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The PowerPoint Ezine - 33
by Geetesh Bajaj December 1st,
2003
Contents
Online Rich Media & PowerPoint
Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint
Quick News
File Formats for PowerPoint
From Word to PowerPoint
Events & Seminars
Online Rich Media & PowerPoint
Online Rich Media - nowadays, you probably are hearing this term
more frequently than ever before. Let's call it ORM so that
the alphabet 'O' can denote both on-demand and online.
ORM is any media that is transmitted online through streaming,
broadcast or otherwise that has the ability to reach a large audience.
More often that not, ORM nowadays constitutes presentations that
are converted or repurposed to fit into that very definition. Not
surprisingly, ORM is distributed often via the Internet or intranet.
PowerPoint is more than a presentation tool - it is also the presentation
archive standard. Any ORM tool these days has to have the ability
to input PowerPoint content that can be repurposed to ORM distribution
formats that include Flash, WindowsMedia and even Java.
In coming ezine issues, we'll focus on an ORM solution each time
and possibly link it to a full review onsite. Some ORM solutions
that work with PowerPoint include Producer, Breeze, Impatica, iCreate,
Articulate, Avitage, RoboPresenter, PowerCONVERTER and Apreso.
Microsoft Producer for PowerPoint
On-demand, rich-media presentations are more popular than ever
in today's business climate. Not only are these presentations visually
compelling, they also help companies reduce extensive travel and
training expenses. For a fraction of the cost of traditional meetings,
you can deliver training and company presentations online and on
demand, viewable by a browser from anywhere in the world.
If you're an Office user familiar with PowerPoint, you can easily
be on your way to creating exciting, media-rich presentastions
that incorporate video and audio through the Microsoft Producer
for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 add-in. Best of all, Producer
is available as a free download for all licensed PowerPoint 2002
and 2003 users.
Read this article by Patrice-Anne
Rutledge...
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Quick News
rObjects has released rChart 1.5, a new version
of the Flash-based charting product that's available free for all
registered users. This update provides a secondary license and
further integration with Microsoft Office applicataions. More
info...
Take-off Datapoint, a tool to integrate database content
within PowerPoint slides is now compatible with PowerPoint 2003.
Read a full review here...
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File Formats for PowerPoint
Jennifer Rotondo, PowerPoint author, expert and designer
discusses her favorite graphic file formats for PowerPoint in this
essay. When you are creating custom presentations, keeping the
file size small becomes a real challenge. Your presentation can
become inflated in size if you don't use the proper type of pictures.
PowerPoint allows you to use over 17 different file formats. You
can import either pictures or illustrations. Some of these file
formats are too large in file size and other just don't have as
good of quality. All of these choices may leave you a little confused.
Read more...
From Word To PowerPoint
Microsoft Word often acts as a storyboard in the foundation
stage of a concept. It is quite normal to find people creating
plans and jotting inspirations in Word to form outlines which can
be refined and fine-tuned to be used later as content for brochures,
press releases and presentations. Now we'll discuss ideas that
help create complete presentations within PowerPoint from
suitable Word content.
Microsoft provides an easy way to create PowerPoint presentations
from Word documents as long as you have both programs installed
on the same machine. Within Word's File menu, you'll find an option
called Send To | Microsoft PowerPoint. This opens up PowerPoint
with a basic presentation that contains text elements contained
within the Word document. If you just tried this procedure using
a Word document you already have, you might be quite unhappy with
the results. That's because PowerPoint understands only a distinct
style of formatting within a Word document - such formatting is
automatically converted to PowerPoint titles, text and bulleted
items.
Let's create a sample Word outline to illustrate the point.
Open Word and type as under:
Slide 1
Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
Save the document and choose File | Send To | Microsoft PowerPoint.
PowerPoint will launch in the background and present you with at
least 4 slides with titles that match our 4 lines - that's not
what we required!
Close PowerPoint and get back to the Word document - select the
first line which contains the words 'Slide 1' without the inverted
commas. Choose the 'Heading 1' option from the Styles drop down
menu in Word's Formatting toolbar. Similarly, select the remaining
three lines and choose the 'Heading 2' style from the Styles drop
down menu. Save your Word document and choose File | Send To |
Microsoft PowerPoint. If you followed all the steps perfectly,
you'll find that PowerPoint has created a single slide presentation
with one title and three bullets in the text area - exactly like
a conventional presentation!
You can create multiple titles and bullets in Word using the Heading
1 and Heading 2 styles alternatively for all your content. This
in turn will translate into multiple slides within a PowerPoint
presentation.
We just learnt that the Word to PowerPoint conversion converts
Word styles into PowerPoint elements. The Heading 1 style translates
into the Title Text designation in PowerPoint. Similarly, the Heading
2 style changes into Bullet 1. Similarly:
Heading 3 becomes Bullet 2 (a sub-bullet)
Heading 4 becomes Bullet 3 (a sub-bullet of a sub-bullet) and so on…
Any text in your Word document (with styles applied) that is set
to 'Normal' will not import into PowerPoint.
A quick way to change Word formatting is to apply the Heading
2 style to an entire document - thereafter, apply the Heading 1
style to whichever part of the document you want designated as
a Title Text within PowerPoint.
You'll find more information at this Microsoft's knowledge base
article:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q198212
Presentations created with Word outlines are basic in nature containing
plain text content using a default font style in black over a white
background slide. It would be a very rare occasion when you would
want to display your presentation in such a bare state.
The easiest way to provide a sophisticated look to such a presentation
would be to choose Format | Slide Design (in PowerPoint 2002) or
Format | Apply Design Template (in PowerPoint 97 and 2000). You'll
find several links to PowerPoint templates you can download or
buy online at:
http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/pptemplates.html
Events & Seminars
Winning Presentations Seminar
January 15 and 16, 2004
Boston, USA
Claudyne Wilder, Wilder Presentations
http://www.wilderpresentations.com/
PowerPoint Live
October 10 to 13, 2004
San Diego, California, USA
Rick Altman, R Altman Digital Consulting
http://www.pptlive.com/
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Credits
During the preparation of this issue of the PowerPoint Ezine,
I received assistance, content or feedback from Jennifer Rotondo,
Mario Pintaric and Patrice-Anne Rutledge (all in alphabetical order).
I would like to use this platform to thank them for their help.
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