Look at a tool like Camtasia or HyperCam to record your presentation to a movie - thereafter create a VCD/DVD from that movie.

These links might help:

Camtasia Studio and PowerPoint

Camtasia Studio and PowerPoint - Another Tutorial

HyperCam and PowerPoint

If you have access to PowerPoint on the Mac, you can output your entire presentation to a QuickTime movie:

Slide Show to Go

Related Links:

How do I convert my PowerPoint presentations to VHS?

PowerPoint to DVD

PowerPoint to Video

Monday, July 26, 2004

If you don't want the navigation buttons such as the arrow (for before and next slides), pen and menu to be visible when you play your PowerPoint presentation, you can choose from three options.



1. Choose Slide Show | Set Up Show and select Kiosk mode. Do remember that you'll need to create your own navigation buttons to move around the presentation if you select the Kiosk mode option.

2. Choose Tools | Options and select the View tab. In the Slide Show area, remove the checkmark next to "Show popup toolbar". Click OK.

3. After you start the show, press Ctrl + H. This will hide the mouse cursor and the navigation buttons (not in Kiosk mode) on the bottom left of the slide show window.

Sunday, July 25, 2004

You might want to explore products like Photo Album, Image Importer Wizard,
etc to make it easy for you to import pictures:

You have several options:

Photo Album for PowerPoint 2000
http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/album.aspx
http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/ppphotoalbum.html

Photo Album for PowerPoint 2002/03 is built-in within PowerPoint 2002/03

Image Importer Wizard
http://www.mvps.org/skp/iiw.htm
http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/addin/iiw.html

PowerTools Import Export
http://www.corpimaging.com/PowerTools/Index.htm
http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/addin/powertools.html

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Why is it that I can only see just a part (the right side) of all bullets in my presentation?

1. Display your rulers if they are not already visible (View | Ruler).

2. On the ruler above the slide, you'll find some tabs - try selecting your bulleted content and drag one of the tabs a little towards the right.

When I link back to a slide and click the link, the slide shows itself in 'finished' mode with all animations, events and transitions done. How can I prevent this?

That's something that can be termed as 'feature-by-design'. Here's a workaround:

1. In your presentation, insert blank slides between all slides.

2. Give these blank slides a slide transition that automatically advances in 00:00 seconds.

3. Place all hyperlinks to the blank slide before the slide you actually want to hyperlink.

Now when you view the slide show, all animations for a particular slide will show.

Try these steps:

1. Create your WordArt as required.



2. Then right-click the WordArt object and choose Format WordArt.

3. In the Colors & Lines tab, click the downward pointing arrow next to the Color fill option and choose Fill Effects from the resultant menu.

4. Select the Picture tab in the resultant Fill Effects dialog box and navigate to where you have stored the animated GIF you want to use as a fill.

The animated GIF will be active (animated) while in slide show mode within your WordArt object.

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

On the Palm, Dataviz's Documents To Go program includes the Slideshow To Go component that allows you to synchronize, edit and rehearse your PowerPoint files and make last minute changes to your presentation.

If you have an older handheld that runs Windows CE, you'll be thankful to find a copy of Pocket PowerPoint included with the product. For some reason, Microsoft seems to have abandoned the development of Pocket PowerPoint for the PocketPC platform.

On the new PocketPC platform, you'll have look at third-party software solutions like Pocket Slideshow, Pocket Slides and iPresentation Suite.

Finally, you'll find hardware solutions like Margi's Presenter-To-Go for both Palm and PocketPC handhelds.

You'll need to convert your presentation to VHS using a slide converter or similar device. Look here for more info:

Creating Your Visuals: Converting PowerPoint to Video
- by Jim Endicott

Recording your PowerPoint presentation to VHS
- by Austin Myers

How to Videotape a PowerPoint Presentation
- Microsoft Knowledge Base Article

Monday, July 12, 2004

When I click the text placeholder, all my white text gets highlighted in white and I cannot see anything! What can I do?

In PowerPoint 97/2000: Go to Format | Slide Color Scheme. You'll find your background color set to white. Change it to something darker (or a non-white color).

In PowerPoint 2002/2003: Go to Format | Slide Design. In the activated Slide Design task pane, click Color Schemes. Then click Edit Color Schemes... and change your background color from white to something darker (or a non-white color).

Related Links:

Echo Swinford has a nice Color Schemes tutorial on her site.

Steve Rindsberg's PowerPoint FAQ has more info - see Text disappears when I edit it

Shyam Pillai's free Color Schemes Manager allows you to manage and share your PowerPoint color schemes.

Windows XP is the operating system - you need to buy PowerPoint or Office (comprising PowerPoint) separately. Look here:

What's in the Office 2003 Editions?

You can also order a 30 day trial of Office at: Microsoft Office System Trial

If you only need to view PowerPoint presentations, look here: PowerPoint Viewer 2003

In PowerPoint:

1. Select your image, shape or any other element.

2. In the Draw toolbar, choose Draw | Align or Distribute | Relative to Slide

3. Then choose Draw | Align or Distribute | Distribute Horizontally

4. Finally, choose Draw | Align or Distribute | Distribute Vertically.

You might want to drag the Align controls off the Draw menu to make it a floating toolbar.

To make it easier, you might want to get a copy of Steve Rindsberg's free PPTools Starter Set, which includes a button to pick up the size/position of any shape OR if nothing's selected, the slide itself. And another button to "hammer" a selected shape to the memorized size/position.Pick up the slide's size/shape, bring in your image, click the hammer button, you're done.

Sunday, July 11, 2004