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

New Tools in Slidewise 2.1!

Slidewise 2.1 has released! Version 2.0 was released in October 2024 and added an amazing set of new tools (color audit, find cropped images, improved way to see assigned layouts and update the layout assigned to slides, and more). Now, only 3 months after having access to version 2.0, version 2.1 has been released!

Open a presentation and click the Slidewise button on the HOME tab to get an amazing audit of the slides.

Version 2.1 replaces the row of icons to select Slidewise tools with a dropdown menu. I particularly like this navigation improvement for 2 reasons; first, if the PowerPoint action pane was too narrow, not all of the icons displayed. And second, I was constantly spending time mousing over and waiting for the tooltip to display to remind me what icon led to what tool – in the drop down menu the tool names are instantly there (yay!)

The ability to audit what slides use what Master Slide, and what Master Layout has been a huge time saver in presentation clean up. The Consolidate Masters feature has gotten better!

  • First note, this feature is still hard to find, so I feel a lot of people miss it (and it is awesome!). Go to the SLIDE MASTERS tool. Click the down arrow on any master slide listed and select CONSOLIDATE MASTERS from the fly out menu
  • This is the updated Consolidate Masters dialog. The big improvement are the checkboxes next to each master. (1) select the Slide Master you want to move other slides too. (2) check mark 1 or more (yay!) of the “bad” Slide Masters. (3) click CONSOLIDATE MASTERS and all of the slides assigned to the “bad” Slide Masters are instantly moved to the selected “good” Slide Master (double yay!!).
    • Note: if the “good” Slide Master does not have a Master Layout of the same name, PowerPoint will create new/Frankenstein layouts for those slides, but everything is consolidated to the Slide Master selected.

The last Slidewise tool I am covering in this blog post is the IMAGE AUDIT and the addition of a CROPPED images audit.

  • The first note is I think a lot of people miss the true Image Audit tool and features, because when Slidewise opens the default view is the FONTS AND MEDIA tab, which has an IMAGES section that provides a lot of great info and options.
  • But the IMAGE AUDIT tab offers even more! For me, the Image Audit is turned off when going to the tab (not sure why(
  • Turn ON the Image Audit and a number of amazing options are available to inspect, and correct, by image size – compression – quality – and more.
  • Version 2.1 adds to the list of options, a CROPPED image audit. Expand and see a list of every image that has a PowerPoint crop applied.
  • Click the down arrow next to any image and from the fly out menu click SHOW IN POWERPOINT to go directly to that slide and have that image selected.

Bonus: I am not 100% certain this is new in v2.1. I may have been added in v2.0, but it is new to me, all images and videos have an option to EXPORT ORIGINAL IMAGE/MEDIA now, which is another great addition to an already amazing productivity set of tools!

Check out the Slidewise PowerPoint add-in here.

Troy @ TLC

 

By |2024-02-03T08:52:33-07:00February 13th, 2024|Software/Add-Ins|

ToolsToo Updates (some cool new features!)

ToolsToo released v10 of the PowerPoint add-in suite in January 2022. There was a sprinkling of updates through 2022. Fast forward to 2024 and v11 of the ToolsToo  productivity suite has been released!

Here are my top 3 new tools from my initial few weeks running the new version.

1. AUTOFIT TEXT TO SHAPE

Here is this one-click formatting tool in use. The top bar is the template default font and font size – too small for the callout bar. Select the text box and go to ToolsToo > Shape Tools > Autofit Text to Shape and the font is instantly sized to fit the bar.

This is not a dynamic sizing. resize the bar and text does not automatically change size (which is the way I prefer text boxes to behave). On the bottom image I updated the text margins and reapplied the Toolstoo text sizing. Easy – fast – reliable!

2. MAKE SAME CROP

This is like Make Same Size, which easily one of the most helpful add-in tools to PowerPoint!, with the crop tool. As example, here are two images I added to a slide.

I cropped the left image.

To make the right image match, I used the ToolsToo Make Same Crop. Select the left/cropped image, then the right image > ToolsToo > Make Same > Make Same Crop

The right image is one-click cropped!

I do not know the algorithm being applied behind the scenes, but I am impressed that the crop is not just center-center of image, but appears to take into account the content! Just fine tune the image in the crop to be sized and positioned as needed.

3. Select Same Size

This is one of those tools you never thought of, or needed – until it was given to you and now I’m addicted to using it!

Question – which of these shapes are not the same size? (no scrolling down to see the answer )

Select all of the shapes, go to ToolsToo > Select Same > Select Same Size

The first shape selected is the reference for sizing, I selected shape #2 from left. And ToolsToo did not select the 2 of the shapes – they do not match the others!

ToolsToo is one of the best values at ~$20 USD for an amazing set of productivity tools. Version 11 is another great addition to the presentation designer tools. Details at the ToolsToo website here.

Troy @ TLC

 

By |2024-02-07T07:45:06-07:00February 8th, 2024|Software/Add-Ins|

3D Holiday Card Layout – Created in PowerPoint!

The previous blog post sharing the TLC Creative 2023 Christmas Card had a nice 3D layout to the card. That layout was entirely created in PowerPoint!

Step 1 was adding images of the outside and inside print layouts. Then cropping the image to just one side.

Next is to use PowerPoints’ 3D perspective options. Apply to the image.

Duplicate the image and adjust the crop to display the other half.

Update the 3D perspective to the opposite perspective.

Now move the two perspective images to align.

Group both images and add a PowerPoint drop shadow.

Done! Repeat for the interior layout using the desired 3D perspective (see my 3D perspective applied to the inside and outside layouts on the previous post).

Troy @ TLC

 

By |2024-01-31T11:45:34-07:00February 1st, 2024|Tutorial|

TLC Creative’s 2023 Holiday Card

It is the unofficial rule holiday decorations are okay until the end of January – right? Well, that is the rule I am going with as we near the end of January. I am sharing the TLC Creative Services 2023 Christmas card that was sent out to many of our friends and company’s we get to work with.

And a quick look at the house all lit up for the holidays.

Troy @ TLC

By |2024-01-29T23:11:27-07:00January 30th, 2024|Personal|

The Noun Project SVGs

The Noun Project has a direct integration with PowerPoint and as a presentation designer is invaluable. If unfamiliar the Noun Project has “the most diverse collection of free icons and stock photos with over 5 million art-quality icons and free photos.”

  • side note: I have had a paid Noun Project plan for many years, and did know they offered images/photos! There are separate plans for icons and photos. Offering looks good, but not something we use at TLC Creative. 

Three great callouts:

  1. It is an add-in that makes it entirely accessible directly in PowerPoint.
  2. Icons can be downloaded as raster .png (transparent background!) or vector .svg (yay, scalable, color change and edit directly in PowerPoint!).
  3. It is budget friendly at ~$40 year for unlimited use.

TO GET STARTED

  • Under the insert tab select “Get Add-ins” and search for “Noun Project”
  • Once added the add-in is installed, use the ICONS button on PowerPoint’s INSERT tab. Review current pricing and plans on the Noun Project website.
  • Click the ICONS button and the Noun Project interface opens as a Pane in PowerPoint on the right side. The first time you open the Noun Project pane, click LOG IN TO NOUN PROJECT and add your account credentials.
  • note: if you have not paid for the service, the option to create a free login by clicking on the login will then allow icons searches, but they are “locked”. 
  • After logging into your Noun Project account, search for any icon.
  • Select the icon to see larger, choose a color, and insert.
  • If you have selected to import .svg vector icons (and you should!), the ability to change the fill color – outline and other formatting options are the same as formatting a PowerPoint rectangle.
  • Additionally, inserted Noun Project icons can be ungrouped – which will display this message (click YES).
  • Ungroup a 2nd time and the icon will be broken into individual pieces.
  • Advanced shape design can also be done by right-clicking, selecting EDIT POINTS, and modifying the shape (aka “Illustrator-lite”)

Troy @ TLC

By |2024-01-23T19:59:22-07:00January 25th, 2024|PowerPoint, Software/Add-Ins, Tutorial|

Error Message when Opening a PowerPoint File from MS Teams

Working a set of our TLC Creative show computers I had this frustrating error when attempting to open the MS Teams based presentation:

I confirmed MS Teams was logged in with my credentials. Confirmed I can access the Team, folder and file. I also confirmed I was able to open the PowerPoint file in the Teams viewer and web-based browser version of PowerPoint. But I did not confirm PowerPoint/MS Office was logged in with my account – the user seen in the upper right of PowerPoint.

Each time I went through the process of logging myself as the profile for Office to use, the above error taunted me (argh!!). The solution, which I have confirmed works on yet another computer having the same Microsoft seizure, is to SIGN OUT of all profiles. Then sign in with your credentials. I have no idea why Office errors out when trying to login your profiles sometimes, but it does. And I now have a solution that works (but sorry to everyone else that needs to also use that computer and must go through the login profile process vs. just clicking to change profiles…).

– Troy @ TLC

By |2024-01-23T19:29:08-07:00January 23rd, 2024|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc, Software/Add-Ins|

Look Over There! (3)

The concept of the subject looking toward the content is not limited to people. Vehicles, roads, and animals all apply.

We can, all within PowerPoint, easily go from this:

To this:

Just some presentation design ideas for thought

Troy @ TLC

By |2024-01-09T17:39:02-07:00January 18th, 2024|PowerPoint|

Look Over There! (2)

The previous post had these two (problem) slides.

The first image is an easy fix. The photo has no text, car steering wheel, or wedding band visible – all things that clearly show an image is in the wrong orientation. Using the FLIP HORIZONTAL in PowerPoint, updates the slide, and creates the reassuring visual of the subject looking at the slide content.

The second image is more difficult. The words on the white board prevent the image from being flipped. So we can be creative with the layout and “flip” the content to make the image work. We moved the bullet list to the left and the photo to the right, creating the reassuring visual of the subject looking at the slide content.

Troy @ TLC

By |2024-01-09T17:32:13-07:00January 11th, 2024|PowerPoint|
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