March 17, 2012 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. OPENOFFICE's version ofpowerpoint is better, and I have notes for that too. ********************************************************** FREEZING ANIMATIONS IN AN OLD SLIDESHOW Select "Slide Show > Set Up Show" from the application menu at the top of the screen. 3 Check the "Show without animation" box in the "Show options" portion of the dialog box. ------------------------ FORMATTING In VIEW, select SLIDE MASTER to get the template for all slides. To apply it, select all slides to which yuo want to apply it and in HOME select LAYOUT. ------------------------ DRAWING DIAGRAMS In Powerpoint 2007. INSERT-SHAPES then click on the straight line or whatever shape you want, then Right-Click on that shape to keep it as the default shape. I couldn't get this function to work very well, tho. Hold down SHIFT to get lines to go vertical or horizontal or 45 degrees. That doe not seem to work when you start the line on anothre object tho, so start it on a blank space and then move it. Draw one line, then right-click on it to get a menu to format it using FORMAT SHAPE. After getting the format right, right-click on it and on the menu choose SET AS DEFAULT LINE so future lines will look like it. THere is a way to add the Gallery of shapes to the HOME toolbar. On the Home tab, in the Drawing group, click Arrange, point to Align, and then click Grid Settings. Turn off SNAP TO GRID and put SNAP TO OBJECT. It is CRUCIAL to set VIEW to 200% or so to get dots and suchlike small things aligned. Don't forget to use the handy F4 key. You can select another text object and press F4 to repeat the last action. So, if an action needs to be performed on multiple text objects in the presentation, this makes it even faster. F4 will repeat all "last actions", not just the Shift +F3. Select multilpe objects: see http://www.ppt07.com/manipulating-objects.htm. You can click on them whilst holding down shift and each additional click adds to your selection. The obvious way, with a big box, didn't work for me. Also, if you hit TAB the selection goes to a different, closeby, indiivual object ********************************************************** CHANGING FONTS FOR AN ENTIRE DOCUMENT On the left where there are thumbnails of the slides are two tabs. One is "Slides" and one "Outline." If you click on the "Outline" tab, then highlight the text, then change the font in the "Home" tab at the top it should carry over to the slides. ********************************************************** OO OPTOINS: Under TOOLS-OPTIONS-IMPRESS-GENERAL uncheck the ALLOW QUICK EIDTING AND ONLY TEXT AREA SELECTABLE boxes to stop the obnoxious selecting of the entire word. TOOLS-CUSTOMIZE-TOOLBAR is where you can ask for text to label commands rather than mysterious icons. ********************************************************** BOXES FOR WRITING IN DURING SLIDESHOWS Here is how to insert a box that can be written in during a slidehow. Go to View, then ToolBars and check CONTROL TOOLBOX. A menu/palette will pop up that includes a box with AB in it. Click on that and click in your powerpoint file on a slide, and it will put a box there. Then right-click on the box you have made and choose PROPERTIES. You can change properties such as the color of the box there. (Choose BACKCOLOR to make it gray instead of white.) One thing I needed was to change the MULTILINE property from False to True so that typing in the box would go to a second line when it reached the end of the box. Also, you can choose the TEXT property to put some writing in the box to start with even before the slide show. ********************************************************** 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/T eX4PPT/ 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. **********************************************************