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Advantages of PPTools Starter Set Plus

Ever wonder how some people can edit complex animations with speed, accuracy and ease?

Well, we use a great program called PPTools Starter Set Plus developed by Steve Rindsberg. This program has many beneficial features for users of PowerPoint.

1. Layer Manager: Move objects above or below any other object
2. Hammer Tool: Places objects on different slides in the same position 
3. Access to the Character Map directly from the toolbar
4. Ability to make selected text small caps

Our favorite feature is within the Layer Manager.  Not only can it adjust layers, but also it can turn Shapes on (Visible) or off (Invisible) at will.  For us, this is a dream come true.  Given that our animations can be several layers deep, we can now edit and modify any object/text with ease by simply turning off the layers that hide it, edit the hidden object and then turn everything back on.

For less than $20, we have saved countless hours.  Bulk pricing is also available.  For more questions regarding this product and to see other tools Steve has created to make your life easier, visit www.pptools.com.

New Year, New PowerPoint Presentation

It’s a New Year! Make a new PowerPoint presentation that will wow your audiences. It’s time to reevaluate your slides. What areas could use improvements? Here is a list of tips on how to spruce your PowerPoint deck.

1. Go through your deck before every presentation so each presentation will target the specific audience your speaking to
2. If you skip slides while speaking; it’s time to delete them
3. Make bulleted text slides more dynamic, for example: insert text into objects and add animation, or better yet replace the text with images
4. Where appropriate, add animation, sound or videos that will enhance your message
5. Check that all information is still accurate
6. Clean up your slides, if there is a lot of information on one slide – remove content or split it into two slides

We wish you a great year of powerful presentations.

Helpful PowerPoint Features for Beginners

Before I started working at ViCoSo I claimed to be a PowerPoint expert, I soon learned that I was wrong and PowerPoint has a lot of features that I was unaware of. Below is a list of PPT features that I find save time and ultimately creates a more powerful presentation:

1. Pick Up Object Style Tool (Eyedropper Tool): The Eyedropper tool allows you to copy the style of one object and apply it other objects in the presentation. You don’t need to go through the same process for applying a style to each object. One click will apply a style to multiple objects.  For more instructions how to use the tool and on where to find it, visit our Tutorial: “What Can the Eyedropper do for me?”

2. Align Tools: The alignment tools allow you to align multiple objects on a slide by the top, bottom, middle or center.  For example if you want two boxes aligned by the top, you don’t have to guess exactly where they align to the top.  Once both objects are selected you can click the Align to Top icon.  You can also align an object relative to slide which is a great way to align an object perfectly in the center of a slide.

3. Object Order: Bring to Front or Back, Bring Forward or Backward gives you the ability to change the order of objects that are placed on top of one another.

4. Selection Pane: The Selection Pane is a new PowerPoint 2007 feature, which is extremely helpful.  You can choose an object to be visible or invisible.  This helps when you need to edit an object that is behind another object.  By making an object invisible you can edit an object without moving anything.  Just make sure you make all objects visible after you are done.

We would love to hear what your favorite PPT features are that help you.

 

I Want for Christmas is…

Dear Santa,

We aren’t asking for much this year; nothing you can place under the tree and not the impossible items such as world peace and a prosperous economy.  I only ask for a few PowerPoint enhancements. Here are my wishlist items:

1. Ability to align/distribute tables

2. More precise control over the motion path points:
possibly by keyboard arrow movement or x-, y-coodinates

3. Return to the AP style Title Case as an option

4. Add speed commands for zoom in and zoom out
(i.e., ctrl + and ctrl – )

5. Lastly, for fun a few new animations and  slide transitions

We hope your elves can help with this.

Happy Holidays!!!

Tis the season to be thankful…below is our thankful PowerPoint 2007 list:

1.  Custom placeholders: Add custom placeholder fields into the slide master: perfect for subtitles.

2. Undo after save: The undo option works after saving the file! You can also undo more than 10 actions!!

3. Edit auto-shape points: Ability to edit points on PowerPoint’s auto shapes.

4. Instant previews: Rollover the desired effect and the selected shape, text, image, or chart will preview the change.

5. Tracking: customize the spacing between text characters.

6. Paste Special Speed Key: Ctrl+Alt+v

7. Edit Grouped Objects: Ability to move an individual object after it has been grouped. 

8. New Effect options: There are more effect options for images and shapes.  You can now add reflections and make objects 3D.

9. Linked Text Columns: Add columns to a text box.

10. Echo Swinford: because she always has the answer

Happy Thanksgiving!

Grouped Objects in PowerPoint 2007

Have you ever grouped together objects, animated them and realized that you have to resize or move one of those objects?  Now you have to ungroup, edit, regroup and then reanimate.

How aggravating and time-consuming!

PowerPoint 2007 has a great new feature that allows us to edit objects that are grouped and animated without ungrouping them.  You can resize, move, and edit your grouped objects individually while grouped.  This is a major time saver and it also prevents errors that can happen when reanimating.  Kudos to Microsoft… now if they can only allow buttons with rollover states…

How to Determine the Length of your Presentation

Do you determine the length of your presentation based on the amount of slides you have in your PowerPoint deck?  Don’t be a slide counter!  A common misconception is that the amount of slides will determine the length of a presentation.  This typically will cause people to cut down on the amount of slides and put too much information on a slide.  Too much information on a slide can make it too cluttered and confusing for your audience, and can even make your presentation longer than expected

It’s time to clean up your slides.  Next time you prepare a presentation, count the amount of clicks, not slides.  The average time a person tends to spend per click is about one minute.  So go ahead add more slides to your presentation.  Your slides will now be clean and more presentable for your audience.

Group, Ungroup and Regroup in PowerPoint 2007

We have started to work with PowerPoint 2007 on a more regular basis, and were disappointed when we found that ctrl+shift+g, h, and j speed key commands did not work anymore to group, ungroup, and regroup objects respectively.  We use those speed key commands on a daily basis, which saves a lot of clicks.

Well after looking through the web and a bit of trial and error, we found the solution:

          Task                                   Speed Key Command
To Group Objects                                      ctrl+g
To Ungroup Objects                              ctrl+shift+g
To Regroup Objects                              ctrl+shift+j

We believe this is an attempt to conform to other design programs, such as Illustrator.   Not sure why else for the change.  This is the first blog in our series, “Converting to PowerPoint 2007”.  As we uncover additional benefits, we will make sure to post.  Have you seen any major differences that you’ve figured out solutions too?

A New Way to Present

If you’re looking for an alternative way to present your PowerPoint deck, try pptPlex by Microsoft Office Labs.  This plugin allows you to interactively correspond with your audience.  Most slides are presented in sequence.  However, with pptPlex, the order can be selected in real-time while presenting. 

Another great feature: content that is too small to read on a single slide can be enlarged in real-time. 

For more information visit pptPlex.

Accelerating PowerPoint Animation

Too many animations happening simultaneously on one slide can make your animations appear choppy and slow.  One possible solution is to turn on the “Hardware Graphics Acceleration” within PowerPoint.

PowerPoint 2003

1. Go to the Slide Show Drop Down Menu
2. Select the Set Up Slide Show
3. Click “Use hardware graphics acceleration.” From the pop-up box

PowerPoint 2007

1. Go to the Slide Show Tab
2. Select Set Up Slide Show
3. Click “Use hardware graphics acceleration.” From the pop-up box

Your animations will now run smoothly with no hiccups.