Category: PowerPoint

Recently I was asked if it was possible to paste link an image into PowerPoint so that if the original image is ever updated, the image in PowerPoint would automatically reflect the change. Sadly, PowerPoint cannot do this, but there are some types of source files that can be Paste linked.

Let's say, for example, that you have been sent an Excel spreadsheet for your PowerPoint presentation with the first and second quarter earnings. The spreadsheet has been left blank until the numbers for the remainder of the year are received. By Paste Linking the data into your presentation, the information in your presentation will automatically be updated when the Excel spreadsheet is updated.

 

To know if something will Paste link into a PowerPoint presentation, first copy the object to the clipboard. (If you are copying from another Office program, make sure that the document has first been saved.) In PowerPoint, click the Paste button from the Home tab and choose Paste > Paste Special.

 

If Paste link is available at the left side of the Paste Special dialog box, you will be able to Paste Link.

 

If you were able to Paste link, try making a change to the content you have copied (in this example you would be editing the Excel spreadsheet) and then save your work. In that case, the content in the PowerPoint slide will automatically update.

 

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

Have you tried to change the theme for just one slide in your PowerPoint 2008 presentation? Are you frustrated because there is no "Apply to Selected Slides" option like there is PowerPoint's Windows counterparts? You are not alone. I struggled with this for what seemed like forever until I discovered the easy, albeit completely hidden, solution.
 

1. In PowerPoint 2008, right-click (or [Command]-click if you do not have a right-clicker) a slide and choose Duplicate Slide.
    
2. Hold down the [Shift] key and select both the original slide and its duplicate.
    
3. Right-click (or [Command]-click if you do not have a right-clicker) either slide, and choose Slide Theme > From Gallery.
    
4. You can now select a new Slide Theme from the gallery and delete the duplicate slide. 
    

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

In previous versions of PowerPoint, converting presentations to movies could be a bit of a laborious task. PowerPoint 2010 has a new feature allowing presentations to quickly and easily be saved directly to .wmv (Windows Media Video) format .

1. Open the presentation within PowerPoint 2010.
    
2. Do a run-through of your presentation to make sure there is an adequate amount of time between slide transitions and any animation effects you may have added and make any necessary changes.

   You won't be clicking your mouse to continue the presentation once it is a movie and you may find that the default transition time goes too fast (or not fast enough) for your liking.
    

3. Choose File > Save As.
    
4. From the Save as Type drop-down menu, select Windows Media Video (*.wmv).
    
5. Click Save.
    
6. Notice the Creating video progress bar appears at the bottom of your screen. Sometimes this can take a while. Do not close the presentation before the progress bar indicates that it is finished. If you find that you don't want to wait, you can click the red X button to cancel the process.

   

And that's all there is to it!

 

The good news: In PowerPoint 2007, not only did you need to go in to Windows Movie Maker to convert your presentations to movies, but in doing so you lost any transitions or animation effects you may have added. When you use PowerPoint 2010 to Save As a .wmv file, all of your transitions and animations stay in tact.

 

The not so good news: If you use PowerPoint 2010's new feature allowing for embedding videos from a website, you will find that when you try to save the presentation as a .wmv file, an error message will appear alerting you that this content will not display in your movie. All is not lost. Following these directions, you can take the long way to insert videos from YouTube into your presentation. Using this method will allow you to make a movie from your presentation in which the video will play.

 

Related article: PowerPoint 2007: Adding Voiceover Narration to Presentations Converted to Movies.

 

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

Last week I detailed how to turn a PowerPoint 2007 presentation into a movie that could be uploaded to popular video sharing sites like YouTube. 

 

If you wanted to add voiceover narration to the movie, however, you may have run into a bit of a problem–there is only one row in the Windows Movie Maker timeline for audio. If there was a need to add background music to the presentation in addition to narration, you would be in a bit of a pickle.

 

This week, expanding upon the same method from last week, I will show you not only how to add voiceover narration, but how to have it play at the same time as background music.

1. Follow the instructions from last week to create a movie from your PowerPoint presentation with audio and save your movie as a .wmv file.

   Note (And this is important!): Once you have saved your PowerPoint presentation with the audio as a .wmv file in Windows Movie Maker you will not be able to adjust the length of each slide. Practice your narration before saving this original file so you can adjust the length of time each slide plays as necessary before continuing on to add narration.
    

2. Open the .wmv file in Windows Movie Maker.
    
    
3. If necessary, drag the .wmv file(s) down to the storyboard.

    

4. From just above the storyboard at the bottom of the screen, click Show Timeline.

   Since the audio you previously added is now a part of the imported video, you have a spot on your timeline to add more audio.

    

5. Click the Narrate Timeline tool. 

   

   Note: You can use the microphone built in to your computer for narration. However, if you are looking for better sound quality it is usually better to use an external microphone. We use and recommend the Sennheiser 350.

    

6. Drag the blue playback indicator directly before the slide for which you would like to begin narrating.

    

7. In the center of the screen where it now says Narrate Timeline, click the Show more options link.

   

    

8. Activate (put a check mark next to) Mute Speakers.
    
   Since you have previously added audio, this will prevent the microphone from picking up that audio in your narration and causing an echo effect.

    

9. Click the Start Narration button and record your narration.

    

10. Click Stop Narration when you are finished.

    The Save Windows Media file window will appear.

     

11. Give your narration a name and click Save.

     

12. Click the Done link when you have completed all narration recordings.

     

13. Drag your Narration recording(s) from the Collections area down to the Audio/Music portion of your timeline.

     

14. Save your video as covered last week.

    You are now ready to upload your movie to a video sharing site.

 

If you would like more tips on recording audio for eLearning voiceovers, consider taking our Audio Basics for eLearning live, online class.

 

 

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

I am frequently asked if it is possible to convert PowerPoint presentations into movies that can be shared on websites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Facebook. Sadly, the answer is no, at least not from within PowerPoint 2007. However, there is a workaround if you have Windows Movie Maker on your system (most computers using Windows do have the program by default).

 

The following steps show how to convert a presentation into a movie. However, please note that any transitions or custom animations you have applied to your slides will not convert. You can add transitions between slides in Windows Movie Maker, but I would suggest reworking any slides in PowerPoint that were dependent upon animations.

 

1. Using PowerPoint, open the presentation you would like to convert into a movie.
    
2. Click the Office button and select Save As.

   The Save As dialog box appears.
    

3. From the Save As dialog box, navigate to where you would like the presentation to be saved.
    
4. From the Save as type drop-down menu, select JPEG File Interchange Format (*.jpg).

   

   A dialog box will appear asking whether or not you want to export every slide or only the current slide.

   
    

5. Select Every Slide.

   A dialog box will appear alerting you that each slide in your presentation has been saved as a separate file in a folder by the same name as your presentation.
    

6. Click OK.
    
7. Close PowerPoint.
    
8. Open Windows Movie Maker.
    
9. Choose File > Import Into Collections.

   The Import File dialog box appears.
    

10. Navigate to the folder in which you saved each slide as a JPG image.
     
11. Open the folder and press [Ctrl] [A] on your keyboard to select all of the images.
     
12. Click Import.

    All of your slides will appear in the Collections area in the center of the screen.
     

13. Press [Ctrl] [A] on your keyboard to select all of the slides and drag them down to the storyboard below.

    If you press the Play button on the preview panel to the right, you will notice that your presentation is now in movie form. If all you needed was a movie, skip to Step 19. If you would like to add music or other audio, continue to the next step.
     

14. To add music to the movie, select Import audio or music from the Capture Video category.

    The Import File dialog box appears.
     

15. Navigate to where your audio is saved, select it and click Import.
     
16. Just above the storyboard, click Show Timeline if necessary (if you are looking at the timeline instead of the storyboard already, skip this step).
     
17. Drag your imported audio from the Collections area to the Audio/Music portion of the timeline.
     
18. Right-click the audio track on the timeline and notice that a shortcut menu pops up with audio options including Mute, Fade In, Fade Out, and Volume. Adjust these setting as you would like.
     
19. Take the time to play around with the Edit Movie options. (You can add transitions or effects as needed.)
     
20. From the Finish Movie category, select Save to my computer.

    The Save Movie Wizard appears.
     

21. Give your movie a name and select where you would like to save it.
     
22. Click Next a few times and then click Finish.

    Your movie is now ready to be uploaded to your video sharing site of preference.

 

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

Sometimes it would really save time if you could reuse a slide from an existing presentation rather than have to copy and paste all of its elements to a new slide. Here's how to do that.

1. In Normal view, decide where in your presentation you would like to reuse a slide and select the slide directly before it. (PowerPoint will insert the slide after whatever slide you have selected.)
    
2. From the Home tab, choose Slides > New Slide > Reuse Slides.

   

   The Reuse Slides panel appears at the right.
    

3. Click the Browse button and select Browse File.

   

   The Browse dialog box appears.
    

4. Locate the presentation from which you would like to reuse slides and click Open.

   All of the slides from the presentation will appear in the Reuse Slides panel.

   Note: Checking the Keep source formatting option at the bottom of the Reuse Slides panel will import your old slides into the new presentation with whatever fonts, backgrounds, etc were used in the original presentation. If you decide to keep this unchecked, all of the slide's images, text and animation will be brought over, but the background and font formatting you have set up in the new presentation will be applied.
    

5. Select the slide(s) you would like to reuse.

   Your old slides have now been inserted. 

 

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

Last week I shared a couple of the lesser-known PowerPoint tricks to help speed up your workflow. This week, a few more…

Change Your Point of View… Faster

You can switch your View options by using the View tab on the Ribbon. A faster way is to use the buttons at the bottom right of the screen.

What you may not know is that holding down the [Shift] key when you click these buttons will provide even more shortcuts. To view the Master Slides, hold down [Shift] and click the Normal view button (the first one). To view the Notes Slides, hold down [Shift] and click the Slide Sorter view button (the second one). Holding down [Shift] and clicking either the Reading or Slide Show view buttons (the third and fourth buttons) will bring up the Set Up Show dialog box.

Move–But Just a Little

Have you ever tried to move something (clip art perhaps) with your mouse and found that it wouldn't move to the exact spot you wanted it to? Using the arrow keys on your keyboard will help this, but by default it will nudge the image 6 points. If this is still too far for that exact spot you are aiming for, hold down the [Ctrl] key when you are using the directional arrow key. This will move the object just 1.25 points each time instead.

You can also adjust your settings so that by default objects are nudged 1.25 points. On the View tab, click the more arrow from the Show group to open the Grid and Guides dialog box. Disable Snap objects to grid by removing the checkmark.

Be a Point Magician

I am constantly having to edit clip-art for clients so that they are more suitable for the overall look and feel of a project. Typically I do this by editing the points (right-click and choose Edit Points) of the graphic.

If a graphic needs lots of points, adding and deleting them can become an arduous task. For instance, every time you come across a point you want to delete you have to select it, right-click and choose Delete Point. I discovered a simple time-saver to this process. Press [Ctrl] on the keyboard when selecting a point and the point is immediately deleted. Likewise, pressing [Ctrl] and clicking somewhere on the red line without a point automatically adds a point.

 

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

When you work with PowerPoint frequently, every little tip could help improve your productivity time. A quick Google search will turn up a list of common keyboard shortcuts for working in and presenting with PowerPoint, but here are a few lesser known tips I'd like to share.

Give Yourself Room to Make Mistakes

Every time I upload a new version of PowerPoint, the first thing I do is increase the number of Undos I can make. This never fails to be a huge lifesaver for me. Choose File from the Ribbon and then select Options. Select the Advanced category. From the Editing options area, change the Maximum number of undos to 150 (this is the highest you can go).

Setting the number of Undos this high may slow down your system. I don't notice a difference so I always keep it at the maximum number. If you notice your system being sluggish, try lowering this number by half.

Let Your Fingertips Do the Walking

Did you know that most everything in PowerPoint (and in all MS Office products, actually) can be done with keystrokes? With PowerPoint open, press the [Alt] key on your keyboard. Notice that each tab on the ribbon is assigned a letter.

The Home tab, for example, is H. Pressing any of the tabs' assigned letters will take you to that tab and reveal more key shortcuts for that tab's commands.

Want to change your slide's layout? Press [Alt] [H] [L], use the arrow keys to move between layouts and press [Enter] to make your selection.

 

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

According to their recent reports, every minute 35 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. (That's up 10 hours from their report released just last March of 24 hours of video a minute.) With all that content, there's a good chance you might find some videos on YouTube that you'd like to put in your PowerPoint presentation. I've previously written about how to go about doing this in PowerPoint 2007 with an internet connection and without an internet connection as well as how to do this in PowerPoint 2008 for the Mac. In the latest version (2010), uploading videos from the web is easier than ever. Here's how: 

1. Find the video you would like to insert into your PowerPoint presentation on YouTube (or any other video site with an Embed code like Vimeo or MetaCafe).
2. From YouTube click the Embed button (found below the video) and copy the code.

   

   Note: The latest version of YouTube offers Embed options, including video size and playbar colors. If you are going to edit these options, be sure to copy the embed code after you have made these changes, as it will change the code.

3. In PowerPoint, select the slide on which you would like to insert a video and from the ribbon choose Insert > Video > Video from Web Site.

   

   Note: Your ribbon may not include the Shape Union and Shape Subtract tools seen above. If you would like to learn how to add (and use) them, check out this blog post.

4. The video will appear on the slide as a black box. Pull the handles at the corners to resize the video to your desired size.

   

   When you view the presentation (by pressing [F5] on your keyboard or choosing Slide Show > From Current Slide from the ribbon) the video will appear with its playbar, ready to be played.

I was excited to see the option to easily embed YouTube videos added to PowerPoint. Unfortunately I don't think it's quite right yet, as many of the new, fancy video formatting options included with PowerPoint 2010 will not work on embedded YouTube videos. If you would like to insert YouTube videos into your PowerPoint presentation and be able to apply fancy formatting, follow steps 1-9 of these directions. When you have successfully downloaded and converted the video, choose Insert > Video > Video from File from the PowerPoint ribbon. This method takes a bit more work, but you will now be able to apply formatting to the video.

 

Related Posts:

PowerPoint 2007: Insert YouTube Videos

PowerPoint 2007: Insert YouTube Videos, Part 2

PowerPoint 2008 for the Mac: Inserting YouTube Videos

 

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."

Last week I showed you an easy way to extract audio and image files from a presentation. The problem with that method is that it only works on files created in PowerPoint 2007 or 2010. What if you received a file created in an older version that didn't have the updated file extension? This week I will show you an alternate way to do this in both PowerPoint 2007 and 2010.

In PowerPoint 2007, you will save the project as an html file.

1. Open the presentation in PowerPoint 2007.
2. Click the Office button and choose Save As.

   The Save As dialog box opens.

3. From the Save As drop-down menu, choose Web page.
4. Select a storage location for your folder and give it a name.
5. Click Save.
6. Locate the new HTML file folder on your hard-drive.

   Within this folder is a sub-folder by the same name followed by _files (e.g. HTMLme_files).

7. Open the _files folder.

   Included inside the folder are all of the audio and image files used in the presentation.

With the newest edition of PowerPoint, the option to save as a web page has been removed, so the method used in PowerPoint 2007 will no longer work. Here is a workaround for saving your presentation as an HTML file in PowerPoint 2010.

1. Open the PowerPoint presentation in PowerPoint 2010.
2. Press [Alt] [F11] on your keyboard.

   Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications opens.

   

3. Press [Ctrl] [G] on your keyboard.

   The Immediate window opens within Microsoft VBA.

4. Copy and paste the following text into the Immediate window:

   ActivePresentation.SaveAs "<Drive>:\users\<username>\desktop\<filename>.htm", ppSaveAsHTML, msoFalse

5. Press [Enter] on your keyboard.

   In PowerPoint, where your presentation once had the filename you had given it, it now says <filename>.htm (upon saving the presentation the title bar will revert back to its original name).

   

6. Navigate to where your PowerPoint presentation is saved. There is now a folder with the same name as your presentation followed by _files. (Example: HTMLme_files)
7. Open the new folder.

   Included inside the folder are all of the audio and image files used in the presentation.

 

About the author: AJ George is IconLogic's lead Technical Writer and author of both "PowerPoint 2007: The Essentials" and "PowerPoint 2008 for the Macintosh: The Essentials."