InterActiv Presentation Wizard

Introduction
About InterActiv Presentation Wizard
Download and Installation
Using InterActiv Presentation Wizard
Pricing and Support
Conclusion

Introduction

Many of us need to create non-linear PowerPoint presentations where all slides are interlinked to each other using hyperlinks. Think of creating kiosk style PowerPoints or just something that makes a PowerPoint presentation function as a web page. The most important part of such a presentation is to decide how many levels deep you want your slide hierarchies to go, and then creating the actual structure of slides that contain all your content. Something like this is prone to error, even if you do all the planning in the world -- and an automated solution that can help you with something like this is a welcome feature.

Enter the InterActiv™ Presentation Wizard, a PowerPoint add-in that does just something of this sort! Read on to learn more.

About InterActiv Presentation Wizard

InterActiv Presentation Wizard is from InterSlice Studios, a company based in Michigan, USA. Other than InterActiv Presentation Wizard the company has created interactive products such as InterActiv™ Emails, InterActiv™ Documents, InterActiv™ Data, etc. You can learn more about of InterActiv Presentation Wizard, and download a trial version from their site (link no longer exists).

With InterActiv Presentation Wizard you can:

• Navigate quickly to any section in your PowerPoint presentation
• Respond immediately to your audience without having to click through multiple sequential slides
• Reuse the same presentation for different audiences simply by using different navigation paths without having to shuffle your presentation deck
• Increase message retention with this unique approach

My contact for this review was Stephanie Gorecki - thank you, Stephanie.

Download and Installation

Download the installer from the link given above, run the setup routine and follow the instructions. The InterActiv Presentation Wizard is a PowerPoint 2003 and 2007 compatible add-In.

When installed, you'll end up with a InterActiv button under Add-ins tab on the Ribbon within PowerPoint 2007 as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1: InterActive button

Once the add-in is installed, you must first register and activate your license code. After purchasing the full version of InterActiv Presentation Wizard, go to License Manager from the InterActiv menu in PowerPoint. From the License Manager Window, select the option to Activate the InterActiv Presentation Wizard. The next screen will prompt you for your license code. Your unique license code is provided to you in your welcome email if you purchased a license for the product. Once you enter your license code, click Activate.

Using InterActiv Presentation Wizard

Follow the steps given below to use the InterActiv Wizard:

1. Click the InterActiv button under Add-Ins tab on the Ribbon, as shown in Figure 1 above.
2. From the menu choose Launch Wizard (see Figure 2).
3. 
   Figure 2: Launch Wizard
3. This opens the welcome screen of the InterActiv Presentation Wizard, as shown in Figure 3. Click Next button to continue.
4. 
   Figure 3: Welcome screen
4. The second screen allows you to choose start options (see Figure 4). You can start a new InterActiv presentation, or browse for an existing outline to start with. Make a choice, and click the Next button.
5. 
   Figure 4: Start options
5. Based on the number of main topics and levels of navigation in your presentation, choose a template. Other than choosing a template, you can select numbers of navigation levels and the main level topics, as shown in Figure 5. Click Next when done.
6. 
   Figure 5: Select a template
6. Now you choose a color scheme, or create a new color scheme. You can also add a logo to your presentation (see Figure 6). Click Next to continue.
7. 
   Figure 6: Brand your presentation
7. Define your navigation topics and number of slides for each topic as shown in Figure 7. For each level of navigation, define your topics/navigation components in an outline format (see Figure 7 again). Modify as needed, and click the Next button.
8. 
   Figure 7: Navigation topics
8. Provide a name to the presentation and save your presentation as you can see in Figure 8. Click the Finish button.
9. 
   Figure 8: Save presentation
9. Figure 9 shows a message that the presentation and outline were created successfully.
10. 
    Figure 9: Presentation created successfully
10. Open the presentation -- and add the content, images and other media objects to individual slides without altering the navigation links. Save the presentation.
11. Play the slide show to see the interactivity.

Pricing & Support

InterActiv Presentation Wizard costs $200.

Support is through email and an online FAQ.

In Conclusion

For what it does, the InterActiv Presentation Wizard can be a huge time saver. I like the fact that I can open existing outlines and re-edit them rather than starting all the time from scratch. As far as I know, there's no similar product available for general use. And the price is right too.

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