Power Point Tips & Tricks
Setting the Default Text Style
Using Different Backgrounds within one Presentation
Creating Pages with Slides and Descriptive Text
Making Presentation Files Smaller
Building Presentations for Distribution to Others
Easily Changing from Caps to Lower Case or vice versa
Saving Across Multiple Diskettes
Selecting Small or Covered Objects
Setting
the Default Text Style: If you want to change the style of the text
that appears when you type things that aren't the title or the slide body, do
the following:
Make sure no objects are selected.
From the Format menu, select Font. Make all the changes that you want there, and
click OK.
From that point on, new text will be created in that style.
To Set the formatting for the title or slide body objects, go to the Slide Master and format these objects on the master.
Using Different Backgrounds within one Presentation: Although you only have two background designs automatically supplied with the Masters (counting both the Slide Master and the Title Master), you can have any design you want on any slide. From the Format menu, select Background. Check the box that says "omit background items" and this will make the slide ignore the Slide Master's design. You are now free to add whatever design you want to this slide. If you want to do this to many slides at once, go to the Slide Sorter, select the slides, and then use the Format menu command. Remember though that if you choose to do something like put a photographic background on many of your slides instead of doing it once on the Master, that your file size may increase dramatically.
Using More than One Guide: If you like using guides, but wish there were more, you can create additional Guides by simply holding down the CTRL key while dragging on an existing Guide. This will create a new guide. To get rid of guides, just drag them off the edge of the slide.
Creating Pages with Slides and Descriptive Text: If you want to create printable pages that have notes or descriptive text associated each slide, PowerPoint has a feature designed to do just this called Notes Pages, or Speaker's Notes (depending on which version you're using). To view the Notes page for any slide, go to the View menu and select Notes Pages. You will see an image of your slide there, and a placeholder for adding your script, notes, or any other text you wish. You can cut-and-paste text from Word here if you like. To print these pages, bring up the Print dialog, and at the bottom of the dialog where it says "Print What:", select Notes Pages. These pages were originally designed to be used as audience hand outs (with space for the audience to take notes) but were also used by many as speaker's notes: the text block would have the script of the presentation, to be used by the speaker, or for sales binders to educated sales people.
Making Presentation Files Smaller: Prior to PowerPoint 97, there was no internal file compression code inside of PowerPoint, and files could get pretty big quickly. The most common cause of large files is the addition of large bitmaps. PowerPoint 97 compresses these bitmaps, but previous versions do not. To keep your presentations as small as you can, try reducing the resolution of your bitmaps, which will bring their size down tremendously. For viewing on screen, the bitmaps don't need to be more than 96 dpi; they won't print nicely until they're up around 150 or higher, but the screen always displays at 96 dpi, so if the primary viewing medium is the screen, there's no point in having the bitmaps be a higher resolution. Also, the bitmap format can make a big difference to your file sizes. JPEG and PNG both have good internal compression code. GIF has some, but not as good as JPEG. BMP files are the largest; TIFF files will also be very large.
Building Presentations for Distribution to Others: If you're making a PowerPoint presentation that you intend to distribute to lots of different people, here are some important things to watch out for that will cause problems:
1. Stick with the fonts that come installed with Windows; Fancy fonts that appear on your machine will cause problems if everyone else doesn't have them.
2. Avoid embedding sounds and videos: these will not go from Mac to Windows gracefully, and you have to be very careful about how you insert the files in order to get them to "travel" properly. See the FAQ section for more information on this.
3. Design the presentation on the lowest version that you think might be in use. For example, if you want the presentation to be able to be viewed by Mac users (who may not have upgraded to the latest version), you will want to design your presentation in PowerPoint 4.0. If you don't have PowerPoint 4, then you'll want to save your presentation in the lowest format you think people will have. For cross-platform distribution, 4.0 is still your safest bet; for Windows-only distribution, save to PowerPoint 95. When you down-rev save, be prepared for some visual changes in your file--the previous version may not support some of the features you've put in, so be sure to sanity check your file on several different machines and versions BEFORE you distribute it!
Easily Changing from Caps to Lower Case (or Vice Versa): If you have text that is in the wrong case, select the text, and then click Shift+F3 until it changes to the case style that you like. Clicking Shift+F3 toggles the text case between ALL CAPS, lower case, and Initial Capital styles. You'll be surprised how often you use this once you get the hang of it!
Nudging Objects: You can use the arrow keys to move objects very small distances. This is a big win for those laptop users who no longer have mice. Select the object, then use your arrow keys. Each press of the key will move the object on "grid unit" (1/12th of an inch, don't ask why); if you hold down the ALT key while nudging, or if you have the grid turned off, you can move the objects one pixel at a time.
Saving Across Multiple Diskettes: PowerPoint 7.0 (the one in Office 95, also known as PowerPoint '95) has a great feature that allows you to save large files over multiple diskettes! From the File menu, select Pack and Go. This wizard will compress your PowerPoint presentation and copy the file onto as many floppies as are necessary.
Subliminal Messages: These can be pretty hysterical in the right circumstances. Create a text object. With the text object selected, click on the Animation Effects button on the tool bar (the one that looks like a yellow star), and then click on the "flash once" button. Go to slide show and see the message quickly flash and then disappear.
Editing Drawings: Anything you draw with the pencil tool, you can edit. To get the object into "points mode", either double-click on the object, or select it then hit the Enter key. You will then see points at every vertex, which you can move. You can add points by holding down the shift key and clicking, you can subtract points by holding down the ALT key while clicking, and you can of course just drag points around.
Soft Shadows: You can create "soft" shadows for square or round objects that sit on a solid color background. Make a copy of the object, then change it's fill to be shaded from black to the background color, with the shading set with black going from the center out to the background color at the edges. Make this object about 150% bigger than the original object, and put it behind the object. This will give you the effect of "soft" shadows.
Selecting Small Objects: Hit the ESCAPE key to insure that nothing is currently selected, then repeatedly hit the TAB key, which will toggle you through a selection of all of the objects on a slide. This is useful for selecting very small objects, or objects that are covered up by other larger objects.