PowerPoint and Presenting Blog

Speak Concisely: by Claudyne Wilder

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Sat, 25 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Speaking concisely and to the point is a much-needed skill in business. Presenters who are brief and on target appear more knowledgeable than those who ramble from detail to detail. Many presenters believe the opposite: that the more they share, the better everyone will think they know the subject. That is just not true. Here is a wonderful quote I just read:

Knowledge is power, which is why people who had it in the past often tried to make a secret of it. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not from having it.

- Peter Drucker
(writer of 39 books, management consultant and university professor).

The key is to accurately gauge what and how much information your audience needs to know. Then you can speak in short sentences, not connect your sentences with information your audience really cannot process or take action on. Someone who is used to talking without pausing sometimes says "and" only to realize there really is not another point to make about the subject. The person struggles to think of something to say, ending up with a string of "and, um's."

Second, a good presenter will leave out extra filler phrases. For example, when using slides, the presenter will not say as every new slide comes up, "as you can see here" or "we put this information on the slide to..." Once in a while these phrases may be used for impact, but not for every slide.

Lastly, less is more. A concise presenter says less in a relaxed manner rather than more very quickly, with tension in voice and posture. A concise, well-organized presentation errs on the short side. Remember, it all goes back to the executive summary that you have prepared - or should have prepared! Your executive summary allows you to be concise and look and sound like you have done your homework. Always ask yourself: How will this level of information make my audience more productive in terms of taking action or making better decisions?

Claudyne Wilder coaches executives, managers, and salespeople on how to deliver presentations that get to the message. Her clients give compelling, passionate presentations. Her company has an ongoing contract to give her Get to the Message: Present with a Purpose workshop at a Fortune 100 Global Pharmaceutical Company. Claudyne brings a unique and invigorating perspective to her work from her years of studying the Argentine Tango.

Do visit Claudyne's site at Wilder Presentations to sign up for her blog, her tweets or to download some free presenting tools.

Claudyne's next Get to the Message Workshop in Boston is May 14 and 15. It is a very small intimate group with only ten people.

Categories: guest_post, opinion, powerpoint

See Also: Claudyne Wilder on Indezine

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Slide Layouts within Slide Master View

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Fri, 24 May 2013 03:30:00 +0000

While exploring how you can change the Slide Layout of any given slide(s), we have seen that when you access the Home tab of the Ribbon and click the Layout button, the Layout drop-down gallery opens. The number of Slide Layouts that you see in this gallery may differ depending upon the Theme of your active presentation -- but with PowerPoint's default Office Theme applied, you will see 11 layouts in PowerPoint 2011. So, where do these Slide Layouts come from? What influences how they look, or how the placeholders within them are laid out?

Explore Slide Layouts within Slide Master view in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Categories: office_mac, powerpoint_2011, tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Eyedropper Option

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Thu, 23 May 2013 03:45:00 +0000

Although PowerPoint lets you choose almost any color you want, it is often difficult to choose the same color as a picture on the slide! You may want to match the colors of shapes or text on your slides to a picture, or even some other object (maybe a logo or even the slide background) of your PowerPoint presentation to give your slides a cohesive look. PowerPoint 2013's new Eyedropper option enables you to pick an exact color from anywhere, sometimes even from somewhere outside PowerPoint! Even better, when you are picking up the color from a source, you get to see the color preview as well as the RGB value of the color you are picking.

Learn how the new Eyedropper option works in PowerPoint 2013.

Categories: color, fills, outline, powerpoint_2013, tutorials

Presentation Summit 2013: Conversation with Rick Altman

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Wed, 22 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Rick Altman is a presentation consultant based out of Pleasanton, CA. Rick has been hosting end-user conferences since 1989, and is well known as the host of the annual Presentation Summit conference. He has a strong sense of the needs of the presentation community. Rick has authored 15 books on presentations and graphics, including Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck.

In this conversation, Rick discusses the upcoming eleventh edition of his Presentation Summit conference, to be held in September 2013 in Fort Lauderdale.

Geetesh: The 2013 Presentation Summit is slated to be held soon at Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It's the first time we are going to be on the East Coast next to the ocean -- what else will happen for the first time?

Rick: I suspect that it will be the first time for many to get significant exposure to the new version of PowerPoint. While out for several months, we know how slow corporate wheels turn. And yet our patrons are a curious lot, so we'll make sure to have version 2013 installed on all of our Help Center computers so patrons can spend quality time with it and decide for themselves if a migration to it would be the right move.

This year will also mark two debuts at the conference: Sam Horn of the IntrigueAgency and Sunni Brown of the Doodle Revolution. Both are outstanding presenters with compelling stories to tell about how presentation professionals can better engage their audiences with critical messages. We can't wait for our gang to meet them.

Geetesh: What can attendees expect from the Summit? Can they bring their problem slides with them? Can they learn a lot? Can they also have fun?

Rick: Summit patrons can expect a completely immersive experience. For four days, they will get to live and breathe presentation. From message crafting, presentation design, PowerPoint technique, introductions to other software, right through to delivery, our seminars are broad and deep. Meanwhile, the networking opportunities are what attract many, as we make it virtually impossible to not meet peers, make friends, and cultivate meaningful relationships.

Patrons can indeed bring files with them; we encourage them to load up their flash drives and come to our Help Center fully armed. Little is more helpful than working through issues with slides that are relevant and meaningful. So yes, bring us your pain – we thrive on it.

As for the fun, well, we're famous for that, too. We'll be 1/4 mile from the most charming and happening nightlife spot in town, and we will be literally across Atlantic Blvd. from the beach. The weather should be phenomenal there in mid-September. So all in all, we're looking forward to a wonderful time.

Geetesh: And you have early pricing to offer?

Rick: Yes, but your readers will want to hurry. Throughout the month of May, registrants can take $100 off of the registration price.

See Also: Presentation Summit 2012 and 2013: Conversation with Rick Altman

Categories: interviews, powerpoint, presentationsummit

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Change Background Styles in the Slide Master

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Wed, 22 May 2013 03:30:00 +0000

In PowerPoint, the Slide Master influences the layout and look of all slides in your presentation. One of the changes you can make to your Slide Master is applying the Background Style used so that all slide layouts and actual slides in your presentation use a different slide background. In this tutorial, we will explore how you can choose from any of the 12 available Background Styles to apply to the Slide Master.

Learn how to change Background Styles within the Slide Master in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Categories: office_mac, powerpoint_2011, templates, tutorials

PowerPoint and Presenting News: May 21, 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Tue, 21 May 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Continuing our series of tutorials on PowerPoint 2013, we look at the not so obvious differences between text placeholders and text boxes. We teach you how you can create outlines in Word 2013, and then import the outline content as new slides within PowerPoint. PowerPoint 2011 for Mac users can learn about adding Headers and Footers on their slides, and also on their Notes and Handout pages. Finally, we combined all our Pushpin graphics to make a single large collection -- including all colors and variations, you have 35 pushpin graphics that you can use on your slides.

Read Indezine's PowerPoint and Presenting News.

Categories: ezine, powerpoint

Keyboard Shortcuts: PowerPoint Web App for Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Tue, 21 May 2013 03:45:00 +0000

Here's the most comprehensive list of PowerPoint Web App keyboard shortcuts that we know about -- many users are not aware that the in-browser PowerPoint web app supports an amazing number of keyboard shortcuts! However, these shortcuts may differ depending upon whether you are using a Windows or a Mac computer -- all the keyboard shortcuts listed on this page have been tested using the PowerPoint web app on the Internet Explorer web browser on Windows.

Explore keyboard shortcuts for the PowerPoint Web App using Internet Explorer on Windows.

Categories: microsoft_windows powerpoint_web_app, tutorials

9Slides: Conversation with Aaron Khoo

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Aaron Khoo is a software industry veteran with a strong background in building and leading software teams and managing the delivery of projects, from conception to completion, for a variety of companies, including Microsoft. Prior to joining 9Slides, Aaron served in the executive capacity as President and Chief Technology Officer for several technology startups. He spent nearly 10 years with Microsoft as principal development lead on a variety of projects, including Xbox, Interactive Entertainment Business Analytics team, and Windows Gaming Experience. He holds several patents for software and gaming and a PhD in computer science from Northwestern University.

In this conversation, Aaron discusses his new position at 9Slides.

Geetesh: Tell us more about yourself, and also what your thoughts are about 9Slides.

Aaron: I'm presently the Director of Engineering for 9Slides. I might be subject to some bias, but what can I say about 9Slides other than the fact that it's awesome? Our product offers the ability for people to truly connect with their audience. There are existing services that enable users to share slides or videos, but just a handful that enable users to easily bring both together in synchronized harmony. PowerPoint slides are a powerful communication tool that provide a way to convey information succinctly. However, they are fundamentally designed to reinforce a speaker's message, not to stand alone for someone to read as a mere online flipbook. At 9Slides, we strongly believe that the speaker must be present (even if just virtually) to elevate the slides and drive home the point.

To this point, more and more professionals have put videos online in an attempt to reach a wider audience, but these videos are often jarring, as a single camera struggles to capture the dynamism of the speaker and the information-richness of the presentation simultaneously. Often, the video switches between the two aspects (speaker and slides) in a non-intuitive fashion, making for a confusing viewing experience.

Our goal at 9Slides is to make the process of creating and viewing synchronized video and presentations simple and intuitive. Sales/marketing, corporate training and education professionals should be able to craft interactive videos supported strongly by rich presentations. Their target audience should be able to view these video presentations at anywhere, at any time and on any device.

That's what we live for. Come upload some great content, and see what we can do for you.

Geetesh: What motivated you to join 9Slides -- can you share your beliefs about the online presenting market?

Aaron: I look for two things when I join a company: People, and then Vision. I have known Ruchit Garg (the CEO of 9Slides) for about 5 years. We worked together for a couple years at Microsoft, and I know him to be a smart, tenacious person. Moreover, we got along very well when we worked together previously. This was critical to me, since ultimately you spend 8 hours a day with your co-workers (even more in a smaller company!). As I learned more about 9Slides, I realized that they had a concrete, clear vision: Making presentations shine online as easily as possible. Ruchit was able to quickly articulate this vision and convince me that it filled a very specific and real need for many people.

It is obvious that the Internet has enabled an individual to reach many others in profound yet affordable ways. Available hosting solutions have allowed enterprise professionals to share their message far and wide, and many have taken advantage of this reach. Sites that host presentations and videos abound, and provide good ways of sharing. However, we feel that, in many ways, the communication mechanisms and processes are still in their nascent stages. To put it simply, there's more to it than simply putting a presentation, or a video, on a website. The magic, we believe, is marrying the speaker to the presentation in an interactive way that truly engages the consuming party. It is more than just about hosting a presentation or a video. It is about allowing your consumer to view a dynamic speaker, reinforced by a strong presentation, on any device at any time. It is about the ability to create these experiences as simply as possible, so that anyone can do it, and share their vision with literally the rest of the planet.

See Also: 9Slides: Conversation with Ruchit Garg

Categories: 9slides, interviews, online_presentations, powerpoint

Keyboard Shortcuts: PowerPoint Web App for Mac

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Here's the most comprehensive list of PowerPoint Web App keyboard shortcuts that we know about -- many users are not aware that the in-browser PowerPoint web app supports an amazing number of keyboard shortcuts! However, these shortcuts may differ depending upon whether you are using a Windows or a Mac computer -- all the keyboard shortcuts listed on this page have been tested using the PowerPoint web app on the Safari web browser on Mac OS X.

Explore keyboard shortcuts for the PowerPoint Web App using Safari on Mac.

Categories: mac, powerpoint_mac, powerpoint_web_app, tutorials

Handmade Slides: Pushpins for PowerPoint

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Sat, 18 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

These "pushpin" graphics are already placed in PowerPoint slides – just copy them and paste within your slides to create a look that makes a picture, shape, or anything else appear as if it has been pushed onto a surface, board, or wall with a pin! These ready-made pushpins are already within PowerPoint slides -- and have been provided in five colors. Just copy them and paste them on your slides.

Download and use these push pins in your slides.

Categories: graphics, presentation_samples, powerpoint

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Import Outlines

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Fri, 17 May 2013 03:45:00 +0000

Creating outlines for PowerPoint in various external applications lets you stay away from distractions in PowerPoint-land and concentrate on the structure of your slides rather than their appearance. Once you have the outline created, it's very easy to import it in the form of slides into PowerPoint. While this import process works the same way in all versions of PowerPoint, there are small interface changes.

Learn how to import outlines in PowerPoint 2013.

Categories: powerpoint_2013, tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Add Headers and Footers in Notes and Handout Pages

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Thu, 16 May 2013 03:30:00 +0000

Similar to how you can add Headers and Footers to your slides, you can also add Headers and Footers to your Notes and Handout pages. Different from the slides which are primarily presented through a display device such as a monitor or a TV screen or a projector, Notes and Handouts are essentially intended for printing. Let us explore how to add Headers and Footers to make your printed Notes and Handout pages look more professional and useful.

Learn how to add Headers and Footers in Notes and Handout Pages in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Categories: office_mac, powerpoint_2011, tutorials

Creating PowerPoint Outlines in Microsoft Word 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Wed, 15 May 2013 03:45:00 +0000

An outline encompasses the text content within your presentation slides. In some ways, this text is the story of your presentation. In a less poetic description, you may just describe the outline as the sequential structure of text content that you use in a presentation. Whatever description you prefer, the outline does form an ideal starting point for a bunch of slides! PowerPoint can import outlines created in many applications and we have already shown you how you can create outlines for PowerPoint presentations in Word 2010 and Word 2007. In this tutorial, we'll explore the procedure of creating a structured outline in Word 2013.

Learn how to create outlines for presentations in Microsoft Word 2013.

Categories: powerpoint_2013, tutorials

PowerPoint and Presenting News: May 14, 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Tue, 14 May 2013 05:00:00 +0000

In this issue, we introduce a collection of Map Pin graphics -- while you can use these for maps, you are free to use them anywhere else you need a pin graphic! Patrice-Anne Rutledge discusses her new book, PowerPoint 2013 Absolute Beginner's Guide. We also bring you a great offer in partnership with PowerFinish -- something that has been a very successful promo in past years. Finally, you can learn about the super amazing hierarchial Guide options in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows -- also learn about best practices for working with Guides. For PowerPoint 2011 for Mac users, we continue looking at the cool stuff you can do with videos (movie clips).

Read Indezine's PowerPoint and Presenting News.

Categories: ezine, powerpoint

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Add Headers and Footers in Slides

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Tue, 14 May 2013 03:30:00 +0000

The terms Header and Footer arrived from the word processing programs. These denote repeated elements that show at the top and bottom of every page. Headers and Footers are different from each other on PowerPoint slides only considering their position -- the Footer is a line of text that usually appears at the bottom of a slide.

Learn how to Headers and Footers in slides in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Categories: office_mac, powerpoint_2011, tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Text Placeholders vs. Text Boxes

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Mon, 13 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

When you explore text containers in PowerPoint, you'll find that there are essentially three kinds: text placeholders, text boxes, and shapes -- we explain shapes in our comprehensive section on Shapes tutorials -- let us now look at the other two text container types. Aren't text placeholders and text boxes the same? Are they really different? And why should we bother even if they are different? All these are valid questions, and the answers to them form one of the most important foundations in learning to create more structured presentations. We will now explore the relationship between text boxes and text placeholders in PowerPoint 2013.

Learn about the differences between text placeholders and text boxes in PowerPoint 2013.

Categories: powerpoint_2013, text, tutorials

Handmade Slides: Map Pins for PowerPoint

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Sat, 11 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

These "map pin" graphics are already placed in PowerPoint slides – just copy them and paste within a slide that already contains a map to create a look that lets you highlight a location on your map! Other than maps, you can also use these map pins like regular push pins so that a picture, shape, or anything else appears as if it has been pushed onto a surface, board, or wall with a pin!

Download and use these map pins in your slides.

Categories: graphics, presentation_samples, powerpoint

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Reset Option for Movies

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Fri, 10 May 2013 03:30:00 +0000

In PowerPoint, there are plenty of options to enhance your movie clips -- these may make your original movie clip appear entirely different from what you started with! The fact that you can make your movies look so different in PowerPoint 2011 with customizations galore can sometimes prove to be a disadvantage, especially if you want to get rid of all customizations and get back to original state of your movie clip. Fortunately, the Reset option is just what you need at this point of time!

Learn how to reset your movie clips in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Categories: movies, office_mac, powerpoint_2011, tutorials, video

Huge PowerPoint Content Only for Indezine Members

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Thu, 09 May 2013 05:00:00 +0000

This is the once-in-a-while offer that Indezine brings you in partnership with PowerFinish – something that has been a very successful promo in past years. This year, we made this even better for you! See what you get: 15,000 PowerPoint Templates and Backgrounds -- these are all clean in appearance and eminently useable; 8 Volumes of Looping Video Background Sets; 4 Volumes of HD video clips; a full single user license for business use; and free shipping anywhere in the world!

Get them now.

Categories: powerpoint, templates

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: Working with Guides

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Thu, 09 May 2013 03:45:00 +0000

Let's start with the basics -- what are Guides? Consider Guides as a Grid on your slide that you create -- each single Guide can be moved, added, or deleted. Guides also have snap options that are always on -- once the Guides are made visible on the slide, all objects that venture close enough to them just snap. Along with Rulers and Gridlines, Guides help you position your slide objects with more precision, and you can make them work for you using techniques explained on this page.

Learn how to work with Guides in PowerPoint 2013.

Categories: powerpoint_2013, tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Resize, Rotate, and Flip Movies

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Wed, 08 May 2013 03:30:00 +0000

PowerPoint provides you with plenty of options to enhance your movie clip. These options include Correction Adjustments, Recoloring, Movie Styles, Movie Effects, Movie Shapes, and Movie Borders. These options will make your movie clips look better and focused -- yet, there are some very basic movie editing options that can be even more significant. These include how you can resize, rotate, and flip your inserted movie clips. Resizing can help you change the dimensions of your movie clips, while slight changes in rotation values can draw attention. Flip, the last of these options though is something you will almost never use -- unless you want to do something drastically different!

Learn how you can Resize, Rotate, and Flip movie clips in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Categories: movies, office_mac, powerpoint_2011, tutorials, video

PowerPoint and Presenting News: May 7, 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Tue, 07 May 2013 05:00:00 +0000

This issue has evolved as a PowerPoint to social media sharing special! First of all, we explore how you can share your PowerPoint slides as a link off SkyDrive to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Then there’s another option for sharing your slides (the slides themselves, not just a link) through authorSTREAM on Facebook – Dinesh Awasthi explains more. You can also share presentations off SkyDrive, and not necessarily to social sites only. Do those Windows 8 notifications trouble you? Want them banished forever – we show you how! PowerPoint 2013 for Windows users can learn about the Slide Master view, and how you can change Slide Layouts, whereas PowerPoint 2011 for Mac users will explore cool stuff you can do with videos (movie clips).

Read Indezine's PowerPoint and Presenting News.

Categories: ezine, powerpoint

Learn PowerPoint 2013 for Windows: New Hierarchial Guide Options

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Tue, 07 May 2013 03:45:00 +0000

Enabling Guides for your presentation slides is a great way to make sure that your objects are aligned -- and often in the same position in successive slides. PowerPoint 2013 also lets you work with Guides on a higher hierarchial level within the Slide Master and individual Slide Layouts. Depending upon whether you added Guides within the Slide Master, an individual Slide Layout, or even a normal slide -- your Guides are color-coded for easy identification.

Learn about the new hierarchial Guide options in PowerPoint 2013.

Categories: powerpoint_2013, tutorials

PowerPoint 2013 Absolute Beginner's Guide: Conversation with Patrice-Anne Rutledge

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Mon, 06 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Patrice-Anne Rutledge is a business technology author and journalist who specializes in web-based applications, presentation technology, and social media. She is the author of several books for Pearson Education, including PowerPoint 2013 Absolute Beginner's Guide. Patrice is also the founder of Rutledge Communications, a professional writing and editing firm. You can reach Patrice at her website, PatriceRutledge.com.

In this conversation, Patrice talks about her new book, PowerPoint 2013 Absolute Beginner's Guide.

Geetesh: Can you share some thoughts about the new PowerPoint 2013 -- and what is your favorite, new feature in this version?

Patrice: There's a lot to like about PowerPoint 2013. One of the great new features is that you can easily insert online media from sites such as YouTube, Flickr, Office.com, or your SkyDrive account. You can even search Bing for pictures licensed under Creative Commons. I also enjoy the new theme variants, which provide even more color and design options for each theme. The ability to create MP4 videos from your presentations is another welcome addition to PowerPoint 2013.

Geetesh: Tell us about your new book, PowerPoint 2013 Absolute Beginner’s Guide –- who is your typical reader?

Patrice: PowerPoint 2013 Absolute Beginner's Guide is my sixth book on PowerPoint (Indezine publisher Geetesh Bajaj served as technical editor) and the first for the Absolute Beginner's Guide series. Although this book is great for beginners, as the title states, it's an ideal resource for intermediate PowerPoint users as well. The typical reader is anyone who wants to go beyond the basics and learn about all of PowerPoint 2013's many features. Because PowerPoint seems like such a simple, intuitive program, many users rarely scratch the surface of what you can do with it. I've received emails from readers of the book who were surprised at all the other things you can do with PowerPoint beyond creating a basic presentation -- such as creating videos, web graphics, eLearning programs, and more.

Categories: books, interviews, powerpoint_2013

Learn PowerPoint 2011 for Mac: Crop Movie Clips

noreply@blogger.com (Geetesh) — Mon, 06 May 2013 03:30:00 +0000

You can crop a movie clip on your PowerPoint slide in almost the same way you crop a picture. Before you crop though, ascertain whether PowerPoint's Crop option will help enhance your inserted movie -- don't just do a crop if it adds no extra value to your movie clip. The Crop option allows you to remove non-required areas of a movie -- for example, if the subject of your movie is a person speaking who is surrounded by a large, distracting background of other people or moving objects, you may want to crop the movie so that the cropped movie now focuses more on the speaker, and gets rid of all the extra distractions.

Learn how to crop a movie clip in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Categories: movies, office_mac, powerpoint_2011, tutorials, video