ALIGNING BULLETS AND TEXT
In 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.
ANIMATE YOUR BULLETS
In a previous tip, we mentioned that PowerPoint 2000 supports animated GIFs. Let's toss in another interesting new feature--the fact that PowerPoint allows you to use pictures as bullets. Now stir a little and look what we get--animated bullets!
To begin, select the text you want to add animated bullets to, then choose Format, Bullets And Numbering. Click the Bullets tab, then click Picture.
Click Motion Clips and choose one of the existing clips, or add your own (click Import Clips and browse to the file you want to import).
Click to select the clip you want to use, then click OK (or click the topmost icon on the pop-up list that appears). PowerPoint adds the picture or motion clip as the bullet graphic for each paragraph of selected text. If the graphic is too small, choose Format, Bullets And Numbering again and dial in a larger number for the Size: % Of Txt setting.
Note: Animated GIF bullets won't animate while you're editing your presentation but will start moving when you view your presentation as a slide show.
THINK "OUTSIDE THE BOX" FOR BETTER ANIMATIONS
Sometimes 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.
AN AUTOSHAPE QUICKIE
You can insert PowerPoint's AutoShapes right from the keyboard if you like.
Press Alt-U to pop up the AutoShape menu.
Use the Up and Down Arrow keys to highlight the general category of shape you want to insert, then press the Right Arrow key to open up the category.
Use the Up, Down, Left, and Right Arrow keys to highlight the shape you'd like to add.
Press Ctrl-Enter to add it to your slide. You can then use the arrow keys to move the new AutoShape around on the slide, or use the mouse to size and reformat it however you like.
AUTOSHAPES CHANGE SIZE
When 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.
MORE AUTOSHAPES
You'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 AUTOSHAPE FORMATTING
In 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.
REMOVING BACKGROUNDS FROM IMAGES
Tired of that annoying white background that sometimes shows up behind your scans and other bitmap images? Let PowerPoint get rid of it for you.
First, click the image to select it. Usually, as soon as you select the image, the Picture toolbar appears, but if not, choose View, Toolbars and click Picture on the pop-up menu. Next, click the Set Transparent Color button on the Picture toolbar (it's the second one from the right), and the cursor changes to match the picture on the button. Then, click on the background area of your picture and it becomes transparent.
Sometimes only part of the background becomes transparent, leaving you with a rather unattractive mottled effect. When you click an image with the Set Transparent Color tool, it figures out the color of the image pixel you clicked on and makes all the other identically colored pixels in the image transparent. Pixels that aren't the exact same color won't be affected, which can give you a mottled effect if the image background isn't one solid color. To fix this, open the image in a paint program and make sure that the entire background is a single color, then re-import the image into PowerPoint.
REARRANGE YOUR BUTTONS
PowerPoint'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.
I CAN'T INCREASE THE HEIGHT OF A CALLOUT
You use one of PowerPoint's Callout AutoShapes, but no matter how you drag this way and that on the sizing handles, you can't get its height to change, though you can change its width.
This happens when the Callout shape has the Resize AutoShape To Fit Text option enabled, either for the shape itself or because the shape inherited this setting from PowerPoint's defaults for new objects.
To change this so you CAN resize the shape freely, double-click the shape to bring up the Format AutoShape dialog box. Click the Text Box tab and deselect the Resize AutoShape To Fit Text option.
If you want to make sure that other shapes don't have this option turned on automatically, click the Colors And Lines tab and select the Default For New Objects option. Then click OK. You'll now be able to change the height of the shape to anything you like.
CHARACTER FORMATTING SHORTCUTS
When you're in the middle of entering text and need to change the formatting of a word or two, it's much faster to do it right from the keyboard than to use the mouse. Here are a few fast formatting tricks. Ctrl-Shift-> increases the font size of the selected text; Ctrl-Shift-< decreases the font size of the selected text.
In both cases, when you change the font size, PowerPoint selects the next size from its list of standard font sizes (the one you see when you use the mouse to change the font size). If you'd rather pick your own exact font size, press Ctrl-Shift-P, then enter the font size you want and press Enter.
You can also press Ctrl-Shift-F and type the name of the font you want.
INSERTING SPECIAL CHARACTERS--PART 1 OF 4
Your 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 4
In 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 4
In 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 4
In 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.
MY CHARTS CAN'T BE EDITED BY OTHER POWERPOINT USERS
If people using older versions of PowerPoint can't edit the charts in your presentations, even though you may have saved them as an earlier-version PowerPoint (PPT) format file, it may be due to a changed default setting in the Options dialog box.
To ensure that others can edit your charts when you save to an earlier version of PowerPoint, choose Tools, Options and click the Save tab. On the Save tab, select the option Convert Charts When Saving As Previous Versions. Then, click OK. Now save your presentation again to the appropriate previous version of PowerPoint.
Note: To save to a previous-version format, choose File, Save As. In the Save As dialog box, choose the version you want to save to from the Save As Type drop-down list box. Finally, give the presentation a different name and save it.
COPYING CONTENT--A QUICK LOOK UNDER THE HOOD
What 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.
TAKE CONTROL--WITH THE CTRL KEY
In 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.
COPYING, PASTING, LINKING--WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT
Anyone 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.
INDENT SETTINGS AND THE RULER
Having 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.
POWERPOINT 97 USERS CAN'T VIEW MACROS
PowerPoint 97 users may not always be able to view and edit macros created in PowerPoint 2000. One of the new security features in PowerPoint 2000 is called digital signatures. These signatures help you verify that the macro code inside a PowerPoint or other Office file came from a known, trusted source (and because of that, is probably safe to run).
PowerPoint 97 doesn't support digital signatures. PowerPoint 97 can't update the signature when the macro code is edited, so it doesn't allow you to modify the macro.
If you need to convert a digitally signed macro so that it can be edited in PowerPoint 97, copy it from PowerPoint 2000's Visual Basic Editor, paste it into Notepad, and save it as a text file. You can then copy the macro code from the text file into a new VBA macro in PowerPoint 97.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN POWERPOINT 2000 AND 97
In our previous tip, we mentioned that animated GIFs won't animate in earlier versions of PowerPoint. PowerPoint 2000 and PowerPoint 97 share the same file format, meaning that each can read the other's PPT files, but some features that were added in PowerPoint 2000 aren't supported or are incompletely supported in PowerPoint 97. If you have to share presentations with PowerPoint 97 users or need to distribute presentations that will be viewed with the free PowerPoint Viewer, you'll want to keep these points in mind:
AutoFit Text adjusts font sizes slightly in an attempt to fit text in a bulleted text placeholder to a given space. AutoFit information isn't saved with the file, so PowerPoint 97 won't recognize it.
Graphical/Numbered Bullets in PowerPoint 2000 are very similar to the same feature in Word. You can choose your own preferred bullet character or use pictures for bullets. When a PowerPoint 2000 file is opened in PowerPoint 97, these become plain bullets. Numbered bullets appear as the default bullet defined in the slide master. Graphical bullets revert to the bullet characters used before switching to graphical bullets.
The Table Editor in PowerPoint 2000 is very similar to the one in Word. PowerPoint 2000 tables become groups of AutoShapes when you open the presentation in PowerPoint 97. You can ungroup the table in PowerPoint 2000 to get a pretty good idea of what will happen to it in PowerPoint 97.
Animated GIFs will animate in PowerPoint 2000 but not in PowerPoint 97 or in the free PowerPoint Viewer, both of which display only the first frame of the animation as a still image.
FIX A PROBLEM WITH THE FAVORITES FOLDER
When you choose File, Open, the Open dialog box shows you a convenient list of folders on the left side. We'll be talking about these folders in upcoming tips, but here's something you need to know first, especially if you have a dial-up modem connection to the Internet:
If you click the Favorites folder, PowerPoint wants to preview the first file it finds there. What it finds in Favorites by default is two links to Internet sites. The moment it finds the first one, it tries to initiate a connection to the Internet, presumably to show a preview of the "file." This happens without you having to click anything. If that's not where you want to go today and you click the Cancel button on the Internet dialer, PowerPoint locks up and quits working. If the same thing happens on your computer, it means that every time you open the Favorites folder, PowerPoint will crash.
Not good. Here's what you can do to fix the problem:
The first time you go to the Favorites folder in the File Open dialog box, carefully note the names of the two Internet links there. Then browse to your \Windows\Favorites folder, locate these two link files, and delete them or move them to another folder.
It's now safe to use PowerPoint's Favorites folder again.
PROBLEMS OPENING OR INSERTING POWERPOINT FILES
If you run into problems when opening PowerPoint files or inserting slides into other programs, it may be because PowerPoint's registry settings are incomplete or damaged.
You can use PowerPoint to re-register itself or repair some damaged registry settings. To do this, follow these steps:
Locate PowerPoint's main .exe file. Start Windows Explorer and press F3 to open the Find Files dialog box. In the Named text box, type
POWERPNT.EXE
and in the Look In box, type in or browse to the drive where Office is installed. Click Find Now to start the search. Once POWERPNT.EXE is found, choose Start, Run. Clear any existing text from the Open text box, then drag the PowerPoint program icon from the Find Files window to the Open text box. Add quotation marks to the beginning and end of the text, then move the cursor to the end of the line and type
/regserver
The text in the Open box should now look something like
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Powerpnt.exe" /regserver
Click OK. PowerPoint will start, display its splash screen, correct the problem entries in the Windows registry, and then quit automatically.
WHY ARE MY POWERPOINT FILES SO BIG--PART 1 OF 2
PowerPoint 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 2
In 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.
MAKING 35MM SLIDES WITH POWERPOINT--PART 1 OF 3
Lately, it seems that everyone's using video projectors instead of 35mm slides to show their PowerPoint presentations. There are plenty of good reasons for this:
The Biggie: You can edit your presentation right up until the moment you take the stage.
Convenience: Video projectors keep getting smaller, lighter, and less expensive, while the image quality gets brighter and better with each new generation.
Ease of use: If there's already a projector set up wherever you're presenting, you only have to power up your laptop and plug it into the projector, and you're in business.
Price: Once you've paid for the projector, it costs you no more to have 100 slides in your presentation than to have ten.
Multimedia: Animations, movies, and sounds are all simple to add to your on-screen presentations. There's no practical way of incorporating multimedia into a 35mm slide presentation.
Next time, we'll cover 35mm slides.
MAKING 35MM SLIDES WITH POWERPOINT--PART 2 OF 3
Does anybody still use 35mm slides? Yes, and for them, there are equally compelling reasons for choosing this "old technology" instead of the latest whiz-bang computer video projection system.
The Biggie: Image quality. An inexpensive 35mm slide projector projects a brighter, sharper image than even current top-of-the-line video projection systems.
Convenience: You can rent a slide projector quickly and inexpensively nearly anywhere in the US. There's generally no need to carry one with you.
Ease of use: What could be simpler? Pop your tray of slides onto the projector, turn it on, and it's Show Time.
Price: While it costs more per slide to use 35mm slides, you can buy a slide projector AND an awful lot of 35mm slides for the cost of a video projector.
Which should you choose? That depends a great deal on your needs. Here are some factors to keep in mind:
If you're presenting to a large audience, 35mm slides will give you clearer, crisper images on screen. You can project them larger as well, so the folks in the back row will be able to see your presentation better. If your presentation changes frequently and on short notice, video projection is the way to go.
If you often give presentations outside the major metropolitan areas and need to rent projection on site, 35mm slides may have the edge, since it will be easier to locate (or purchase, if need be) a slide projector. Many presenters play it safe and use both; they use video projection when possible but also carry a set of 35mm slides with them as a backup.
WORKING WITH POWERPOINT'S SPECIAL FOLDERS
In 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.
ROTATING CLIP ART
A reader wrote to say that he could rotate shapes and graphics that he drew in PowerPoint himself but was unable to rotate clip art that he 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.
MULTI-CLIPPING
PowerPoint--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.
ERROR MESSAGES ABOUT OLEAUT32.DLL
Some programs mistakenly install older, out-of-date versions of some critical Windows system files. That can cause problems for your other programs that depend on the newest version of these files. If you start PowerPoint and see the error message
The AGENTSVR.EXE file is linked to missing export OLEAUT32.DLL:277
it means you're probably a victim of this type of installer mischief. Here's what you should do. If PowerPoint doesn't close immediately afterwards, select Help, Detect And Repair. Click Start in the Detect And Repair dialog box. Office Setup starts and replaces the outdated copy of OLEAUT32.DLL with the updated one it needs to run.
If you can't start PowerPoint because of this problem, choose Start, Settings, Control Panel, then double-click Add/Remove Programs. Locate Microsoft Office 2000 in the list of programs and double-click it. Wait until you see the Microsoft Office 2000 Maintenance Mode dialog box, then click Repair Office. When prompted again, click Finish. You may see error messages during the repair procedure because of the outdated copy of OLEAUT32.DLL. If so, click Ignore in each error message dialog box, and the repair procedure will continue.
ERROR: PART OF FILE IS MISSING--PART 1 OF 2
If you ever get a Part Of File Is Missing error message when opening a PowerPoint presentation, here's what may have caused it, what you can do to prevent it, and (in our next tip) what you can do to try to correct the problem.
This error message can result from several causes, including improperly handled disks, network problems, power problems, hardware problems, and a few others. We'll discuss each cause and suggest ways of curing the problem and preventing it in the future.
First, the bad news. According to Microsoft, "In most cases, this error message indicates that the file you are attempting to open is damaged and you will not be able to recover the file." In other words, it's best to avoid the problem in the first place.
Always handle your disks carefully. If you need to ship disks by mail or courier, use packaging that protects them adequately. Marking the package "Fragile" is not enough; be sure to use adequate packaging for more severe handling. Above all, keep disks away from anything that produces a magnetic field (motors, telephones, magnetized tools, and, of course, magnets!).
Never save your presentations directly to diskette or other removable media. Instead, save first to your hard drive, then use Windows Explorer to COPY the PPT file to the diskette. If you must save directly to a diskette or other removable media, make absolutely certain that the file has been completely saved before removing the diskette or cartridge from the drive. Likewise, avoid opening files directly from diskettes; if you must do so, NEVER remove the diskette while the file is open in PowerPoint.
Avoid saving directly to a network drive. Save to your local hard drive, then COPY the file to the network drive.
Virus scanners and other disk utility programs can interfere with PowerPoint's ability to save a file correctly. If this problem crops up often, try deactivating these programs while you're using PowerPoint. If that seems to solve the problem, contact the programs' manufacturers to see if there are updates that will allow them to work cooperatively with PowerPoint.
Paranoia is your friend. Embrace it. Assume the worst--that at any time your computer will crash, the power will go out, or you'll make some silly little mistake that destroys your presentation. Save early, save often, and periodically choose File, Save As and save your presentation under a new filename (MyPresentation.PPT becomes MyPresentation-2.PPT, then MyPresentation-3.PPT, and so on).
ERROR: PART OF FILE IS MISSING--PART 2 OF 2
In a previous tip, we outlined several strategies for preventing the nasty Part Of File Is Missing problem. But all the prevention in the world won't help you open a presentation that's already damaged. For that, you need stronger medicine. Here are some things to try:
If you can't open the file from within PowerPoint, quit the program, then double-click the file's icon in Windows Explorer. Or start PowerPoint and drag the file's icon into it. Occasionally, a corrupted preview image will prevent PowerPoint from opening the file directly, but when you open it this way, PowerPoint doesn't have to display the preview and may be successful.
If the damaged file is on diskette, removable media, or a network drive, copy it to your local hard drive, then try opening it again.
Try opening the file on a different computer.
Run ScanDisk on the diskette or cartridge the file's on. ScanDisk can fix corrupted files in some circumstances.
Start PowerPoint and start a new presentation. If you know which master the damaged presentation is based on, use the same one. Hint: Right-click the damaged presentation in Windows Explorer, choose Properties from the pop-up menu, and click the Summary or Contents tab, where you'll find a listing of the master POT file upon which the presentation is based.
Choose Insert, Slides From File. Click Browse and locate the damaged presentation. PowerPoint displays thumbnail previews of each slide it's able to read from the presentation. Choose the first slide preview, then click Insert to add it to your new presentation. Repeat for each slide in the original presentation. Hint: You might first want to select all the visible previews at once before you click Insert. If this works, it will save you some time. If not, try inserting one or two slides at a time as described above.
With a little luck, you'll be able to recover at least some of the slides from the damaged file.
ERROR MESSAGE--THIS TYPE OF FILE CANNOT BE OPENED BY POWERPOINT
You may see the error message
This type of file cannot be opened by PowerPoint
for various reasons. Your PowerPoint file may have become corrupted or may have been saved as the wrong file type.
If you receive this message when trying to use the Send To feature in Word to send a file to PowerPoint, it could be the result of installing an older version of the PowerPoint Viewer after having installed Office. This can cause the Viewer--rather than PowerPoint--to take over as the program that handles other programs' requests for PowerPoint services. Since the Viewer has a much more limited set of capabilities, this can cause a problem.
To resolve the problem, quit all Office programs, then choose Run from the Windows Start menu. In the Open box, type
POWERPNT /REGSERVER
and then click OK. If PowerPoint doesn't start and quit automatically, quit manually.
If this doesn't solve the problem, start PowerPoint, then choose Help, Detect And Repair and follow the instructions on screen.
MAKE IT SIMPLER TO FIND YOUR FILES
In 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.
FILE DIALOG BOX SHORTCUT KEYS
Here 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?
SPEED UP FILE OPEN AND INSERT PICTURE FROM FILE DIALOG BOXES
Whenever you choose File, Open or Insert, Picture, From File, PowerPoint immediately locates the first file it recognizes in the default directory and tries to show you a preview of it. If it's a PowerPoint file, that means a slight delay, but if the first file it finds is a large bitmap image, it can take quite a while to display the preview, delaying you from choosing the file you really wanted.
To prevent PowerPoint from wasting time showing you previews of images you don't want to look at, click the Views button in the File Open dialog box's toolbar and choose List, Details or Properties.
Any of these choices will turn the Preview feature off for the rest of your PowerPoint session, but the next time you start PowerPoint, you'll discover that it's baaaaaaack...
We'll explain in an upcoming tip how you can effectively disable the Preview feature a little more thoroughly.
I CAN'T SEE MY FILE TYPES
You may have this problem on your machine, or you may occasionally run into it on somebody else's computer: You choose Insert, Sound, From File (or Picture, or some other file type).
The File dialog box appears and may show you some files to choose from, but the Files Of Type drop-down list box doesn't show you what file types PowerPoint considers acceptable. Instead, it may simply display "Sound Files" or the like. Yet, if you do the same thing on other machines, you DO see a list of file types. What gives here?
Simple: Windows Explorer is set to hide file extensions, and PowerPoint is picking up and using Explorer's settings. To change the settings so you see file types, start Windows Explorer. Choose View, Folder Options. Click the View tab and deselect the Hide File Extensions option. PowerPoint should now show you all the file types and extensions you paid for.
AVOID A NASTY LITTLE GOTCHA
In some circumstances, when you perform a drag-and-drop, then undo it, not only are you deleting the newly dropped item, you may also be deleting the SOURCE from which it came. For example, if you drag a slide or object from one presentation into another, then choose Edit, Undo or press Ctrl-Z, you'll delete the object from BOTH presentations, not just the one in which you dragged the object.
This happens because of the way drag-and-drop works. When you drag from one presentation to another, you're not copying the object--you're moving it. In other words, the drag-and-drop operation deletes the object from one presentation and puts it into the other. When you undo this, you delete the object, but by that time, the drag-and-drop operation has deleted the original, leaving you empty handed.
To avoid this problem in the first place, hold down the Ctrl key while you drag and drop objects from one presentation to another. This tells Windows to COPY rather than MOVE the object, so it leaves the original untouched.
If you forget to do this and accidentally get into this bind, immediately switch to the source presentation and choose Edit, Undo or press Ctrl-Z, which will bring back your inadvertently deleted object.
GRADIENT ODDITIES
If 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.
SPEED KEYS FOR POWERPOINT'S FILE DIALOG BOX
The previous few tips have shown you some nifty tricks for working with PowerPoint's File dialog box folders. Here are a few keyboard speedups that will make navigating the File dialog box even faster:
Press Alt-1 (or click the Back button) to go back to the previous folder you viewed while in the File dialog box.
Press Alt-2 (or click the Up One Level button) to open the folder one level up from the current folder.
Press Alt-3 (or click Search The Web) to open the Web search page in your browser.
Press Alt-4 (or click the Delete button or press the Delete key) to delete the currently selected file or folder.
Press Alt-5 (or click the Create New Folder button) to create a new subfolder in the currently open folder.
Press Alt-6 (or click the arrow next to the Views button) to switch between List, Details, Properties, and Preview views.
Press 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 show you the name of the button and tell you what it does.
ANIMATED GIFS IN POWERPOINT
Earlier versions of PowerPoint allowed you to import animated GIFs but showed only the first image in the GIF; they wouldn't display the animation. PowerPoint 2000 will let you display animated GIFs in all their hyperactive glory. There are a few caveats to be aware of, however.
Like PowerPoint's other animation features, animated GIFs come to life only when you view your presentation as a slide show. You won't see any animation in Slide, Normal, Slide Sorter, or any of PowerPoint's other views.
Animated GIFs animate only in PowerPoint 2000 itself, not the PowerPoint Viewer. The Viewer supports most if not all of the features of PowerPoint 97, but not features that are specific to PowerPoint 2000. So, until Microsoft releases a real PowerPoint 2000-compatible viewer, your animated GIFs won't be very lively when you display them in the Viewer.
CONVERT A PRESENTATION TO VIDEOTAPE
Computer-based presentations are great--sharp, high-resolution images, snappy color, good sound and all--but sometimes it's just more practical or convenient to send somebody a videotape instead of a PowerPoint presentation. There's only one problem: How?
Actually, you can use a couple of methods. For example, you can use a scan converter. This gadget converts the signal from your computer's video output jack to the NTSC signal that video recorders need. Scan converters are available in a wide range of prices, from inexpensive home models to pro-grade equipment costing thousands of dollars. They don't require any special drivers; you simply plug your computer's video output into one side of the converter, hook the converter's output to the input jack of your VCR, start the PowerPoint presentation, and roll the tape.
Alternatively, you can use digital video editing software and hardware. This requires a special card that either works with or replaces your computer's existing video card. You can use it to record a PowerPoint presentation video to your computer's hard drive (free up LOTS of space first!) and edit it with special software before recording it to videotape. Of the two methods, this will be more expensive, since it requires special hardware and software. But in return you get better quality and a lot more control over what goes out to tape.
Whichever method you use, keep in mind that the NTSC video signal you record on your VCR can't hold the same high standards of resolution and color that you get from your computer monitor. Keep important details large and away from the edge of the screen (where they might get clipped off in the conversion to video). Also, perform at least one test recording to see whether your chosen colors translate well to video.
LOVE THAT PRESENTATION--SURE WISH I HAD THE TEMPLATE
Did you ever get a presentation from a co-worker or off the Web and really wish that you had the template it's based on so you could use it for your own presentations? Do we ever have good news for you!
If you have the presentation file, you have the template. Every presentation (PPT or PPS) file contains all the formatting information from the template (POT) on which it's based. Getting to it couldn't be simpler. Let's say you have two presentations, YOURS.PPT and THEIRS.PPT. YOURS has some great content, but design-wise, it needs a boost. THEIRS has just the design that would put YOURS over the top. So here's what you do:
Open THEIRS.PPT; choose File, Save As; and pick Design Template
(*.pot) from the Save As Type drop-down list. Give THEIRS a different name if you like (MINE_NOW.POT comes to mind) and save it to the default \Templates folder that PowerPoint proposes. Now close THEIRS and open YOURS. Choose Format, Apply Design Template, and then pick the template (POT) file you just saved. Nice, eh?
There's even a quicker way to accomplish the same thing. Open YOURS.PPT, then choose Format, Apply Design Template. In the Apply Design Template dialog box, choose Presentations & Shows (*.ppt, *.pps) from the Files Of Type drop-down list, then browse to and choose THIERS.PPT. Since all the necessary formatting information is part of THEIRS.PPT, PowerPoint lets you treat it as though it were a template file and applies the formatting to YOURS without your having to save THEIRS in any special way.
CREATE MANY PRESENTATIONS IN ONE WITH CUSTOM SHOWS
Suppose you have a really dynamite presentation that you need to give before different audiences. Audience A may be more interested in The Big Picture, whereas Audience B wants all the gory details. In other words, you need to customize the presentation for each audience. You could make several copies of the presentation and customize each, but that can quickly turn into more work than you bargained for. If you later decide to revise a few of the slides that are common to both versions, you'll have to revise them in both copies of the presentation. And if you later add versions for Audiences C, D, E--well, you can easily see how much work this can lead to. Scratch THAT plan.
Instead, use PowerPoint's custom shows. By setting up custom shows, you can keep all your slides in one .ppt file and still show only the slides that are appropriate for a given audience.
To set up a custom show, choose Slide Show, Custom Shows to open the Custom Shows dialog box. Click New, then type a name for the show in the Slide Show Name text box. In the Slides In Presentation list, double-click each slide you want to add to your custom show. If you click any of the slides in the Slides In Custom Show list, you can click Remove to remove it from the list, or click the up and down arrows to change its order within the custom show.
Click OK when you've finished to return to the Custom Shows dialog box. You can create another new custom show or edit any others that you've created. When you've finished, click Close (or click Show to go right into slide show mode and view your custom show).
To set up your presentation to display one of your custom shows automatically when it's launched, choose Slide Show, Set Up Show, then choose the custom slide show you want to use from the Custom Show drop-down list box in the Slides area of the dialog box. Finally, click OK. Now when you start your show, it will automatically display the custom show you picked, using only the slides in the custom show, in the order you want them.
SEND YOUR PRESENTATIONS TO WORD
In response to an earlier tip about printing multiple slide "thumbnails" on a single page, a reader wrote to suggest 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.
SPEED KEYS FOR WORKING WITH PRESENTATIONS
Here 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 UP YOUR PRESENTATIONS
Before you "go on" to give that big speech in front of thousands of people (or just a little speech in front of a few folks), start PowerPoint, load your presentation, and cycle through all the slides once.
It can take PowerPoint a little while to prepare each slide for display on screen, and this can produce a noticeable lag while you're giving your presentation. However, once each slide is prepared, PowerPoint caches it (that is, stores a copy of it in memory or on the hard drive in ready-to-use form), so it doesn't have to prepare it for display again.
By running through the entire presentation once, you force PowerPoint to get each slide ready for display ahead of time, cutting down the loading time when you start your presentation for real.
Net result: a faster-moving, smoother presentation. And any supervisor, boss, potential client, etc. will appreciate your foresight.
SIDETRACK POWERPOINT'S FILE PREVIEWS
In a previous tip, we showed you how to turn off the Preview feature in PowerPoint's File Open dialog boxes. That was the good news. Now for the bad news: PowerPoint turns Preview back on each time it starts up. While there's nothing you can do to stop it from doing this, there is a way you can head it off at the pass.
If you don't want PowerPoint to show you previews, don't show it any files that it CAN preview. If a folder contains no .ppt files or graphics that PowerPoint will recognize and try to display when you choose File, Open or Insert, Picture, From File, you can turn off Preview (by choosing List, Details or Properties from the Views button on the dialog box's toolbar) and THEN navigate to the folder where your .ppt files or images are stored.
For example, suppose you like to store your work in My Documents. Instead of saving graphics and PowerPoint files directly into the My Documents folder, create subfolders for your work within My Documents and move all your files into these subfolders. Now, when you choose the My Documents folder, PowerPoint won't find any files to preview and you can immediately choose one of the other views. Then you can open one of the subfolders and choose the file with which you really want to work. Ah, sanity is a good thing.
Stay tuned for more tips on this subject.
COMBINING SLIDES FROM DIFFERENT PRESENTATIONS--PART 1 OF 4
Why reinvent the wheel? If you have a collection of PowerPoint presentations, you may already have just the slide you need hidden away in one of them. Instead of re-creating it from scratch, why not reuse one you've already created? It couldn't be simpler to do.
If you know which presentation contains the slide you want to reuse, open it in PowerPoint, open the presentation you want to use it in, and put both presentations in Slide Sorter view.
In the presentation you want to copy slides FROM, click to select the slide you want to copy (or hold down Ctrl while you select multiple slides), then choose Edit, Copy or press Ctrl-C. Switch to the presentation you want to copy the slides INTO and choose Edit, Paste or press Ctrl-V to insert the slides into your new presentation.
PowerPoint applies the template of the current presentation to any slides you paste into it, so you don't have to reformat them to get a consistent look.
Good luck!
CONTROL PRESENTATIONS WITH INVISIBLE ACTION BUTTONS--PART 1 OF 4
Here's how to create invisible action buttons: Create the buttons by drawing rectangles (or any other shape you like) on the slide where you want the action buttons to appear, then assign them action settings (choose Slide Show, Action Settings and set the options you want for each). Then, test the buttons by starting the screen show and clicking each shape to make sure it does what it's supposed to. Finally, make the buttons invisible by selecting the shapes and assigning them a fill of No Fill and an outline of No Line.
Now try running your screen show again. You'll find that even though the shapes are invisible, they still trigger the actions you've assigned when you click them.
If you want the same action buttons on several slides, simply select the ones you just created; choose Edit, Copy (or press Ctrl-C); move to the next slide; and choose Edit, Paste (or press Ctrl-V). That works well if you only need to copy the buttons to a few additional slides, but what if you want the same set of buttons on every slide in your presentation? Stay tuned--we'll cover that next!
CONTROL PRESENTATIONS WITH INVISIBLE ACTION BUTTONS--PART 2 OF 4
In our previous tip, we explained how you can create invisible action buttons on one slide and then copy them to additional slides as needed. There are two problems with this:
It's tedious to copy buttons to every slide in your presentation, and you might forget to copy them to any new slides you add later.
And it's REALLY tedious when you discover that you need to change the action setting or location of a button AFTER you've copied it to every slide in your presentation.
There's a way out--instead of putting your action buttons on any single slide, choose View, Master, Slide Master and create your action buttons on the Master slide. Anything you place on the Master slide appears on all slides in the presentation unless you specifically disable master items on a particular slide.
Well, almost. Anything on an individual slide sits atop everything on the Master. So if you have a large graphic on Slide 3, for example, and it partially overlaps an action button on the Master slide, the graphic will "eat" any mouse clicks on it--the action button will never "feel" them, so it won't be triggered.
At the very least, you'll want to make sure that you don't completely cover up any action buttons you've placed on the Master slide. There's a way around this little problem too, and we'll show you the solution in our next tip.
CONTROL PRESENTATIONS WITH INVISIBLE ACTION BUTTONS--PART 3 OF 4
At the conclusion of our previous tip, we left you with a problem: Objects on individual slides that overlap shapes-with-action-settings on the Master slide will prevent the shapes from "feeling" and responding to mouse clicks.
The way around this is to make a copy of the shape on the Master and paste it onto the individual slides. Here's how: First choose View, Master, Slide Master. Then, select the shapes that are covered by objects on individual slides and choose Edit, Copy (or press Ctrl-C). Choose View, Slides to return to the slide you started on. Finally, choose Edit, Paste (or press Ctrl-V) to paste a copy of the shape(s) onto the slide itself. Since the copy will sit atop anything else on the slide, it will receive mouse clicks instead of the graphic or other object underneath it and will react in the same way that the same shape on the Master slide would have.
CONTROL PRESENTATIONS WITH INVISIBLE ACTION BUTTONS--PART 4 OF 4
So far in this series, we've shown you how to create invisible action buttons, how to include the same buttons on every slide in your presentation, and how to make sure that objects on individual slides don't interfere with them. There's one more little trick you'll want to know about.
Suppose you've put two of these invisible action buttons on each slide. Each one fills half the slide, so all you need to do is click the right side of the slide to advance to the next slide in the presentation or the left side of the slide to go back to the previous slide. Nice and simple, but when you're on the last slide in the presentation, it doesn't make any sense to have a button that takes you to the next slide. There IS no next slide. Why not a button to end the presentation instead?
You don't want to delete the Next action button on the Master because that would delete it from all your other slides. But as you'll recall from an earlier tip, anything on an individual slide that covers up something on the Master slide will receive mouse clicks--and that's the solution. Simply draw a new rectangle on the slide, make sure it completely covers the one on the Master, then assign its action setting as Hyperlink To, End Show, and make it invisible. That's all there is to it.
CREATE A DEFAULT PRESENTATION
Normally when you start PowerPoint, you can choose between creating a new blank presentation or a presentation based on one of the included templates. But suppose the default blank presentation is simply too boring for words (suppose? SUPPOSE? It IS too boring for words!). And further suppose that you want to base all new presentations on a template of your own design automatically. You can. Magic? No, just a matter of knowing a simple little trick: PowerPoint's "blank" presentation is actually a template file; if you create a replacement for it--one that uses your own custom formatting--it will use your template in place of the default blank presentation.
Here's how: Start PowerPoint and open a new presentation. It'll save some work if you base it on an existing template that's fairly close to what you want to end up with for your custom template. Set the defaults you want to include with each new presentation. You can set defaults for Slide Size and Orientation (File, Page Setup); color scheme; colors for fill, line, shadow, and text; text styles; the formatting for Title and Text placeholders on the Slide Master; and so on. And of course, you can include any background graphics you want on the Slide and Title Masters.
Once you've got everything just the way you want it, choose File, Save As. Select Design Template (*.pot) in the Save As Type list box. Name the presentation
Blank Presentation.pot
and click Save. PowerPoint will automatically choose the correct folder for this file, so let it; if you change the folder, it may not be able to locate and use it later.
Now close the file and choose File, New. One of the available templates in the General tab of the New Presentation dialog box will be Blank Presentation.pot. That's YOUR new Blank Presentation.pot. Choose it and enjoy your new default template!
KEYBOARD YOUR WAY THROUGH YOUR PRESENTATION
Here are some more handy keyboard shortcuts for all you mouse-o-phobes out there:
To create a new presentation, press Ctrl-N. To insert a new slide, press Ctrl-M. This will do one of two things, depending on whether New Slide Dialog is selected on the Tools, Options, View tab. If it's not selected, PowerPoint immediately inserts a new slide based on the same layout as the current slide. If New Slide Dialog IS selected, PowerPoint displays the New Slide dialog box, where you can use the arrow keys to select the layout you want, then press Enter to insert the new slide.
Either way, PowerPoint adds the new slide immediately after the current one. If the current slide's so utterly perfect that it needs no changes, press Ctrl-D to insert a duplicate of it. Ctrl-S saves your presentation, Ctrl-P prints it, Ctrl-W closes it, and Ctrl-O brings up the File, Open dialog box so you can get to work on the next masterpiece.
SHARING YOUR PRESENTATIONS WITH OTHERS
Handing off a copy of your PowerPoint 2000 presentation to somebody else is no problem: You simply need to ensure that they also have PowerPoint 2000 also and--uh-oh. They're still working with an older version. NOW what?
Well, if they have PowerPoint 97, there's not too much to worry about. PowerPoint 2000 and 97 share a common file format, so they can read one another's files without difficulty. A few new-to-PowerPoint 2000 features aren't supported in PowerPoint 97, though:
Animated GIFs won't animate in PowerPoint 97. Custom picture bullets aren't supported, either, so it's a good idea to replace these with standard bullets before handing off your presentation.
If the other party has PowerPoint 95 (also called PowerPoint 7), you'll need to save your presentation in that format before giving them the file. Here's how:
Open the presentation and choose File, Save As. From the Save As Type drop-down list, choose PowerPoint 95 (*.PPT), and then give the file a name and save it. (If the other party has PowerPoint 4, follow the same steps, but choose PowerPoint 4 (*.PPT) from the Save As Type list.)
Finally, be aware that if you have any bitmapped images in your presentation (scans, digital photos, paint images, or screen captures), files saved to PowerPoint 95 and PowerPoint 4 formats may grow very large. Neither of these formats supports image compression, whereas PowerPoint 97 and 2000 both do. When you save to earlier versions, PowerPoint has to decompress any images in your presentation, which accounts for the larger file size.
TROUBLESHOOTING DAMAGED PRESENTATIONS--PART 1 OF 4
There's nothing more frustrating than the feeling of watching hours of work go down the drain when you try to open a presentation and PowerPoint tells you that it "cannot open the type of file represented by..." your presentation. Or when the program tries to persuade you that it isn't a PowerPoint presentation. Or, even better, it tells you that you're low on memory or system resources. Or worse yet, it crashes your computer.
In a previous series of tips, we outlined several strategies for dealing with another of PowerPoint's little tricks--"Part of the file is missing." All the tips we mentioned then can also be useful in preventing these other problems. Once a presentation is badly damaged, there's not much hope for recovering it, so prevention is the best cure. But that's good old 20/20 hindsight. What can you do if the presentation you need NOW is damaged NOW? Here's how you can try to recover your work.
Shut down PowerPoint and any other programs you're running, and restart the computer. Once Windows has restarted, close any unnecessary programs that started up automatically (like virus checkers, e-mail programs, schedulers, etc.). Then start PowerPoint, choose File, Open, and open a different presentation. If it opens without problems, try opening the presentation that's giving you trouble.
If the problem presentation still won't open, restart the computer again in Safe Mode, then try opening the presentation again via File, Open in PowerPoint. If it opens this time, it usually means that your video driver is incompatible with PowerPoint in some obscure way. Check with the video board manufacturer for updated drivers to correct the problem.
If updated drivers don't fix the problem, or if there are none available, try changing video modes. Right-click the desktop, choose Properties, then go to the Settings tab. Try selecting different Colors and/or Screen area settings. If that doesn't seem to help, there's one last video trick that may. Click Start, Settings, Control Panel. Double-click System, then click the Performance tab. Click the Graphics button and in the Advanced Graphics Settings dialog box, move the Hardware Acceleration slider from Full to None. Click OK until you're back at Control Panel, then close Control Panel. Now try your presentation again. If it opens successfully, you may want to go back to Advanced Graphics Settings and move the slider up a notch at a time until you can't open the presentation, then move the slider back one notch and leave it set there.
If that STILL doesn't help you open your presentation, hang in there. There's more advice on its way in upcoming tips.
TROUBLESHOOTING DAMAGED PRESENTATIONS--PART 2 OF 4
In our previous tip, we explained how you can eliminate video settings and drivers as possible causes of problems with PowerPoint. Before moving on, we'll mention one other system-level thing you'll want to check: your printer driver.
PowerPoint can become very unhappy indeed if it wakes up to find that you don't have any printers installed, or if none are set as your default printer, or even if it doesn't like the installed default printer on your system. Click Start, Settings, Printers to verify that you do have a printer driver installed.
If the only icon in the Printers dialog box is the Add New Printer Wizard, double-click it and add a printer driver. Choose the driver for the printer attached to your computer, if any. Otherwise, choose a generic PostScript driver like the Apple Laserwriter II NTX or QMS Colorscript printer. If you already have one or more printer drivers installed, make sure one is set to be the default printer. Right-click the printer you normally prefer to use and choose Set As Default from the context menu. The printer you set as default should be a normal printer driver, not a fax driver or some other driver that emulates but really isn't a printer.
Still not able to open that problem presentation? Stay tuned--more tips to follow!
TROUBLESHOOTING DAMAGED PRESENTATIONS--PART 3 OF 4
If after trying the suggestions in the previous tips you still can't get that problem presentation to open, try this: Locate the PowerPoint program file on your computer. By default, it will be C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Powerpnt.exe. Drag the presentation to the program file and drop it. Alternatively, you can double-click the presentation in Windows Explorer.
Or try starting a new blank presentation, then choose Insert, Slides From Files and click the Find Presentation tab. Click Browse, select your problem presentation, and click Open. After a few seconds, you'll see thumbnail images of each slide in the presentation. You can click Insert All if you want to try bringing in all the slides at once, but it's better to select one, then add a few at a time. That way, you may be able to determine that one particular slide is causing the problem. Once you know that, you can insert the other slides. If this approach works, you should save the new presentation. Then you can apply whatever template you like.
If none of these suggestions work, try moving the file to another computer and opening it there. Copy the file to a different disk drive and open it from there. Then run ScanDisk.
Good luck!
TROUBLESHOOTING DAMAGED PRESENTATIONS--PART 4 OF 4
If you're able to open a presentation but experience problems editing or displaying it, try the following:
Copy the slides from the damaged presentation into a new file. Open the damaged presentation and start a new presentation as well. Switch to Slide Sorter view in both presentations. In the damaged presentation, click to select a slide to copy, then choose Edit, Copy or press Ctrl-C. Switch to the new presentation and choose Edit, Paste or press Ctrl-V.
Although you can select multiple slides to copy and paste, it's best to do this one slide, or at least a few slides, at a time. If only a few slides in a presentation are damaged, this will help you isolate them. If any of the slides won't copy, or if the copy in the new presentation appears corrupted, delete and re-create them. If the entire presentation seems corrupted, you can try to recover the text that appears in Outline view.
Begin by opening the presentation, then choose File, Save As. Choose Outline/RTF (*.rtf) in the Save File As Type drop-down list box. Next, choose a folder for the file, give it a name, and save it. Close the damaged presentation.
Choose File, Open and in the Open dialog box, choose All Outlines (*.txt;*.rtf;*.doc, etc.) from the Files Of Type list. Then select the RTF file you just saved and click Open. PowerPoint creates a new blank presentation with your saved Outline text already in place. You can then apply a different template if you like.
Hint: After you've saved this new file as a PPT, try applying the template from your damaged presentation. Choose Format, Apply Design Template. In the Apply Design Template dialog box, choose All PowerPoint Files (*.ppt; *.pot; *.pps) from the Files Of Type list, then select your damaged presentation. PowerPoint applies only the template information from this presentation to your new presentation. If this causes the new presentation to behave oddly, close it without saving and revert to the saved copy.
PREVENT FONT SUBSTITUTIONS WHEN OTHER PEOPLE VIEW YOUR PRESENTATIONS
If you plan to give other people your PowerPoint presentations to view or just need to show your presentation on a different computer, there's a potential "GOTCHA" to be on guard against: font substitution.
You've combed carefully through your whole collection of fonts looking for the one that best expresses your message, but can you be sure that your presentation will look as magnificent on somebody else's computer as it does on yours? No, you can't.
When it plays your presentation, PowerPoint asks Windows for the font you've chosen. If it's not available, Windows picks the closest font it can find. Sometimes the result is adequate; sometimes it's not even close. And as if that weren't bad enough, when the character widths don't match those of your font, all the text you so carefully positioned can go askew.
The simplest way to prevent this from happening to your presentations is to stick with the basic fonts that are automatically installed on all Windows computers: Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New, and a few others. That doesn't give you much variety from which to choose, so it's not much of a solution.
The good news is that PowerPoint can "embed" the fonts you chose in your PPT files. When someone opens your presentation on another machine where the embedded font isn't already installed, PowerPoint installs it automatically.
To embed fonts in a PowerPoint file, start by choosing File, Save As. Click the Tools button in the upper right of the Save As dialog box, then click Embed TrueType Fonts. Continue saving your file as you normally would.
Note: You may see a warning from PowerPoint when you embed fonts. This can happen for either of two reasons:
You can only embed TrueType fonts. If you're using some other kind of font, you can use Format, Replace Fonts to substitute a TrueType font before saving.
Not all TrueType fonts are embeddable. If a font hasn't been made embeddable by its manufacturer, PowerPoint can't embed it, so it warns you.
A BRIGHTER, BETTER FORMAT PAINTER TOOL
The normal Format Painter tool is handy for picking up the formatting from one object and applying it to another, or even to a series of objects, but it's not very bright. As soon as you finish using it, it forgets everything you ever taught it. Luckily, PowerPoint will give you a smarter version of the Format Painter if you ask it to.
Choose Tools, Customize, then click the Commands tab. Click Format in the Categories list, then scroll down the options in the Commands list to locate the Pick Up Object Style and Apply Object Style tools (the icons look like an eyedropper with an arrow). Drag each of these to any convenient toolbar, then click Close to dismiss the Customize dialog box.
Use the Pick Up Object Style tool to memorize any object's formatting, and then you can use the Apply Object Style tool to apply the memorized formatting to any other object in the presentation, or in any other open presentation. PowerPoint remembers the formatting style until you pick up a different object's formatting with Pick Up Object Style or quit PowerPoint.
ELIMINATE THE FRINGE AROUND TRANSPARENT IMAGES
In a recent tip, we explained how you can eliminate backgrounds from images using PowerPoint's Set Transparent Color tool. When you use this technique, you'll sometimes notice that your image seems to be surrounded by a slight "fringe" of background color that the Set Transparent Color tool hasn't eliminated. You can minimize or even eliminate this problem by editing the original image in a paint program so that the image's background is as close in color as possible to your PowerPoint background.
First, choose Format, Background; click the down arrow icon in the Background dialog box; and pick More Colors from the drop-down list box. Then, click the Custom tab in the Colors dialog box that appears and write down the Red, Green, and Blue values shown for your background color. Click Cancel to close the Colors dialog box, then click Cancel again to close the Background dialog box. Open your image in a paint program and change the background of the image to match the background color of your PowerPoint presentation. Save the image, then re-insert it into the presentation.
Now when you use the Set Transparent Color tool on the image, the fringe will be gone, or at least much less obtrusive.
Note: If your presentation has a background other than a flat color, pick the dominant color and try to match your image background to it.
MY GRAPHIC WON'T UNGROUP
Sometimes an imported graphic is close, but not exactly what you need. Normally, you'd ungroup the graphic so you can edit the shapes that make it up, but sometimes PowerPoint isn't able to ungroup a graphic. When you try, you see that all of the ungrouping options are unavailable.
There are two different types of computer graphics: vector and bitmap. Vector graphics are made up of individual objects--lines, rectangles, circles, text, etc.--that you can manipulate one at a time. Bitmap (sometimes called raster) graphics are a collection of pixels--dots--that might happen to look like lines and rectangles but aren't really. Since there are no individual objects in a bitmap graphic, PowerPoint can't ungroup them. File types like GIF, TIF, JPG, PNG, and TGA always contain bitmap images.
To make changes to bitmap graphics, you must open them in an image-editing program like Microsoft Photo Editor, PaintShop Pro, Corel PhotoPaint, or Adobe Photoshop, etc. Save the edited image, then insert it into PowerPoint using Insert, Picture, From File.
PUT GRAPHICS IN EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE ON EVERY SLIDE
Occasionally, you may need to put a graphic or picture in exactly the same place on several slides. While you can do this by entering measurements in the Size and Position tabs of the Format Object dialog box, that can be incredibly tedious if there are more than just a few items to place this way. Luckily, there are two much simpler ways of getting the job done:
Use guides--In a previous tip, we explained how to get additional guides by holding down the Ctrl key while you drag an existing guide. You can use multiple guides to make a template you can snap objects into place with. Place and size the first object just the way you want it, then drag guides up against each side of the object. Go to the next slide and select the next object you want to put in the same place as the first. Drag it until it snaps into the upper-left corner formed by two of the guides, then drag the object's lower-right selection handle until it snaps to the lower-right corner formed by the other two guides.
Once you've installed the tools, select the object whose position you want to duplicate, then click the button on the Editing toolbar that looks vaguely like PowerPoint's ruler bar. Click it to record the size and position of the object you selected. Then, move to another slide, select another object, and click the button that looks like a hammer and nail. The object you selected is indeed "nailed" into place--exactly the same place as the object whose size and position you recorded on the previous slide. You can continue to select and "nail" other objects into the exact same place on as many other slides as you like. The tool remembers the position you first recorded until you change it by recording the size and position of a new object.
MY GRAPHS CHANGE FORMAT WHEN I COPY SLIDES
When you copy slides from one presentation to another, graphs on the slides may change their formatting. The fonts and colors might change to match the fonts and color scheme of the presentation into which you're copying the slides. Normally, this is a good thing, since you'd want graphs to graphically match the presentation in which they appear.
If you want the chart to retain its original colors, here's how you can make it happen. After you've copied the slide into the new presentation, right-click the chart and choose Show Picture Toolbar (if the Picture toolbar isn't already visible). Click the Recolor button on the Picture toolbar (it's the fourth button from the right). In the Recolor Chart dialog box, choose None, then click OK. The chart will revert to its original colors.
GETTING ADDITIONAL GUIDES
When you choose View, Guides, you see two guide lines that you can snap objects to for more accurate placement. You can drag the guides wherever you like them, but you're limited to just the two guides--one horizontal, one vertical. Wouldn't it be useful sometimes to have more guides?
Evidently Microsoft thought so too, because you can. In fact, you can have up to eight horizontal and eight vertical guides to place wherever you like, and it couldn't be simpler to do: Just hold down the Ctrl key while you drag an existing guide to a new position. The original guide stays where it was, and you get a new guide at the new position.
USE GUIDES TO MEASURE DISTANCES
Normally when you drag a guide line from one place on the screen to another, PowerPoint shows you a ToolTip readout of the guide's distance from the center of the slide. That's useful sometimes. But it's not at all helpful when you want to know the distance from one point to another on the slide. Luckily, you can use guides for other types of measurements if you're Shifty.
Position a guide at the starting point of the distance you'd like to measure, then hold down the Shift key as you drag the guide to the ending point. Now, instead of giving you a distance-from-center readout, PowerPoint starts with a measurement of 0 and increases it as you drag the guide, so you can tell exactly how far it is from here to that rectangle over there. Or to Tipperary on the map image you just imported.
One little problem: It's hard to make precise measurements of small distances because the guide (and its measurement readout values) are locked to the grid and jump in fixed increments. To temporarily disable the grid, hold down the Alt key in addition to the Shift key as you drag the guide. Zooming in on the slide will also help you make more accurate measurements.
REMOVING GUIDE LINES
In a previous tip, we explained how you could get more than the default two guidelines (hold down the Ctrl key while dragging an existing guide). So now your PowerPoint screen is positively littered with guides and now maybe you're wondering how to clean up the mess?
If you just want to make guides invisible without removing them completely, choose View, Guides. The guides will disappear and objects will no longer snap to them. To bring the guides back into view, choose View, Guides again.
To remove a guide completely, drag it off the slide. As you move it, you'll see the measurement readout box showing you where it is. As long as that's visible, the guide's still on the slide. When the guide is off the slide, the measurement readout box disappears. At that point, let go of the mouse button and the guide will be gone.
You can't remove PowerPoint's default guides (one vertical, one horizontal) this way. Choose View, Guides to make them disappear or drag them to the very edge of the slide to get them out of your way temporarily.
HOW TO CUSTOMIZE HANDOUTS
PowerPoint has a nice variety of different styles of Handout pages, and you can even customize the Handouts master to a certain extent, but suppose you want three-per-page handouts without the usual lines for note-taking that PowerPoint adds? Or maybe you'd like to see your speaker notes next to each slide image on the handout pages. PowerPoint simply won't let you do that.
But Word will.
When you're ready to print handouts YOUR way, choose File, Send To and click Microsoft Word on the flyout menu. In the resulting Write Up dialog box, you can choose from among five different formatting options. Pick the format you want (you'll be able to modify it further in Word later, by the way), then pick either Paste or Paste Link. Paste is a one-shot affair. It pops your current slides into Word, but if you later revise the presentation, you'll need to send it to Word again to re-create your handouts. Paste Link sets up a link between your presentation slides and Word so that when you modify your presentation, your Word handouts document will update also and print the latest version of the slides.
When you've chosen the options you want, click OK. Your slides, plus any speaker notes or other options you've chosen, will appear in Word. Here's the good part: It all comes into Word as a table, so you can then modify it any way you like before printing it.
HANDOUTS WITHOUT LINES
When you print handouts three slides to a page from PowerPoint, you get three lines (presumably for notes) next to each slide on the printouts. There's no way to turn off the lines or cover them up. If you'd like more control over the appearance and formatting of your handouts, try PowerPoint's Send To Word feature.
Choose File, Send To, Microsoft Word. In the Write Up dialog box that appears, select Blank Lines Next To Slides, then click OK. Once Word finishes converting your presentation, you'll see it has created a three-column table, with your slides in the center column and lines in the right column. You can select the lines (they're actually just underscore characters strung together to make lines) and delete them. The easiest way to do this is to click anywhere in the third column of the table (the column with the lines) and choose Table, Select, Column. Next, press the Delete key. Voila, the lines are gone. You can now print your lineless handouts directly from Word.
HYPERLINK BUTTONS BY THE DOZENS
In 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.
REFORMATTING HYPERLINK TEXT--PART 1 OF 2
Whenever 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 2
In 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.
MY HYPERLINKS DISAPPEARED
It's a good idea to reign in your urge to hyperlink if you're working with very large PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint stores hyperlink information--together with the other Document Summary information for your presentation--in an area that allows only 64 KB of data. You may be able to store as much as 32 KB worth of hyperlink info there, but once the available storage space runs out, that's it. After that, PowerPoint can't store new hyperlinks or edits to your existing links. Your new/edited links will be gone the next time you open the presentation.
There's no way to predict exactly how many hyperlinks that translates into, since it will depend on the amount of text in each link, but here's a short VBA macro that will tell you how many characters (or bytes) all the URL hyperlinks in your presentation uses.
To run this macro, copy the text below, then in PowerPoint choose Tools, Macro, Macros. Type
WebLinkDataTotal
in the Macro Name text box, then click Create. When the macro editor appears, click anywhere between Sub WebLinkDataTotal() and End Sub, and paste in the text you copied from this tip. Finally, press the F5 key to run the macro. You'll see a message that tells you how many bytes of available space you've used for your Web links.
' Copy all the text from here to the end of this tip
' Sums the length of all URL hyperlinks in presentation
Dim AllLinks As Hyperlinks
Dim SingleLink As Hyperlink
Dim AllSlides As Slides
Dim SingleSlide As Slide
Dim MyPresentation As Presentation
Dim TotalLength As Integer
Set MyPresentation = ActivePresentation
Set AllSlides = MyPresentation.Slides
For Each SingleSlide In AllSlides
Set AllLinks = SingleSlide.Hyperlinks
For Each SingleLink In AllLinks
With SingleLink
TotalLength = TotalLength + Len(.Address)
End With
Next SingleLink
Next SingleSlide
MsgBox "Total length of all URL hyperlinks in presentation: " & vbCrLf & TotalLength
HYPERLINKS ON EVERY PAGE
When 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).
GRAB IMAGES RIGHT OFF THE COMPUTER SCREEN
Did you know that you can easily grab an image right off your screen and pop it into PowerPoint? It couldn't be simpler!
Set up your screen so the information you want to grab is displayed as large as possible. Press PrintScrn or Shift-PrintScrn to capture the full screen to the Clipboard, or press Alt-PrintScrn to capture just the active window to the Clipboard.
Switch to PowerPoint and choose Edit, Paste or press Ctrl-V to paste the image from the Clipboard into your presentation.
This is a great way to include things like static pictures of Web pages, program screens and dialog boxes, or information that won't normally copy and paste in your PowerPoint presentations.
INCHES VS. CENTIMETERS
If 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.
INDENTS FOR UNBULLETED TEXT--PART 1 OF 2
When 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 2
Last 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?
IT WON'T IMPORT!
PowerPoint can import a huge variety of file types when you choose Insert, point to the picture, then click From File, but once in a while you might find that it can't insert certain types of files. PowerPoint relies on a variety of graphics "filters" to import pictures. If the filter it needs to import your picture isn't installed, you won't be able to include the picture in your presentations.
Depending on how your copy of PowerPoint was first installed, you may need to re-run Setup to install additional graphics or presentation translation filters, but before you do that, there are a couple of other things you can try. Use Clip Gallery to import the picture, then bring the picture into PowerPoint from Clip Gallery. Clip Gallery sometimes does a better job of importing pictures than PowerPoint itself. Choose Insert, Picture, then click Clip Art. When Clip Gallery appears, click Import Clips, select the picture file you're trying to import, then click Import. If Clip Gallery reports no errors, you should be able to insert the newly added clip into your presentation just as you would any other piece of clip art.
Or, you can use a different program. If PowerPoint can't open your picture, try Word, PhotoEdit, or any graphics programs you have installed on your computer. If you can open the file in any program, you can usually select the picture, then copy and paste it into PowerPoint. Alternatively, choose File from the menu and then click Save As. When the Save As dialog box appears, check to see if there's a drop-down list box named Files Of Type or something similar. If so, see what types are available. You may be able to save the file in a format that PowerPoint can insert directly. If you plan to use the picture again in other presentations, this would be the best option.
That way, you'll have the picture in a format that PowerPoint finds digestible, ready to be inserted (via Insert, Picture, From File) whenever you need it.
ADJUSTING LINE SPACING--PART 1 OF 2
When 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 2
In 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.
PROBLEMS WITH THE CUSTOM SOUNDTRACK ADD-IN
Problem: You start PowerPoint and see the error message
PowerPoint couldn't open the Visual Basic for Application project in ppmusic.ppa.
This happens when you previously had PowerPoint 97 installed on your computer and downloaded and installed the Custom Soundtrack Add-In. When you upgraded to PowerPoint 2000, the installer retained any add-ins from your PowerPoint 97 setup. Although most PowerPoint 97 add-ins work well with PowerPoint 2000, not all of them do--and when they don't, you'll see this error message (or a similar one referencing a different .ppa/add-in file).
To avoid seeing this message in the future, you'll have to manually remove the problem add-in. Not to worry--it's a walk in the park. Here's how:
Choose Tools, Add-Ins. On the add-ins list, click the name of the add-in the error message referred to. Then click Remove. This removes the add-in from the list and from the Windows registry file so it doesn't automatically load in the future. Click Close, then restart PowerPoint.
LINKING MOVIES AND SOUNDS
It's easy to liven up your PowerPoint presentations by inserting movies and sounds (choose Insert, Movies And Sounds and pick the option to insert them from either the Clip Gallery or from a file). Sometimes this can cause problems when you move your presentation to a different machine, though. Since these tend to be very large files, PowerPoint links to them rather than embedding them (that is, it remembers where they came from and finds them when it needs to display or play them rather than including them in your presentation file).
This keeps your presentation files smaller, but it also means that you'll have to remember to include any sound or movie files when you take your presentation to another machine. If you're bringing them into PowerPoint from various folders on your hard drive or on the company network, that can easily turn into a tracking nightmare. Instead, copy any media files you need into the same folder as your PPT file, then insert them into PowerPoint. Then when it's time to ship the presentation off to a different computer, you simply ship everything in that folder.
WORKING THE MENUS FROM THE KEYBOARD
If you're more of a typist than a mouser, you can save lots of time by accessing PowerPoint's menu commands directly from the keyboard. (By the way, this is true of all Office programs and in fact nearly any Windows program as well.)
Take a look at the menu bar. Notice that each item on the bar has at least one letter underlined. To open any menu, simply hold down Alt while you type the underlined letter. Alt-F opens the File menu, for example.
Most of the commands on the menu also have underlined letters, so to make your choice from the open menu, press the underlined letter for the option you want. Strictly speaking, you're supposed to let go of the Alt key before you do this, but it doesn't seem to matter in most programs.
A few more useful tricks:
Shift-F10 brings up the shortcut menu (in other words, the same menu you'd ordinarily get by right-clicking).
With both the regular and shortcut menus, you can navigate up and down the menu with the Up and Down Arrow keys or move back and forth from flyout submenus with the Left and Right Arrow keys.
Finally, Alt-Spacebar brings up the Control menu (the one you ordinarily get to by clicking the small icon to the left of the program's name in the title bar). From there, you can control the program's window on your screen by minimizing it, maximizing it, sizing it, moving it, or even quitting the program altogether.
MORE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
Any time you can perform a PowerPoint command directly from the keyboard and save a lunge for the rodent, you've saved yourself a few seconds. Here are few more ways to add minutes to your day:
Press F5 to run a slide show of your presentation, beginning with the first slide in the presentation.
Press Ctrl-F to bring up the Find dialog box so you can search your presentation for a particular word or phrase.
Ctrl-H brings up the Replace dialog box in case you want to replace a word or phrase with another throughout your presentation.
F7 brings up the spell-checker (handy when you want to convince PowerPoint that you really HAVE spelled the name of the boss correctly and get it to stop putting those squiggly red lines underneath).
Press Ctrl-K to insert a hyperlink into your presentation.
And when you're all done with PowerPoint for the day, Alt-F4 closes it.
SOLVING PROBLEMS WITH ORG CHART
The version of Org Chart that comes with Microsoft Office generally works pretty well, but some users are plagued with "Not enough memory" error messages whenever they start Org Chart.
Despite what this error message says, the problem has nothing whatever to do with the amount of memory installed in your PC. The problem, believe it or not, is fonts. Too many fonts will give Org Chart a bad case of indigestion.
There's no hard-and-fast rule for how many fonts you can have installed before Org Chart starts to complain. The number seems to depend on where the fonts are installed on your system and on the length of the font names. Most people seem to run into trouble when about 500 fonts are installed.
So if Org Chart starts complaining about lack of memory, uninstall some fonts from your computer. To do so, click Start, Settings, Control Panel, then double-click the Fonts icon. To delete a font, click its icon to highlight it, then choose File, Delete from the menu, or right-click it and choose Delete from the context menu. It's a good idea to make a copy of the font and put it in some other folder first--you never know when you might want to use the font again later.
Happy deleting!
I CAN'T EDIT POINTS!
If you tried our recent tip that explained how to edit AutoShapes, you may have found that you couldn't use Edit Points to change some shapes, even though you followed our instructions to the letter. We'll explain why in just a bit, but first, here's a summary of the tip, in case you missed it:
PowerPoint won't let you use Edit Points to alter AutoShapes, but you can convert an AutoShape into editable PowerPoint objects. First, select the AutoShape. Copy it using Ctrl-C or by choosing Edit, Copy. Choose Edit, Paste Special and select Enhanced Metafile to paste the AutoShape back into PowerPoint. This converts the AutoShape into a normal PowerPoint object that you can edit with PowerPoint's graphic editing tools--except that sometimes you can't use Edit Points after giving an AutoShape this treatment.
Why? Because Edit Points only works with one object at a time, but some AutoShapes are composed of multiple objects. When you convert them to normal PowerPoint objects as described, they turn into multiple grouped objects, and there's the clue you were looking for.
If Edit Points is dimmed (unavailable) when you select one of your converted AutoShapes, try ungrouping it. Click the Draw button at the lower left of your screen and click Ungroup on the pop-up menu. You can then pick any of the individual objects that make up the shape and use Edit Points to your heart's content. The only hitch is that PowerPoint won't allow you to use Edit Points when a rectangle or ellipse is selected.
HOW TO PRINT ONLY CERTAIN SLIDES
Quite often you may need to print only a few slides of a presentation. Perhaps you've updated a couple of slides from an earlier presentation and just need new copies. Maybe the boss scribbled notes on some of the printouts and needs fresh ones. Or . . . could it be? . . . possibly you made a typo on a couple of your slides and don't want to print the entire presentation again?
No matter. PowerPoint makes it simple to print the slides you want and ONLY the slides you want. In fact, there are two ways to do it.
Use the Slide Sorter: Put PowerPoint in Slide Sorter view and click the first slide you'd like to print. Then hold down the Ctrl key while you click each of the other slides you want to include in your selection of printouts. Now choose File, Print and in the Print dialog box, click Selection in the Print Range section. Choose any other print options you like, then click OK. PowerPoint will print only the slides you selected in Slide Sorter.
Do it by the numbers: If you prefer to keep track of your presentation by slide number, it's just as simple. Choose File, Print. In the Print dialog box, click Slides in the Print Range area, then enter the slide numbers you want to print separated by commas. For example, enter
1,3,5,7,9
to print Slides 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 but no others. You can enter ranges of slides as well. Enter
1,10-20,25
to have PowerPoint print slide 1 followed by slides 10 to 20 inclusive, and finally slide 25.
HOW TO PRINT SLIDES IN REVERSE ORDER
Some people are lucky to have printers that stack pages in the order in which they're printed. Some of us have printers that don't, so we have to shuffle every print job to put Page 1 at the top of the stack rather than at the bottom. If you're not one of the lucky ones, here's a trick that will lower your blood pressure a little every time you print more than two pages (and this works in Word and Excel too, by the way):
Before you print, note how many slides you have in your presentation (the status bar at the lower left of your screen will tell you this). For example, let's say there are 25 slides in your presentation.
Choose File, Print to open the Print dialog box. Under Print Range, click Slides rather than All, then in the text box to the right, enter the range of slides you want to print. And here's the trick: Enter the range backwards. That is, if you need to print slides 1-25 but want them to come out in reverse order, enter 25-1--and that's exactly what PowerPoint will print.
PRINTING IN BLACK AND WHITE--PART 1 OF 2
It can be hard to predict what your presentation will look like when you print it to a black and white printer. Will this chart show up at all? Will those colors print identically, or will they look different enough that they can be distinguished? If this is the sort of thing that runs through your brain every time you're about to click OK in the Print dialog box, stop and cancel the print job. We have a much better way of going about this than killing trees with test printouts.
Look on the Standard toolbar. A few buttons in from the right, you'll find the Grayscale Preview button. If you want to know what your presentation will print like, just click this button to have PowerPoint display on screen exactly what it plans to print to your B/W printer. Click the button again to return to your presentation in living color.
If you find yourself bouncing back and forth between the two modes frequently, try putting a Slide Miniature on your screen. Simply choose View, Slide Miniature. Now whenever you go to Grayscale Preview mode, a miniature color version of your slide appears on screen. It disappears again when you turn off Grayscale Preview.
Now you can tell exactly what your presentations will look like in black and white. What if you don't LIKE what you see? We have some good news for you--next time.
PRINTING IN BLACK AND WHITE--PART 2 OF 2
In our previous tip, you learned to predict how presentations will print to a black and white printer. We promised to show you how to sort things out if you don't like what you see in Grayscale Preview mode. We're keeping our promise, and it couldn't be simpler.
Once you're in Grayscale Preview mode and notice that something on your slide doesn't look quite right, right-click it and choose Black And White from the context menu. You'll see a pop-up menu with Automatic selected. Automatic means "Let PowerPoint decide what this object should look like in grayscale printouts." Well, you already know that you don't LIKE what PowerPoint does with it, so choose a different option from the menu. Try several options until you find one that does the problem object justice. The object will print just as it appears on screen.
Note that the changes you make to the object's Black And White settings have no effect whatsoever on how it will print in color or appear on screen in a presentation.
PRINTING IN REVERSE ORDER
Some people are lucky enough to have printers that stack printed sheets face-down in the output tray, so the sheets are all in order once the document is printed. Some of us aren't so lucky and have to manually re-collate every document we print. Slight correction: We have to manually re-collate every document UNLESS we know this little trick.
PowerPoint normally prints presentations in ascending order, but that can be changed. In the Print dialog box, in the Print Range area click Slides, then enter the range of slide numbers you'd like to print--in reverse order.
For example, if you want to print an entire 25-page presentation, enter
25-1
to have PowerPoint start with page 25 and work backwards. You can also enter individual pages or ranges of pages. For example, you could enter
25-15,12,10-8,3
to print pages 25 through 15, page 12, pages 10 through 8, and finally page 3.
PRINTING FROM THE COMMAND LINE--PART 1 OF 3
Once in a while you may need to print a presentation without first displaying the presentation in PowerPoint itself--for example, as part of a kiosk setup or an automated process.
You can do this easily from a DOS command line or from a BAT file that contains the command line. Here's how:
From a DOS command line, type
(Drive:\Path\Powerpnt) /p YOURFILE.PPT
Substitute the correct drive and path for PowerPnt.exe above. You may also need to supply the drive and path to your .ppt file if it's not in the current default drive and folder.
Now press Enter. After a short while, you'll see the familiar Print dialog box. Choose the print options you want, then click OK, and PowerPoint will print your presentation.
In our next tip, we'll show you how to make PowerPoint print to a specific printer without displaying the Print dialog box.
PRINTING FROM THE COMMAND LINE--PART 2 OF 3
In our previous tip, we explained how you can have PowerPoint print a presentation from the command line. When you use this method, PowerPoint displays a Print dialog box where you can choose a printer driver and set other print options. Sometimes, though, you might just want to print, no questions asked. If so, here's what you need to do:
First, determine the name of the printer you want to use. Click Start, Settings, Printers. Note the name under the icon of the printer you want to work with. For example, let's suppose it says HP LaserJet 4M. That's the printer name you'll use for the following steps. Write down the exact name, then close the Printers window.
Next, open a DOS command line window and type
(Drive:\Path\Powerpnt) /pt "HP Laserjet 4M" "" "" YOURFILE.PPT
Substitute the drive and path to PowerPnt.exe on your computer; also substitute the exact name of the printer you're using.
If there are spaces in the printer name, you must put quotes around the name. The two sets of double-quotes are also necessary. They tell PowerPoint to use the system defaults for the driver name and output port. Normally you won't need to specify these, so just use double-quotes as "placeholders."
When you press Enter, PowerPoint will print your presentation to the printer you've specified without displaying a Print dialog box.
PRINTING FROM THE COMMAND LINE--PART 3 OF 3
In this series of tips, we've shown you how to print PowerPoint presentations directly from a DOS command line. If you're accustomed to the point-and-click convenience of Windows and Windows programs, this may seem to be a pretty old-fashioned, clunky way to do things, and you're probably right. But once you put the same command line into a .bat file, it opens up some interesting possibilities. You can make PowerPoint print a different presentation from an action button, for example. Let's suppose you have a kiosk-style presentation and want to let the Viewer print an order form that you've created in Orderform.ppt.
To begin, start Notepad and enter
@echo off
Next, enter the command line for auto-printing Orderform.ppt as explained in our two previous tips. You should have something that looks like this:
@echo off
C:\Program Files\Office\PowerPnt /pt "HP LaserJet 4M" "" ""Orderform.ppt
Save the file with a .bat extension; for example, you might save it as Printme.bat.
Now start PowerPoint and open your main kiosk presentation. Create an action button and make its action Run Program. For the program to run, choose the Printme.bat file you just saved. Now when you click this action button during your presentation, PowerPoint will automatically open and print Orderform.ppt without actually displaying it.
A HANDY PRINTING MACRO
Did 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.
PRINTING ONLY REVISED SLIDES
Have you ever had to work on one of those Presentations From Hell? The ones where you get input (and revisions and changes and alterations) from several people--non-stop?
In our previous tip, we showed you how to choose the slides you want to print in Slide Sorter, then print just those slides using the Selected option in PowerPoint's Print dialog box. Here's an even simpler way of tracking which slides do and don't need to be printed:
Before you start revising your presentation, go to Slide Sorter view, press Ctrl-A to select all the slides, then choose Slide Show, Hide Slide (or click the Hide Slide button on the Slide Sorter toolbar).
Next, make your revisions to individual slides. After revising each slide, choose Slide Show, Hide Slide again (to unhide it this time). When you're through making revisions, all but the revised slides will be hidden.
To print only the revised slides, choose File, Print. In the Print dialog box, you'll see a check mark next to Print Hidden Slides. Deselect that option, then choose Print Range: All, pick any other print options you want, and click OK. PowerPoint will print only the slides you revised.
When you've finished printing, it's a good idea to return to Slide Sorter view and unhide all of your slides again, then save your presentation so you'll be ready for the inevitable NEXT round of changes.
COLORS LOOK WRONG ON SOME COMPUTERS
Sometimes a presentation that looks great on one computer turns to mud on another, or provokes psychedelic-colored flashes as you change slides. Why is that?
Look to the video settings. Depending on the amount of memory in the video adapter in the computer, Windows may be set to display anything from 16 colors to millions of colors. To check this, right-click the Windows desktop and choose Properties. Click the Settings tab and look to see how many colors are shown under Color Palette. That's the maximum number of colors that can be displayed at any one time on this computer. If it's set to 256 or fewer, try changing it to a higher setting, if that's available.
When PowerPoint displays a presentation, it can use only as many colors as the Color Palette setting permits. If the Color Palette is set to High Color/16-bit Color (16,000-plus colors) or True Color/24-bit (millions of colors), it will have all the colors it needs to do its work.
If the Color Palette is set to Paletted/8-bit (256 colors) or less, then PowerPoint has to alter the colors in your presentation to fit into the limited available palette. The results aren't always pretty and can cause odd "palette flashes" when you move from one slide to the next and PowerPoint changes the palette to suit the new slide.
Whenever possible, set your computer to at least High Color and preferably True Color mode before starting your presentation.
Open PRINTME.PPT in PowerPoint and print a copy of it to each of the printers you use. Keep the printouts handy for later use.
When you need to know what a particular color will look like on your printer, just grab your printout and check it. You can also use the printout while you're choosing colors if you know what printer you'll use. Rather than picking a color in PowerPoint and worrying about what it will look like on the printer, pick the color from the printed sample and ignore what it looks like on screen.
PRINTING PARTIAL PRESENTATIONS
How often do you need to make a few changes to several slides in a presentation, then print JUST the changed slides? Every week? Welcome to the club!
Keeping track of which slides you've changed can be a pain. Sure, you can enter the numbers of just the slides you want to print in PowerPoint's Print dialog box, but if you're like us, this never occurs to you until you're staring the Print dialog box in the face WISHING you'd remembered to write down the numbers as you made changes. Besides, if you added, deleted, or rearranged slides, the numbers have all changed anyway.
Here's the easy way out: Switch to Slide Sorter view and click the first slide you want to print. Then, hold down the Shift key as you click each of the other slides you want to print.
Next, choose File, Print and click Selection in the Print dialog box. This tells PowerPoint to print only the slides you've clicked in Slide Sorter view.
Finally, choose any other print options you want and click OK.
RESOLVING PRINTING PROBLEMS
Having problems printing your presentations? Before you start making forehead-shaped indentations in your desktop, here are a few things to try:
Turn off background printing in PowerPoint: Choose Tools, Options and click the Print tab. Deselect the Background Printing option. While you're there, select the Print TrueType Fonts As Graphics option if you're using a non-PostScript printer.
Check your printer driver options: If you use a non-PostScript printer, click Start, Settings, Printers. Right-click the icon for your printer and choose Properties from the context menu. On one of the tabs, you'll find a Spool Settings button. Click it, then change Spool Data Format to RAW. If you also see an option for printing TrueType text as graphics, select that as well. If your system is a bit short on hard disk space, choose the option Print Directly To The Printer. (This disables printer spooling, which can eat up quite a bit of temporary disk space; however, it can slow down the printing process. If you have plenty of space on your drive, don't change anything.)
It's also a good idea to defragment your hard drive regularly and make certain that you always have plenty of available space on the drive where Windows is installed. Print spooling requires a lot of temporary drive space; if you run out of space while you're printing, the print job will fail and your programs may crash.
I KNOW I PUT THAT SLIDE SOMEWHERE--PART 1 OF 6
The 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 6
Last 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 6
In 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 6
Last 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 6
In 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 6
Here'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.
REMOVING MASTER PAGE GRAPHICS FROM SLIDES
In a previous tip, we showed you how you can add graphics to every slide in your presentation simply by adding them to the Slide Master page. But what if you have a few slides that you don't want the graphic on? No problem!
On a slide where you don't what the Slide Master graphic to appear, choose Format, Background. In the Background dialog box, click Omit Background Graphics From Master, then click Apply. IMPORTANT: Don't click Apply To All unless you want to change ALL the slides in your presentation. And if you want to do that, it's simpler to go to the Slide Master and remove the graphic there.
Your slide no longer includes the graphic from the Slide Master. But your slide also no longer includes ANY graphics from the Slide Master, and that's probably not what you had in mind. To fix this problem, click View, Master, then click Slide Master. This takes you to the Slide Master. On the Slide Master, select all of the graphics you DO want to appear on the slide you just changed, then press Ctrl-C to copy them. Click Close on the Master toolbar to return to your slide, then press Ctrl-V. This puts a copy of the background graphics on the current slide.
Finally, on the Drawing toolbar click Draw, Order, then click Send To Back. This sends the graphics behind all the other elements on your slide, where they belong.
POWERPOINT EASTER EGGS
Did you ever wonder who wrote PowerPoint or how many people it took to write it? Or do you just like to collect "Easter eggs" (that's ComputerGeek for credit screens and other nifty little animated gadgets that many computer software manufacturers hide in their programs)?
If so, here's one for you:
Start PowerPoint. Choose Help, About PowerPoint. Click the PowerPoint logo on the resulting screen.
Enjoy!
Note that there are also Tech Support and System Info buttons on the same screen. Click Tech Support to see the Help file listing for technical support options from Microsoft, or click System Info to start a tool that tells you everything--and we DO mean EVERYTHING--about your computer and the software loaded on it.
POWERPOINT STARTS, THEN HANGS
If PowerPoint seems to start up normally, then appears to lock up and quit responding, it may be because there are files in your Recent File List that contain characters that PowerPoint can't display properly in the Startup dialog box. Specifically, it may be due to files that include an ampersand symbol (&) in the filename. To solve the problem, you have to temporarily disable the Startup dialog box, clear the problem filename from the Recent File List, then finally re-enable the Startup dialog box. Here are the steps to do just that.
If PowerPoint is still running (or trying to and failing), press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to bring up the Task Manager. Select PowerPoint, then click End Task to force it to quit. Next, use Explorer or My Computer to locate any PowerPoint file that doesn't include an ampersand character in its name. Double-click the file's icon to launch PowerPoint, bypassing the Startup dialog box.
Once PowerPoint starts, choose Tools, Options and click the View tab. Deselect the Startup Dialog option, then click OK. Choose File, Save As and save the current presentation under a new name at least ten times. Make sure that the new name doesn't include an ampersand. That will cause the presentation with the problem name to fall off the bottom of the list. Once that's done, you can choose Tools, Options again and re-enable the Startup dialog box.
And by now, you'll have guessed our final bit of advice--don't save any more presentations with an ampersand in the filename!
USING POWERPOINT'S MASTER PAGE
We often see presentations that include a company's logo or some other repeated element on every slide. It's a great idea, but when we examine the presentation, we find that somebody has copied the logo to each and every slide in the presentation. That's not such a great idea. Somebody's working WAY too hard. Here's the smart and simple way to do the job.
First, choose View, Master, then click Slide Master. Or hold down the Shift key while you click the Slide View icon in the lower left of the PowerPoint screen. This takes you to the Slide Master. Anything on the Slide Master appears on every slide in your presentation, so draw or insert a graphic file as you normally would. Click Close on the Master toolbar or click either the Normal View or Slide View icon in the lower left of the PowerPoint screen to return to Slide view.
Now every slide in your presentation includes the new graphics elements you drew or inserted on the Master Slide. The only exception is slides based on the Title Master, but you can easily copy your graphics from the Slide Master to the Title Master if you want your title slides all to have the same graphics.
Using the Slide Master in this way has several benefits:
It saves a lot of work. Instead of having to put the graphics on each slide individually, you've added them to all your slides in one shot.
If you need to resize, move, or otherwise change the graphic, you only have to do it once on the Master Slide instead of on every slide in the presentation.
Any new slides you add to the presentation will automatically include the Master Slide graphics.
Your presentation files will be smaller than if you put the graphics on each page.
E-MAIL LINKS IN YOUR POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS
Nowadays 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.
WATERMARKS IN POWERPOINT SLIDES
A reader has a PowerPoint question:
"I have looked all over for a way to turn a ClipArt picture into a watermark in PowerPoint. I know how to make a watermark in Word, but in PowerPoint this eludes me. Is it possible?"
Yes, it is. Run PowerPoint and choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt, then double-click a picture to insert it. At this point, the floating Picture toolbar should appear. If it doesn't, choose View, Toolbars, Picture to enable it. Now click the Image Control button in the Picture toolbar (second from the left) and choose Watermark.
THINK LINK!
Take a moment to do some thinking about linking. For example, let's say you've developed several (or several dozen) presentations that include your logo on every page as a picture you've inserted from a graphic file. Maybe you've copied the picture onto each page, or maybe you've done it the smart way and put it on the master page of the template. If that last bit didn't make any sense to you, don't worry--we'll show you how to do that in an upcoming tip.
Everything looks great. Then one day you find out that the logo has been revised and now you've got to change every logo on every slide in every PowerPoint presentation you've created. Depending on how you inserted the logo picture in the first place, that might take hours or days of work--or it might take just a few seconds.
If you linked to the logo picture file rather than placing a copy of it, all you need to do is delete the original logo file and replace it with the new one (making sure it has the same filename). You see, when you link to a graphics file rather than inserting it, PowerPoint doesn't actually store the graphic in your presentation file--it simply remembers where it came from. When it's time to display the graphic, PowerPoint goes out to the hard drive and finds it again, so if you change the contents of the file when it's not looking, the next time it looks, it will find your new logo instead of the old. Automatically!
Neat trick. Here's how you make it work. Choose Insert, Picture, then choose From File. Browse to your graphics file as you ordinarily would and click to highlight it. PowerPoint shows you a preview image of the file. Now, instead of clicking the Insert button, click the small down arrow just to the right of the Insert button, and click Link To File on the pop-up menu. PowerPoint inserts your graphic into the presentation, just as it normally would.
Save your presentation, then close it. Now open the graphics file in another program and change it in some way--add some text, change a color, or delete something. Save the graphic, then reopen your presentation in PowerPoint. The graphic in your presentation has been automatically updated with the changes you made to the graphics file. And if you'd linked the same graphics file to a hundred other PowerPoint presentations, they'd all be updated automatically as well.
There's just one hitch to using linked graphics: When PowerPoint stores a link to a graphics file, it stores the complete path to the file. As long as you don't move the picture from the original folder the link points to, there should be no problems, but if you move the file or move the PowerPoint presentation to another machine that doesn't have the same folder structure (and the same graphic in the same folder), PowerPoint won't be able to find the file and won't be able to display the graphic. We'll have a solution for that little problem in an upcoming tip.
SURVIVING A MAC ATTACK--PART 1 OF 7
Sooner or later, we all end up facing that Terror of Terrors: How do you get your presentation to work on a Macintosh? Or there's Terror's Evil Twin: How do you get that Macintosh presentation to work on your PC?
There are several problems you're likely to run into when moving PowerPoint presentations (or any other type of files, for that matter) back and forth between PCs and Macs. PCs and Macs use different disk formats for diskettes, removable media like Zip disks, and hard drives.
PCs use the file extension (for example, the .PPT at the end of every PowerPoint filename) to distinguish between different kinds of files and to know what program to launch when you double-click a file or icon. Macs show the user the same filenames and often the same icons as we're used to seeing on PCs, but they use a very different method of associating files with the programs that created them. Stay tuned... more on the Mac Attack in our next tip.
SURVIVING A MAC ATTACK--PART 2 OF 7
Last time we talked about potential problems PC users might have when trying to work with or on Mac machines. To a computer, the letters, numbers, and punctuation that we see as text are just a series of numbers. The problem is that a particular number might be associated with different characters on different computer systems. There are quite a few special characters that are encoded differently between Mac and PC, so what appears as 1/2 on a PC turns into a Greek Omega on the Mac. For more detailed information, see
ftp://rdpslides.com/ENCODING.PDF
In some cases, the actual data saved by the PC version of a program will be different from the data saved by the Mac version of the same program. PCs and Macs also handle graphics quite differently in some cases. Both can also use platform-independent graphics formats like EPS, TIF, and several other types. However, if the graphics are stored in platform-specific formats like WMF on the PC or PICT on the Mac, you can run into problems when moving files from one platform to the other. Similarly, different multimedia types (such as sounds and movies) don't always survive the jump across the cross-platform gulch.
In upcoming tips, we'll fill you in on the details--and what you can do about each problem to minimize its effect on your presentations.
SURVIVING A MAC ATTACK--PART 3 OF 7: DISK FORMATS
The different disk formats used by PCs and Macs used to be a real show-stopper. Different file types, graphics, fonts . . . none of the rest of the differences between the two mattered much if you couldn't even move files from one platform to the other.
Things are different nowadays. For starters, just about any Mac out there can read and write to PC-formatted disks. Most Macs can handle PC Zip disks and other types of media as well. That pretty much solves the problem of moving files to and fro--stick with PC-formatted media for the transfer and it will generally work out.
If the folks at the Mac end can't give you files on PC-formatted media for some reason, you can install software like DataVIZ's MacOpener, which lets you read nearly any Mac-formatted disk on your PC. You can find MacOpener at
http://www.dataviz.com
Pierre Duhem also has some excellent PC/Mac disk utilities and cross-platform information at
http://www.macdisk.com
SURVIVING A MAC ATTACK--PART 4 OF 7: FILE TYPES
On PCs, it's pretty simple to guess what application to which a given file belongs. If it has a .PPT extension, it's a PowerPoint file. Once Windows sees the .PPT extension and works out the association to PowerPoint, it displays a PowerPoint icon for the file. On the Mac, it's also simple. If a file has a PowerPoint icon, it belongs to PowerPoint.
So far, so good. But watch what happens when we play the old switcheroo and move a PC PowerPoint file to the Mac and move a Mac version of the same file to the PC.
When the PC file hits the Mac, it might appear as a generic document icon rather than as a PowerPoint presentation. The information the Mac needs to distinguish one file type from another wasn't supplied by the PC, so the Mac has to punt. The Mac user won't be able to double-click the file's icon to work with the file, but the user CAN start PowerPoint, then choose File, Open to open the file. If the user then saves the file again, the Mac will supply the needed file type information, and the file will have a PowerPoint icon from then on.
When a Mac file moves to a PC, it loses the Mac file type information that distinguishes it from other Mac file types, but that doesn't really matter--the PC can't use that information anyway. But since Macs don't use file extensions to distinguish one file type from another, Mac users aren't in the habit of using PC-style extensions, and PowerPoint/Mac doesn't automatically supply them the way the PC version does. In short, if you get an extensionless file from a Mac PowerPoint user, rename the file with a .PPT extension so Windows and PowerPoint will know what to make of it.
SURVIVING A MAC ATTACK--PART 5 OF 7: DIFFERENT DATA, DIFFERENT FONTS
Not too long ago, moving presentations from PC to Mac could have been the makings of a pretty good plot for the likes of a Stephen King. For the most part, there were Mac programs and there were PC programs, but very few had more than token cross-platform compatibility. Even if you could get the files from one platform to the other--and even if you had the same program on both--it wasn't likely that you'd be able to do much with the files once they arrived.
Fortunately, that's all changed. PowerPoint 98 for the Macintosh stores information in virtually the same way as PowerPoint 97 for Windows, and each version understands the few differences and conducts any needed translation automatically. They even do a nice job of translating between the different character encodings used on Macs and PCs. So other than the few PC characters that have no Mac equivalent or vice versa, you don't have to worry too much about this problem.
What can still get you into trouble are fonts. They often have similar, but slightly different, names on the PC versus Mac, and in any case, you can't use PC fonts on Macs, nor the vice of that versa. While you can usually embed fonts in your PC PowerPoint files to ensure that the recipient has them available when they open your presentation, font embedding isn't supported on the Mac version of PowerPoint.
If you want to avoid font problems altogether, stick with the standard fonts that come with Windows--Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New--all of which have equivalents on the Mac side. You're fairly safe--and a lot less restricted--if you stick with the fonts that came with PowerPoint.
SURVIVING A MAC ATTACK--PART 6 OF 7: GRAPHICS FORMATS
In this series of tips, we've dealt with most of the common (and generally easily solved) problems that arise when moving files between PC and Mac versions of PowerPoint.
The remaining problem you're likely to run into arises because Macs and PCs have different "favored" graphics formats, and these are not always compatible with one another.
When you need to move a presentation from PC to Mac (or the other way around), have PowerPoint ungroup each graphic, then immediately regroup it. This converts the PICT or WMF objects into native PowerPoint objects, which DO translate nicely across platforms.
When adding bitmap graphics to a presentation on the Mac, don't use PICT graphics files and avoid cut and paste to get graphics into presentations. Use TIFF files instead.
SURVIVING A MAC ATTACK--PART 7 OF 7: MOVIE FILES
When you receive a PowerPoint/Mac file that contains movies, you may find when you display the presentation that the movies are missing. Instead, you may see a message like "QuickTime and a video decompressor are needed to see this picture."
This can happen because PCs and Macs use different methods to specify file folders. PowerPoint can't find the movie file on the PC because it can't understand the Mac method of specifying folders. Another possible cause: PCs and Macs use different platform-specific methods for playing movies.
To solve this problem, you'll need to get the original movie files from the Mac user who created the presentation. Copy these to the folder where you've stored the PowerPoint presentation. Open the presentation and delete the existing movies from it, then reinsert them from the original files.
ACCESSING YOUR MACRO BUTTONS
If 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.
CREATING BUTTONS FOR YOUR MACROS
In 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.
AVOIDING MACRO VIRUS WARNINGS WHEN HYPERLINKING
When you create a hyperlink to files or objects outside your PowerPoint presentation, you may see a macro virus warning when you follow the hyperlink during a slide presentation. Considering all the nasty viruses out there, this is probably a good thing, since it forces us to think twice before running a potentially damaging link in PowerPoint files we've received from others. On the other hand, this is also a very annoying thing when we're showing presentations with hyperlinks on our own PCs--where we KNOW all the external objects or programs are perfectly safe.
Microsoft has a very detailed technical bulletin about PowerPoint security settings, what they mean, and how you can change them to make it act a wee bit less protective. To get a copy of it, send an email to
mshelp@microsoft.com
and type
Q212290
in the subject header.
The short answer is to use the Run Program option instead of Hyperlink in action settings. For example, instead of hyperlinking to MYFILE.TXT, choose Run Program and type
NOTEPAD MYFILE.TXT
Of course, replace with your correct drive:\folder info.
GET RID OF THOSE PESKY MACRO VIRUS WARNINGS
Sometimes it seems that any feature that brings added security also makes life a little more difficult for us honest software users. Macro virus protection is an example of this.
Virus protection is unquestionably a good thing, but when you turn it on in PowerPoint, you'll see a warning message every time you open a PowerPoint file that contains macros. You'll also find that certain action settings trigger macro virus warnings, even though there are no macros in your PowerPoint file. For example, if you insert a hyperlink that runs a program, PowerPoint may bring up a warning message.
That can be a very, very good thing if you're playing a presentation from somebody you don't know and trust, but it's not very professional looking when it pops up in the middle of one of your own presentations. If you run into this problem, check your Security settings. Choose Tools, Macro, then select Security. As long as you're only running your own presentations, it should be perfectly safe to set PowerPoint's Security Level to Low. Don't forget to change it back to Medium or High when you're done.
SPEED UP YOUR WORK WITH MACROS
Have 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.
WE'VE CONVERTED TO OFFICE 2000, BUT...
If you're using PowerPoint 2000 but need to share presentations with coworkers and others who still use older versions of PowerPoint, you can always choose File, Save As and specify the appropriate older version of PowerPoint in the Save As Type drop-down list. But let's face it--that's a nuisance to have to do every time you save a file, and it's too easy to forget. That annoys the neighbors.
You can set PowerPoint always to save in a particular format, if you like. Choose Tools, Options and click the Save tab of the Options dialog box. Choose the version you want as your default save type in the Save PowerPoint Files As drop-down list and select the Convert Charts When Saving As Previous Version option.
Click OK. From now on, PowerPoint will automatically save presentations in the appropriate older-version format. PowerPoint 2000 and 97 share the same file format, so you don't need to do this if everyone else you work with has PowerPoint 97.
Keep in mind that pre-97 versions of PowerPoint don't support bitmap compression, so when you save to PowerPoint 95 and earlier, your files will get quite large if they include many pictures.
OTHER USES FOR NOTES PAGES--PART 1 OF 2
It only stands to reason that PowerPoint's Speaker Notes pages are handy for creating . . . speaker notes. But don't assume that because they're called Speaker Notes, you have to limit yourself to using them for only speaker notes.
For example, let's say that you use PowerPoint to produce presentations for several clients and need a good way to proof-print your work for their approval. Of course, you could simply print the slides themselves, but you'll run into a few problems if you do:
The slides won't be numbered, which makes it difficult to find the right slide quickly when the client calls in corrections or changes. You can always have PowerPoint apply numbers to the slides, but if you don't want numbers in the final presentation, you'll have to remember to remove them later.
There's no blank margin for the client's handwritten notes.
You can't easily add other useful text--the presentation's filename, for example, or your name, phone, and fax numbers.
The simple solution: Print Notes pages instead of slides when you need to make proof printouts. It's quite simple to set up. First, choose File, Page Setup and set Notes, Handouts And Outline to the same orientation as your slides. Then click OK.
Choose View, Master, Notes Master to go to the Notes Master. There you select and delete the notes text placeholder and enlarge the slide image placeholder to suit your needs. You can also format the existing header, date, footer, and slide number. Likewise, you can add any other text and graphics on the Notes Master page. Anything you add here will print on all of your Notes pages.
When you finish formatting, click Close or choose View, Notes Page to see the results of your work.
And now that you know you don't have to use Notes pages the way Microsoft intended you to use them, you have our permission to use them in any way that suits your needs. We'll show you another use for them in an upcoming tip, and if you come up with any unique Notes pages tricks of your own, tell us about them.
OTHER USES FOR NOTES PAGES--PART 2 OF 2
In a previous tip, we showed you how to use PowerPoint's Notes pages to make really useful proof prints. Those of you using inkjet printers will want to know about another unusual way to use Notes pages.
The problem: Few printers can print right out to the edge of a page. Laser printers usually have a 1/4-inch unprintable margin all around; PowerPoint centers your slides in the area the printer CAN print, so it's generally not a worry. But most inkjet printers have uneven unprintable margins. The margin might be 1/4 inch at the top and sides, but considerably larger at the bottom of the page. The result: PowerPoint still tries to center your slides in the printable area, and your slides print off-center.
The cure: Print Notes pages instead of slides.
Start by choosing File, Page Setup and set your notes page orientation to match the slide orientation. Next, choose View, Master, Notes Master. On the Notes Master page, select and delete everything but the slide placeholder image.
Select the slide placeholder image and drag one of its corners to enlarge it. Hold down the Shift key while you drag to ensure that you don't distort the image's proportions accidentally.
Bonus hint: Hold down both the Shift and Ctrl keys to have PowerPoint maintain the proportions AND scale the placeholder in both directions from the center. This will save a lot of time since you won't have to keep resizing and moving the image to keep it centered. Leave plenty of margin around the image; you don't want to size it up to fill the page--you already know that your inkjet can't PRINT a whole page.
Click Close, then print a sample Notes page to your inkjet printer.
Note how far off-center the slide image is, then choose View, Masters, Notes Master again and move the slide image placeholder on the Notes Master left or right to compensate. It may take a few tries to get it right; when you do, you'll have a slightly off-center slide image on your Notes pages, but when you print them to your inkjet printer, they'll be dead center, just the way you want 'em.
INCONSISTENT PAGE-UP/PAGE-DOWN BEHAVIOR
Have you ever noticed that the Page Up and Page Down keys act inconsistently in PowerPoint? Here's why:
In previous versions of PowerPoint, you could have only one view (Slide, Outline, Notes, etc.) active at a time. In PowerPoint 2000, you can have all three visible on the screen at once, each in its own "pane." That can be quite a handy way to work, but it can also be the source of confusion when each view treats keys like Page Up and Page Down differently. In Slide view, Page Up/Page Down move you to the previous or next slide respectively, but in Outline view, Page Up moves you to the previous page IN THE OUTLINE, which might represent two, three, or 30 slides, and the Slide view pane follows along.
The trick is to keep an eye on the status bar, which will tell you either what slide you're on or indicate that you're in Outline or Notes Slide view. That way, you know which pane will handle your Page Up/Page Down keystrokes. Or simpler yet, decide which pane you want your Page Up/Page Down keystroke to apply to, click anywhere in that pane to activate it, and THEN press Page Up/Page Down.
CHANGING THE DEFAULT PICTURES FOLDER
Have you noticed that the first time you insert a picture into a newly opened file, PowerPoint takes you to a folder called \My Pictures? Sure, if you navigate to some other folder from there, PowerPoint will remember it, but only for the duration of your PowerPoint session. As soon as you restart PowerPoint, you're back to \My Pictures again. Isn't there some way to change this?
Actually, no. But there IS a way to save yourself a lot of aggravation if you don't WANT to store all your pictures in the \My Pictures folder: Put shortcuts to your actual picture folders in the \My Pictures folder. PowerPoint will still point you to \My Pictures every time, but all you'll have to do is double-click the shortcut folder where your pictures are really stored and you're there.
RIGHT-SIZING PICTURES
When you insert scans and other similar digital pictures into PowerPoint, you walk a fine line between choosing an image that's too big (and that slows down your presentation) and choosing one that's too small (resulting in the dreaded "jaggies" when you display it). How do you know what the ideal size for an image should be?
If your presentation is intended for screen show for use on a laptop, monitor, or video projector, deciding the correct size for the image is actually pretty simple. You need to know the video resolution of the computer the show will run on first. To find this out, right-click the desktop and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. On the Settings tab, you'll find the current resolution listed under Screen Area. A common value you'll find there is 800x600 pixels for laptops or 1024x768 for desktop machines.
For images that will occupy the entire screen, that's your answer. If the screen itself is 800x600 pixels, you want your full screen images to be 800x600 pixels also. If your images are a little larger or smaller than this, it's probably nothing to worry about--just use them as is. But if they're considerably larger, try using a paint program to "downsample" them to the correct size. They'll display faster and probably will look better on screen.
If you'll be using an image smaller than full screen, it needs proportionally fewer pixels. For example, if the image will occupy only one-quarter of an 800x600-pixel screen, it needs to be only 800/4, or 200, pixels wide.
VISIT A NEWSGROUP FOR ANSWERS TO POWERPOINT QUESTIONS
If you have questions about PowerPoint, visit Microsoft's PowerPoint newsgroup on the Web. The PowerPoint newsgroup is particularly active and well attended by knowledgeable PowerPoint users and Microsoft MVPs (volunteers Microsoft has recognized for their expertise and willingness to help other users).
Newsgroups are a kind of virtual "room" where anyone with a question is free to ask it, and anyone with an answer to the question can respond. Unlike e-mail, newsgroups are a public forum.
You need software that allows you to read the postings in newsgroups you're interested in, but luckily, it's easy to find. Outlook Express (OE) does a nice job of it and is quite simple to set up. Assuming you have OE installed and you're able to send e-mail over the Internet, here's how to set it up to read the PowerPoint newsgroup (and others, if you like):
Start OE. Select Tools, Accounts. Click the News tab of the Internet Accounts dialog box. Next, click Add, then click News. This starts a wizard that collects the information needed to locate the newsgroup. Most of the answers will be obvious (your name, your e-mail address, etc.). When the wizard asks for the News (NNTP) server, enter
msnews.microsoft.com
Make sure there's no check mark next to My News Server Requires Me To Log In. When prompted, click Finish, which takes you back to the Internet Accounts dialog box. Click Close. Click Yes when OE asks
Would you like to download newsgroups from the news account you added?
OE contacts the news server you've added and gets a list of all the different newsgroups on the server. This can take some time for servers with as many groups as msnews, so be patient.
Once the newsgroups are downloaded, you'll see your new newsgroup in the OE folders list. Click it, then click the Newsgroups button on the toolbar or press Ctrl-W to open the Newsgroup Subscriptions dialog box. Type
PowerPoint
in the Display Newsgroups Which Contain text box. Several newsgroups will appear in the list below. Click the one called microsoft.public.powerpoint, click Subscribe, then click OK.
Now click on the plus (+) sign to the left of the msnews.microsoft.com folder in your OE folder list and you'll see that microsoft.public.powerpoint is listed beneath. Click it and you'll see what appears to be many e-mail messages to you. In fact, these are newsgroup messages, which you can read and respond to just like you do regular e-mail. If you have a particular question, click New Post, type your question, then click Send. Visit the newsgroup periodically to check for answers.
Setting up other software to read newsgroup messages is not all that different. The information above should be enough to get you started, though the exact steps will be different.
HELP! POWERPOINT'S ACTING UP--PART 1 OF 2
If PowerPoint doesn't seem to be acting the way you think it should, here are a few quick tricks you can use to help pinpoint the problem or in some cases, fix it.
Save your work, quit PowerPoint, re-start PowerPoint, and try to re-create the situation that caused the problem. Computer problems can be random, one-time occurrences. There's no sense spending a lot of time trying to troubleshoot a problem that only occurs once.
Restart Windows, then try to re-create the problem. Sometimes all PowerPoint and Windows need is a fresh start to "clear their heads."
Restart Windows in Safe Mode and try to re-create the problem. If you use Windows 95, restart the computer and when you see Starting Windows 95 on the screen, press F8 until a menu appears. Choose Safe Mode from the menu. If you use Window NT, choose the VGA mode from the startup menu. If you use Windows 98, hold down Ctrl while your computer restarts, then choose Safe Mode from the Windows 98 Startup menu. If the problem can be duplicated normally but not in Safe Mode, it usually means there's a problem with one of your drivers (drivers are programs that allow Windows to work with the hardware installed in your computer). Most often, the problem is in the video drivers; you can usually download updated video drivers from the video board manufacturer's Web site.
Changing the graphics acceleration is another alternative to replacing video drivers. Choose Start, Settings, Control Panel. When the Control Panel window appears, double-click System. Click the Performance tab of the System Properties dialog box, then click Graphics. Change the position of the Hardware acceleration slider bar from Full to None, then click OK. You may need to restart your computer at this point. Changing the Hardware acceleration setting to None may slow down your computer a little. If you find that the problem disappears with acceleration set to None, try advancing the setting toward Full a little at a time until the problem reappears, then set acceleration back one notch.
PERSONALIZE YOUR PRESENTATIONS
Do you ever find yourself giving the same presentation over and over? It's nothing to be ashamed of--why waste time reinventing the same wheel time after time? Still, wouldn't it be nice if you could personalize your presentation a bit for each different audience? It's really not that difficult.
Suppose your presentation starts out with a title slide that says "Welcome Amalgamated, Inc." and some bullet slides that are called things like "Our relationship with Amalgamated, Inc." and "How can we serve Amalgamated, Inc. better?" In fact, you've personalized every slide in the show with Amalgamated's name. The presentation went over so well with the president of Amalgamated that you'd like to use it again in your pitch to Megabux, Ltd. tomorrow, but you don't have time to change all 100 of your slides from Amalgamated to Megabux.
No problem! Here's what you need to do. First, open your presentation in PowerPoint. Choose Edit, Replace (or press Ctrl-H) to open the Replace dialog box. In the Find What text box, type
Amalgamated, Inc.
In the Replace With text box, type
Megabux, Ltd.
Then, click Replace All. PowerPoint replaces "Amalgamated, Inc." with "Megabux, Ltd." throughout your presentation. Check each slide in the presentation to make sure that PowerPoint hasn't missed any replacements. The Replace feature won't change text that's part of a chart, graphic, or other inserted object. You'll have to fix those yourself. Finally, save your newly personalized presentation under a new name by selecting File, Save As.
I CAN'T RUN A MACRO OR LOAD AN ADD-IN
If your security level in PowerPoint is set to High, PowerPoint won't let you run macros in a presentation, and it won't let you load add-ins that contain unsigned macros. "Signing" is a special process developers use to identify themselves and their products to PowerPoint--it's a way to ensure you that the add-ins and macros are safe and don't contain dangerous viruses.
If you're certain that the presentation or add-in came from a reliable source, you may want to allow the macros to run even though they're not signed. Choose Tools, Macro, Security and set the Security level to Medium rather than High. Close the presentation and reopen it, or unload the add-in, then reload it. You'll now be able to use the macros.
You may want to set the Security level back to High when you've finished using the presentation or add-in.
CHANGING GROUPS OF SLIDES
While it's simple enough to change the background, layout, preset animation type, and the like for two or three slides, doing the same thing for dozens of slides seems like a recipe for SERIOUS tedium. But it doesn't have to be.
Instead of making all the needed changes on each slide, switch to Slide Sorter view, select each of the slides you want to change, and then make your changes to all of them at once. Here are some of the changes you can make to a group of slides selected in Slide Sorter view:
FORMAT
Background
Layout
Color scheme
SLIDE SHOW settings
Present animation
Slide transition
This is a handy trick to know if you've rehearsed a slide show and then decided that you want to remove all the animation timings PowerPoint recorded for you. Normally, it'd be a very tedious task, but now you know how to do it with just a few keystrokes. Press Ctrl-A to select all of the slides, then choose Slide Show, Slide Transition to bring up the Slide Transition dialog box, where you can set Automatically After to 0 and click Apply or Apply To All to remove timings from all of your slides at once.
CONTROLLING YOUR SLIDE SHOWS--PART 1 OF 4
Most of us just click our way through presentations one slide at a time. Mouse-click. New slide. Mouse-click. New slide. And most of the time, that's just fine. It's simple and it gets the job done. But once in a while you'd like to do a little more (or maybe you have to work with a little less . . . ever have your mouse go bad right before an important presentation?). Whatever the case, PowerPoint lets you use the keyboard to do anything you could do with the mouse--and a lot more.
For starters, choose Tools, Options and go to the View tab. In the Slide Show options area:
Clear the Popup Menu On Right Mouse Click check box. This disables the usual right-click pop-up menu and enables you to better control your presentation. You'll be able to back up a slide by right-clicking the mouse in addition to advancing by left-clicking.
Clear the Show Popup Menu Button check box. This removes the menu button that PowerPoint otherwise adds to your shows. One more distraction gone. You'll learn how to replace all its functions with keystroke shortcuts in this and following tips.
If you want your slide show to end with a black slide, leave the last check box selected. If you'd rather the show simply quit after the last slide, deselect this option also.
These are all settings that apply to PowerPoint itself, not each individual presentation. There are other options you can set for each individual presentation; you'll learn about those in upcoming tips.
For now, try out the new settings you've just selected. Open a presentation and choose View, Slide Show (or press F5). Use the left and right mouse buttons to navigate forward and backward through your presentation to get a feel for how it works. And here's one more nifty trick we'll leave you with:
Type a number on either the regular number keys or the numeric keypad, then press Enter. PowerPoint goes directly to that slide. For example, to go directly to slide 15 from the first slide in your presentation (or any other), type 15, press Enter, and you're there.
CONTROLLING YOUR SLIDE SHOWS--PART 2 OF 4
In a previous tip, we showed you how to take a little more control over how PowerPoint displays your slide shows. You learned how to use the mouse to go to the next or previous slides and to jump to any slide in a presentation instantly. That's nice, but is that all you get? Not by a long shot! Start your slide show again and try these on for size:
If you don't want to use the mouse at all, you can move back and forth in several other ways:
Press N to move to the next slide or P to move to the previous one. PageDown and PageUp also move you forward and backward respectively.
So do the Right Arrow/Left Arrow and Down Arrow/Up Arrow pairs. You can also press Enter or Spacebar to move forward a slide or Backspace to move back one.
Now let's suppose that in the middle of your presentation somebody asks a question that you don't have a slide for. While you answer the question, do you leave an irrelevant slide on screen? Of course not! You press B or the Period key to blank the screen to black. Or if you prefer a lighter mood, press W or Comma to make the screen go white. When you're ready to resume your regularly scheduled PowerPoint programming, press the same key again to redisplay the slide you were on. Or press any of the slide show navigation keys we mentioned earlier to "unblank" the screen and move to the next or previous slide.
CONTROLLING YOUR SLIDE SHOWS--PART 3 OF 4
In previous tips, you learned how to navigate between slides in your screen show using keystrokes rather than mouse clicks. PowerPoint also gives you several useful ways to navigate on any given slide in your show:
Let's say you have a slide with hyperlinks that perform some action when you click them. Maybe they navigate to a Web site, display a movie, run a macro, or any of the many other actions of which PowerPoint is capable. And, as we've been discussing in this series, you still want to avoid using the mouse if possible. Can you activate your hyperlinks without a mouse? You bet!
Press Tab to go to the first hyperlink on a slide, then press Enter (while that link is selected) to activate its "mouse click" action.
Press Shift-Enter instead to perform the "mouse-over" action of the hyperlink.
You can press Tab repeatedly to cycle forward one at a time through the hyperlinks on the slide or Shift-Tab to cycle backwards.
Finally, in a previous tip we had you disable the on-screen pop-up button to cut down on screen clutter. What if you need to access one of its functions? No problem. Press Shift-F10, and then navigate with your arrow keys or mouse to the option you want.
CONTROLLING YOUR SLIDE SHOWS--PART 4 OF 4
To complete this series of tips on controlling your slide shows, here are a few miscellaneous items that might prove useful, as well as one final tip that you'll want to remember even if you forget all the others.
Press S or the Plus key to pause or restart an automatic slide show without having to stop it completely.
Press Esc or Hyphen to end a slide show immediately.
Ctrl-P displays the annotation pen or changes the mouse pointer to the pen pointer.
Ctrl-A displays the mouse pointer or changes the pen pointer to a mouse pointer.
Ctrl-H hides either the mouse or pen pointer immediately.
Ctrl-U hides the pointer after ten to 15 seconds of inactivity. Moving the mouse redisplays the pointer in this mode, then after another period of inactivity, it disappears again. This is handy if you don't want the mouse pointer visible most of the time but do occasionally need to use it.
Press E to erase all on-screen annotations.
And finally, The One To Remember: When in doubt, press F1. That brings up an instant help screen that lists all the keystrokes you can use during a presentation.
SELECTING MULTIPLE SLIDES IN SLIDE SORTER
You already know that you can click the thumbnail of a slide to select it in Slide Sorter view, but did you know that you can select and work with more than one slide at a time?
To select a continuous range of slides, you just click the first slide in the range to select it, then hold down the Shift key while you click to select the last slide in the range. All of the slides in between the two will be added to the selection as well. You can also click outside any of the slide images, then drag an imaginary rectangle around the group of slides you want to select. Any slides within or touched by this imaginary rectangle will be selected.
To select a discontinuous range of slides, you click the first slide you want to select, then hold down the Ctrl key as you click each additional slide you want to add to the selection. If you make a mistake, Ctrl-click a selected slide again to deselect it.
To select all of the slides in the presentation, press Ctrl-A.
SPEEDUP TIP FOR SLIDE SORTER
When 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.
ZOOMING AROUND IN SLIDE SORTER VIEW
When 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.
PLAY SOUNDS THROUGH SEVERAL SLIDES
Normally a sound inserted on a given slide will play only until you move onto the next slide. That's not an unreasonable thing for PowerPoint to do, but it can be frustrating when you want to start a sound on the first slide in your presentation and have it run as background music for the remainder of your show. Fortunately, you can get PowerPoint to cooperate with you.
Start by inserting the sound you want to play. Choose Insert, Movies And Sounds, then click Sound From Gallery, Sound From File, Play CD Audio Track Or Record Sound. Insert the sound you want to include. With the sound's icon selected, choose Slide Show, Custom Animation (or pick Custom Animation from the context menu that appears when you right-click the sound's icon).
Click the Multimedia Settings tab and make certain that the object is selected. Select the option Play Using Animation Order, then select Continue Slide Show. This tells PowerPoint NOT to stop playing the sound when you move to the next slide. Then under Stop Playing, click After and dial in the number of subsequent slides through which you'd like the sound to play. If you want the sound to continue through the end of the presentation, simply dial in a number that's higher than the number of slides in your presentation--999 works well for nearly ANY presentation!
That's all there is to it. Your sound will now continue after you leave the slide you placed it on.
NOTE: This works only with sounds you've brought in via Insert, Movies And Sounds. If you use the media player, it may not work as expected.
POWERPOINT SPEEDUP TIP
When 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.
WHAT'S SELECTED HERE?
One frequent point of confusion for new PowerPoint users and experienced ones alike is the distinction between text and the text box that contains it.
When you click anywhere in a text box, PowerPoint assumes you want to edit the text, so it shows you an I-beam text insertion cursor. You can then edit the text or select it and apply formatting if you like, but the formatting will apply only to the selected text. If you want to format all the text in the box, you can drag to select it first, but it's faster to apply formatting to the text box itself.
Formatting you apply to the text box applies to all the text in the box automatically. To select the text box, click on the box surrounding the text. That can be a bit fussy, so luckily there's a simpler way. Click anywhere in the text box to get the I-beam cursor, then press Esc to select the text box itself.
SHAPES PRINT WITH UNEXPECTED BORDERS
If you print your PowerPoint slides with either the Grayscale or Pure Black & White options selected in the Print dialog box, you may find that objects you expected to be invisible print with a black outline. For example, if you've used a rectangle the same color as the background to block out another object on the slide, the rectangle will show up as an unfilled but outlined rectangle on your printouts.
If you run into this, first try printing the problem page again, but deselect the options Grayscale and/or Pure Black & White. If that doesn't help, try customizing the way the object prints in Black and White View. Click Black And White on the View menu; PowerPoint displays your presentation as it will print it to a black and white printer. Right-click the object that you're having trouble with, choose Black And White from the context menu, then click White.
Verify that the object is displayed on screen the way you want to print. If not, try one of the other Black And White options.
Note that this affects ONLY the way PowerPoint prints your presentation to black and white printers. It won't affect what you get when you display the presentation as a screen show or print to a color printer.
SELECT SHAPES FROM THE KEYBOARD
You can select any shape (i.e., text block, drawing object, graph) directly from the keyboard in PowerPoint. If you're currently editing text in a text block or shape, press Esc.
Press Tab to select either the first shape on the slide (if no shape is currently selected) or the next shape on the slide after the currently selected shape. Keep pressing Tab until the shape you want is selected. Oops! Pressed Tab one too many times and overshot the mark, did you? No problem. Hold down the Shift key while you press Tab to backtrack and select shapes in reverse order.
SPEED KEYS FOR COPYING FORMATTING
While you can use the Format Painter button on the Standard toolbar to copy and paste formatting from one object to another, sometimes it's quicker to do the job with a few keystrokes, especially when you're in the midst of entering text. Here are a few keyboard tricks that will speed you on your way:
USING THE TAB KEY TO SELECT OBJECTS ON A SLIDE
If you have a lot of overlapping objects on a PowerPoint slide (as you might if you're editing clip art or a complex drawing), it can be difficult to select the object you want to work with. Instead of clicking to select objects, try using the Tab key instead.
When you press Tab, PowerPoint selects the first object on the slide. Then, each time you press Tab after that, it selects the next object, so you can easily "cycle" through the objects on your slide by repeatedly pressing Tab. If you overshoot the mark and miss the object you were after, hold down Shift while you press Tab to reverse direction and select the previous object.
You can get to the object you want a little more quickly if you first click an object that's a bit before it in the drawing order, then use Tab to move to the object you actually want.
WHERE DID THE SQUARES COME FROM
Occasionally, you'll open a PowerPoint presentation on a Windows 95 or Windows 98 computer and see square characters instead of symbols. This can happen when the presentation was created on a computer running Windows NT 4 and the symbols were inserted with the [Normal Text] option rather than using a standard symbols font. NT 4 supports many more characters in its normal text fonts than Windows 95/98, so Windows 95/98 can't display some symbols that NT 4 can.
Have the NT user who created the presentation change the special symbols. They should use one of the standard shared Windows Symbol fonts that are common to all Windows systems rather than the [Normal Text] option. These standard fonts are
Symbol
MT Extra
Monotype Sorts
Wingdings
GET FINER CONTROL OVER TAB STOPS
If 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.
ALIGNING BULLETED TEXT
Have you ever had problems with your lower-level bulleted text not lining up nicely against the text in the bulleted text above it? Assuming you want the bullets in your lower-level text to line up with the left edge of higher-level text, here's how you can make it happen:
First, choose View and select the Ruler option to turn on PowerPoint's horizontal ruler. Click to select the text box you want to work with.
Note that there are two markers on the ruler for each indent level. The lower (triangle-plus-square) markers set the indent for the beginning of each text level, while the upper (triangle-only) markers set the indent for the bullet characters themselves. You'll be working with the latter.
Hold down Ctrl while you drag the upper marker for the text you want to work with. As you drag, you'll see a vertical dotted line that helps you align the marker position precisely to the text you want it to align with. Once it's lined up the way you want it, release the mouse button, then release the Ctrl key.
TEXT IN A BOX (OR CIRCLE . . . OR POLYGON . . . OR . . . )
Have you ever needed to center some text in a rectangle or circle or other shape? Here's a simple way to get it done: Draw a shape and start typing.
When you have a shape selected and start to type text, PowerPoint automatically puts your text in the shape, nicely centered. The only problem is that PowerPoint puts all your text on one line. It doesn't automatically word-wrap it, so if you type more than a few words, the text will probably extend beyond the boundary of the shape you're typing it into. To fix this, right-click the shape, then click Format AutoShape on the pop-up menu. Click the Text Box tab and put a checkmark next to Word Wrap Text In AutoShape, then click OK.
INSERT TEXT QUICKLY
When you want to select a text box to edit or insert text, you can use the mouse to click it, but if you're in a hurry, press Ctrl-Enter to select the title text box and begin typing.
Press Ctrl-Enter again to select the bulleted text box and begin typing. Press Ctrl-Enter again to insert a new slide after the current slide. Its layout will be the same as the current one.
GET BETTER LOOKING SHADOWED TEXT
PowerPoint sometimes produces odd-looking and seemingly unpredictable effects when you apply shadow formatting to your text.
Actually, the result is quite predictable (if unlovely at times). PowerPoint selects the shadow color based on the slide background color. The problem is that it doesn't always choose well, and it doesn't give you any control over the decision.
Instead of applying a shadow attribute to your text formatting, use an object shadow instead. If your text already has a text shadow, remove it. Select the text, choose Format, Font, and remove the check box next to Shadow (or click the Text Shadow button on the Formatting toolbar). Now apply an object shadow to the text. With the text still selected, click the Shadow button on the Drawing toolbar and pick the shadow style you'd like from the pop-up menu. Or pick Shadow Settings from the pop-up menu to bring up the Shadow Settings toolbar. You can use the Shadow Settings toolbar to turn the shadow on and off, change the shadow direction and depth, or set the shadow's color.
TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR TEXT SHADOW COLORS
PowerPoint 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.
TEXT-IN-A-SHAPE
Have 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.
SLAM DUNK YOUR TEXT INTO POWERPOINT
Ever have one of those presentations that comes up suddenly out of the blue and has to get done NOW? Or would you like to speed up the process of creating presentations in PowerPoint generally?
Well, here's how we've learned to cut the time it takes to get a presentation up and on its feet: Start a new presentation (File, New) and pick the design template you'd like for your presentation. Go directly to Outline View. Enter all the text for your presentation in Outline View. Start with the title for the first slide, then press Enter to go to a new line. Press Tab to indent it beneath the title and enter your text bullet points. When you finish with the last bullet point on the first slide, press Enter, then press Shift-Tab to start a new slide.
Continue this way until you've entered all the text for your presentation. If you have a slide that requires a chart or just a graphic, enter a reminder of what's needed either as the slide's title or its bullet text.
Once all the text is in place, switch to Slide view and look at each slide in the presentation (press PageDown and PageUp to switch from slide to slide). Don't make any changes yet; you're just trying to get an overall sense of how well the average amount of text you've entered per slide fits. Let's say that on average, it's a little on the long side; it's running off the bottom of a fair number of slides.
Choose View, Master, Slide Master and decrease the text size of the text placeholder box. Then choose View, Normal and check your slides again. If most of your text now fits comfortably, you can adjust any holdouts individually. The trick here is to let the Master do 90 percent of the formatting and sizing for you (so you don't have to do it manually!).
Finally, make another pass through your presentation, adding graphics and charts and any other necessary bits. Since you typed reminders to yourself in the slide text, these will be easy to find. It may seem counterintuitive to do it this way rather than entering and formatting your text on each slide, but give it a try. You'll find yourself FLYING through the process of creating new presentations.
SETTING DEFAULT TEXT FORMATTING
Have 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).
OUTLINE VIEW SPEED KEYS
PowerPoint gives you all the outline formatting control you need via its many menu and toolbar choices, but in our experience, most people who use the Outliner in PowerPoint are serious typists. They like to do it all from the keyboard whenever possible. And is it ever possible to really work the Outliner hard without ever moving your hands off the home keys!
To demote a paragraph, press Alt-Shift-Left Arrow.
To promote a paragraph, press Alt-Shift-Right Arrow.
Similarly, you can move selected paragraphs up/down with Alt-Shift-Up Arrow/Down Arrow. (You can use these two key combinations when you're working with bulleted text in Slide view as well.)
Press Alt-Shift-1 (the number "one", not the letter "l") to collapse the outline to the first heading level--in other words, to view just the slide titles without any slide text for a quick overview of your presentation.
Alt-Shift-Plus Sign (+) expands the text beneath the current heading, and Alt-Shift-Minus Sign (-) collapses it again. Alt-Shift-A expands the outline to show all heading levels.
Finally, if you prefer to see the outline text without formatting, press the Slash key (/) on the numeric keypad to toggle formatting off and on.
MACROS IN TEMPLATES
In 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.
WHERE DID THE TITLES GO
PowerPoint has a handy slide show feature that lets you navigate directly to any slide in your presentation. During your show, right-click on the screen; choose Go, By Title; and pick the slide you want to jump to from the pop-up menu.
Sometimes, though, you'll just see something like "Slide 8" on the pop-up menu instead of any useful text. This occurs when there's no text in the slide title placeholder on the slide--which is the case when you create your own titles with the Text tool rather than using PowerPoint's placeholders. (Hint: Look at the presentation in Outline view. If there's no text next to the slide icon of any slide, you'll see "Slide XX" in the By Title pop-up menu.)
Generally, it's best to use PowerPoint's title placeholder for your title text, but sometimes there are reasons not to. If you aren't using the title placeholder but still want to have your slides identified meaningfully in the By Title pop-up menu (and in the Outliner), here's how to go about it.
First, choose View, Master, Slide Master. Click the title placeholder and assign it a very small text size, shrink it, then move it just off the slide. Click the Close button. Now when you view your presentation as a screen show, you won't see any text in the title placeholder on screen, but you can still type text into it in Normal view or in the Outliner. Your text will appear in the By Title pop-up menu so you can jump to meaningfully named slides instead of having to remember what exactly was on Slide 42.
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.
CREATE YOUR OWN CUSTOM TOOLBARS
After working with PowerPoint for a while, we all develop our own sets of favorite commands. Some of them are right there on PowerPoint's toolbars, but some of them are several branches deep into the menu tree. Wouldn't it be nice if you could create your own toolbar with all of your personal favorite commands on it? Would we ask a question like that if we didn't have an answer like "You CAN"? Of course not! So here's how you do it.
First, create a new toolbar to hold your favorite tools. Choose Tools, Customize. Click the Toolbars tab of the Customize dialog box. Click New, then give your new toolbar a name. We'll call it MyTools for this explanation, but you can call it whatever you like.
Click OK. The new toolbar appears. Since it doesn't have any buttons on it, it may not be wide enough to display the full name you gave it. That's okay, because the next thing you're going to do is add your favorite buttons to the new toolbar.
Click the Commands tab of the Customize dialog box. Next, choose the general category of tool you want to add from the Categories list. In the Commands list, you'll see all the available commands in the selected category. For example, if you choose the Insert category, one of the commands will be a picture icon with the words "From File" next to it. This is the Insert, Picture, From File command. Drag it from the Commands list to the new MyTools toolbar.
Locate and add any other commands you'd like to add to your toolbar and drag them onto it also. Click Close. That's all there is to it! You now have a neat new toolbar with all your favorite commands on it.
Tip: Take a little time to look at all the different commands available for all the categories. There are a few goodies in there that aren't even available from PowerPoint's menus. Note also that if you choose the Built-in Menus category, you can add any of PowerPoint's menus to your custom toolbar.
CUSTOMIZE YOUR CUSTOM TOOLBARS
In our previous tip, we explained how you can create your own custom toolbars with all your favorite PowerPoint commands on them. Once you've done that, you can customize your toolbar and its buttons in a lot of neat ways. We won't go into great detail here; instead, we'll give you an idea of what's possible and let you experiment on your own. There's no reason to keep all the fun to ourselves.
Make sure your custom toolbar is visible, then choose Tools, Customize to display the Customize dialog box. Right-click any of the buttons on your toolbar to see a context menu that includes the following choices (some options may be grayed out, depending on whether you've right-clicked a menu item or a toolbar button on your toolbar):
- Reset--Resets the selected button (i.e., removes any changes you've made with the other customization options below).
- Delete--Removes the selected button from the toolbar.
- Name--Allows you to name the toolbar item (the name is visible only if you choose one of the button style options that includes text--see below).
- Copy Button Image/Paste Button Image--You can copy the button icon from any visible button in PowerPoint and paste it to any other. If you want your Bold button to look like the normal PowerPoint Format Painter button (we won't ask why), you can do it.
- Reset Button Image--If you decide that using the Format Painter button icon for your Bold button wasn't such a good idea, Reset Button Image resets it to the default icon. Whew!
- Edit Button Image--Guess what: PowerPoint includes a complete icon editor. Pick this option to see it and use it to create your own custom icons.
- Change Button Image--Lets you pick from a selection of pre-made icons. Once you choose one of these, you can use Edit Button Image to change it if you like.
- Button Style Options--This group of four options allows you to choose the button style you prefer. You can have just icons (Default style), icons and text (Image and Text), or just text (one of the Text Only options).
- Begin A Group--Select this option to begin a new icon group starting with the button/icon you right-clicked.
- Edit Hyperlink--The two options here let you create a variety of hyperlinks. You can have the button automatically send e-mail, insert pictures into your presentation, display Web pages, or several other nifty tricks. It's a little tricky to use, but a few minutes of experimentation will get you on the right track. Once you've created a hyperlink, you can use this menu choice to remove or edit it.
THE CASE OF THE MISSING TOOLBAR
In 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).
CUSTOMIZE POWERPOINT'S TOOLBARS
In previous tips, we explained how you can create and customize your own toolbars in PowerPoint. Now here's the really neat secret: Anything you can do to a custom toolbar, you can also do to PowerPoint's built-in toolbars.
Right-click any toolbar and choose Customize from the context menu (or choose Tools, Customize). Once the Customize dialog box is visible, you can do the same customizations to PowerPoint's own toolbars as we explained in previous tips.
You can also drag toolbar icons from one toolbar to another (or press Ctrl while you drag to put a copy of an icon on a different toolbar), or remove icons from toolbars by dragging them off and dropping them anyplace except on top of another toolbar.
REARRANGE YOUR TOOLBARS
You 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.
RESTORING DEFAULT TOOLBARS/MENUS
PowerPoint lets you organize and customize toolbars, toolbar buttons, and menu commands in pretty much any way you like, but you may occasionally find that you need to return your fine-tuned, personalized copy of PowerPoint to its normal defaults. For example, suppose you want to show co-workers how to perform some task in PowerPoint. You'd want your copy of PowerPoint to look and act like the copy they'll be using on their own machine. Fortunately, it's simple to revert to PowerPoint's default toolbar and menu settings, then restore your customizations later.
PowerPoint stores your customization changes in a file called PPT.PCB, which it stores in
\Windows\Profiles\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\PowerPoint
where <username> is your login name. If you don't have profiles enabled, PowerPoint stores this file in
\Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\PowerPoint\PPT.PCB
When you need to set PowerPoint back to its out-of-the-box defaults, quit PowerPoint, locate PPT.PCB in one of these two locations, and rename it to something else.
To restore your customized version of PowerPoint, quit and change the filename back to PPT.PCB. All of your customizations will be restored the next time you run PowerPoint.
STUPID TOOLBAR TRICKS--PART 1 OF 2
Here 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 2
Like 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.
OOPS--UN-REARRANGE YOUR TOOLBARS
Suppose you've had fun rearranging your toolbars and toolbar buttons--but you got a little carried away.
It's nice to know that you can reset PowerPoint's toolbars to their default settings with just a few mouse clicks. Here's how:
At the right end of each docked toolbar, you'll see a small downward pointing diamond-shaped icon. On floating toolbars, the same icon appears to the left of the toolbar's name in the title bar of the toolbar. Click this icon to see a pop-up menu with the option Add Or Remove Buttons at the bottom. Point to this option, and a much more elaborate pop-up menu appears. Near the bottom of this pop-up menu, you'll see Reset Toolbar (if you don't see it, click the downward-pointing diamond icon at the bottom of the pop-up menu to scroll additional choices into view).
Click Reset Toolbar, and PowerPoint removes any customizing you've done to this particular toolbar, getting rid of any buttons you've added to it and restoring any you may have removed.
You CAN go home again.
WORKING THE TOOLBARS FROM THE KEYBOARD
In a previous tip, we showed you several handy keyboard shortcuts for working with PowerPoint's menu items. As we mentioned, most of those tips also apply to any Windows programs. There are also tricks to working with toolbars that may not work in all of your Windows applications but are sure handy in PowerPoint.
Press F10 to activate the menu bar. You'll see that the File item on the menu bar changes its appearance; once it does, you can use the Tab key to move to the next menu bar item or press Shift-Tab to move to the previous one. PowerPoint cycles through each menu item, then starts over at the beginning again.
Once you reach the menu item you want, press Enter to open the menu, then navigate to the submenu item you want using the arrow keys.
While Tab cycles through the available choices on any single menu once it's selected, Ctrl-Tab cycles through all the visible toolbars (and Shift-Ctrl-Tab reverses the cycling direction). Once a toolbar is selected, you can press Tab and Shift-Tab to highlight the button or other control you want to work with, then press Enter to activate it.
For example, to change the size of selected text, you'd
Press F10 to activate the menu bar.
Press Ctrl-Tab (as many times as it takes to activate the Formatting toolbar).
Press Tab to move over to the text size box.
Type in the text size you want.
Press Enter to accept the new size.
PowerPoint gives you subtle visual cues to let you know which toolbar is selected; if you have lots of toolbars visible, it can be tricky to figure out which one is active. It's worth taking a few minutes to work out the selection order on your system. It will stay the same unless you remove or add toolbars.
WHEN I TYPE SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE A LINK...
PowerPoint's AutoFormat feature often converts text that resembles a link automatically, and it applies its default formatting for links as well. Sometimes that's really convenient, but other times it's a downright nuisance--like when you aren't typing a link!
There are two ways to calm PowerPoint down and save your sanity:
Choose Tools, Options; click the Edit tab; and deselect the AutoFormat As You Type option. This will disable all of PowerPoint's autoformatting, including its habit of converting your link-lookalike text into links. Whew!
If you'd rather not lose all autoformatting, then type your text-that-looks-like-a-link, and when PowerPoint converts it to a link, press the "Oh, no, you don't" magic keystroke combination (better known as Ctrl-Z).
I WANT IT ALL
Everybody wants it all at one time or another--all of the text (or graphics or slides or outline information) in a PowerPoint presentation, that is. When you want it all, just remember one thing: Ctrl-A.
In Slide view or with the Slide pane active, press Ctrl-A to select all objects on the slide, text, drawings, graphics--the works.
In Slide Sorter view, press Ctrl-A to select all the slides in your presentation.
In Outline view or with the Outline pane active, press Ctrl-A to select all of the outline text in your presentation.
CREATING A WATERMARK--PART 1 OF 2
It's simple to include a logo or other graphic on every slide in your presentation. First, choose View, Master, Slide Master. Once in Slide Master (or Title Master) view, choose Insert, Picture, From File (or Clip Art) and choose the graphic you want to add. Once the graphic's in PowerPoint, size and position it to taste, then return to Slide view. Voila!
With some graphics and logos, the result may be a little too intrusive, especially if you plan to add text atop the graphic on some of your slides. If you want something a little more subtle, try converting your graphic into a watermark. First, select the graphic you just inserted. The Picture toolbar should appear when you select the graphic; if not, choose View, Toolbars and select the Picture option. Click the Image Control button on the Picture toolbar (the second button from the left) and click Watermark on the pop-up menu that appears. PowerPoint fades the graphic back to a ghosted watermark image.
In our next tip, you'll learn how to take a little more control over the exact degree of fading/watermarking.
CREATING A WATERMARK--PART 2 OF 2
We learned in our previous tip how to turn your graphics into watermarks using PowerPoint's Watermark feature. You may find that this feature doesn't always work well with your graphics, especially if they're light to begin with, or if you want a specific amount of lightening for a particular graphic.
PowerPoint's automatic watermark is an all-or-nothing, take-it-or-leave-it deal, but you CAN take more control over the way your watermarked images look.
Let's assume that you've just inserted a graphic as explained in our previous tip. Select the graphic, then when the Picture Formatting toolbar appears, use the More Contrast, Less Contrast, More Brightness, and Less Brightness buttons (the third through sixth buttons from the left, respectively) on the Picture toolbar to get exactly the effect you're after.
Tip: Try lowering the contrast first, then increasing the brightness. This usually gets you directly to the desired effect.
And another tip: Don't worry about messing up the image. If things get out of hand, click Reset Picture (the button on the far right of the Picture Formatting toolbar) to reset the picture to exactly the state it was in when you first inserted it.
WINDOWS, TELL ME ABOUT THIS .PPT FILE
Have 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.
INSERT WORDART FROM THE KEYBOARD
If you prefer the keyboard to the mouse, here's how you can insert WordArt into your PowerPoint presentation--and your fingers never have to leave the keyboard.
Press Alt-I, then press PW (keyboard shorthand for Insert, Picture, WordArt) to see the WordArt Gallery. Use the arrow keys to select the WordArt style you want, then press Enter.
Type the text you want to convert to WordArt. Press Tab to move the focus to the OK button, then press Enter to close the dialog box and return to PowerPoint with your WordArt already inserted.
While you're in WordArt's text entry dialog box, you can also use the Tab key to select other options (Font, Font Size, etc.).
I CAME, I ZOOMED, I'M LOST
In our previous tip, we showed you how to change the Zoom setting in PowerPoint's Slide Sorter view to see more or fewer slides on screen at once. There's only one little problem: When you change the Zoom level, PowerPoint redraws the Slide Sorter screen and the currently selected slide may no longer be visible. While you could use the scrollbar to bounce up and down looking for the slide you're working on, there's a much simpler trick. Press the Up Arrow, then press the Down Arrow to have PowerPoint bring the currently selected slide back into view. Pretty easy, huh?
