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MICROSOFT POWERPOINT: Adding Transparency to Photos
by AJ Walther, COTP
You have a plan… a plan to create an awesome PowerPoint presentation about, among other emotions, anger.
Naturally, you want to illustrate anger on one of the slides. Once you're done, it's possible that you'll take the presentation into Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline and create an epic eLearning course. But that's down the road. Let's get back to the plan at hand: anger.
Your plan is to show a truly upset human in varying states of anger. However, you've only got one photo you're allowed to use. Your plan needs to adapt, so you're thinking you'll simply duplicate the image a few times and then make each copy a bit more transparent than the previous one.
You want to do this:
“But AJ, how’d you know I want to do that exact thing?” Friend, I just knew.
The problem is—how? PowerPoint won’t allow you to adjust the transparency of a photo so you'll need to scrap that plan.
Don't get angry!
What you CAN do is adjust the transparency of a shape or other drawn object. Here’s how to get from Point A to Point B, including an extra bit to accommodate if your photo has a background you’d like removed.
Insert your photo onto your slide (Insert > Pictures).
With the photo selected on the slide, select the Picture Tools Format tab and click the Remove Background tool to remove the background as you see fit.
When your photo is properly background-less, right-click and choose Copy (or press Ctrl-C on your keyboard).
Insert a shape (Insert > Shapes). For the image at the beginning of this article, I inserted a rectangle. It’s a good idea to “trace” your original image while drawing your shape to ensure it’s the correct size.
Right-click the shape and choose Format Shape. From the Format Shape panel, ensure the Fill and Line tab (the paint can) is selected and open the Fill area.
Select Picture or Texture fill and from the Insert Picture From area, choose the Clipboard button. Note that when you choose Picture or Texture fill, the panel name changes from Format Shape to Format Picture.
Your shape will auto-fill with the last thing you copied: in this case, your background-less photo.
From the Line area, choose No Line.
In the Fill area, note that you can now adjust the transparency of your picture-filled shape.
To achieve the effect in the photo below, I simply copied and pasted my picture-filled shape several times and adjusted the transparency on each duplicate.
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I'm teaching a couple of live, online, and highly interactive PowerPoint classes: PowerPoint for eLearning 101: You’re Doing it Wrong and PowerPoint for eLearning 201: Finding, Editing, and Creating Vector Graphics for eLearning Design, Come learn how to take your PowerPoint presentations to the stratosphere.
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AJ Walther, COTP, is IconLogic's Chief Creative Officer (CCO), a seasoned online trainer, eLearning graphic designer, and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." AJ made her own interdisciplinary studies major, focusing on writing and art. Her combined expertise in PowerPoint, graphic design, and writing allows her to bring a unique skillset to the eLearning community.MICROSOFT POWERPOINT QUICK TIP: Smoothly Animate with Morph
by AJ Walther, COTP
Raise your hand if this is you. You want to animate something on a slide and then on the next slide, you want that same object to do something else.
The problem is that you used motion paths to move this item from Point A to Point B on Slide 1 and then on Slide 2 you want that object to appear in the exact spot it ended on Slide 1 before it does something else. And getting that item in that exact spot is a total pain in the you-know-what.
Sure, there are ways to do this. In fact, I wrote an article about this very thing many moons ago: Perfecting the Motion Path. There are also add-ins you can download that will make quick work of this, but one that I downloaded may or may not have been the cause of my software acting glitchy and crashing, so I uninstalled it just to be safe. But, let's keep it real: ain't nobody got time for that.
A new PowerPoint 2016/365 transition might just solve this problem. Using the Morph transition, objects from one slide can smoothly transition to whatever spot you place them on the next slide.
Let’s use these birds as examples.
They’re love birds and they just want to sit together on the same branch.
And then they want to say via speech bubble how in love they are.
All I need to do for this to work is:
- Create a slide with the birds on opposite branches
- Duplicate the slide
- Move the birds together on the second slide
- Add the morph transition between the two slides
- Either add a third slide or use an “appear” animation for the speech bubble
I'm including two versions of the animation below (just in case your email software doesn't play one or the other). The first one below is an animated gif. A video of the animation is next.
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Looking to learn the best ways to use PowerPoint in your eLearning initiatives? Check out my live, online, and highly interactive classes.
***
AJ Walther, COTP, is IconLogic's Chief Creative Officer (CCO), a seasoned online trainer, eLearning graphic designer, and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials." AJ made her own interdisciplinary studies major, focusing on writing and art. Her combined expertise in PowerPoint, graphic design, and writing allows her to bring a unique skillset to the eLearning community.Create a Branching Scenario in Microsoft PowerPoint
by Thomas Reyes-Cairo 
A branching scenario is a great way to help a learner apply knowledge by providing a simulated situation from real life. They're also fairly easy to create! Follow these four steps to quickly bring your PowerPoint projects that extra bit of interaction.
Storyboard it Out
In the case of a branching scenario, it is important to map out which slides you want to go where and to do what. Storyboarding is an important part of any design, but is critical when working with branching scenarios (and especially if your scenarios are complicated ones).
There are lots of different ways you can design a situation to unfold. The simplest way would be to make it so that each individualized situation has a set of answers that have no affect on a future outcome or conversation. Think of it like this. The learner can give a client a good or a bad suggestion on investment opportunities. If the learner gives a bad suggestion now, feedback is provided but it doesn't change the client's attitude going forward. This is relatively easy to map out: Slide 1 goes to Slide 2 for positive feedback and to Slide 3 for negative feedback. Both then go to Slide 4 for the next scenario.
If you're going to create something akin to the Choose Your Own Adventure book series of yesteryear (hopefully, with a lot less untimely demises), you should get your charting skills ready. Like the number of branches on a tree, any time you want to reflect a recurring change throughout a decision-making process, you can expect it to grow at an exponential rate every time there is a new decision to make. This isn't to say that you shouldn't do it; there's a lot of value in remembering consequences to a decision. Just be ready to make sure you have mapped it all out.
Find your Visual Style
For an interaction as simple as this, you're not going to need more than a text box and the buttons that will mark each decision point. Some people naturally have an eye for design and can easily make something that fits the parameters for an activity like this. This could be you or it could be the friendly graphic designer the next cubicle over. Personally, I try hard but am often found wanting in the graphic design department. So, instead of trying to make something out of nothing, I'm going to snag a few templates out of the eLearning Brothers PowerPoint Graphics Library to demonstrate the next point.
Either way you go (designing something from scratch or finding a good-looking template), visuals are important and shouldn't be left by the wayside. You want to make sure that you're stimulating your learners' brains in positive ways, encouraging a focus on your content and principles.
Working with PowerPoint
Now for the fun part: linking everything together! As you can see in the image, I've built out all of my slides according the needs of my plan. In this case, I'm going with the easy route of just having each question self-contained with its outcomes. I'll start with Slide 1 (pictured above). In this case, I want Answer 1 to go to Slide 2 for positive feedback and Answer 2 to go to Slide 3 for negative feedback. Both of those will then advance on to Slide 4 for Question 2. I'm going to accomplish this by using Action Settings.
Find the object that you want to click to go to the appropriate slide. In this case, I'm going to use the brown Answer buttons above the text on each side. Right click on the button (make sure you're not in the text editing box but have the actual object selected) and choose Action Settings.
Check the Hyperlink to: box and select Slide from the drop-down menu. Select the appropriate slide (ie., Slide 2 for Answer 1) and click OK.
Repeat this for each button you have on the page, assigning it to go to the appropriate slide. Also, if you haven't done so, ensure that on your feedback slides you have included a Continue button.
Give this button (but not any others) a hyperlink to your next question. Continue this process for all remaining questions. Pretty simple, right?
There's one last thing you'll want to do, though. Head to the Slide Show tab on the ribbon and select Set Up Slide Show.
Under Show type ensure that you check the Browsed at a kiosk option. This will disable other types of navigation, including simply clicking to the next slide and the navigation bar that usually accompanies a presentation.
Depending upon the remainder of your slide content, it may be important to include a Continue button on each slide. Don't worry! If you copy/paste an object from another slide, the hyperlinks will also paste with it. Simply just make one button that hyperlinks to the Next Slide (and maybe one for a Previous Slide, if desired) and that should do it for any regular content slides you might have.
Test it Out
This often goes without saying, but for that very reason I mention it here. Sometimes when something goes unsaid, it also goes undone! Anytime you're dealing with something you've built, you should take some time to make sure that it fully works the way you would expect it to. Don't just check a few of the branches and make sure they're sturdy before hopping on one. Ensure that each path you've created yields the expected outcome. This will save you any headaches come presentation or learning time. The last thing you want is for someone to get positive feedback for something that was actually done poorly or improperly!
At the end of the day, there's no doubt that branching scenarios give you more possibilities with your content than your standard linear presentation. Take some time to experiment with hyperlinking in your PowerPoint projects and see a whole world of possibilities open up to you!
Articulate Storyline vs. Adobe Captivate
A recent LinkedIn post asked eLearning developers: which tool is best: Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline? As I read through the comments, I was struck by how many people insisted that Storyline was the better choice because it was easier to learn than Captivate because it was so much like Microsoft PowerPoint.
As someone who uses both Captivate and Storyline, I have to disagree with that recurring sentiment. Sure, Storyline seems to be more like PowerPoint (there's a similar Ribbon and toolset). But honestly, how many of you are PowerPoint experts? I bet you can make a traditional presentation in PowerPoint including text, bullets, and images, but do you really know how to use PowerPoint efficiently and to its potential? I would submit that the answer is no… unless you received proper PowerPoint training. Both Captivate and Storyline seem simple at first glance… just like PowerPoint. However, PowerPoint, Storyline, and Captivate are robust development tools and if you aren't trained, you'll quickly find yourself doing the "hunt and peck" shuffle as you learn on-the-fly… spending double (perhaps triple) the time necessary to perform simple tasks.
I'm a big fan of both Captivate and Storyline (and TechSmith Camtasia Studio too). I'm constantly asked which tool is best (typically this question comes from new eLearning developers who are under pressure to pick one tool for their corporate eLearning initiatives over another). People want to know the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each tool.
My answer? It depends mainly on two things: your budget to purchase an eLearning tool (are you a one-person shop buying a single license or are you part of a team requiring multiple licenses?); and the output you are trying to provide your learners.
Captivate costs around $1,000. If you don't want to shell out the cash up front, you can subscribe to Captivate for around $30 per month. Given that Adobe upgrades Captivate approximately once each year, and you get the upgrades for free as part of your subscription, subscribing is a pretty good deal. Storyline is far more expensive (I've seen it listed for upwards of $2,000 and there isn't a subscription plan).
When it comes to output, both Captivate and Storyline can publish SWF and HTML5 content. However, if you're required to publish interactive PDFs or create responsive eLearning, the choice has to be Captivate (Storyline does not currently support either output).
Here's an analogy for comparing Captivate against Storyline. Consider the Toyota Tundra to the Toyota Takoma. Both are trucks. Both are awesome. Both have similar appointments in the cabin (some of the appointments are identical and if you learn how to use a feature in one truck, you know how to use it in the other). The Tundra (Captivate) can tow a house; the Takoma (Storyline) can tow a boat. The Takoma is easier to park in a small garage; the Tundra… not so much.
Do you need to tow a house or just a boat? If just a boat, go ahead and get the boat-puller. However, once you've purchased the boat puller and then need to pull a house… yikes!
If you use both Captivate and Storyline, I'd love to read your comments about both tools below as comments.
And of course, no matter which tool you choose, we've got an awesome collection of training classes to support you.
Microsoft PowerPoint: Fixing Tables
by AJ Walther
I've said it a thousand times: when it comes to eLearning (and presentations in general), PowerPoint is not the problem. Bad design is the problem. That being said, I wouldn't let PowerPoint off the hook altogether. Many PowerPoint defaults serve to lead users down a path of poor design choices (starting on a slide that encourages a title followed by a bulleted list, for example).
Let's take a look at tables. When you insert a table in PowerPoint, you will probably end up with something that looks a lot like this:
The table shown above isn't deplorable, but there's a good chance that if you show it to an audience, eyes will glaze over (people will not know where to focus). To fix this table you first need to decide what message you are trying to convey. Do you want your audience to really see all of the information? Are you trying to show a progression over time? Are the totals really important? Maybe just one month is important and the other information is just supporting data? You might find that a table really isn't the solution you want after all. Maybe a simple graphic would do the trick instead.
For the sake of demonstration, let's say you are presenting the chart above and the main point you want to drive home is the 2013 totals. Here is a step-by-step guide to fixing such a table:
Remove font and fill colors
Don't worry, we'll add in some design-y elements later.
Remove Borders and Gridlines
Use your best judgment here to decide whether there should be absolutely no lines, lines in specific places, or a line after each row. Generally you will find that despite temptation to add them, few lines are really needed. This may depend on your audience, how much data you are presenting, and from what size screen your end-users will view this content.
Remove Bolding
Traditionally you may find that the trend is to bold all items in the top row and the left-most row. Think carefully about whether this is really necessary.
Left align text
Ignore the titles for now and align all of the data's text (not numbers) to the left.
Right align numbers
Still ignoring the titles, right align all of the numeric data.
Align titles with data
Now for the titles. Match the alignment of titles to the data below them.
Resize columns to data
Working within the table in PowerPoint, hover your mouse over the gridlines between each row of data. Your mouse will change to parallel lines with arrows. Double-click and the row to the left will resize to perfectly fit its data.
Use white space
In the example below the data is divided by months of a year so a logical place to add space and provide a rest for the eyes was after each quarter. Use your best judgment when deciding how you might break apart your data to make it more readable.
Round numbers and use consistent precision
There are some fields where it is truly important to show numerical data several units past a decimal point. For most of us, however, that is not the case. Decide where you want to round your numbers and be consistent throughout.
Remove repetition
In this case, repeating 2013 for every month of the year was not necessary. Instead the title was changed to "Months of 2013."
Format fonts
It's easy to forget to apply the fonts you've used elsewhere to your table. Take the time to do that now, making sure you are being consistent with the rest of your content.
Add emphasis
Now, finally, add in emphasis thoughtfully to illustrate your main point.
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If you love AJ's articles, you'll love her Optimizing PowerPoint Design for eLearning & Presentations mini course.
Microsoft PowerPoint: Create and Use Chart Templates
by AJ Walther
Do you work for an organization that uses many charts? Do all of those charts need to be formatted to match specific corporate branding? Does this take you ages? Utilizing PowerPoint's custom Chart Templates might just save you a lot of time.
Create a Chart Template
- Insert a chart in PowerPoint
- Format the chart to reflect your company's branding guidelines.
- Ensure the chart is selected (it will have a gray border) and choose Chart Tools Design > Save As Template.
- Give the chart template a name. (PowerPoint will automatically save the chart template where it needs to go.)
- Repeat this process for all charts that need a template. (You won't be able to apply a chart template to a different kind of chart, so you'll need to do this for every type of chart you plan to use.)
Apply a Saved Chart Template
- Select a chart that requires your corporate formatting.
- From the Ribbon, choose Chart Tools Design > Change Chart Type.
- From the Change Chart Type dialog box, select theTemplates folder from the categories at the left.
- From the My Templates area, hover over each chart to view its chart name.
- Choose your desired chart template and click the OK button.
You might have to do some additional formatting based upon the amount of information in your chart, but overall this process should save you a lot of design time.
Share a Chart Template With Your Team
There are a few ways that you could distribute your chart template to others on your team. Here is one of the easiest ways:
- Send a presentation to everyone on your team that would need to utilize the chart template. (Keep in mind that the template needs to includes one properly formatted chart of every type your company may need to use.)
- Instruct your team to follow the instructions above to save the Chart Templates to their systems.
And that's it… everyone should now have readily available chart templates on their systems.
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If you love AJ's articles, you'll love her Optimizing PowerPoint Design for eLearning & Presentations mini course.
Microsoft PowerPoint: Working with Guides
by AJ Walther
For some PowerPoint projects you may find that you would like to line up elements in a certain way and that having guides on the slide would be useful. In the steps that follow, I will show you how to make guides visible and (because there is only one horizontal and one vertical guide that intersect in the center by default) how to add extra guide lines.
Show the Guides & Ruler
- Click the View tab and, from the Show area, select Guides. (Two guides appear on the slide by default, one vertical, the other horizontal.)
- Select Ruler from the Show area of the View tab.
Most people who use the guides need things lined up at specific measurable spots on the slide. The Ruler will help with this.
Reposition a Guide
- Click and hold one of the guides. (You will see a 0.00 indicating that the guide is in the center of the slide.)
- Drag the guide one direction or the other to change its position.
Create a New Guide
- Ensure the original guide is at its starting 0.00 position.
- Press the [Ctrl] key on your keyboard and then click and hold the guide. (When you drag you will create a new guide.)
- Place the new guide wherever you would like.
Be sure to release the mouse button first and then the [Ctrl] key. If you release the [Ctrl] key first the original guide will not be duplicated but will be repositioned instead.
Note: To delete a guide, simply drag it off the slide.
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If you love AJ's articles, you'll love her Optimizing PowerPoint Design for eLearning & Presentations mini course.
Fundamentals of Designing and Developing Cost-Effective eLearning
When: September 22-25
Where: McCormick Place, Chicago (Part of the Online Learning Conference Certification program)
There are multiple tools available that will let you create compelling eLearning content including Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, TechSmith Camtasia Studio, and Adobe Presenter. But which tool is the best, most affordable option for your needs?
Once you select your eLearning tool, what's next? How do you get started creating your first eLearning content? Once you start, how long is it going to take you to finish? What's the real cost for your effort? Are there hidden costs? How will you be able to measure the effectiveness of your eLearning?
Join IconLogic's Kevin Siegel for an intense, tool-agnostic, hands-on workshop where you'll get a jump start on building your first eLearning course.
Among other things, you'll learn:
- Strategies for building effective eLearning
- The eLearning development process
- How to create an eLearning script and/or storyboard
- How to get started on creating eLearning content using Captivate, Storyline, Camtasia or Presenter
eLearning: Articulate Storyline and Microsoft PowerPoint
by Kevin Siegel 
If Microsoft PowerPoint is your starting point for developing eLearning content, you can reuse that content in any of the top eLearning development tools including Adobe Presenter, Adobe Captivate, and TechSmith Camtasia Studio.
This week I'm going to show you how to use Articulate Storyline and PowerPoint to jump start the eLearning development process.
You can either create a new Storyline project using a PowerPoint presentation or import PowerPoint content into an existing Storyline project. In the image below, notice that there is an Import PowerPoint menu item on Storyline's Welcome screen.
After clicking Import PowerPoint and opening the PowerPoint presentation, the Import Slides dialog box opens. You can select all of the PowerPoint slides or pick and choose. Once you've selected the slide(s) you want, click the Import button.
The PowerPoint slides are imported into the Storyline project as Storyline slides and you'll end up in Story View.
Unlike Camtasia (where the presentation becomes one, uneditable video), or Captivate (where each slide is converted to an uneditable video), opening a Storyline slide reveals an interesting possibility: the original PowerPoint slide objects can be manipulated. For instance, in the image below, the PowerPoint text box says "To continually develop…"
Without leaving Storyline, I was able to edit the text in the image below to "To usually develop…"
The ability to edit the PowerPoint content directly in Storyline is awesome. However, there is no link between Storyline and the original PowerPoint presentation. If your subject matter expert is still making changes to the original PowerPoint presentation, you won't see those changes in Storyline (moreover, you'll have to make those changes in Storyline yourself). If the PowerPoint presentation is a moving target, you might want to wait until all of the PowerPoint edits are final prior to importing the presentation into Storyline. As I showed you last week, a Captivate project and original PowerPoint presentation can be linked. If the PowerPoint presentation is updated, you can easily get those updates to appear in Captivate. You might want to keep this fundamental difference between Captivate and Storyline in mind when choosing between the two development tools.
According to Articulate Support, here are some other limitations you should keep in mind when importing PowerPoint content:
- Imported text may not look the same way it does in PowerPoint. You may find some variations in font size, line spacing, alignment, colors, or bullets.
- Presentation size: If your PowerPoint presentation is a different size than your Storyline project, you may need to make adjustments to the size and placement of objects after importing them. Or, you can change your story size to match your PowerPoint presentation before importing.
- Embedded fonts: Storyline doesn't support embedded fonts from PowerPoint. If a font used in the PowerPoint presentation isn't installed on your computer, Storyline will apply the default Articulate font to the imported text.
- Animations and slide transitions: PowerPoint entrance and exit animations are supported in Storyline and will be imported–though some will be converted to Fade animations. Similarly, some PowerPoint slide transitions are supported in Storyline, while others get converted to Fade transitions. Emphasis animations and motion paths aren't supported and won't be imported into Storyline.
- SmartArt Graphics will be imported as images.
- Tables will be imported as images.
- Equations will be imported as images.
- Slide numbers won't be imported into Storyline.
- 3-D rotation: Objects with 3-D rotation will be imported as images without 3-D rotation.
- GIF images: Animated GIFs will be imported as static images.
- Line thicknesses: Border and line widths may appear slightly different in Storyline.
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Looking for instructor-led training on Articulate Storyline? Check out our live, online, instructor-led Storyline classes.