Microsoft PowerPoint – Page 2

September 7, 2014

Microsoft PowerPoint: Character Challenge

by AJ Walther

A few weeks ago I presented a Character Challenge and asked readers to send in their PowerPoint-created eLearning characters. A round of applause for Tracey Stokely's awesome customized character!

Last time I submitted a before and after of IconLogic's Kevin Siegel. This time I decided to go ahead and play my own game and create my own eLearning character self-portrait. Ta-da!

If you were feeling shy, but Tracey has inspired you, feel free to keep sending along those character submissions!

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If you love AJ's articles, you'll love her Optimizing PowerPoint Design for eLearning & Presentations mini course.

September 3, 2014

eLearning: Adobe Captivate and Microsoft PowerPoint

by Kevin Siegel

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Wait… before answering that, let's rework that classic question with this: what comes first, the eLearning or the PowerPoint presentation?

When developing eLearning, the content is often created in Microsoft PowerPoint first. I'm not going to get into what it takes to create visually compelling PowerPoint presentations (we have a mini course for that). Instead, I'm going to show you how to take existing PowerPoint content and quickly re-purpose it for eLearning.

Earlier this year I wrote an article teaching you how to take PowerPoint content and create eLearning using either TechSmith Camtasia Studio or Adobe Presenter. Over the next two weeks, I'm going to show you how to use your PowerPoint content in Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline.

Adobe Captivate and PowerPoint

You can import PowerPoint slides into an existing Captivate project or create a new project that uses the PowerPoint slides. During the import process, Captivate includes the ability to create a link between a Captivate project and PowerPoint presentation. Using this workflow, any changes made to the original PowerPoint presentation can be reflected in the Captivate project.

Note: Microsoft PowerPoint must be installed on your computer before you can import PowerPoint presentations into Captivate. Also, the ability to import PowerPoint presentations isn't new. In fact, Captivate has supported PowerPoint imports for years. If you're using a legacy version of Captivate (even version 4 and 5), the steps below will work for you just fine.

To create a new project from a PowerPoint presentation, choose File > New Project > Project From MS PowerPoint and open the PowerPoint presentation.

The Convert PowerPoint Presentations dialog box opens, offering a few controls over how the presentation is imported.

Adobe Captivate: Advanced Slide Options.

The On mouse click option adds a click box to each Captivate slide. The other available option, Automatically, results in Captivate slides that, when viewed by a learner, automatically move from slide to slide every three seconds. At the lower right of the dialog box, there are options for High Fidelity and Linked.

Adobe Captivate: High Fidelity and Linked options.

During a standard import process, PowerPoint pptx presentations are first converted to the ppt format and then converted to SWF. If you select High Fidelity, the import process takes native pptx files directly to Captivate SWF (the ppt conversion is skipped). This option, which is available only in Captivate for Windows, results in the best-looking content in Captivate, but it takes much longer to complete the import process.

The Linked option creates a link between the PowerPoint presentation and the new Captivate project. The link allows you to open the PowerPoint presentation from within Captivate. Additionally, any changes made externally to the PowerPoint presentation can be reflected in the Captivate project with a few mouse clicks.

After the PowerPoint slides are imported into Captivate, you can add Captivate objects such as captions, highlight boxes, or animations.

Adobe Captivate: Imported PowerPoint Presentation

If you need to edit the PowerPoint slides, choose Edit > Edit with Microsoft PowerPoint > Edit Presentation. The Presentation will open in a window that can best be described as a union between Captivate and PowerPoint. If you've used PowerPoint before, you will recognize the familiar PowerPoint interface.

There are two buttons you wouldn't normally see if you opened the presentation directly in PowerPoint: the Save and Cancel buttons at the upper left of the window. Once you have edited the PowerPoint slides, click the Save button and the changes will appear in the Captivate project.

If the PowerPoint presentation has been edited outside of Captivate, (perhaps your subject matter expert is adding or removing content from the presentation) you can still get the changes. Choose Window > Library. On the Library, notice that there is a Status column.

A red button will indicate that the PowerPoint slides within the Captivate project are no longer synchronized with the PowerPoint presentation. A simple click on the red button will update the Captivate slides.

Adobe Captivate: Not in synch with source.

Next week: Articulate Storyline and PowerPoint.

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Looking for instructor-led training on Adobe Captivate? Check out our live, online, instructor-led Captivate classes.

August 1, 2014

eLearning: Create Icons Instantly with Iconion

by AJ Walther

Previously I shared some tips for creating your own great looking flat design eLearning. A recurring trend in flat design is the use of simplified icons in lieu of detailed drawings, images, or photos. Many icons can be found by inserting symbols or certain Clip Art images from within PowerPoint. Creating your own icons from scratch is also not terribly difficult. As an alternative, I'd like to share a fun (and free!) tool for quickly creating and customizing icons for use in eLearning.

Iconion is a free download that is still currently in Beta. After you've downloaded Iconion, you can choose from a large array of icons from four different icon font sets: Typeicons, Linecons, Font Awesome, and Entypo.

To create an icon, simply select an icon from the left of the Iconion window, preview it in the center panel, and then add a style from the right panel. The styles are many and varied and, in addition to looking great in your eLearning, would blend seamlessly with Windows and iOS. After you've chosen a style, you can make stylistic tweaks to fills, background colors, gradients, blurs, etc. From there you can save your icon to your desktop in a number of fully scalable sizes. Fast, easy, and great looking!

Here's an example of how I incorporated some icons from Iconion into the slide deck for an online training course here at IconLogic:

June 23, 2014

Microsoft PowerPoint: Find and Replace Fonts

by AJ Walther

There are many reasons you may want to globally change every instance of a font in a PowerPoint presentation. Maybe you inherited a presentation from someone else and it needs a little work. Maybe you've had a change of heart about your own design choice. Maybe a client would prefer a different font. Whatever the case, manually changing every occurrence of a font could become a time-consuming task. Luckily, PowerPoint comes with a quick and easy tool to handle the heavy lifting for you. Here's how to use the Replace Fonts tool:

From PowerPoint's ribbon, choose Home > Editing and click the down arrow next to Replace to view more options.
From the Replace drop-down menu, choose Replace Fonts to open the Replace Font dialog box.
From the Replace drop-down menu, choose the font you'd like to find and replace.
From the With drop-down menu, choose your new font.
Click the Replace button.

Just like that, you've replaced every instance of the original font!

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Want more creative PowerPoint ideas to take your eLearning to the next level? Attend our Optimizing PowerPoint Design for eLearning and Presentations live, online, instructor-led course.

June 23, 2014

Microsoft PowerPoint: Embedding Fonts

by AJ Walther

If you are sending your PowerPoint presentation off to be viewed on another system that is not yours, you may be concerned that this other system won't have the same fonts. No need to lose any sleep over what your final design will look like. If you've used TrueType fonts, you can embed them into your presentation and send them along with it.

TrueType fonts can be identified by a TT next to the font name in the font drop-down menu of PowerPoint. The fonts outlined in red below are all TrueType fonts.

Microsoft PowerPoint: TrueType Fonts

Here's how to embed TrueType fonts in a PowerPoint presentation:

From the PowerPoint ribbon, choose File > Options.
Select the Save category at the left.
From the Preserve fidelity when sharing this presentation: area, select (check) Embed fonts in the file.
Choose the option under Embed fonts in the file that applies best to your situation. The first option will help keep the file size small; but if the person you are sending the presentation to will be making edits, you may need to select the second option.
Click the OK button to close the PowerPoint Options dialog box.

Now you can rest assured that your fonts will survive the trip to another computer system.

See also:

June 19, 2014

Microsoft PowerPoint: Measurement Unit Conversion in a Flash

by AJ Walther

Here's a quick tip you may not already know that could save you some serious time with unit conversion. By default, PowerPoint measures in inches. But, if you're using PowerPoint as a design tool you might wish to work in pixels or centimeters. It isn't rocket science to Google your way to proper unit conversion, but there's an easier and faster way right there in PowerPoint.

For example, let's resize a shape using pixel dimensions. We want our final shape size to be 600 pixels high and 800 pixels wide.

In PowerPoint, insert a rectangle (Insert > Illustrations > Shapes > Rectangle).
Right-click the rectangle and choose Size and Position. (The Format Shape dialog box will open with the Size category selected. Notice the Height and Width fields are pre-populated with the current size of the shape inches.)
Ensure Lock aspect ratio is deselected.
Highlight the measurement in the Height field and type 600px followed by the [tab] key. (The Height will automatically be converted to 6.25 inches.)
Highlight the measurement in Width field and type 800px followed by the [tab] key. (The Width will automatically be converted to 8.33 inches.)

The same method can be used for centimeters. In the Height and Width fields, type your desired size followed by cm and press the [tab] key. Presto! Automatic conversion to inches!

April 11, 2014

eLearning & Presentations: More Free Images. A MILLION more!

by AJ Walther

Want more free images for your eLearning or PowerPoint presentations? How about over a MILLION more? In December of last year, the British Library released into the public domain a huge collection of scanned images from more than 65,000 books spanning the 16th to 19th centuries. Yes, that's right, I said public domain. That means these images are free to use, share, and modify in any way that you see fit. The library asks only that you help to populate the metadata for the images to help make them more easily searchable–and to help spread the knowledge.

Free image

The project is called the Mechanical Curator and is housed on a tumblr page that purports to post a randomly selected small illustration or ornamentation from these antiquated books. All of the images can be found on the British Library's flickr feed.

Another free image

Think these images are a little too old school for anything you'll be designing? Think again. Just for funsies I threw together a little eLearning layout by using the British Library's free images. Here's what I came up with:

Free images used in an eLearning project

The great thing about these images is that most all of them go together cohesively. And that "B" I used? I was able to find every letter I searched for, in a variety of styles. That could lead to endless designs… for free! Design on, friends.

See also:

March 20, 2014

PowerPoint: Create Tables with Rounded Edges, Method 2

by AJ Walther

Last week I shared a method for creating a table with rounded corners in PowerPoint. While that method did have its benefits, it could be a bit time consuming and there was no easy way to uniformly adjust the slope of the curved edges. Here's an alternate method for creating tables with rounded corners using PowerPoint for Windows. It's a bit faster and allows for easy corner editing.

Insert the Table as an Image Fill

In PowerPoint, select a table (the thick gray table border should be visible).
Right-click the thick border of the table, choose Save as Picture, give the image a name, and save it to your computer.
On a new slide, from the ribbon, choose Insert > Illustrations > Shapes > Rounded Rectangle to insert a rounded rectangle shape that is roughly the same size as your original table.
Right-click the rounded rectangle and choose Format Shape.
From the Line Color category at the left, choose No Line.
From the Fill category at the left, choose Picture or texture fill.
From the Insert from area, click the File button.
Navigate to where you have saved your table image and Insert it. (Ensure Tile picture as texture is not selected.)

Your table is inserted and has easily adjustable rounded corners thanks to the yellow handle on the top left corner.

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To make edits to the table, you'll need to return to the original table, make edits, and then re-save and re-insert as a shape image fill.

Do you prefer the Paste Special method or the Shape Image Fill method? Do you have another method you like to use? Feel free to post comments below.

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Looking to improve the appearance of your PowerPoint presentations? Check out my Optimizing PowerPoint Design for eLearning & Presentations class.