell us about your experiences working with the object model in PowerPoint 2007, and controlling it with VSTO.
Vivek: Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the finest presentation tools available. However, I was not a frequent PowerPoint user -- so I brainstormed with some frequent PowerPoint users about the essential operations that all PowerPoint users perform frequently, and used those observations for programming examples using VSTO for PowerPoint in my book.
First I cover all the basic programmability of PowerPoint using VSTO, and than explain the object model for PowerPoint. There is a huge collection of objects available to be explored by the PowerPoint programmer. While I don't cover it all, I have worked with the basics in the book so that the budding programmer has a strong foundation to start with PowerPoint programming using VSTO. Currently I don’t see as many PowerPoint programmers in the community as for other Office applications. I hope that my book will raise the PowerPoint programming interest in the community.
Categories: books, interviews, powerpoint_2007, programming
Labels: positioning, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
This tutorial shows you how you can group slide objects in PowerPoint 2007 and higher with regular Ribbon tab controls, right-click options, and shortcut keys. When you have many (or more than one) slide objects on a slide that you want to manipulate in the same way, you might want to consider grouping them. Grouping can be helpful in many scenarios.
Learn more now...
Categories: positioning, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: movies, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
As far as possible, work with a presentation that has been saved at least once; then copy any movie/video file you want to insert to the same folder as the presentation. Thereafter, follow these steps to insert a movie clip in PowerPoint 2007.
Learn more here...
Categories: movies, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: books, microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
This exclusive book extract from VSTO 3.0 for Office 2007 Programming is presented here with permission from Packt Publishing.
The book, authored by Vivek Thangaswamy will help you get started with using VSTO in several Microsoft Office 2007 applications including InfoPath, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project, etc. The excerpt on this site looks at customizing the Ribbon interface in PowerPoint 2007.
Read the excerpts here...
Categories: books, microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
Labels: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
In this tutorial series, I showed you how you can play with all the effects available in PowerPoint 2007. This is the last tutorial in this series, and builds upon the previous tutorial that showed you how to apply 3D Rotation to a shape in PowerPoint 2007 (or higher version).
Learn more now...
Categories: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
We have already covered all effects available in PowerPoint 2007 in this tutorial series except the 3-D, and we remedy that now with this tutorial where I show you how you can add a 3-D Rotation effect to a selected shape in PowerPoint 2007 (or higher version).
Learn more now...
Categories: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
3-D Options seems like something that should work with the 3-D Rotation effect in PowerPoint 2007, yet it also works with other effects such as Bevel and Presets. In simple terms, 3-D Options let you format the bevel style of a shape with many more options that are available in the conventional Bevel gallery. You can customize options such as contour, contour color, depth, depth color, and materials. This detailed tutorial explains every option within the 3-D Options gamut.
Learn more here...
Categories: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
We have already covered most of the effects available in PowerPoint 2007 in this tutorial series -- and now I show you how you can add a Bevel effect to a selected shape in PowerPoint 2007 (or higher version).
Learn more here...
Categories: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
We have already explored a few of the effects that PowerPoint 2007 allows to be used on shapes -- and that's the reason they are called Shape Effects. Soft Edges are one of these effects, and we'll look at what you can do with soft edges, which adds an eaten-up, feathered edge to a selected shape. Soft edges work best with larger shapes, especially if you use some of the larger soft edge variations available. PowerPoint provides some ready-to-use soft edges, but there is no option to format soft edges beyond these readymade offerings. In this tutorial, I'll show you how to apply soft edge to a shape.
Learn more here...
Categories: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
In a previous tutorial, I showed you how you can apply a glow effect to a shape in PowerPoint 2007 (or higher version). In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can change the glow color.
Learn more here...
Categories: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
In previous tutorials, I have showed you how you can add preset, shadow, and reflection effects to shapes in PowerPoint 2007. Now I move on to the next effect: Glow. Glow adds a hazed color perimeter outside the shape area. PowerPoint provides several glow variations, and in this tutorial I'll show you how to apply glow effects to a shape.
Learn more here...
Categories: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
This tutorial is part of the effects series for PowerPoint 2007. I already showed you how you can apply a shadow effect, and tweak the shadow options. In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can quickly add a reflection to a shape.
Note: Although you can add both a shadow and reflection effect to any object in PowerPoint 2007 or higher versions, it's good to use just one of these two effects.
Learn more here...
Categories: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
In a previous tutorial I showed you how to apply the preset effects to shapes in PowerPoint 2007. In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can apply shadow effects to shapes in PowerPoint 2007.
Learn more here...
Categories: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
PowerPoint 2007 offers six effect types that you can apply to most slide objects including shapes. However there may be times when you don't want to go through the trouble of experimenting with these six effects to see if a particular shadow effect style works well with another bevel effect. If that sounds familiar, you will love the Presets option that combines effects that generally work well with each other.
Learn more about these Preset Effects...
Categories: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
PowerPoint 2007 shape effects can be applied to selected shapes on a slide. There are six shape effects available in PowerPoint 2007: shadow, reflection, glow, soft edges, bevel, and 3-D rotation. In addition you also have presets. I'll explain each of these effects options in individually detailed pages. In this tutorial, I'll explain basics of applying effects.
Learn more here...
Categories: effects, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: color, lines, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
I have already showed you the different outline attributes in PowerPoint 2007. In this tutorial, the outline options series will conclude with this article on gradient lines. Gradient lines are a new feature in PowerPoint 2007
Learn more here...
Categories: color, lines, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: color, lines, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
I have already explained the basics of outlines in PowerPoint 2007 and changing weight and dash types. In this tutorial we'll learn about adding arrowheads to lines. First things first: arrowheads can only be added to lines within open shapes. Shapes, such as rectangles, circles, etc. are closed shapes. Regular line Shapes, such as straight lines, curves, scribbles, etc. are open shapes.
Learn more here...
Categories: color, lines, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: color, lines, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Weight is the thickness attribute of the outline: you can change the weight all the way from a hairline thin line to a chunky thick line. Dash type is the variation between a line without dashes to ones with longer or smaller dashes, or even alternating small and long dashes.
Learn more here...
Categories: color, lines, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: color, lines, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
We have already covered fills in PowerPoint 2007 and later versions. In the next part of this series of tutorials, we are going to learn about the outlines in PowerPoint 2007. If you moved up to PowerPoint 2007 from an earlier version, you'll find it interesting to know that Microsoft decided to change some terms -- a line is now an outline, and an AutoShape is a shape. Having said that, many interface areas of PowerPoint 2007 still use the term "line" -- so we'll use both line and outline interchangeably.
Learn more here...
Categories: color, lines, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
Labels: color, fills, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
In previous tutorials, we have covered solid, picture, and gradient fills for shapes in PowerPoint 2007. In this tutorial, we finish this series by showing you how you can use texture fills.
We also cover in detail how you can use the extensive tiling options available in PowerPoint 2007.
Categories: color, fills, powerpoint, shapes, tutorials
Labels: color, fills, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
I already showed you how you can add or change solid color and picture fills for shapes in PowerPoint 2007. In the next part of this series, I show you all the stuff you can do with gradient fills in PowerPoint 2007. To keep things simple, you first learn how to add a gradient fill to a shape in PowerPoint 2007. Then unleash some more gradient power by using the More Gradients option. Finally, become a gradient guru by learning to edit and create your own gradients using the cool Gradient Stops feature.
Categories: color, fills, powerpoint, shapes, tutorials
Labels: color, fills, powerpoint_2007, shapes, tutorials
We start this series on fills for shapes in PowerPoint 2007 by showing you how you can add or edit solid and picture fills. Each tutorial has screen-shots and sample online presentations.
Categories: color, fills, powerpoint, shapes, tutorials
Labels: outline, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
The new interface in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 has changed quite a bit -- however the Slides/Outline pane looks and works in the same way as it did in the earlier versions -- at least on the surface. There are small changes though -- for starters, there is no equivalent of the Outlining toolbar in PowerPoint 2007 -- this means most of the outline tasks now have to be accessed through right-click options -- and I'll show you how you can do that.
Learn here now...
Categories: outline, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: office_online, powerpoint_2007, training
It's been close to two years since I encountered the Ribbon in Office 2007, and that's probably not counting the beta period. And there must be many of you who moved up to PowerPoint 2007 since then. Most of you love the Ribbon and the tabs -- and the Quick Access Toolbar -- but many of you still want to use menus -- so you might be using one of the free add-ins that bring back the menus as a new tab in the Ribbon! These include the RibbonCustomizer from Patrick Schmid -- and Classic Menu from Addintools.
If you are still struggling with the Ribbon, but don't want the menus back yet, Microsoft has created this cool interactive demo that lets you locate your favorite PowerPoint 2003 commands within the new PowerPoint 2007 interface (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 command reference guide
Now only if they could provide this as a download-able file -- that would be cool. Even more cool -- make this part of the PowerPoint help interface that can work offline as well. And I'm not complaining even if I may sound so! Kudos to the Office Online team for creating something so helpful -- there are similar interactive demos for other Office 2007 products including Word and Excel.
Categories: office_online, powerpoint_2007, training
Labels: powerpoint_2007, tutorials
All pictures are normally squares or rectangles -- but they don't really have to be that way if you use PowerPoint 2007. The new Picture Shapes option lets you change boring rectangles to almost any shape that's included in PowerPoint's Shape gallery -- this movie clip I created shows you the process, and all it takes is two clicks!
Categories: powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: interviews, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007 
Wendy Russell is the About.com Guide to Presentation Software -- in her role as a software consultant and teacher, Wendy gives frequent presentations, coaching and offering advice to students, educators and business clientele on how to make the most of presentation software. In this interview, Wendy discusses her role as a guide at About.com, talks about PowerPoint 2007, and shares some trivia.
Read the interview here...
Categories: interviews, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007
Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
This exclusive book extract from Advanced PowerPoint 2007 is presented here with permission from Pearson Education.
The book, authored by Wayne Kao and Jeff Huang will help an intermediate PowerPoint user improve their skills to an advanced level. The book goes into deep technical detail about the Office 2007 theme engine and how color schemes, effect schemes, and font schemes work; as well as the new PowerPoint XML file format, showing you how to edit PowerPoint files without using PowerPoint at all.
Read the excerpts here...
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007
Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
Ric Bretschneider's newest podcast is now live on the Presentationsroundtable site.
In this podcast, Ric interviews Echo Swinford and Geetesh Bajaj about their new book, Microsoft Office 2007 Complete Makeover Kit. The discussion is essentially an enthusiastic and candid conversation on the state of makeovers today -- and how this book evolved.
The authors also explain more about the content of the book, and how readers can benefit from the makeover samples.
Make sure you put up a comment on the podcast page!
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007
Tommy Powell (pictured to the left) is from Neuxpower, a software solutions company based in the UK. Neuxpower custom-build both stand-alone applications and add-ins that enhance existing software such as Microsoft Office. Their commercially-available PowerPoint optimizer, NXPowerLite , radically reduces the size of PowerPoint files.
Geetesh: Tell us what is new in version 3.5 of NXPowerLite.
Tommy: NXPowerLite 3.5 features three big changes. The most important change is that it is now compatible with files saved in Microsoft's new Office Open XML formats (such as DOCX, XLSX and PPTX).
NXPowerLite 3.5 is the only product on the market that can optimize Word, Excel and PowerPoint files created in any version of Office, from Office 97-2008 (of course, it also works with files created in other Office suites, such as OpenOffice, StarOffice and even Google Docs, as long as they are saved in a Microsoft Office format).
Secondly, we've improved the way that NXPowerLite integrates with Microsoft Outlook, making it even easier to optimize your email attachments.
The third change is that NXPowerLite is now available in Chinese, increasing the number of supported languages to six (with more languages to follow soon). NXPowerLite detects the language of your Windows installation and automatically displays in that language - so if you're using a Chinese version of Windows, you'll now see a Chinese version of NXPowerLite.
Geetesh: NXPowerLite has evolved from an optimization program for PowerPoint to an optimization program for Microsoft Office files – tell us a little more about this evolution.
Tommy: NXPowerLite was originally launched back in 2001 as a program to make PowerPoint files smaller. PowerPoint files could (and still can) get incredibly large, making them difficult to store and share. NXPowerLite solved this problem, but customers frequently told us that they also had file-size problems with Word and Excel. You'd be amazed at what some people try to do with large graphics in Excel! So last year we added support for Word and Excel files to NXPowerLite. But we haven't forgotten our core PowerPoint audience -- we've got some cool new features for PowerPoint users coming later this year!
NXPowerLite has evolved in other ways too, NXPowerLite 3.5 is also available as a Server Edition, enabling organizations to automatically optimize all the Office files on their servers, freeing up large amounts of existing server space and, in turn, contributing to a greener storage strategy.
Categories: add-in, interviews, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007
Labels: add-in, interviews, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007
Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
Here's a small excerpt from Tom Bunzel's review on PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit on InformIT:
There are, in my opinion, two different ways to get proficient in a computer, and more important, a professional discipline of some kind. One way is methodical, and the other way is to wing it.
I must confess that when I get a new program these days, I mainly try to intuit how it works and have little patience for methodical training.
But when I encounter methodical training, as I do in Echo Swinford and Geetesh Bajaj’s Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit, I am always reminded of how superior it is.
Particularly in a professional discipline like presentation coaching, consulting or authoring, and a program like the new PowerPoint 2007, taking a project oriented approach and then digging deep into the precise whys and wherefores helps to ground any end user thoroughly in techniques that are empowering and enduring.
Read more on InformIT...
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007
Labels: books, interviews, powerpoint_2007
Echo Swinford (pictured to the right) is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional). When she's not working on new media, she is answering almost all the questions on the PowerPoint newsgroup. Echo is also the co-author of Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit, published by Que. The other author of this book is the owner of this blog -- so I thought it will be fun for one author to interview the other!
Visit Echo's site Echo's Voice to find several PowerPoint usability tricks...
Geetesh: How much ground does this new book cover for the everyday PowerPoint user?Echo: Well, I think the PowerPoint 2007 Makeover kit actually covers most of the PowerPoint 2007 hills and valleys, at least enough to get you started walking through the woods!
Seriously, the book does cover almost all of the features in PowerPoint 2007, some to a greater extent than others. One of the goals was to teach users about PowerPoint 2007 while reviewing some basic best practices users can rely on to help make their presentations more polished. As a result, we talk a lot about leveraging themes and color schemes and slide layouts and the like to create consistency throughout a presentation. Because themes are new in PowerPoint 2007, and slide masters and layouts are not well understood (even though they do exist in previous versions of PowerPoint), even accomplished PowerPoint users should learn some helpful tricks.
I was really excited to do this book because I think it's important for people to see that even non-designers can make good-looking presentations.
Just because it's PowerPoint, it doesn't have to be ugly. There are a million design books out there, and there are a million PowerPoint books, but I don't think there's another "here's how to design in PowerPoint," with some practical things you can do to make your presentations look better.
Geetesh: What types of presentations do you cover, and why were these particular types of presentations chosen?
Echo: Well, we wanted to offer a good representation of the types of presentations we see every day, and of the types of presentations we're asked about frequently on the Microsoft PowerPoint newsgroup. So you'll see things like a couple of corporate presentations, a school report, a photo album with a background music track. This way, hopefully at least one makeover will be specifically relevant to most readers. Now, that doesn't mean the others won't be relevant -- they will be. For example, in the medical presentation makeover, we discuss using tabs instead of spacebar-spacebar-spacebar to align text on an agenda slide. But there are a gazillion other types of presentations that use agenda slides, and, for that matter, there are even more types of slides where you might use tabs to align the text. So the skills and best practices you learn about are transferable to any number of presentations.
Really, though, there seem to be some issues we just see repeatedly, no matter what type of presentation we're dealing with, and having a variety of presentation types allowed us to highlight those in different ways. To illustrate the point, I'll confess that I worry a little that readers will get sick of us harping on them to use the placeholders to ensure consistent text placement and formatting...but I'm telling you, that's one of the fundamental issues I see day in and day out as I clean up slides for various clients. If people only knew how to use the layouts and placeholders to their advantage, they'd save a ton of time -- and end up with better looking presentations to boot! I hope the book helps them realize that.
Categories: books, interviews, powerpoint_2007
Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
Get ready to add punch and pizzazz to your presentations and wow your audience using the latest PowerPoint techniques. This friendly book/CD-ROM combo covers all of the new features of Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, including interface changes, presentation themes, multimedia, the Slide Library, and more.
Read a free chapter here...
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007
Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
This book, authored by Geetesh Bajaj and Echo Swinford is not as much about reading as it is about seeing and doing! That’s why it's called a kit. Full-color pages show you exactly how your slides will look as you follow the makeover steps, and all presentations in various stages of the makeover are on the accompanying CD.
Read a free chapter here...
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007
Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
Can you create a PowerPoint presentation without using bullets? This chapter shows how adding visuals and using fewer words can spruce up your presentations. Read this excerpt from my new book PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit at InformIT.com...
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007
Labels: book_review, powerpoint_2007
Wendy Russell of About.com just posted a fabulous review for my Special Edition: Using Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 book that I co-authored with Patrice-Anne Rutledge and Tom Mucciolo.
Take a look here...
Categories: book_review, powerpoint_2007
Labels: microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
Microsoft has announced on Wednesday, a $60 web-based version of the company's Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 software that will be exclusively available to college students. Microsoft dubbed their latest promotion as the "The Ultimate Steal" and will run until April 30, 2008. The promotion already started in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and will be available to France, Italy, and Spain starting September 20, 2007.
More on the Associated Content site...
Categories: microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
Labels: office_mac, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007
Microsoft MacBU (Macintosh Business unit) announced a beta release of their Office Open XML Converter. With this update, Microsoft Office X and 2004 users can save to and open the new Office 2007 XML file formats including PowerPoint and Word files.
According to the site, "this version of the converter improves conversion of Word documents that contain XML content, inline graphics, hyperlinked graphics, WMF/EMF graphics, SmartArt graphics, tracked changes in the document header and footer, Unicode characters, and Japanese Rubi fields".
More on the Microsoft site...
Categories: office_mac, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007
Labels: powerpoint_2007, presentation_samples
Ted Thayer whips up cool PowerPoint presentations with amazing animations. He's 14 years old, but that did not stop him from taking part in iFilm's Best PowerPoint Moment contest and becoming one of the winners. Visit Ted's site here...
Geetesh: Tell us what got you started with creating such amazing PowerPoints at this age?
Ted: I started using PowerPoint when my friend showed me a short animation he had done in PowerPoint. It was very simple and had very few pictures and animations. After that he basically forgot about it. I however was really interested. First I made a few take offs on the original. Then when I understood the basic concept, I decided I had to get more. I convinced my parents to upgrade to version 2003. With this, I discovered more and more features. When I thought I knew them all, I came across PPTHeaven. By looking at those PowerPoints, I realized there was so much more I could discover with PowerPoint. That was a couple of months ago.
Geetesh: Tell us more about your entry in the iFilm PowerPoint contest.
Ted: The biking presentation was one of three presentations I made to be submitted. It was also the only one that made it to the finals. This was kind of a spur the moment presentation. I sat down one day, thought of an etremely original topic, and created from there. As I look back I can see things that I could have developed more or cut out but overall im proud of what I did.
Categories: powerpoint_2007, presentation_samples
Labels: add-in, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007
We have reviewed PowerShrink in the past -- so in this review, we will look at the new features that PowerShrink 2007 (aka PowerShrink 3) offers along with a brief walkthrough.
PowerShrink 2007 is a PowerPoint, Word, and Excel compression product from TopByteLabs Computing, a software company based in Germany.
Read the review here...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007
Labels: powerpoint_2007, presentation_samples
There's so much you can do with PowerPoint these days -- and showcasing your best PowerPoint moment is the concept behind a new contest at iFilm.com. Microsoft is sponsoring prizes worth $10,000 for the contest -- and results are less than a day away!
There are some amazing entries -- I'm surprised that there is so much of a difference in both the quality and concept of the entries. Of all the entries, some of them do juggle the balance between concept and quality so well -- and showcase the capabilities of the new PowerPoint 2007. Check them for yourself and vote!
Categories: powerpoint_2007, presentation_samples
Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
This exclusive book extract from How To Do Everything with PowerPoint 2007 is presented here with permission from McGraw-Hill/Osborne.
The book, authored by Ellen Finkelstein is the ideal resource for anyone who wants to create rich presentations with PowerPoint. You'll find out how to use all the features of the software and get coverage of key topics, such as creating a well-written outline, the fine points of graphic design, and tips for delivering the presentation in front of an audience.
Read the excerpts here...
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007
Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
This exclusive book extract from Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 on Demand is presented here with permission from Pearson Education.
The book, authored by Steve Johnson is in full color, and explains common PowerPoint procedures using a series of numbered steps with tons of screenshots that are captioned.
Read the excerpts here...
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007
Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
This book extract from Special Edition: Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 is a full chapter on Working with SmartArt that I authored -- it has been put up on Indezine.com with permission from Pearson Education.
The book, which I co-authored with Patrice-Anne Rutledge and Tom Mucciolo is probably the most detailed volume on PowerPoint you'll find anywhere -- in addition it also looks beyond PowerPoint to design sense, presentation and speaking skills. The book has been completely updated for PowerPoint 2007 and includes a free CD that contains software that you can use.
Read the free chapter here...
Categories: books, powerpoint_2007
Labels: add-in, microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
RibbonCustomizer, the add-in product for Microsoft Office 2007 that allows you to customize the tabs within the Ribbon has now been updated to version 1.1 -- the new update is free for all users. See screenshots later on this page.
New features include:
More info on the RibbonCustomizer site...
Categories: add-in, microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
Labels: add-in, microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
The biggest feature in Microsoft's new Office 2007 suite is most certainly the interface. Gone are the menus and the toolbars -- now all the commands are available in the various tabs of the Ribbon. The Ribbon is much more intuitive -- but for seasoned users who have been working with Microsoft Office applications for more than a decade, it does involve a serious amount of unlearning.
An interesting add-in for Office applications like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel now brings back the menus and toolbars -- all inside a new Ribbon tab called "Menus"! The add-in is called Classic Menu Manager.
Read on to learn more...
Categories: add-in, powerpoint_2007, microsoft_office
Labels: powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Here's a quick walkthrough of the PowerPoint 2007 interface.
Explore here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, tutorials
Labels: microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
Microsoft Corp. last week released the final part of a free tool kit designed to help corporate users convert their existing Office files to Office 2007's new Open XML file format. The new technology, called the Office Migration Planning Manager, combs through networked PCs to discover and report back on how many and what kind of Office files exist on the systems. The OMPM's availability was quietly announced Friday on the blog of Brian Jones, an Office program manager at Microsoft.
More on the PC World site...
Categories: microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
Labels: books, powerpoint_2007
An excerpt rom my new book on PowerPoint -- Special Edition: Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 207 is now available on the InformIT site.
Check it out here...
Categories: powerpoint_2007, books
Labels: add-in, microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007
If you use MathType with Word or PowerPoint, and then upgrade to Office 2007, you will find that you no longer have the icons or buttons to insert a MathType equation in Word 2007 or PowerPoint 2007.
You'll find instructions on bringing them back in Word 2007 on this link -- it works the same way for Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007.
Categories: microsoft_office, powerpoint_2007, add-in
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