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New SmartArt layouts, including numbered lists and Meet the Team options

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SmartArt has been around a long time with no significant changes, but finally, we have some new SmartArt layouts!

First of all, let me say that I’m a big fan of SmartArt. It’s a way to turn a boring-looking bulleted list into something that looks like a graphic. SmartArt will make your slide more easily digestible for your audience.

It’s a great option for non-designers.

I have an old post, My Favorite SmartArt faves, that will give you some ideas, if you haven’t been using SmartArt.

Numbered SmartArt lists!

I’ve been wanting numbered SmartArt for a long time. Yes, I created a workaround but it was a bit time-consuming. It was 6 steps!

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Creating beautiful process diagrams with a teardrop shape

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Process diagrams are very useful for depicting (obviously) processes. Processes are a common topic in presentations and describing them with just words doesn’t work very well.

In this post, I’ll explain 2 ways to create a process diagram:

  • Using SmartArt
  • Creating it from scratch, to give you more variations and possibilities.

Let’s start with this slide, “4 pieces to the online marketing puzzle.” The 4 pieces are website, email, products, and events. But because I’m suggesting that this is a process, that is, you start by creating a website, then build an email list, and so on, it’s a process. You do one after the other.

A quick way would be to turn it into SmartArt, following these steps:

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Quickly create a grid of tiled images

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Can you imagine creating this slide in under 5 minutes?

powerpoint-tips-grid-tiled-images-1

Well, you can.

Using SmartArt picture layouts

Few people use or even know about the SmartArt picture layouts. They help you lay out multiple images in a preset pattern. They even crop the images for you! But you can change the cropping if you want. You can use them for:

You can probably think of more uses.

You’ll probably need to make some minor adjustments, but the final result should take less than 5 minutes.

Here are the steps: [Read more…]

My latest SmartArt faves

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As you probably know, SmartArt (available since PowerPoint 2007) is a way of converting bulleted text to a diagram, or at least a visually attractive graphic.

When I work with presenters, I often see slides that have a lot of text on them. We go through several options:

  • Delete the text, add a useful graphic, and just speak out the text
  • Divide the slide into 2 or more slides
  • Edit the text to reduce the number of words

But sometimes, there’s still a lot of text. Then I recommend converting it to SmartArt. PowerPoint offers many SmartArt layouts and configurations, but for a simple list, I was using the List layout, which turns bulleted text into simple rounded rectangles like this.

So, this looks better than…

powerpoint-tips-smartart-faves-1

… this, right? [Read more…]

7 quick fixes to your slides based on my experience with clients

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I see lots of slides that clients create and then ask me to help them make over. There are some problems that I see over and over and I thought I’d tell you about them because avoiding these mistakes will help you improve your slides a lot!

1. Ditch the text boxes!

I don’t know why people are allergic to PowerPoint’s built-in slide layouts. They are your friends! That’s because they help you create consistent slides with a minimum of fuss and bother.

What I see instead is slides created with the Title Only layout and a text box inserted below the title. The person types in the text and formats it manually. Then the text box is moved around — and the text resized — to make it fit. The result is text that moves around from slide to slide and is a different size on each slide.

Instead, use the Title & Content layout. Put the text in the body of the slide in the main text placeholder.  If necessary, reset the slide by right-clicking just off the slide and choosing Reset Slide.

Is there a legitimate use for text boxes? Yes! Use them for image captions or labels

2. That reminds me…

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