A PowerPoint Blog

Winning at Trial with a Dynamic PowerPoint Presentation

2009-07-02T14:17:00.002+05:30

A lot is at stake�power, money, reputation, future plans, justice. You need to win this case. Your presentation materials surely will play an important role in helping the judge and jury experience the sights, sounds, and details of the case � or not. The choice is up to you, says one tech-savvy attorney. It all depends upon whether you are willing to push PowerPoint beyond its normal boundaries to maximize its interactive and persuasive potential.

This article by Robert Lane and Bruce A. Olson provides a better idea of using PowerPoint in court.

Read this now...

Categories: legal, opinion, powerpoint

Learn PowerPoint 2007: Using Adobe's PDF Print Driver

2009-07-02T14:07:00.001+05:30

In an earlier tutorial of this PowerPoint to PDF series, I have shown you how to use the Office 2007's Save as PDF option, which is an easy way to convert a PowerPoint presentation to a PDF. But this option does have some limitations -- primarily you can only save your slides as PDFs. You cannot save your handouts as PDFs, or print multiple slides on a single PDF page. For that, you'll need to use Adobe's PDF Print Driver.

Learn how to create PDFs now...

Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials

Learn PowerPoint: Password Protecting Adobe Acrobat PDFs

2009-07-01T16:09:00.001+05:30

This is the final part of the PowerPoint to Secure PDF series in which I show you how to do more than just create a secure PDF from your PowerPoint slides. You learned how you could create PDFs that played full screen and also had transitions! Now, it's time to make your PDF entirely secure with password access.

Follow these steps to get started...

Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials

Learn PowerPoint: Search Google for PowerPoint Files

2009-07-01T11:10:00.001+05:30

Google is a web search engine which indexes all sorts of information on the World Wide Web. Search results on Google typically contain results that consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. What many users don't know is that Google allows you to restrict your search for a particular file type, such as a PowerPoint presentation! In this tutorial, I'll show you how you can search for PowerPoint presentations only using Google's Advanced Search option.

Learn more now...

Categories: google, powerpoint, tutorials

PPTools PPT Merge: The Indezine Review

2009-06-27T13:20:00.001+05:30

Out of the box, Microsoft builds little or no integration or relationships within PowerPoint to other Microsoft Office applications. To provide a quick example, PowerPoint users have nothing close to the mail merge options in Word or Outlook that can access data from an Excel or database source. And that's sort of sad, since PowerPoint is one application that can act as a glue to all sorts of content -- from text to pictures, and movies to charts! Our review product, PPT Merge does try to cover this vacuum -- does it succeed?

Read more to find out...

Categories: add-in, powerpoint

Learn PowerPoint 2007: Password Protecting PowerPoint Presentations

2009-06-25T14:04:00.002+05:30

PowerPoint 2007 offers two password choices. The first one is a Password to Open option that lets you type a password in the field, and the next time you or anybody else opens the file, PowerPoint will prompt to enter the password. The second is a Password to Modify option that lets you type a password in the field to make the presentation readable and visible, but not editable.

Learn more now...

Categories: powerpoint_2007, tutorials

Learn PowerPoint: Password Protecting PowerPoint Presentations in v 2002 and 2003

2009-06-25T13:42:00.002+05:30

Why would anyone want to password protect their PowerPoint presentations? There are many reasons, and here are some of them. A presentation with confidential content is safe if it is password protected -- nobody without access to the password can open it. Also, the password protected presentation is more safer to share -- you can provide the password to the person whom you are sharing the presentation with. In addition to providing a password-to-open option, PowerPoint provides a less restrictive password-to-modify option. So your presentation can be opened by anybody, but can't be modified - this makes your content non editable.

Learn more now...

Categories: powerpoint, tutorials

Learn PowerPoint 2007: Adding Transitions in Adobe Acrobat

2009-06-24T12:49:00.001+05:30

In the previous tutorial of this PowerPoint to Secure PDF series, I showed you how to set PDF to play in full screen mode. If your PDF is playing full screen, and you want it to look like a presentation, it's a great idea to add slide transitions so that it mimics a PowerPoint presentation.

Learn more now...

Categories: pdf, powerpoint_2007, tutorials

Design Shapes: The Circle, Part III

2009-06-23T16:20:00.003+05:30

Continuing my discussion on circles (see Circles I and Circles II), this time I look at creating circles in an application outside PowerPoint.

Specifically, my office team was helping me with a review of Artlandia's new SymmetryWorks plug-in for Adobe Illustrator that lets me create organic looking patterns from all shapes. Since we are biased towards circles at this point of time, we decided to create a repeating circular pattern using SymmetryWorks. These patterns were intended as a starting point for PowerPoint backgrounds.

Look at these patterns here -- they are all uploaded to my Flickr account so feel free to click on these thumbnails to see larger previews:

Since this was a fun project, we also made a presentation-full-of-circles with the first pattern -- we uploaded this to SlideBoom so that we could embed it within this post:

Circles

View more presentations or Upload your own.

So what do I do with circles next? Wait and watch -- or send me your thoughts and feedback...

Categories: design, powerpoint, shapes

Design Shapes: The Circle, Part II

2009-06-20T14:06:00.003+05:30

I shared a few "circle" thoughts with you in the first post in this series: Design Shapes: The Circle, Part I -- and now it's time to look at some more circles. What could be better than an entire book on circles, and my favorite is a book that's entirely filled with color pictures of any sort of circular pattern that you might have seen!

The book is called Circles and Dots: Communicating with Pattern, and it contains 250 pages worth of circular inspirations for you to feast on.

This is a book that will inspire every individual in a way that's different for each reader. Some people may get ideas about doing crafts and hobbies, others may launch their PowerPoint or Photoshop, and start creating circles -- and others might just start doodling. But each of them will have their own circle of inspiration.

So how does it inspire me? I love to see how color and texture can make so much of a difference between one circle and the other -- how light alters a circular concept in a photograph, and how many circles we have around us all the time that we are not even aware of!

Categories: design, photoshop, powerpoint, shapes

Design Shapes: The Circle, Part I

2009-06-19T14:57:00.007+05:30

In this new Design Shape series of posts, I'll look at concepts that are not limited to PowerPoint alone, although you can expect me to relate them to PowerPoint in some way or the other because as you must have guessed it, I am in a circle that revolves around PowerPoint!

Talking about circles, that's also the shape that I talk about in this post. There are many reasons why I like circles:

They are round and balanced.
They are not limited by starting and ending points.
They work great in single color and two color designs.
They also work well when you have many of them overlapping each other in the same media.
They represent continuity.
They remind everyone of the sun, the moon, and the earth, and
They make great PowerPoint slide backgrounds!

Of course, there's so much more that I can tell about them -- but for now, let's just leave them here as far their virtues are concerned.

I searched a few visuals depicting circles, and here's what I found on Shutterstock, a well known stock photo site:

Picture Courtesy: Shutterstock

So will the visuals of circular concepts shown above work in PowerPoint? Will you have to adapt or edit them? And would you do those edits in PowerPoint, or another program? That's a lot of questions, even if I am prone to thinking aloud! But that's also a direction for future posts in this series -- watch this space!

Categories: design, powerpoint, shapes

PowerPoint Contests Galore

2009-06-17T12:15:00.003+05:30

At last count, I found that there were at least 3 PowerPoint presentation contests happening online.

Picture Courtesy: Shutterstock

On the top of my list is Microsoft's own PowerPoint Template Contest called Create a Spark. The rules are simple enough:

Create a PowerPoint 2007 presentation template that motivates and inspires.
Choose a business or education topic that you feel passionate about. Some ideas include sales, marketing, sports performance, leadership, and volunteering.
Please limit your template to 10 slides or less.

The second contest from SlideBoom is called the SlideBoom Presentation Contest 2009. They have fewer rules, but that's not always an advantage:

Introduce any concept as a presentation on business, education, career or on any other interesting subject.

The third contest is from SlideShare, and is called the Tell A Story Contest. They seem to be offering the best prizes! The rules are:

The presentation must be your original creation. Please do not upload the work of others. It will be disqualified.
You can enter up to 10 presentations into the contest.
Slidecasts & presentations having videos are also eligible for the contest.

So if you have created a cool presentation that you can share, there are at least three places that they can be uploaded to -- wish you all the best!

Categories: online_presentations, powerpoint, slideshare, templates

PowerPoint Ninja: Conversation with Brent Dykes

2009-06-16T15:56:00.001+05:30

Brent Dykes has used PowerPoint for more than 10 years in various marketing and consulting roles. His presentations have been seen by executives at Fortune 500 companies and various marketing conferences. In 2008, he started the PowerPoint Ninja blog. Brent has an MBA from BYU and is Director, Consulting at Omniture.

In this conversation, Brent discusses his PowerPoint involvement and his blog.

Geetesh: Tell us more about your involvement with PowerPoint.

Brent: I�ve been working with PowerPoint for more than 10 years in a variety of contexts: sales and marketing, business school, business start-ups, consulting, and management.

My first significant exposure to PowerPoint came when I interned at Microsoft for a couple of semesters in the late 1990s in Vancouver, BC. As a sales and marketing intern, I gained access to Microsoft�s vast marketing slide repository so that I could build presentations for various speaking engagements. Seeing what other very skilled users had created with PowerPoint really opened my eyes to what could be done with this presentation software.

After graduating from Simon Fraser University with a BBA in Marketing in 1999, I joined a successful web design agency, Blast Radius (WPP), as a marketing analyst. A core responsibility of my role was to create reusable marketing presentations for our sales and executive teams. I also worked on several sales pitches for Fortune 500 companies.

In 2002, I went back to school for my MBA from Brigham Young University. As an MBA student, I was able to leverage my PowerPoint skills on a weekly basis in my various class projects. I was also able to participate in a couple of business plan competitions where my presentation skills helped my team to place as a semi-finalist in the 2004 BYU competition and second in the 2004 Utah Entrepreneur Challenge. It was great to get exposure to VC pitches.

For the past five years, I�ve been working for Omniture as a web analytics consultant, manager, and director. In that time I have worked extensively with PowerPoint in building various client presentations for Fortune 500 companies, which focused on data analysis and strategy. I�ve also been fortunate to present at several marketing conferences including a 2008 keynote presentation in Japan. For better or for worse, PowerPoint continues to be a big part of my life.

Geetesh: How did PowerPointNinja evolve? What sorts of thoughts do you post?

Brent: Throughout my career I�ve had several co-workers, managers, and clients praise me on my PowerPoint skills. In 2004, I finally decided to purchase a web domain that related to my PowerPoint expertise. I chose �PowerPoint Ninja� because ninjas are skilled, mysterious, and just plain cool.

After a few years of sitting on the domain and telling people that I would eventually create a PowerPoint presentation website, I decided it needed to happen in 2008. Eventually, I�d like to publish a PowerPoint Ninja handbook.

In terms of the types of thoughts I post on my site, I believe I bring a very practical or pragmatic perspective to PowerPoint design and business presentations. As someone who is using PowerPoint in a corporate environment, I can relate with many of the limitations and challenges that business users run into because I�m battling those same issues.

I post tips and tricks on how to use PowerPoint features and how to design effective business presentations. I try to focus on all three phases of PowerPoint presentations: planning, design, and delivery. If you�ve already read some of my articles you�ll also know that I like to have fun with my posts.

Categories: interviews, opinion, powerpoint

Selling with PowerPoint: Taking Control of That Critical First Meeting

2009-06-16T14:26:00.002+05:30

A prospective customer has invited you to showcase your company's products and services, and the stakes are high. This contract could be huge. Your marketing department and executives have been fretting over the necessary PowerPoint slides for weeks. Every word has to be perfect. Every slide must be in exactly the right order. Your mission is to lay down a faultlessly planned and executed sales strategy that persuades this customer to buy exclusively from you ... but you are worried!

This article by Robert Lane and Andre Vlcek explains how you can sell better using PowerPoint.

Read this now...

Categories: design, opinion, powerpoint

Learn PowerPoint 2007: SmartArt Graphics

2009-06-09T10:21:00.002+05:30

SmartArt graphics are a new feature in PowerPoint 2007 (and Office 2007). Like charts, these are info-graphics but the similarities end there. Whereas charts are based on figures, the foundations of SmartArt graphics are based on logic, which helps convey relationships, hierarchies, and flows through a combination of simple shapes and text. Organization charts and cycle relationship drawings are all common examples of SmartArt graphics.

Learn more here...

Categories: powerpoint_2007, smartart, tutorials

Learn PowerPoint: Changing an Animation

2009-06-05T12:28:00.001+05:30

Many times, users just remove an animation and apply another one instead. The need to change an animation may arise for several reasons: You realize that another animation type would work better in a given slide, or you want to make all animations across the entire presentation consistent, or you want to use a more subtle or exciting animation. Whatever your need may be, you need to remove an animation, and then add another one -- PowerPoint's Change animation option makes this a one-click step.

Learn more now...

Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials

SlideBoom Supports Open Document Format

2009-06-04T22:17:00.003+05:30

SlideBoom, a leading slide sharing platform announced support for Open Document Presentation (ODP) files. The ODP file format is increasingly being used in free office suites like OpenOffice, NeoOffice or IBM Lotus Symphony and proprietary software packages like Sun Microsystems� StarOffice. SlideBoom continues support for PowerPoint and some other file formats.

More info can be found on the SlideBoom blog...

Categories: odf, online_presentations, slideboom

Tell A Story in 30 Slides: SlideShare Contest

2009-05-28T05:44:00.003+05:30

SlideShare announced the very interesting Tell A Story in 30 Slides contest that invites participants to submit a story about themselves, their travels, or something they love. Just tell it with words and pictures and in 30 slides.

Everyone who enters the contest gets a free Fuze Meeting account ($270 value). Learn more about how to enter contest here...

Jonathan Boutelle of SlideShare adds: "We launched a new contest yesterday that will be of interest to your readers. The theme is "tell a story", and the top prize is $5000. The judges include Om Malik, Pete Cashmere (Mashable), Ann Handley, Don Tapscott, and Tony Hsieh (Zappos). There's already some really nice entries up, and I think the theme is going to elicit some very interesting work this time (PowerPoint as narrative device).

Categories: powerpoint, slideshare

Outstanding Presentations: Workshop by Ellen Finkelstein

2009-05-26T07:36:00.002+05:30

Need to learn how to create outstanding presentations, from start to finish? Ellen Finkelstein is offering a 3-day, intensive workshop that covers content, design, and delivery.

You�ll get personal attention in a small group. If you live in the U.S. or Canada, I suggest that you check it out here...

Categories: powerpoint, training

Learn PowerPoint: Animating Text

2009-05-19T14:37:00.001+05:30

As part of the animation tutorials series, I have showed you how you can add an animation to any slide object in PowerPoint. However, there's more to animating text than just adding an animation since PowerPoint provides specialized options for animating paragraphs and bulleted text. In this tutorial we will learn how you can use these special options to animate text sequentially by words, by letters, and by paragraph levels.

Learn more now...

Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials

Learn PowerPoint: Animating Charts

2009-05-16T16:58:00.001+05:30

In PowerPoint you can animate any slide object, but some objects have extra animation options. These objects include charts and bulleted text, and in this tutorial we will work with chart animation in PowerPoint. Since animation is largely unchanged in PowerPoint versions 2002 through 2007, we'll cover all those versions in this tutorial.

Learn more here...

Categories: animation, powerpoint, tutorials

Office Intervention: Learning PowerPoint with Julie Terberg

2009-05-16T16:48:00.003+05:30

Julie Terberg who is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP has been busy doing this cool video with Microsoft Office Online as part of their new Office Intervention series. In this particular video, Julie shows a law student how she can effectively use PowerPoint effectively to create a compelling presentation.

Yes, the finished video looks amazing -- so I embedded it here on this blog post!

Categories: microsoft_office, office_online, powerpoint

SlideBoom World Presentation Contest

2009-05-16T15:02:00.003+05:30

SlideBoom, a presentation sharing site from the makers of iSpring announced the SlideBoom World Presentation Contest. This contest, open to everyone requires participants to submit any PowerPoint presentation (or another compatible file format) on the SlideBoom site. All participants need to be members of the site, and basic membership is free.

Applicants can submit their works from 18 May to 21 June inclusive. Winners will be announced on 30 June 2009.

The contest winners will be judged by a panel of 5 presentation professionals including yours truly.

More info can be found on the contest site...

Categories: online_presentations, powerpoint, slideboom

Studio-Max: Conversation with Max Wijgergangs

2009-05-16T13:33:00.000+05:30

Max Wijgergangs is the owner of a Dutch PowerPoint presentation company, Studio-Max. Max admits that he bought his first computer only in 2001, until which time he knew practically nothing about computers and PowerPoint. But he made up for that lost time soon by rapidly discovering all kind of possibilities working with Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe graphics software. This remained a big passion, but it was still a hobby until 4 years later, when he decided to quit his regular job. He launched Studio-Max with a goal to provide the Dutch market with professionally designed PowerPoint presentations. Since then, his energy focused on taking PowerPoint presentations to a higher level that has allowed Studio-Max to become a known name.

Max and his team love to play with the animation possibilities in PowerPoint. In this conversation, Max discusses this and more.

Geetesh: How can animation enhance a regular PowerPoint presentation to something above the ordinary.

Max: Many Dutch clients and companies don't know the full possibilities of PowerPoint, and they are in most cases pleasantly surprised when they see some of our works. "Wow, is this really done by only PowerPoint?' is what we hear a lot from these people. This reaction probably stem from the way we use graphics and animation. When animations are used in the right way, they can really enchance any PowerPoint slide. The secret is to combine different basic animations on pre-calculated timeframes (we use Excel formulas for this!).

When combined with well designed, corporate looking content (Photoshop/Illustrator artwork), this will result in stunning and professional looking animated slides that will blow people away.
We have an in-house PowerPoint professional, Lam Quang Huy working with us at Studio-Max. He is an animation specialist, and he really knows how to take PowerPoint animations to the next level.

There are many secrets hidden in the PowerPoint animation schemes, and we continue to discover new tricks on a regular basis! A lay-person could well imagine that these animations were created using Adobe Flash!

Studio Max Sample Animated PPT

View more presentations or Upload your own.

Geetesh: Is there anything called too-much-animation? Tell us more about the dividing line.

Max: Yes there is, I see that almost every day when companies send me their in-house presentations. Content is animated too fast or too slow, pictures are spinning and turning around the screen to vertigo levels, and so on. Too much animation of that sort can distract the audience from the message. Of course, an overkill of animations can also be annoying.

The dividing line in animations can be a distinct difference -- between slides created by a PowerPoint professional or an amateur. Most presentations made in this part of the world demand animations on each slide. It's always a challenge to find the balance between restful and highly dynamic, yet sophisticated animations.

Audiences must not be overwhelmed by all kind of animations but it's also important not to bore them with standard animation stuff they have seen a zillion time before. Being original and creative, that will help a lot!

Categories: animation, interviews, powerpoint

Neuxpower NXPowerLite 4: The Indezine Review

2009-05-13T13:05:00.004+05:30

NXPowerLite 4 is the new version of a well known file optimizing product that reduces the size of Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and JPEG images. The files remain in their original format, with almost no loss of quality. Also NXPowerLite works integrated within Lotus Notes, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows Mail. In this case, NXPowerLite will automatically optimize email attachments as they are sent and the file recipients don't need NXPowerLite to open or edit the attachments.

Read the review here...

Categories: add-in, microsoft_office, nxpowerlite, powerpoint