Absolute PowerPoint

Before there were presentations, there were conversations, which were a little like presentations but used fewer bullet points, and no one had to dim the lights. A woman we can call Sarah Wyndham, a defense-industry consultant living in Alexandria, Virginia, recently began to feel that her two daughters weren't listening when she asked them to clean their bedrooms and do their chores. So, one morning, she sat down at her computer, opened Microsoft's PowerPoint program, and used it.

Parker, Ian. Ohio State University, The. Articles>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

Animations Combination: Exploding Effect

In this presentation, you will learn how to create an explode effect on pictures.

Tohlz, Shawn. PowerPoint Heaven (2005). Resources>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

Animations Combination: Leaf Motion Effect

In this tutorial, you will learn how to make the motion of a leaf moving in the wind. It can be easily done with the combinations of Motion Path, Spin and Swivel Effects.

Tohlz, Shawn. PowerPoint Heaven (2005). Resources>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

Are You A Presentation Master Chef Or A Short Order Cook?

Have you ever attended a successful dinner party? Do you remember what it was that made it so enjoyable? Was it the great food, the company, the entertainment? Chances are it was all these things. You can use these same ingredients to create and deliver an unforgettable presentation.

Shaw, Glenna Raye. Presenters University. Articles>Presentations>Rhetoric>Microsoft PowerPoint

Automatic Slideshow, Delay before Slide Advances

You are making a slide show which runs automatically throughout your presentation without the needs of mouse clicking or entering of keyboard. The automatic slideshow can be photographs presentations and etc. In every slide, you realize that the slide advances to another slide immediately after the last animation ends. The result? Audience does not have the chance to read your slides because it moves too quickly. You will need to make some delay so that all your slides will pause for a while before going to the next one. There are few ways to achieve this. This tutorial will cover two simple methods.

Tohlz, Shawn. PowerPoint Heaven (2005). Resources>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

Clockwork

Chances are you have watched your best intentions evaporate under pressure, to find yourself tweaking PowerPoint slides in the desperate hours or minutes before your presentation, scrambling to make time for a quick rehearsal and hoping against hope that you'll be able to pull off a miracle. Indeed, if good intentions paid dividends, plenty of presenters would have tidy sums to add to their retirement nest eggs. Procrastination being the force of nature it is, however, no matter how much lead time presenters give themselves and no matter how many resources are at their disposal, more often than not, the presentation-development process devolves from noble ambitions to utter chaos.

Zielinski, Dave. Presentations (2002). Articles>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

Convince the Crowd With Presentations and Diagrams

Why just get by with a boring presentation when you can create a dynamite Microsoft Office PowerPoint® presentation or a colorful Microsoft Office Visio® diagram? Get ready to impress the big boss or the new team with simple ideas that go a long way.

Microsoft. Articles>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

Creating a Simple Traditional Countdown in a PowerPoint Presentation

An article featuring steps on how to create a traditional countdown using custom animations in PowerPoint. This article is done by tohlz from PowerPoint Heaven (http://www.pptheaven.xs3.com)

Tohlz, Shawn. PowerPoint Heaven (2005). Articles>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

Does "New and Improved" Always Mean Better?

A few years back a Canadian company asked me to review their corporate presentation. They seemed pretty pleased with what they had created but asked if I could take a look at things with a professional eye and provide them with some constructive feedback. I rarely turn down these types of requests because every one of us can benefit from some objective perspective from time to time. They went on to tell me that they had been working hard over the years to improve the quality of their presentations and they even went to the extent of purchasing Macromedia Action (no longer available). This high-end presentation design package featured timeline-based slide orchestration, a boatload of new effects, easier media integration capability and a host of other features to be able to create `professional results in minutes'.

Endicott, Jim. Presenters University (2003). Articles>Presentations>Technology>Microsoft PowerPoint

An Effective PowerPoint Presentation Requires More Skill than Clipart  

PowerPoint is the jacks-or-better of the corporate world--you've got to have it in order to stay in the game. Just try giving a seminar without PowerPoint or showing up at a meeting with, gasp, paper handouts. I live in mortal fear that my eulogy will be delivered as a broken PowerPoint stack.

TechRepublic (2007). Articles>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

Embedding Flash Inside of a Powerpoint Presentation

Whenever people talk about "jazzing up" some of the Microsoft Office tools, PowerPoint always rises to the top of the list (but you can use this technique for any Office applications). We've all seen the presentations with that pat clip-art, the checkered fades, and those bullets that slide. Why not add some interactivity and exciting animation? Thanks to Microsoft's ActiveX technology we can.

Flashgeek (2006). Articles>Presentations>Multimedia>Microsoft PowerPoint

Enlarge Image in Slide Show, Retaining Quality

Often when doing a presentation, you may want to enlarge an image using Emphasis: Grow effect in PowerPoint 2002/XP and above. You probably want to show a clearer view of a photograph. But enlarging with the Grow effect often ends up getting the image blurry/jagged. Now it looks ugly, you wouldn't want to show others an enlarged but poor quality picture, do you? When inserting the image, have it at the enlarged size. If you shrink the image and then enlarge it again, the quality will retain. But how do you shrink an image without the audience knowing? See the steps below.

PowerPoint Heaven (2005). Resources>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

Free PowerPoint Templates  

These Free Powerpoint Templates are a great choice for a wide variety of presentation needs.

Chaw, Brandy. Powered Templates (2006). Presentations>Graphic Design>International>Microsoft PowerPoint

Give Participants Something to Flip Over

Let me start off by saying that I do NOT like toys or other distractions in training. I’m NOT one to provide little widgets to keep participants’ hands occupied or provide cutesy pens or such trinkets. I’ve always viewed them as distractions that shouldn’t be necessary if your training is engaging and relevant.

Traut, Terence R. Presenters University. Articles>Presentations>Rhetoric>Microsoft PowerPoint

How Slides and Transparencies Stack Up to Micro and Ultraportables

Microportable and ultraportable projectors are changing how Corporate America presents information, sells products and trains employees and customers. Small enough to fit in a brief case, light enough to carry from appointment to appointment and easy enough to use without extensive training, these projectors deliver big, brilliant video, graphic and data images that are sure to grab and hold the attention of audiences.

Presenters University (2003). Articles>Presentations>Technology>Microsoft PowerPoint

How to Convert a PowerPoint Presentation to Play on a DVD Player

This tutorial guides you through how to convert your PowerPoint presentations to play on a home dvd player. It's great for showing presentations without a computer.

Simmons, T.A.J. Awesome Backgrounds for PowerPoint (2004). Resources>Presentations>Video>Microsoft PowerPoint

Interactive Prototypes with PowerPoint

Have you ever wished your early design mockups could come to life, so you could try out the navigation, test an interaction, or see if a button label just feels right when you click on it? Sure, you could invest in a dedicated prototyping tool, but you can create surprisingly quick and effective prototypes with a software program that's probably sitting on your hard drive right now. It's PowerPoint.

Kelly, Maureen. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Design>Web Design>Prototyping>Microsoft PowerPoint

Introduction to PowerPoint  

Discusses how to prepare a PowerPoint slide show.

Nielan, Cate. Intercom (2001). Design>Software>Presentations>Microsoft PowerPoint

Is PowerPoint the Devil?

While the cultural scoreboard may be invisible, this much is indisputable: the PowerPoint people are winning.

Keller, Julia. SiliconValley.com (2003). Articles>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

Make Maximum Use Of The Multiple Slide Master

Nearly every presenter knows the pain of having to merge presentations from different sources. In earlier versions of PowerPoint, such as 95, 97 and 2000, slides copied from another presentation were automatically reformatted by PowerPoint to reflect its current template design. This made it necessary to painstakingly reformat all the new slides, or to program links from one presentation to another, to make everything appear consistent. It was a time-wasting hassle. But with PowerPoint 2002 (also known as XP), the problem can now be easily solved. PowerPoint 2002 offers multiple slide masters, a feature that allows you to copy slides from different presentations and still retain their original formatting. Multiple slide masters also make it easy to design a variety of layouts within one template.

Terberg, Julie. Presentations (2002). Design>Graphic Design>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

Non-Linear PowerPoint Presentations

This non-linear PowerPoint tutorial will help you plan and create a presentation using some of the advanced branching and linking tools. You'll be able use the common drawing tools to design a simple user interface and navigation scheme.

Guides and Tutorials (2006). Articles>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

The Power of PowerPoint: Providing MBAs a Leadership Edge  

Edward Tufte (2003) argues that PowerPoint is so flawed that it is impossible to communicate anything meaningful using it. The medium is not flawed; the users are. Instead of condemning PowerPoint, we owe it to the MBAs to teach them how to use this powerful communication tool. Knowing how to use PowerPoint effectively can give MBAs a leadership edge. This article discusses what we should be teaching the MBAs to allow them to take advantage of PPT and use it to deliver powerful presentations.

Barrett, Deborah J. Association for Business Communication (2005). Articles>Presentations>Management>Microsoft PowerPoint

PowerPoint 2003: A Comprehensive Overview of the New Features of the New Version

The new features of PowerPoint 2003 are both prominent and subtle, but before we start discussing PowerPoint further, there is some thing important you need to know about Office 2003: Office 2003 requires a minimum operating system of Windows 2000 (Service Pack 3 or later), or Windows XP (preferred). For the Package to CD feature in PowerPoint 2003, you need Office XP to be able to package direct to CD from within PowerPoint. Okay, now we can get down to busi ness...

Millar, Glen. Presenters University. Articles>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint

PowerPoint 2007 Tutorial

This tutorial is based on the PC version of Microsoft PowerPoint 2003, but the principles explained here should be similar for older versions of the program and for Macs.

Cramer, Dan. Ereunao (2007). Articles>Presentations>Software>Microsoft PowerPoint