Page 157 of PowerPoint tutorials, presentation essentials, personality interviews, and PowerPoint news.
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Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint
January 14, 2014
In this issue, we explore another callout style that you can use within your PowerPoint slides. We then show you how you can edit PowerPoint files on SkyDrive using a foreign language interface. Allison Wahl of Brainshark discusses the 2014 Sharkie Awards, and how you can participate and possibly win by uploading your slide deck. We also bring you animated slides on Sankranti, an Indian harvest festival. PowerPoint 2013 for Windows users can learn about some of the Merge Shapes commands including Subtract, and how they can convert their text into shapes. PowerPoint 2011 for Mac users can learn about Table Styles, distributing rows and columns in tables, and selecting them. And finally, do not miss the new discussions and templates of this week!
Read Indezine's PowerPoint and Presenting News.
January 14, 2014
An individual cell within a Table acts just like any other text box as far as its content or even appearance is concerned. Therefore, all text alignment options used for text containers work with Table cells too with a few exceptions. Text alignment options for Table cell content can be found within the Table Layout tab of the Ribbon -- look for them in the Alignment group.
Learn about text alignment in Table cells in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
January 13, 2014
There are times when you have to share your PowerPoint presentation as a PDF -- mainly because you want to send a non-editable file format to someone. However any sound or music clips within your original PowerPoint file do not get included within the converted PDF. At other times, you may just want to add some sound or music to an existing PDF, even if that PDF was not created from a PowerPoint file.
Learn how to add sound/music to a PDF.
January 13, 2014
PowerPoint 2013 enables you to use its repertoire of Shapes to create some amazing artwork. Its Merge Shape commands allow you to create complex shapes by merging several simple shapes. Additionally, these options also let you convert your text to shapes so that you can see the text even on a computer that does not have a particular font installed. We already showed you how you can convert an entire text box to one shape using the Intersect command. However, if you want your resultant shapes to be individual for each character, then you will need to use the Fragment option, as explained in this tutorial.
Learn how to convert PowerPoint text into individual editable shapes.
January 10, 2014
Continuing our series on how you can use callouts within your slides, here's another sample to share. This is actually quite simple, but that's probably the best part. Making something appear simple to your audiences is the best service you can do for them. The color used for the callouts and the connectors attached to the callouts is the same (chrome yellow) -- and this color complements the overall color within the rest of the slide (primarily brown and white) very well.
January 10, 2014
Tables can make your data or other content look organized and make it easy for your audiences to quickly understand how the content in one or more cells relates to the content in other cells. However, even with all this organization built-in within the tabular structure, tables still need aesthetics. A table on your slide looks good when its rows and columns are arranged and sized in a proper manner, and the table cell content is aligned well.
Learn how to distribute Table Rows and Columns in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
January 9, 2014
Two animated Sankranti PowerPoint presentations are included within this package. The first presentation has animated kites that gives a flying effect throughout the slide. The second presentation has rangoli that animates perfectly and is available in three variations: white, brown and multicolor. Go ahead and download these and use as you want -- retaining credit for these slides is something we will appreciate!
January 9, 2014
PowerPoint 2013 has several new features but there's nothing quite like what we will explore on this page -- an option to convert regular text into a shape. First of all, this is an undocumented feature -- so it was really cool discovering how this was done. And then, this is such an utterly useful option -- people find all sorts of excuses to use this feature. For example, you can now easily create logos in PowerPoint without using any other application. Or use a fancy font and then share that presentation with others in the knowledge that recipients can see the font exactly as intended, even if it's not installed on their computers.
Learn how to convert PowerPoint text into editable shapes in PowerPoint 2013.
January 9, 2014
AKVIS NatureArt 5.5 is an Adobe Photoshop compatible plug-in that contains 9 nature-specific visual effects. It is the newest version of the AKVIS NatureArt 1.0 plug-in that we reviewed earlier. This plug-in allows you to add create natural phenomena on your pictures. You can also add effects directly on a blank background, such as converting a blank background into a sea view, lightning bolt, rain, sun, and snow. Finally, save your effects as presets for future use.
Read the Indezine review here.
January 8, 2014
SkyDrive may seem to be like an online file storage device but there's so much more to it. All SkyDrive users get access to free Office applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that work entirely in your web browser. Even better, you can change SkyDrive's interface language in a snap -- you don’t need any foreign language packs nor do you need to pay any extra money to get these niceties.
Learn how to switch interface languages in SkyDrive.
January 8, 2014
While it is easy to work with tables in PowerPoint 2011, you will always need to select some particular part of the table to work with -- this means you will have to select an individual table cell, or even separate rows and columns while performing various tasks such as populating tables with content, or adding and removing table rows/columns, or merging and splitting table cells. Sometimes you will also need to select contiguous cells in both rows and columns, or even the entire table itself. Follow these guidelines to learn about how to select the entire table, an individual row, a column, a cell, or even contiguous cells in PowerPoint 2011.
Learn how to select table cells, rows, and columns in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
January 7, 2014
In this issue, we first bring you an awesome add-in for PowerPoint that converts text to shape outlines. We then explore the beginnings of Adobe Presenter, an add-in for PowerPoint that lets you create eLearning content easily. And although it's already 2014 when you will receive this mail, do look at the New Year clip art graphics that we gave away before the end of 2013! PowerPoint 2013 for Windows users can learn about some of the Merge Shapes commands including Combine, Fragment, and Intersect. PowerPoint 2011 for Mac users can learn about merging and splitting table cells, and also about some fancy Table Options. And finally, do not miss the new discussions and templates of this week!
Read Indezine's PowerPoint and Presenting News.
January 7, 2014
PowerPoint 2013 lets you change the appearance of merged shapes -- don't get fooled by how easy-to-use this is because the results you can end up with can be seriously impressive. In all, there are 5 options that let you merge shapes, and we have already explored 4 of them. In this tutorial, we'll show you how you can use the Subtract option to subtract one shape from another shape or even shapes. Shapes with the Subtract option applied result in a single, cutout shape.
Learn how you can subtract shapes in PowerPoint 2013 using the Shape Subtract command.
January 6, 2014
Allison Wahl is customer community specialist at Brainshark, Inc., a leader in cloud-based business presentations. Brainshark's offerings include Brainshark On-Demand -- for turning static content such as PowerPoint documents into online and mobile video presentations -- and SlideShark, the award-winning app for showing PowerPoints from the iPad and iPhone. Thousands of companies use Brainshark to improve the reach and results of their business communications, while dramatically reducing costs. In this conversation, Allison discusses Brainshark's annual Sharkie Awards program, which is now accepting submissions.
January 6, 2014
PowerPoint 2011 makes repetitive table formatting easy and consistent with the Table Styles option. These are pre-defined styles that contain combinations of formatting elements such as fills, borders, and font colors. PowerPoint provides various such styles to choose from -- just a single click can make your Table look great.
Learn how to apply preset Table Styles to your tables in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.
January 3, 2014
The year was 2001, and Flash was becoming more and more omnipresent. And then came a product called Presedia Producer that changed everything. So why are we talking about Presedia? That's because Presedia is what we all know as Adobe Presenter today!
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