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Page 125 of PowerPoint tutorials, presentation essentials, personality interviews, and PowerPoint news.
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Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint
January 8, 2013
All PowerPoint presentations contain one or more slides -- and all slides are typically based on one of the available Slide Layouts (we call these just layouts for the rest of this tutorial). You can either choose a layout when you add a new slide -- or even change the layout of your existing slides. Our sample presentation has 9 layouts but if your presentation has fewer or more layouts, that's perfectly acceptable since the number of Slide Layouts available depends upon the active Theme of your presentation -- what's important though is that you will see the same number of layouts in both the New Slide and Layout galleries.
Learn how to duplicate, rename, and edit slide layouts in PowerPoint 2010.
January 7, 2013
The axis is the measuring scale that is typically placed towards the left and bottom of your chart. Normally, the axis on the left is called the Primary Vertical Axis and the axis placed at the bottom is called the Primary Horizontal Axis. Two more axes can be placed for most chart types -- these would be the Secondary Vertical Axis towards the right side of the chart's Plot Area, and the Secondary Horizontal Axis above the chart. In common everyday usage, both the Horizontal axes may be called the X axes, and the Vertical axes may be called the Y axes. Additionally, the Horizontal axes are also called Category axes, and the Vertical axes are sometimes called Value axes. In addition to X and Y axes, some chart types such as 3D charts can also have a Z Axis -- known within the PowerPoint interface as a Depth Axis. Commonly this may sometimes be called the Series axes.
Learn about the various chart axes in PowerPoint.
January 7, 2013
When a new chart is inserted in your PowerPoint presentation, you will find that it takes the fills and border types based on the Theme of your presentation. You can change the fills and borders of charts as required. Other than that, you can always use pictures as fills. For example, imagine a chart that shows fruit exports and each column of the chart is filled with pictures of a particular fruit type rather than the conventional solid color fills or geometric patterns? Also, if you wanted to show how the export of grapes has increased over the years, your column chart would have all columns filled with pictures of grapes stacked one over the other? In PowerPoint 2011, you can always do just that with your charts as explained in this tutorial!
January 4, 2013
When a chart contains only one series and several categories, then by default inpidual chart segments may use the same fill color (such as individual columns in a column chart) or varying colors (such as segments in a pie chart), depending upon the chart type you are working with. If your chart uses the same colored series in all of the categories, it can make your chart look dull -- it also does not provide a proper way for your audience to compare the individual series' elements.
Learn how you can change the color of category elements (series) in a chart.
January 3, 2013
Although charts are a visual medium, they still contain some text in the form of data labels, titles, legend, axis labels, etc. You may need to format the chart text to suit your requirements. While PowerPoint 2011 makes it simpler to access text formatting options than in previous PowerPoint versions, there's still some learning involved. That sort of learning is exactly what this tutorial aims to provide.
Learn about formatting fonts within charts in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
January 2, 2013
There are plenty of opportunities to use a less restrained background for your slides -- your choice for a slide background should complement the content of your presentation. For example, you'll want a flashier background for slides created for kindergarten students -- or if you were creating a PowerPoint greeting card. On the other hand, you may want a washed out, faded, or even a subtle patterned picture for a typical business presentation. PowerPoint 2010 does provide you with 12 default slide Background Styles which can be applied to both the Slide Master and individual Slide Layouts -- other than these default background styles, you can also opt to change the slide background to a solid color, a gradient, a pattern or texture, or even a picture.
January 1, 2013
Welcome to 2013's first issue of your PowerPoint and presenting newsletter. We wish you a great new 2013 -- do take a look at our New Year goodies and clip art to get started. David Klein discusses SlideShark's newly announced support for hyperlinks -- and we teach you how you can fool PowerPoint to consider any MP3 as a WAV file so that you can use them for animation and transition sounds. Learn also about Account Management options in PowerPoint 2013. Our regular tutorials' series walks you through the topics of Slide Masters and Charts.
Read all this and more in Indezine News.
January 1, 2013
If your chart includes only one series and several categories, then by default individual chart segments will use the same fill color (such as individual columns in a column chart) or varying colors (such as segments in a pie chart), depending upon the chart type you are working with. For all charts, you can always change the color of the entire series but that works best if you have multiple series in your chart. The same is not true for a chart that has only one series -- in that case displaying all individual elements of a chart series in the same color can make your chart look dull -- it also does not provide a proper way for your audience to compare the individual series' elements. PowerPoint 2011 lets you resolve this limitation by using the Vary color by point option.
December 31, 2012
Tomorrow is a new year -- 2013 to be precise. And Office 2013 is expected to be released sometime soon in the first quarter of 2013. Conventional wisdom in such a scenario is to postpone any decision to buy the existing version of Office -- and wait for the new one to be released. Yet, there's a compelling reason to ignore that conventional wisdom and take the plunge now! Even if you already have Office 2010 for Windows -- or Office 2011 for Mac, it makes sense to get a license today.
December 31, 2012
There are a number of sites that provide royalty-free pictures that can be used in your PowerPoint presentations -- one such site is Microsoft's Office.com site -- and there are also several other sites that provide free pictures. However, none of these resources can match the amazing breadth and variety of picture content you can find at Flickr, a photo-sharing site from Yahoo! Additionally, Flickr makes it easy for you to find pictures that you can legally use in your presentations since it lets you search for pictures within the Creative Common license.
Learn how to search Creative Commons pictures on Flickr.com.
December 31, 2012
We explored differences between the Slide Master and its Slide Layouts within the Slide Master view. Also you learned how you can change Background Styles within the Slide Master -- when you do so, you may end up changing the Background Style for all dependent Slide Layouts. However, it is not necessary for all your Slide Layouts to possess the same Background Style as the Slide Master -- or even another Slide Layout. Each Layout can have its own independent Background Style -- as you will learn in the rest of this tutorial.
Learn how to apply Background Styles to individual Slide Layouts in PowerPoint 2010.
December 28, 2012
These New Year themed clip arts for PowerPoint are all silhouettes that are ready to use within your PowerPoint presentation slides. These have been provided in both black and white colors -- both variations are contained within two separate sample presentations that you can download. Copy the graphics of your choice from the downloaded presentations, and paste them into your PowerPoint presentation slides. You can also paste them into a Word document, an Excel worksheet, or any other program.
Download these free New Year clip art graphics here.
December 28, 2012
When you select the "Invert if negative option" for a chart that has any negative data values in a series, you end up seeing those negative series with an inverted gradient fill. Since there appears little difference between the gradient fill used for positive and negative values as far as appearance is concerned, you may wish your negative series to show in a solid color that contrasts with the positive series. This color can be red (or any other color). In this tutorial, let us learn how you can do so in PowerPoint 2011.
December 27, 2012
When working with adding sound within PowerPoint -- be it adding sound to an animation or even adding sound to a slide transition, you'll realize that only WAV files can be used as sounds in either of these scenarios. What's more -- the same WAV file is always larger in size than its MP3 alternative and since animation and transition sounds are always embedded within PowerPoint, you can end up with really large PowerPoint file sizes! Note that adding an MP3 file for animation or transition sounds is normally not doable since PowerPoint won't accept a file that has an MP3 file extension -- that's unfortunate because MP3 files can be almost 10x smaller than WAV files.
Learn how to use CDex to add WAV headers to MP3 files.
December 27, 2012
We already explored how you can change between different Slide Layouts in our Change Slide Layout in PowerPoint 2010 tutorial -- when you access the Home tab of the Ribbon and click the Layout button, you see the Layout drop-down gallery. The number of Slide Layouts that you see in this gallery may differ from Theme to Theme -- but with PowerPoint's default Office Theme applied, you will see 9 layouts. So, where do these Slide Layouts come from? What influences how they look, or how the placeholders within them are laid out?
Explore Slide Layouts within Slide Master view in PowerPoint 2010.
December 26, 2012
New Year celebrations commemorate the end of one year, and the beginning of the next year. New Year's Day is celebrated worldwide on the night of December 31st, and continues until January 1st. To celebrate the New Year, we have put up this special page to provide you with a free collection of New Year PowerPoint templates, clip art, presentations, scrapbook backdrops, embellishments, Snagit stamps and more goodies.
Download New Year goodies here.
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