Misc. PowerPoint Tips

Customize the PowerPoint interface

October 29, 2014 by Ellen Finkelstein 1 Comment

Your work in PowerPoint can go faster and easier if you customize the interface so that you don’t have to click so many times to find commands that you use often. In PowerPoint 2010 and 2013, you can customize not only the Quick Access Toolbar (usually at the top left of your screen) but the entire ribbon.

Many power users have a Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) that stretches across the entire PowerPoint window. If you want to do that, you should display it below the ribbon, instead of above the ribbon — where it will run into the Title bar that shows the name of your presentation and the words “Microsoft PowerPoint.”

To move the QAT, click the down arrow at the right end of the QAT and choose Show Below the Ribbon.

I cover how to customize the QAT in an earlier blog post, “Work faster in PowerPoint.”

Customize the ribbon

You can go further and customize the ribbon. Here’s how:

In any blank space on the ribbon, right-click and choose Customize the Ribbon. The PowerPoint Options dialog box opens with the Customize Ribbon category highlighted. (You can also get to the same place by choosing File, Options and clicking Customize Ribbon.

One of the simplest things you can do is to display a tab that isn’t displayed by default, such as the Developer tab. That tab has a number of uses and you can read about a cool one in my older (but updated) blog post, “Add notes in PowerPoint in Slide Show view.”

Notice the New Tab and New Group buttons. Yes, you can create your own tabs and add groups to an existing tab. (A Group is a section on a tab.)

Also notice the drop-down list at the upper right, below the Customize the Ribbon heading. Here you can display Main tabs (tabs that appear all the time), Tool tabs (tabs that appear when an object is selected) and all tabs.

The commands are on the left. From the drop-down list at the tip, you can choose Popular Commands, All Commands, and the wonderful Commands Not in the Ribbon. (You’ll find some gems there.)

Here’s the process

Select an item on the right. You often need to click the plus sign to its left to expand it and see what’s inside.
Find a command on the left and select it. Sometimes, there are multiple items with the same name, so hover over it to read a tooltip that explains more.
Click Add.

You can also reorder items on the right-hand side by selecting them and clicking the Up or Down Arrow.

Here’s a 2-1/2 minute video showing how I add a customization to the ribbon.

The flipped meeting

October 15, 2014 by Ellen Finkelstein 5 Comments

At the Presentation Summit, I heard Patti Sanchez, SVP of Strategic Services at Duarte, talk about slidedocs, which are slides that are used as short documents. One use she mentioned was for pre-meeting reading. (You can download Nancy Duarte’s free book on slidedocs here.)

At the end of her talk, I stood up and said that this reminded me of the flipped classroom.

What is the flipped classroom?

It’s a concept that flips the idea of learning in the classroom and practicing at home. The reason is that students often struggle when doing homework — that’s when they have to apply what they’ve learned but they don’t have someone to help them at that time.

So instead, the teacher assigns reading — or watching a video — to be done at home. That content teaches the lesson. Then the students come to class and can ask questions and do exercises — but the teacher is there to help them.

The flipped classroom is being used both at the K-12 level and at the college level. You can read more about it here.

What is the flipped meeting?

Could this approach be used for in-house meetings? [Read more…]

Use black & white textured background images for infinite flexibility

April 3, 2014 by Ellen Finkelstein Leave a Comment

A nice background is a texture that isn’t too striking. It provides some interest without distracting from your content. Whether you want to find one texture and use it a lot or you want to create a variety of backgrounds, a black & white texture can give you lots of flexibility.

That’s because you can add a semi-transparent rectangle of any color on top of it. Or director “colorize” the image itself.

These textures make your slide look artistic and hand-made and were created by fellow PowerPoint MVP Geetesh Bajaj. They’re amazingly inexpensive and cost only $20! They come in both 4:3 (standard) and 16:9 (widescreen) versions.

This type of “grunge” look is very popular these days.

Click here to buy the set.

How to add a semi-transparent rectangle on top of the image

Here are the steps to follow:

Choose a textured background and insert it on your slide master — or even on an individual slide if you want. Just choose Insert> Picture(s). One nice thing about these images is that if they don’t fit exactly, you can resize them; they’re so abstract that no one will know!
Right-click the image and choose Send to Back.
Draw a rectangle, dragging it to cover the entire slide and image.
Click the Format tab and choose Shape Outline, then No Outline. an outline will ruin the effect!
Right-click the rectangle and choose Format Shape.
In the Fill category, drag the Transparency slider until you get the result that you want.
Right-click the rectangle and choose Send to Back, Send Backward until it’s in front of the texture image but behind any text placeholders.
Be sure to change the color of the text, if necessary, so that it’s legible.

Here the result using the default blue color in PowerPoint 2013 and a 64% transparency setting. I love how the dark gray blends with the blue to create a sophisticated blue-gray color! And all I have to do to change the color is select the rectangle and change its fill color! In fact, if you change the theme colors, the color will automatically adjust, as long as you choose one of the theme colors when you create the rectangle.

You can make the colored rectangle less transparent to show less of the texture and more of the color. It’s up to you. This one is 36% transparent, but it’s the same color as the previous example.

Colorize the textured image

Choose a textured background and insert it on your slide master — or even on an individual slide if you want. Just choose Insert> Picture(s). One nice thing about these images is that if they don’t fit exactly, you can resize them; they’re so abstract that no one will know!
Right-click the image and choose Send to Back.
With the image selected, click the Format tab.
Click the Color drop-down list in the Adjust group and choose one of the colors in the Recolor section.
You can additionally change the brightness and contrast. To do so, click the Corrections drop-down and choose one of the options.

Here you see the textured image colorize with a gold color and brightened 40%.

I LOVE this look, don’t you?

You can purchase the full-slide textures here. (Note: this is an affiliate link.)

Work faster in PowerPoint

January 31, 2014 by Ellen Finkelstein 5 Comments

When I work with clients in 1-on-1 coaching, I use webinar software so we can work together on a presentation. Sometimes I wield the mouse and sometimes my client does. Because I work in PowerPoint so much, I use the fastest way possible — at least as far as I know. But when my clients take over, I often see them use slower ways of accomplishing a task.

So, here are my best tips for working faster in PowerPoint.

The ribbon is often the slowest way

For many tasks, the ribbon isn’t the way to go. Take font changes, for example.

To change the font or its color or size, use the mini toolbar. When you select text, the mini toolbar appears. At first it’s semi-transparent but if you move your cursor over it, you’ll find tools for quickly changing the font and its properties. Because the mini toolbar is close to the text, you’ll find it faster to make common changes there than to go all the way up to the ribbon. And if you aren’t on the Home tab, using the ribbon is especially slow.

The ribbon has more tools than the mini toolbar, so sometimes you have to use it, but avoid it when possible.

Right-click is your friend

Right-clicking is often the fastest was to get the result you want.

To change a slide’s layout, instead of going to the Home tab and choosing an option from the Layout button, just right-click off the slide and choose Layout, then the option you want.
To reset a slide’s layout, right click off the slide and choose Reset Slide.
To open the Format Shape task pane or dialog box, right-click the object and choose Format Shape.

Love your keyboard shortcuts

The fastest way to get the job done is often a keyboard shortcut.

To save your presentation, don’t use the ribbon. Better than that is the Quick Access toolbar at the top of the PowerPoint window. But by far the fastest way is to press Ctrl + S.

To copy any object and paste it, I see many people right-click and choose from the shortcut menu. But it’s much faster to use Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V.

We all make mistakes. When you do, press Ctrl + Z to undo your last action. You can do this any number of times.

On the other hand, you often want to repeat an action. You can’t repeat every type of action, but when this works, it’s amazingly fast. Press F4 or Ctrl + Y to repeat your last action. For example, you can change the color of a shape to blue and then select other shapes and press F4 to change their color to blue, too.

Of course, to delete anything on a slide, select it and press the Delete key. If that object contains text, you need to click the border so that you delete the object and not just some of the text in it.

I see many people spend a lot of time dragging objects to move them a small distance. They move it too far, then try to move it back a little bit. Instead, use the 4 arrow keys; you’ll have a lot more control. To move an object an even smaller distance, press Ctrl while you tap the arrow keys.

Customize the Quick Access toolbar

The Quick Access toolbar is at the upper-left of your screen. It comes with a few buttons on it but you can add more. The advantage of doing this is that these buttons are available all the time, no matter which ribbon tab is active.

To customize the Quick Access toolbar, click the arrow at its right end, shown by the red arrow at the right. You can quickly choose from some common options. To find more, choose More Commands.

Note that you can also choose the Show Below the Ribbon option which is helpful when you add so many buttons that they run into the part of the title bar that says the name of the presentation.

When you choose More Commands, the Options dialog box opens with the Quick Access Toolbar category active. You can choose commands from the left side and click the Add button to add them to the toolbar. Then, you can use the Up and Down arrows on the right to move the buttons around so that they’re in the order you want. I always want a New, Open and Save button there and also add a couple of commands that aren’t on the ribbon at all. I’ve seen professional designers with buttons going clear across the screen.