The PowerPoint® Blog

I work with PowerPoint on a daily basis and I am very honored to be a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP. We have a talented team of presentation designers at TLC Creative Services and ThePowerPointBlog is our area to highlight PowerPoint tips, tricks, examples and tutorials. Enjoy! Troy Chollar

Animated Object Goes Opaque (1)

Many of the emphasis animations do not respect the transparent properties of an image – whether it be a .png with alpha channel transparency or an image where PPT ‘Set Transparent Color’ tool was used. In most cases you can use some more advanced animation to create the same effect and not have the opacity problems.

Here is our image. It is a .png image created in Photoshop and it has no background.

But if we apply the TEETER emphasis animation

When animated the background changes from transparent to a solid color (blue in this instance)

We can create the same effect with some custom settings on the SPIN emphasis animation. So the first step is to apply the SPIN emphasis.

Then go into the animation properties and on the EFFECT tab change:
1. Amount from 360 to 5
2. Turn on Smooth Start
3. Turn on Smooth End

Then in the TIMING tab change:
1. The speed to VERY FAST (or faster)
2. Repeat to 3 times

Now the object will “teeter” and maintain its transparent background!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:07:45-07:00April 28th, 2008|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Color for the Medical Template

To help a medical device company stand out I introduced some bold coloring. I also used shadowing, bevels and negative space to create the content area. Here is the template developed for medical device maker, Zylon.

1. Theme Graphic
2. Title Slide
3. Content Slide

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:08:08-07:00April 25th, 2008|Portfolio, PowerPoint|

Dark Knight PPT

I recently had a project with the upcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Had a lot of fun getting sneak peaks at images and footage of the movie. I was tasked with developing a PowerPoint template that carried the dark color scheme and edgyness of the movie. Of course using an all black color pallette is not that easy, but it did prove to be a fun challenge! Here are the 3 slide layouts used for the template:

1. Theme Graphic
2. Title Slide
3. Content Slide

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:09:20-07:00April 23rd, 2008|Portfolio, PowerPoint|

Hanging Out with PowerPoint Gurus

Last week I had opportunity to spend some time with a group of the Korean PowerPoint MVPs. Despite communication challenges we showed off some recent projects and I do not need to understand a presentation to be impressed by it. This group of guys can put together an animated slide that is tops!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:09:47-07:00April 21st, 2008|Personal|

Greeting from Seattle!

Yesterday was a fantastic day of hearing from the PowerPoint program managers, developers and more at Microsoft. Lots of great energy and truely one of the best teams of people in the entire company.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:10:17-07:00April 16th, 2008|Personal|

Microsoft MVP Summit 2008

I missed a few posts last week and I hope you have gotten more sleep than me lately. My project load has been huge and I have been trying to complete a number of projects in anticipation of heading up to Microsoft for the the MVP Summit this week.

I am looking forward to a great time, learning lots of new things about the future of PowerPoint and getting some time with many great friends!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:10:55-07:00April 14th, 2008|Personal|

Quick Before-&-After slide

Much of my time is spent interpretting information and creating a visual design that simplifies and makes it look ‘nifty’. Here is a quick before-&-after from a recent presentation.

Before:

After:

– Note: slide loses a bit of visual aesthetics as client content and template removed. Also, the animation is not seen, which helped emphasize the yellow section remained consistent over the 2 years. My slide was also built using PPT2007 visual effects.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:11:47-07:00April 8th, 2008|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Trouble with Flash Player…

So I recently went through some issues installing a PowerPoint add-in. It relies on Flash, but did not recognize it was already installed. In troubleshooting I found a couple of nice tools from Adobe and lots of information on the Flash Player.

For me it turned out that I needed to register the flash player with the add-in, which was a solution provided on their website. But should you need to take further steps here are a few useful tools:

What version is installed?
– Click here to go to this website and it will run a system check and tell you exactly what version and build of Flash player is installed on your computer.

How do I remove it?
– Click here to download Adobe’s Flash Removal Tools.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:12:14-07:00April 7th, 2008|Resource/Misc, Software/Add-Ins|

ESCape Key as an Instant Undo (CTRL Z)

Another nifty keyboard shortcut is like an instanteous undo. Say you are adjusting the size of an image and while adjusting you see it really is not what you want to do.

At this moment you have 3 choices:
1. Try to resize to the original and then unclick
2. Unclick and use the Undo button or CTRL+Z to undo the resizing
3. Click the ESCape key while still holding your mouse click. Whatever action you started (move object, resize object, crop object, etc.) is ended you are instantly back where you started before the mouse click!

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:12:45-07:00April 4th, 2008|PowerPoint, Tutorial|

Use Space Bar to Stop Actions (PPT 2007)

I made reference to this in the previous posts “option 2” solution. A way to stop many editing actions at the exact point you want is to use the space bar.

Adding or adjusting a line can be tricky right now in PowerPoint 2007. Because some mice tend to be a bit jumpy when you release the click the line has moved a bit from your ideal location.

What you can do is click and drag to the length you want (can be longer or shorter). Then press the space bar. Using the space bar is the same as releasing, or unclicking.

Also works with adjusting images or autoshapes size, including using the crop tool.

It is bit difficult to figure this action out without doing it. Open PowerPoint 2007 and try using the space bar instead of unclicking.

– Troy @ TLC

By |2016-11-17T13:14:16-07:00April 2nd, 2008|PowerPoint, Tutorial|
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