Microsoft PowerPoint

 

How do I make my own PowerPoint templates?

What you're talking about, is creating template, or "POT" files. First of all, any file can be saved as a POT file - all you have to do is use the SAVE AS dialog and select POT as the file type, replacing PPT. This action automatically takes you to the location where the rest of the templates are stored, which is sometimes useful and sometimes not. As for the file itself, you'll want to do the following things to make a good template: (easiest if you make it in this order).

  1. Format the slide master, including making a nice background, setting the fonts, bullets, etc.
  2. Create and apply a color scheme to the Slide Master; make sure that desired objects (text, drawings, etc) follow these colors. You can create multiple schemes for a single template, but the master will only use one of these schemes at a time. Later, when actually in use, each slide can use a different color scheme, so sometimes it's nice to make templates with differing schemes that give each template different looks.
  3. Format the page numbers, footers, as you like, and set them for being visible or not, depending on your wishes.
  4. Go to black and white view, and, by using the right mouse button to click on individual objects, set the way each object on the page will print until the page resembles the way you want it to look when printed to black and white printers.
  5. Insert a New Title Master. By doing this after you've done all the rest, it will automatically "inherit" all the work you've already done, so you've got a good starting place.
  6. Make any changes you want to the Title Master, including changing the color scheme and black and white print settings.
  7. With no objects selected, from the FORMAT menu, select FONT. Select the font that you want other text and labels to default to.
  8. Go to slide sorter view and delete any slides that are there.
  9. Go to slide view, where you should see nothing. From the FILE menu, select SAVE AS, and in the "save as type" drop down box select "Presentation Template"
  10. close the file, and then create a new presentation from this template, evaluating what needs to be changed, and what bugs need to be fixed. Have fun!

How do I create additional pre-set color fills?
There is no way to create two or multi-colored fills that you can get to display in the fill menu. A lame workaround is to just make a shape with the fills you like (combine shapes to get multicolored fills) and then keep it around and copy/paste it into your presentation.


Is there some way to prepare photos so they display well in PowerPoint?

Use a product like PhotoShop to lower the number of colors in the photograph. Use PhotoShop's Indexed Color feature, and select Adaptive Palette, then keep setting the number of colors lower and lower until you get a small number that still looks good. Numbers that are powers of 2 (2,4,8,16,32,64,128, 256) will also reduce your overall file size. When you save the file, save as a GIF file, which will give you the best compression, while preserving the correct palette adjustments. JPEG format has better compression, but will always save the photo with millions of colors, thus leading to pretty harsh display problems on 256-color systems.

Why are my Excel Spreadsheets getting cropped when I paste them into PowerPoint?

According to Microsoft Tech Support, PowerPoint has an internal limit of 6 x 6 inches for this type of object. Spreadsheets larger than 6" in height or width will get cropped when they are pasted into PowerPoint.

At what resolution should I scan an image for it to present well in PowerPoint?

If you want an image to look good on the screen in PowerPoint, scan it at the screen resolution: 72. dpi. Higher doesn't help for on-screen viewing - it only makes the files bigger. If you are outputting to 35mm slides, you'll want 300 dpi scans. 35 mm slide output devices are very high resolution. These will make your presentation gigantic.

How can I go "back" in a slide show like I do in my browser?

The next slide/previous slide actions are basically the same as back/forward on your browser. You can use any of the following: Page up, Right mouse button, Left arrow key. If you're doing a kiosk style or self-running presentation, the best thing to do is to put buttons on each slide that navigate directly to the places they may want to go.

To make a BACK button:

  1. Draw a button (or use Slide Show/Action Buttons and select the blank button, then draw it out on the screen like you would a box).
  2. Select this button or graphic
  3. Go to the Slide Show menu, select Action Settings.
  4. Click the radio box marked "Hyperlink to:" and set it to "Last Slide Viewed". This button will behave like the Back button on your web browser.
  5. If you want this on all of your slides, put the button on the Slide Master (View/Slide Master).

Why does the speed of animation effects change on different computers?

Animations do run differently on different computers, depending primarily on the processor speed, video hardware and settings, and the amount of RAM. It may be that the second computer is not as powerful as the first. Sometimes another problem has to do with screen display speed; laptops with screen types other than active matrix displays are very slow, and tend to lag in displaying things.

Any way to "zoom in" on a picture in slide show? ?

There are two ways, but it's not a built-in feature. The most elegant, but also most time consuming would be to make more slides with the zoomed-in bitmaps on them. These could be hidden slides, which would allow you to gracefully skip over them if you didn't want to explore them, or just press the H key while in slide show to show the hidden slide. Alternatively, you can , when you need to zoom in, ALT-Tab to PowerPoint (regular view), zoom in to the picture as you like, then ALT-Tab back to slide show when you're done. Preferably, you would turn off as many toolbars as possible to make this less ugly.

Is it possible to use an Audio-CD soundtrack in my presentations??

Yes, but you'll need PowerPoint 97 (or higher) and there is a bit of a trick to it. Put your Audio-CD in your CD-ROM drive. For most computers running Windows 95, this automatically starts the Windows 95 CD player and you hear your music. It is very important to CLOSE the CD Player application before you try inserting the sound in PowerPoint. If you have the CD Player application running, it won't work properly, so just remember to close that puppy down! Meanwhile, back in PowerPoint 97: from the Insert menu, select "Movies and Sounds..." an then "Play CD Audio Track..." This brings up the Play Options dialog. Set things as you like, and then click OK. You should now see a little sound icon on your presentation. If you go to slide show, you can now click on this icon, and it will play the sound.

If you want the sound to play automatically:

  1. Click on the sound icon (the one you just inserted) to select it.
  2. From the Slide Show menu, select "Custom Animation..." This brings up the Custom Animation dialog, which has several tabs. On the "Play Settings" tab, click "Play Using Animation Order"; also click "hide while not playing" to hide the icon (if you want to, most people do). You can now choose to have the sound play just on one slide, or across multiple slides by playing with these settings.
  3. From the "Timing" tab, click "Automatically". Otherwise, you have to click to get the sound to play. You can use the arrow buttons to the right of the animation order box to control the order in which objects "play" on the slide. For example, you might want your title to fly in first, then have the music play, and then have bullets fly in. To do this, you'd want to make sure your sound clip was second in the play list.

Why don't sounds play when I move my file to another computer?

When preparing a presentation (with sounds) that is to be used from different computers, it is very important to make sure that all of the sound files are located in the same folder as the presentation that you've created, and that you insert them from this location. Sound files, because of their large size, don't become an actual part of the presentation file--a link is formed to the sound file. When the presentation is played, the program goes looking for the sound at the location described in the link. This works fine on the original creation machine, but as soon as you move things to another machine, the links don't accurately describe where the files are, and things fail to play.

The first thing to know is that PowerPoint will always look for the sound in the folder that contains the presentation, so this is the best place to put them. You can't modify the links, so you have to start off by putting the sounds in the same folder as the presentation, and then inserting them into your presentation. This will create an internal link with no real address: PowerPoint knows that the sound is in the same folder as the presentation, and will look for it there regardless of what that folder's name is, or what machine it's on.

Any way to print a catalog of slides with titles and file names? ?

The best thing that exists is to use the 6-slides per page option in PowerPoint's print dialog, and to set the Handout Master (View/Masters/Handouts) to have the file name in the header or footer. If you don't want pictures of the slides, and just want titles, print the outline (again, select this in the Print dialog) and format the Outline Master (View/Masters/Outline) to have the file name in the footer. For each of these approaches you'll have to print out each presentation separately.

Why are all my slides black and white? What happened to the colors?

Check to see that the "Black and White View" button hasn't accidentally been pressed. This is on your main formatting toolbar, right next to the view percentage readout. This button toggles the presentation's view between color and what you'll see when you print. While in this view, you can right-click on any object, and by using the Black and White settings menu, change how each object prints.

How do I make a PowerPoint file into a self-running executable file? ?

You can't. For those of you who don't understand what this is, it would be a presentation that would "play" itself, regardless of if PowerPoint was installed or not. Macromedia Flash has the capability of exporting to an executable file.

How do I insert Charts from Word and Excel?

To prevent charts having a squeezed look when inserting charts from either Word or Excel into a PowerPoint presentation, you should copy the chart from Word or Excel, then in PowerPoint, use Edit from the toolbar, choose Paste Special and select paste as Microsoft Excel Chart Object.

How do I create a Web Slide Presentation from a PowerPoint Presentation?

From the PowerPoint presentation, click on File from the task bar and then click on Save as Web Page. Type in a name in the File Name box.. A folder with the same name is also created when you save the presentation as web page. This folder needs to publish with the new htm page.

How do I insert a picture into one of my slides?

Click on the place in the slide where you want the picture, then go to the menubar, click on Insert, choose Picture, then choose what type of picture you want to insert.

My picture is too big. Is there any way to make it smaller??

Right click on the picture, choose Format Picture, click on the Size tab, then adjust the size as desired.

Can I change the color of my slide?

Right click on an empty spot on the slide, choose Background, then from the small pulldown menu at the bottom of the Background dialogue window, choose the color you want the slide to be.

How do I black out the screen, but not close the presentation?

In any Powerpoint slide show, you have the option of "blanking" or "blacking" the current slide (interrupting but not stopping the show!) by simply pressing the "B" or "period" key (s). Or, you can interrupt the show and show a white screen by pressing the "W" or "comma" key(s). To restart the show where you left off, press the same key again.

My presentation won't fit on a single floppy, how do I get it to another computer?

If the only way to move the presentation is to use floppies (i.e., the other computer isn't hooked to the SMU network or you don't have access to a CD burner), use a feature of PowerPoint called "Pack and Go". Before you begin, be sure to have several formatted floppy disks available.

Packing the Presentation:

  1. Open the presentation you wish to "pack".
  2. From the File menu, choose Pack and Go.
  3. The Pack and Go Wizard will begin. Click Next.
  4. Choose Active presentation. Click Next.
  5. Choose A:\ drive. Click Next.
  6. Select "Include linked files". Click Next.
  7. If you don't know if the PC you'll use to present has PowerPoint 2000, select the option to include the viewer. Click Next.
  8. Make sure that your blank disk is in the floppy drive. Click Finish.
  9. The Pack and Go Status window will appear as the files are packaged on the floppy disk(s). If more diskettes are needed, you'll be prompted to insert another blank floppy into the drive. If you're prompted for more than one diskette, number the diskettes (disk 1, disk 2, etc.) as you remove them.
  10. Click OK at the "Pack and Go has successfully packaged your presentation" dialog box.

Unpacking the Presentation:

    1. Insert the first diskette that was created by running Pack and Go.
    2. Open Windows Explorer and view the contents of the floppy drive.
    3. Double-click on the file pngsetup.exe to "unpack" your presentation.
    4. Choose the destination folder on the C drive to save the presentation. (example - c:\myjunk). You are limited to using eight characters for the folder name, with no spaces. If the folder does not exist, you'll be prompted to create it.
    5. You may be prompted for additional diskettes. When the presentation has been extracted, you'll be asked if you'd like to run the slide show.
    6. If you choose No, you can run the slide show later by opening the destination folder on the C drive.
    7. The file name of your presentation may be abbreviated to eight characters, and may include a tilde (~) to indicate the characters that were removed from the file name. For example, a presentation called "Admissions Presentation.ppt" will be named "Admiss~1.ppt" after unpacking it on another computer.
    8. Note: The PowerPoint viewer is called PPVIEW32.exe. If the destination computer does not have PowerPoint installed, you can run your slide show by opening PPVIEW32.exe, then opening the presentation file.

I'd like a "timed" slide show that plays itself. How can I do this?

    1. From the Slide Show menu, select Rehearse Timings. Your first slide will appear, along with a clock to time the presentation.
    2. Click when the slide has been displayed for the desired length of time.
    3. Continue until you have gone through all of your slides.
    4. You will be asked if you'd like to save the slide timings. Choose Yes. The slide show will now advance each slide according to the times you saved.

Where can I get more help with PowerPoint?

Contact Dr. Chad Kjorlien (x1573 or 800-635-5987, ext. 1573) in the Office of Instructional Technology for information on integrating PowerPoint into your intstructional strategy