3 November 2006 Eric Rasmusen, erasmuse@indiana.edu This file is now at http://www.rasmusen.org/a/powerpoint-rasmusen.txt These notes are Powerpoint tips and tricks that I have found useful or thought might be useful. I wrote these for my own use and have not tried to make them clear for others, but some other people might like them. ********************************************************** 16 PAGES TO A PAGE PRINTING Powerpoint only does up to 9 images per page, but Acrobat does up to 16. So first print using Acrobat Distiller. Then in Acrobat, do PRINT, the PROPERTIES, then PAGES PER SHEET and set it to up to 16. I can do this for the NOTES view too. And for the handouts, I imagine, and thus get many more slides per page. For NOTES, 4 per pages is all that permits legibility, if I typed in my notes. ********************************************************** FIGURES The curve tool works pretty well. I can move the toolbox away to anywhere I want so it appear on top rather than having to go into autoshapes. ********************************************************** BACKGROUND COLORS To get a background color with a fade, right-click on your slide. Choose Background, then the downarrow, then FILL EFFECTS, then check off TWO COLORS, then choose a color for each, and the background will fade between them. It is best to choose two very similar colors. ********************************************************** CAPTURING AND CROPPING IMAGES One way to capture images is to cut and paste. PDF has a button with a camera on it to do this. Another way is to go to the image, right- click on your mouse, and choose COPY IMAGE. If a pdf or other document is copy-protected, make it big and hit the PRINT-SCREEN button. That copies the entire screen to the clipboard. Then go to your blank powerpoint slide and hit CTRL-V, which pastes the image there. You will have to crop off the part of the screenshot that you don't want. To get the size and shape right, call up the PICTURE toolbar in Powerpoint by going to VIEW, then TOOLBARS, then PICTURE. Next, click on the image first, and then the CROP button, which is in the PICTURE toolbar looking rather like a design on a Greek vase. That will cause some little black bars to appear which can be used to crop the image. Get out of those, and pull on the sides or corner of the box to resize the image. Note that copied pdfs usually seem to be copied in a distorted way, squished a bit. ********************************************************** LATEX http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~srg/softwaretools/presentation/TeX4PPT/ This is the best of the two tex powerpoint programs. Free, and easy to install. Needs Powerpoint 2002. ********************************************************** FORMAT FORMAT-BACKGROUND-MORE COLORS-CUSTOM is a way to get a very light color for a background for powerpoint slides. VIEW-HEADER AND FOOTER is where you go to turn slide nubmers on and off. Wide (landscape) slide are better for presentations using a projector. ********************************************************** ACER LAPTOP, POWERPOINT, Turn on Slideshow. move the mouse or pointer to the lower left. Images will appear. Set the Pointer to PEN and the color to GREEN. Then, the pointer will draw. OR: Use CTRL-P to convert the pointer to a PEN, and CTRL-A to get it back to an arrow. SHIFT-E will get rid of all of a pages pen notations. ? will get a list of things I can do. To go to the next page, I cannot now use the mouse clicker, since it is part of the pen. Instead, use SHIFT-N for next and SHIFT-P for previous. Or, use the wheel. Or the arrow keys. What is drawn may or may not survive me going to another page, it seems. Powerpoint lacks an obviously useful command (another sign of stupidity at MS): to change the default from pointer to pen, or to a particular color. That has to be done over every time a slideshow is started. See http://www.iprimus.ca/~martha/adobe/powerpoint-2003-and-tablet.pdf ********************************************************** SLIDESHOW Go to to Tools->Options->View and disable "Popup/Show menu on right mouse click" With this option disabled, a right click will bring you to the previous slide. I really think this option should be disabled by default, but it isn’t. ********************************************************** PDF PRESENTATIONS IN CLASS PDF: I can use the tablet PC pen on it page by page. **********************************************************