PowerPoint 2007

Are you sick of clicking your mouse, hitting a key, or pressing next on your wireless presenter?

Well in PowerPoint 2007, you can set up your presentation so that each slide automatically advances after so many seconds.

To make a slide automatically advance after a certain amount of time:

1) Make sure you are looking at the slide you want to apply the timing to

2) Click on the “Animations” tab of the ribbon

3) Look for the “Advance Slide” section at the far right hand side of the ribbon

4) Check the “Automatically After:” box, and then input the number of minutes and seconds you would like the slide to be visible before advancing to the next.

If you are unhappy with automatically advancing slides, don’t worry – you can still use the mouse click to move to the next one.  And if you really hate it, you can simply uncheck the “Automatically After:” check box to stop the timed slide advance from occurring.

‘till next time!
TNP

Have you ever noticed that your PowerPoint Presentations are running a little sluggish?  Maybe they jump through every transition, or just take a long time to load up?

There is one way to help accelerate your PowerPoint deck – and that is to lower the resolution that it displays at.

To alter the resolution that your PowerPoint presentation uses:

1) Make sure you are on the “Slide Show” tab of the ribbon

2) Look for the “Monitors” group

3) Select your preferred resolution from the “Resolution” drop down box

To put it simply, the lower the resolution, the higher the performance of your presentation will be, but at a cost of lower fidelity.  On the flip side if you want to turn up the visual quality of the presentation, and don’t mind a little performance hit, crank up the resolution to as high as your computer (or more importantly your projector) can handle.

‘till next time!
TNP

Have you ever built an awesome slide with lots of different objects?  Well then I am sure you will understand how frustrating it can be when you need to select an object that is behind 3 or 4 other ones!

Did you know there is a great tool you can use called the “Selection Pane”, that will help you select those pesky, hard to get to objects?

Selection Pane simply lists all the objects that are on a slide, in a simple to use task pane to the right hand side of your PowerPoint 2007 screen.  Using Selection pan you can quickly select any object, not matter how far to the back of the slide it is.

To turn on the selection pane:

1) Make sure you are on the “Home” tab of the ribbon

2) Look for the “Editing” Group – you will find it on the far right hand side of the ribbon

3) Click on the little arrow beside the “Select” button

4) Click on “Selection Pane…”

‘till next time!
TNP

Did you start creating a presentation in PowerPoint 2007, only to realise after you perfected 67 different slides that you really should have used Arial instead of Verdana?

Well there is a very quick way to replace one font with another in PowerPoint 2007.  Here is how:

1) Make sure you are on the “Home” tab of the ribbon

2) Look for the “Editing” group – which you will find on the right hand side of the ribbon

3) Click on the little arrow beside “Replace”

4) Click on “Replace Fonts…”

From the box that appears, simply select the font you want to replace, with the new font, and click “Replace”

‘till next time!
TNP

If you follow @thenewpaperclip on Twitter (or @paulwoods – the guy behind The New Paperclip), you would have known that I was presenting at TechEd Australia the past week.

My session (with Microsoft Australia’s Andrew Lowson) was titled “Personal Productivity for the IT Pro” and was one of the level 100 sessions in the Office System track.

It was never meant to be a deep dive – simply a session to highlight some quick productivity wins you can get simply by getting to know the tools you already have in front of you – in this case, Microsoft Office.

The best part of the session was that about about half way through we handed it over to the audience and started crowd sourcing productivity tips.  It was obvious that there are some very smart, very passionate people out there – and plenty of knowledge was shared

For those of you who could not make it to TechEd, or are unable to access the session I delivered via your TechEd Online subscription, whilst on site at the Gold Coast Convention Centre I did record a TechTalk just for you.

Titled “The Productivity Myth”, this interview with Alistair Speirs from Microsoft Australia will give you a taste of what the session was all about.

If you want to read more about “The Productivity Myth” – check out this blog post. 

Looking forward to seeing you all at TechEd next year!

‘till next time!
TNP

If you regularly collaborate with others creating Word documents, or Excel spreadsheets – I am sure that you are very familiar with the commenting feature.

Basically it allows you to add comments throughout the document or spreadsheet for others to see when they are reviewing the work.

Well you will be happy to know that you can also add comments to the slides in your PowerPoint 2007 presentations.

Here is how:

1) Go to the “Review” tab in PowerPoint 2007

2) Look for the “Comments” group

3) Click on “New Comment”

4) Write your comment

5) Click on the comment and drag it to where you want it to appear on your slide

… but how do I change the name associated with the comment?

Good question!  PowerPoint takes that information from the information that has been entered in the PowerPoint options menu.

1) Click on the “Office Orb” – that is the old file menu in the top left hand corner of the screen

2) Click on “PowerPoint Options”

3) Look for “Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office”.  You will find the User Name and Initials there.  Simply change them to the right details and your comments will now be attributed to the right person.

‘till next time!
TNP

I am sure you are more than familiar with the default layouts that you regularly see in PowerPoint 2007.  The first one you always see is the “Title Slide” layout, and whenever you add a new slide after that, you will see the “Title and Content” layout.

But did you know that there are plenty of other layouts you can use, which might help you lay out the information on your slide a lot cleaner, nicer, better etc etc.

If you are on the “Home” tab of the Ribbon you will see the “Slides” group, and in that group, the “Layout” button.  If you click on that, you will see all the different layout options at your disposal:

• Title Slide
• Title and Content
• Section Header
• Two Content
• Comparison
• Title Only
• Blank
• Content with Caption
• Picture with Caption

There are two simple ways you can use these layouts in your PowerPoint deck.

Create a new slide with a specific layout

1) Make sure you are on the “Home” tab in the Ribbon

2) In the “Slides” group, click on “New Slide”

3) Select your preferred layout from the gallery

… alternatively you can change the layout of specific slides in your presentation.

Change the layout of an existing slide

1) Select the slide or slides you want to change the layout of

2) Right click on the selected slide(s), and move your mouse over “Layout”

3) Select your preferred layout from the gallery

‘till next time!
TNP

Did you ever notice that when you show your PowerPoint 2007 deck that it always shows it as a full screen?

Have you ever wondered if it was possible to show a PowerPoint presentation in a window that you can resize to meet the needs of your presentation?  For example, you might want to demonstrate a product, and have your presentation on the screen at the same time!

Well there is a well hidden command in PowerPoint 2007 which means you can show your deck in a window!  Here is how to do it:

1) Beside the quick access toolbar (in the top left hand corner of the screen – it is the one what has the save, and undo buttons) you will see a little arrow that points down.  Click on that

2) From the menu that appears, click “More Commands…”

3) In the “Choose commands from:” dropdown box, select “All Commands”

4) You will see literally hundreds of commands listed.  Luckily they are all in alphabetical order!  Scroll down until you find one that says “Slide Show in a Window”.  Click on that.

5) Click on the “Add > >” button to add that command to your quick access toolbar

6) Click “OK”

You will notice that there is a brand new button in your quick access toolbar in PowerPoint 2007.  It looks like a presentation screen, with a window in front of it.

Simply click on that button, and your presentation is now delivered through a window instead of full screen!

How easy is that!

‘till next time!
TNP

Did you know that you can add a footer to each and every slide in your PowerPoint 2007 deck?  It is easier than you think.

There are three areas at the bottom of each slide that the default master slide (think of it is the master layout for your PowerPoint slides) sets aside so you can add footer information to each of your slides.  Information like, the date, the slide number, and the title of your presentation

To add a footer to your PowerPoint presentation, simply:

1) Make sure you are on the “Insert” tab in the Ribbon

2) Look for the “Text” group

3) Click on “Header & Footer”

4) In the Header and Footer box that appears, select what you want to include on the slide. 

5) Click “Apply”, to apply to the current, single slide, or click “Apply to All” to apply to every slide in your presentation

There you have it – PowerPoint footers the easy way!

‘till next time!
TNP

Have you or a creative genius close to you built an unreal shockwave/flash animation and you want to show the world?

Did you know that you can show off that animation using PowerPoint 2007?  Bet you didn’t.  That being said it isn’t the simplest of things you can do – but it does work.  Here is the step by step guide to doing it!

1) Open PowerPoint 2007 (obvious right!)

2) Make sure you can see the “Developer” tab in the “Ribbon”.  If you can’t, click on the Office menu (the circle button in the top left hand corner), then click on “PowerPoint Options”, and make sure that you check the “Show Developer tab in the Ribbon” box!

3) Go to the slide you want the .swf file to appear

4) Click on the “Developer” tab in the Ribbon

5) Look for the “More Controls” button in the controls group.  It is the one with a spanner and a hammer with three dots underneath it.  Once you find it – click on it

6) The “More Controls” box will appear.  Scroll down until you find “Shockwave Flash Object”.  Click on that, then click “OK”

7) You will notice your cursor is now a cross, and no longer an arrow.  That means you can now draw where you want your Shockwave/Flash file to appear on your slide.  Simply draw with your mouse, and use the adjustment handles on the box to make sure it is just the right size and position on your slide.  When you are done you should see a wireframe box with a big “X” through the middle of it

Now we want to link your .swf file into your PowerPoint 2007 presentation.  Click on the box you just drew, then right click, and select “Properties”

9) In the properties box that appears, look for the “Movie” property, and then add the location of your .swf file (for example c:\temp\test.swf)

10) Quickly run your presentation and watch in awe as your shockwave file hits the big screen in your PowerPoint 2007 presentation

So how did you go?  Sure it is a little complicated to get there, but boy does it look good once you have that file playing through PowerPoint.

Just a word of warning though – this only LINKS to the .swf file, so if you email or share the presentation with others, chances are the link will break and you will need to go through the above process again to re-link the PowerPoint deck to the .swf

That being said… it is well worth the effort!

‘till next time!
TNP