Smooth Sailing Postscript

If you haven't read the first "Smooth Sailing" post, you'll probably want to go back and read it now.  A quick summary: the article reviews the effect PowerPoint's Snap to Grid feature has on your editing experience, and goes over the somewhat hidden controls for the default behaviors here.

What I Forgot!

There was one additional entry point for bringing up the Grids and Guides dialog that didn't get mentioned in the previous post.  It's perplexingly both the easiest to use, and potentially the hardest to discover on your own.

The Handy Right-Click Menu

PowerPoint 2003

Right clicking on a slide in PowerPoint 2003, brings up a set of contextual commands for slides and the presentation.  You'll note that the Grids and Guides command is right there, as you see in the illustration on the left.  Again, in PowerPoint 2007 the is available in the right-click menu.  Although much of this menu is changed, the Grids and Guides command is still there as you can see in the illustration on the right.

PowerPoint 2007

Be Careful Where You Click

If  you don't see the Grids and Guides command in the menu, check to see that you've clicked on an empty part of the slide, not a placeholder, shape, picture, chart, etc.  These objects have their own right-click menu, and won't list the Grids and Guides command.  If the slide is covered with objects, you can also click in the area just outside the slide to bring the menu up.

Ric Bretschneider  July 15, 2008

Quick Try This: Smooth Sailing

I talk to a lot of people who spend significant portions of their lives in PowerPoint. And when those people run into the same problems over and over, well, it means we made a mistake in the design of the product.  Worse, if they're looking for something that the application can do, but they can't find it, we made a mistake and wasted everyone's time. This is one of those situations.  We will fix it in the future, but for now I hope this helps. -Ric

Smooth Movement in Slides

When you're editing slides, you often will have to move shapes or picture to a new location.  It's a very common operation, because you don't always draw the shape in exactly the right position, or the imported picture needs to be a little to the left, or whatever.  You may have noticed that the movement "stutters" slightly as you move it along.  This is because PowerPoint has a feature called "Snap to Grid." As you move a shape about on the slide, the shape automatically jumps along to invisible grid lines that are supposed to help you align objects.

Now for the most part, this is a good thing, because in creating pleasing design we generally like to see similar things line up in neat rows and columns.  And Snap to Grid makes it easier to do just that. But there are always times when you need to adjust the position of a shape or picture freely, we occasionally need that freedom of movement to align a shape point to something in a picture, or simply for creating an aesthetically appealing free-form design.

Well, there are two ways to circumvent the snapping behavior.  Unfortunately both of them relatively hard to find.

Temporary Smoothness

Let's say you are pretty happy with the snap to grid default, but you've just come across a situation where that behavior is frustrating you. Like the illustration of the lifeboat number, I just can't get that arrow to line up exactly with the boat number. 

There are two ways to overcome default snapping.  You may want to launch your copy of PowerPoint and follow along with some of these techniques.

Nudge It - Keyboard

With an object selected, try moving it using the arrow keys on your keyboard. You'll see that the arrows move much the same way as with the mouse, kind of jerky.  Now try it holding down the CTRL key while you press an arrow key once.  The movement is almost unperceivable. This smoother nudge is moving in much smaller increments. The movement becomes more obvious if you hold down the arrow key to do multiple successive nudges.  Hold down the CTRL and arrow keys and watch the object sail smoothly across the slide.

Nudge It - Mouse

Don't let go of that CTRL key yet.  Try moving the object with the mouse now!  Yes, the CTRL modification also changes how the mouse moves shapes on the slide. You can almost feel the difference!

So remember, holding down CTRL temporarily turns off the snap to grid function.

Permanent Smoothness

OK, so you've probably figured out that there's a way, somewhere to turn off this behavior all together, and you're right.  It's never been really easy to find, but it only got harder in Office 2007.

PowerPoint 2003

Not terribly hard to find if you know the command you're looking for, in PowerPoint 2003 the menu is one you probably don't hit all that often.  It's the Draw menu at the bottom-left corner of the application.  The command you're looking for is Grids and Guides.

Selecting Grids and guides launches a dialog that has a number of related features, but the one you're  most interested in is Snap Objects to Grid.

Unchecking the box here will stop the stutter-drag that's driving you crazy.  But remember, later if you find that you're actually missing the default behavior, you can head back to the Grids and Guides dialog and check the option again. It's always just a few clicks away.

PowerPoint 2007

With the advent of the ribbon, you can see that commands really moved around a lot.  But the old menus weren't always collected in a manner that made sense, and the ribbons do create a great environment for finding similar and collaborative commands.  We consider the ribbon a a big win overall.

But, some mistakes were made.  And the location of the Snap control is one of them.

We pretty much buried the Snap control under the Arrange command.  Drop the Arrange menu, and from the Align sub menu you can now access the Grid Settings command.

Other G&G Goodness

As you can see by comparing the two dialogs above, the base function hasn't changed between the two versions. It's a powerful set of design features that you should get to know.

I encourage you to check out the other settings here, including Snap objects to other objects command, which is a good one to know about.  Play with it a bit and see if it will help with the kinds of slide design you do.

Hopefully the rest of these are, perhaps with some assistance from the Help command, pretty easy to figure out.  The Guides are actually more powerful than they appear at first, but that's a topic for another day. If the other commands aren't entirely clear, add a comment below and I'll try to clear things up for you.

In the meantime, smooth sailing to you!

Ric Bretschneider
July 9, 2008

Good News for Producer Fans

There was a little confusion in the earlier posting about the recently announced Producer 2007 update.  Although the name says "For Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007" it still supports earlier versions of PowerPoint. 

To be clear, this is still a beta and the point of doing betas is to see if we can find any additional bugs we need to fix and to get your feedback.  So please do share your thoughts after using the tool. 

The forum for Producer bug reporting and feedback is through the Microsoft Connect site.  Instructions for joining Connect and downloading Producer are repeated below.

But make sure to bookmark the Connect site while you're there, because you'll want to return to the Producer forum to enter and read feedback and bug reports.  The development team will be monitoring and responding to those same reports!

Thanks,

-Ric

How to access the Producer for PowerPoint 2007 beta:

1. Click here to jump to the Connect site or type http://www.connect.microsoft.com in your web browser.
2. Click Sign In. Enter your Windows Live ID and password, and click Sign In again.
   • If you don’t have a Windows Live ID, click here to sign up for one.
   • If you have not used the Connect site before, a registration screen will display. Click any of the Register links and enter the requested details.
3. Choose one of these options and follow the steps:
   • If this is your first time accessing the Connect site:
     • Click the Connection Directory tab, and then click Office in the Categories list in the left-hand navigation pane.
     • Scroll through the list of available Connections and locate the Producer for PowerPoint 2007 Beta. You may want to change the Sort By criteria to list by Connection Name (A-Z) to locate it more quickly.
     • When you have found the link for the Producer beta, click the Apply Now link on the right. Clicking this link will jump to the Producer 2007 beta site.
   • If you are returning to the Connect site
     • Click the Your Dashboard tab, locate the link for the Producer for PowerPoint 2007 Beta site, and click it.
4. In the Producer for PowerPoint 2007 Beta site:
   • Review the FAQs and Links on the site for helpful information about Producer and this beta.
   • Click the Downloads link in the left-hand navigation pane to download and install Producer 2007.
   • Click the Feedback link in the left-hand navigation pane to report any issues and provide feedback to Microsoft.

Zen Strikes Twice

Last week the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus was fortunate to host Presentation Zen blogger and author Garr Reynolds. 

Garr presented on the origins of the Presentation Zen philosophy and style; how to bring Zen simplicity and clarity to your communications.

The Presentation Zen style is a very accessible and effective set of guidance and references for making your communications engaging and effective. Amazingly popular just five months after its publication, the book Presentation Zen has secured a number one position in Amazon’s Business, Communications, and Meetings & Presentations categories. The Presentation Zen blog continues a regular update of these concepts and comments on the general state of presentations and communications in business, education, and politics.

Both the book and blog are highly recommended.

We really scrambled back in March to get Garr in for a private presentation for the Windows and Macintosh PowerPoint teams, unfortunately there had not been enough lead time to throw the invitation open to the whole campus. Garr wrote about that experience with the PowerPoint team in his blog.

But this time we had plenty of warning, and opened the invitation to the whole Silicon Valley Campus. Garr had scheduled a trip in the States from his home in Japan, with an extended stay in the Silicon Valley. Microsoft employees really showed their interest in Garr's messages. We pretty much filled the main auditorium here at lunch time. Again, you can read about his take in a recent PZ blog entry. If you'd like to watch Garr tell the Presentation Zen story, you can watch a recording of his March visit to Google (just down the road from the SVC.)

Note on this second photograph. If you look closely Garr may appear to have lost the audience's attention. But they're actually responding to his request that they take a moment to discuss what good and bad presentations they've seen in the past. The audience reaction was huge, so much discussion, hand-waving, and laughter!  Check out the video as well...

There's already a podcast available of my first visit with Garr from the beginning of this year.  That recording features commentary from Nancy Duarte and Howard Cooperstein. You can listen to it here. We took Garr's latest visit as an opportunity to record a second session that will be available soon. Great evening, discussion revolved around the serious issues of audiences, humor and why presentations are like stand-up comedy.

Thanks again Garr!

-Ric

Happy One Year Anniversary Meine Freunde

The German PowerPoint 2007 Blog just celebrated it's one year anniversary!

Their 100th entry was published on Sunday and the 101st entry was entered the same day German PowerPoint MVP Pia Bork!

Check them out at http://www.ppt-user.de/blogger.  Yes, you'll need to speak German to read the blog, but there are lots of pictures and screen shots.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag! (Sure hope I got that right!)

-Ric

The Return of Producer for PowerPoint!

It's a pleasure to announce the return of a great tool for working with PowerPoint files, Microsoft Producer.

Originally created by the Microsoft Windows Media team, and available as a free download, Microsoft Producer allows you to take an existing presentation file, capture and synchronize video and audio narration, add additional media content, and produce a unified set of content ready for viewing in a browser on your corporate intranet or a generally accessible web server.

A powerful tool for e-learning, corporate communications, sales... many corporations and schools have been using Producer on a regular basis for many years.

It's been missing for a little bit...

The previous version of Producer had a few bugs, some adjustments that needed to be made for it to work with the new Office 2007 version of PowerPoint, as well as a couple of changes to fix incompatibilities with current browsers. But we're happy to say that today, right now, you can download the public beta of Microsoft Producer for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007!  (Yes, that's a real mouthful, but the lawyers like it when we use the full name in print.)

For those not already familiar with the previous versions, you can use Producer 2007 to capture video, audio, and still images from a Web camera, a video camera  (digital or analog), or from your computer screen. You can then use the captured content in your Producer presentations. You can also use Producer to import existing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, Windows Media files, still images, and HTML files, and then synchronize narrations with your video and PowerPoint presentations. You can then publish the presentation to an e-service provider, to a corporate intranet site, on a corporate network, or to the Web.

A couple of things to know

This new version of Producer supports PowerPoint 2007 and earlier versions of PowerPoint.  This is a compatibility upgrade and there aren't any new features. NOTE: Yes, this section has been updated from the original post.  There was some initial confusion about support for earlier versions of PowerPoint. 

And it's free!

So now you're wondering how you can join in with this beta and get yourself some of the new Producer goodness? 

Well, here you go.

How to access the Producer for PowerPoint 2007 beta:

1. Click here to jump to the Connect site or type http://www.connect.microsoft.com in your web browser.
2. Click Sign In. Enter your Windows Live ID and password, and click Sign In again.
   • If you don’t have a Windows Live ID, click here to sign up for one.
   • If you have not used the Connect site before, a registration screen will display. Click any of the Register links and enter the requested details.
3. Choose one of these options and follow the steps:
   • If this is your first time accessing the Connect site:
     • Click the Connection Directory tab, and then click Office in the Categories list in the left-hand navigation pane.
     • Scroll through the list of available Connections and locate the Producer for PowerPoint 2007 Beta. You may want to change the Sort By criteria to list by Connection Name (A-Z) to locate it more quickly.
     • When you have found the link for the Producer beta, click the Apply Now link on the right. Clicking this link will jump to the Producer 2007 beta site.
   • If you are returning to the Connect site
     • Click the Your Dashboard tab, locate the link for the Producer for PowerPoint 2007 Beta site, and click it.
4. In the Producer for PowerPoint 2007 Beta site:
   • Review the FAQs and Links on the site for helpful information about Producer and this beta.
   • Click the Downloads link in the left-hand navigation pane to download and install Producer 2007.
   • Click the Feedback link in the left-hand navigation pane to report any issues and provide feedback to Microsoft.

Feedback!

The Connect site will be used for managing all instructions, downloads, and bug reporting for Producer.  While we're planning additional blog postings about the product, we do direct you to that site for all general communications about the product.  There's a lot of information there now, including a list of frequently asked questions.

Patience is a very appreciated virtue

One final note to all the folks who have written or asked after the fate of Producer over the last few months.  Thank you for your continued patience and understanding.  We have a standard policy with respect to pre-announcing products, for the most part we won't discuss products under development, and it's terribly hard to keep quiet when have a fix is in the works.

Please remember that even though we don't make a lot of comments about future releases, we're always listening.  And working.

-Ric

Ric Bretschneider
June 5, 2008

Quick Try This: It's a Multi-Screen World

There are an increasing number of people out there with multiple monitors attached to their computers.  And many of them are PowerPoint users who think this new configuration should be more useful to them than it is.  They're right, and today I'll show you a simple technique to gain that advantage.

Going from desktop computer to laptop seems to be a common upgrade path for computer users today.  Laptops are now just as powerful as most desktops, and they have the benefit of being where you are, if you decide to tote them around.  Perhaps you've recently joined this mobile rank, and also discovered that the left-over monitor from your previous system can be connected to your laptop affording you an extended desktop area while you're at your desk.

OK, right away I know there are people out there saying "I've seen that, but I've not been able to get it to work for me!"  OK, that's another article entirely, involving the Windows Display Settings control panel, and perhaps even an updated driver from your computer's manufacturer.  My apologies for not attempting to solve the connection situation in this post, but here is advice on getting started with multiple monitors:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307873/en-us

Meanwhile, back at your desk you probably discovered that the left-over monitor from your old desktop gave you a pretty useful bump in document display when you connected it to your laptop. You can leave more icons on your desktop, have multiple applications open in different screens. It really is like getting a larger desk.   But for most PowerPoint users, you eventually come to the question: "How do I get this configuration to work so I can edit two presentations at once, one on each screen?

Seems natural, but you'll no doubt notice that the Maximize window command only uses the current display for any given document, and that PowerPoint tends to cycle open documents in that display when you click on them in the task bar.   It sure looks like we're stuck in one monitor here.

But you're not.  It just takes a little manual work.

Start by opening any two presentations.  For the purpose of this demo, it really doesn't matter which ones you use.  Mine were called "Civil War Weapons" and "In Your Face."  You'll note that, as usual, only one is visible. 

(Note: Depending on your screen dimensions your monitor may display the presentation overlapping screens, this is something you can fix later.)

If your PowerPoint window is maximized, click the "Restore Down" button (next to the red Close button in the upper right-hand corner of the window.

Now drag the window dimensions out so that you cross over into the second monitor.  You may need to adjust both the upper-left and lower-right corners to give yourself a reasonable size.  It should end up looking something like this:

Now comes the real trick.  It's in the PowerPoint View ribbon, Windows group.  The Arrange All command. 

In earlier versions of PowerPoint, this command can be found in the Window menu.

OK, you're there!  Check out your display.  It should look something like this:

As you see above, the notes panes, thumbnail panes, and slide content can all be adjusted per document as needed.  Copying to and from presentations in this configuration is much easier, you can even drag and drop whole slides between presentations!

And now that you know how to do two presentations, you can probably figure out how to do it with three or more. 

Have fun with multiple monitors and windows!

Ric Bretschneider

April 6, 2008

Quick Try this: Presentations 2 Go

Today PowerPoint Program Manager Andrew Hewatt will show you how to get presentations "under your thumb!"  Ouch, OK, sorry for the pun. Really this is a useful technique for any presentation you may need to present without assurances that the computer you end up using will have PowerPoint installed.

Note: Although these instructions are shown using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, the technique will work with any version of PowerPoint that includes the Package for CD feature.

Grab your favorite USB Thumb Drive and your favorite PowerPoint presentation and try the following:

Package for CD: Copy to folder

1. With your favorite presentation open in PowerPoint 2007, click the Office Button, Publish and then Package for CD.

2. In the Package for CD window click the “Copy to folder…” button.

3. In the copy to folder window click Browse and choose your Desktop (for simplicity).

4. After choosing the folder click Ok in the copy to folder window.

Copy the contents to USB Thumb Drive

1. Insert your favorite USB Thumb Drive into your computer

2. Open the “PresentationCD” folder on your Desktop

3. Copy the entire contents of this folder into the main directory of your USB Thumb Drive

Re-insert the Thumb Drive

1. After the contents have been copied, remove the Thumb Drive

2. Find a Windows machine that does not have PowerPoint installed and insert the Thumb Drive

3. VISTA: If you found a Windows Vista machine

a. Click the Start button, then Computer

b. In this window right click on the USB Thumb Drive and click “Open Autoplay…”

c. The AutoPlay prompt should come up. Click to “Run PPTVIEW.exe”

d. Sit back and enjoy your presentation in full screen (without installing PowerPoint)

4. Windows XP/2000: If you found a Windows XP machine

a. The AutoPlay prompt should come up. Click to “open the folder and view files”.

b. In the USB Thumb Drive directory open the “play.bat” file

c. Sit back and enjoy your presentation in full screen (without installing PowerPoint)

You wanted to stay up with the times and purchased a USB Thumb Drive. Now you can utilize this new tool to take your presentations with you wherever you go. Enjoy!

Random Questions and Answers

It's unavoidable. When people find out we work on PowerPoint, we get questions. Sometimes they're new, but many are repeaters.  We take all questions seriously, especially the repeaters, as those sponsor changes we need to make to the product.  Our goal is to eliminate the necessity of the question in the first place by better design.

To be clear, many of the questions we get are answered in the PowerPoint help, or in online support.  But again, the fact that people don't find these answers means we've still got work to do in making the products better.

Today, we're going to review a set of common questions that have recently been asked, and provide our best answers for each.

In case you don't find your favorite question below, we'll end the article with additional references and resources for getting your questions answered.

Q. In PowerPoint 2007, lines seem to work more like connectors from the previous versions.  Is this intentional? 

A. Yes, all lines are now, in fact, connector lines.  This means that when you are drawing a line it will try to snap to the corner or mid-point of other shapes on the slide.  You'll see these points "light up" on a shape as you approach it when drawing or moving a line.  This is a great feature, providing an exacting match-up of your line and the shape that can be repeated with other lines and shapes in a crisp and professional manner. 

However it is possible that you may want to get a line near a shape but not actually connect to it, and may feel that the magnetic attraction between the two is getting in your way. This can be exasperated by a second setting in PowerPoint called Snap to Grid.  The Snap to Grid setting is in the Home ribbon, under the Arrange command, in the submenu Align.  Look for the Grid settings.  In that dialog, you can both make the grid visible and turn off the snapping behavior.  Making the grid visible will make the behavior more obvious, and won't affect the appearance of your slides when printing or presenting.  However, turning off the snapping will allow you a little more freedom in where you place lines and shapes on your slide.

Q. PowerPoint. 2003 had a word count feature, but now I can't find the option in PowerPoint 2007.  Can you help me find or set up a way to give the number of words in the notes section or even for the whole presentation?

A. Well, yes, things did get a little shifted during the 2007 redesign of the application.  Word count for the presentation is still there.  In the Office menu, you'll want to select Prepare, and then Properties.  The document properties bar opens at the top of your document.  At the top of the properties bar is a small menu labeled Document Properties.  Click that and choose Advanced Properties.

The Advanced Properties dialog contains several tabs, one of which is Statistics, which will list the number slides, paragraphs, words, notes, hidden slides, multimedia clips, and the presentation format for the current document. 

Yes, it could be simpler, but now you know where to find it.

Q. I was wondering if you could tell me how to disable the semi-transparent navigation  buttons at the bottom left hand side of a slide during a presentation?  I'm creating my own navigation buttons on the slides themselves, and your automatic buttons can get in the way of my buttons.

A. These buttons can controlled by adjusting the "Popup Toolbar" option.  This is found in the advanced options.  To open the advanced options, click the the Office Menu, then PowerPoint Options (bottom of the list), and finally click Advanced.  You want to uncheck Show Popup Toolbar in the Slide Show group.

Note that because this is an application option, it will be used for all presentations you show with this machine.  And the setting is kept with the application, and does not travel with your presentation document.  That means that if someone else shows your document on another computer, they will also have to uncheck this option to supress the navigation buttons.

In your case it sounds like you're using hyperlinks on objects in the slide to do custom navigation, and so there is an alternative that can be set on the document itself.  You may want to look into; Kiosk mode. 

It's actually fairly easy to set a presentation into Kiosk mode, it's in the first group of commands in  the Setup Show command on the Slide Show tab.  You'll want to select Browsed at a kiosk (full screen).

Kiosk mode hides the slide menu, but also sets the presentation so that it won't advance on click.  The assumption here is that you're building a set of buttons into each slide, and your navigation is going to be completed through the use of those buttons. 

If you're going to distribute a kiosk mode presentation, make sure you've fully tested it, or at least warned the recipient that you've used this alternative show type.

Q. How can I save my presentation as PDF?

A. Starting with Office 2007, the capability of saving to the portable formats XPS and PDF is built into PowerPoint.  To access this feature, open the Office menu and choose Save As, then from the second menu choose PDF or XPS. 

OK, one more fairly "techie" question, but one we get a lot.

Q. What resolution should I use when creating or purchasing photographs for use with PowerPoint?

A. OK, this is dependent on how you're using PowerPoint, or any other Office application for that matter, so we'll give you three answers:

• 96 dpi (dots per inch) for e-mail, it's an acceptable size. 
• 150 dpi for screen presentations.  This is an all-around good choice.
• 220 dpi if you're concerned about print quality.  You may want higher depending on your printer and goals, but note that larger sizes may affect slide show performance, and will be slower to print.

OK, that wraps things up for now.  If you're running into problems like these, or just want to learn more about using PowerPoint and Office, we encourage you to review the following resources as well:

• Microsoft Office: http://office.microsoft.com  - The Office web page, a great starting point for product information, and links to supplemental help and training.
• PPT FAQ: http://pptfaq.com - A web site created by the PowerPoint MVPs with an amazing wealth of knowledge.
• Microsoft Discussion Groups - A community where users can go and post questions and answers about the products.  Monitored by the MVPs, this is a terrific resource for both getting answers to your questions as well as meeting other users.  For more information, visit http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx

Ric Bretschneider
Senior Program Manager
Microsoft PowerPoint

Present for the Presentation People...

There are a lot of ways to become a better presenter. Really, there are.  And some are simple and fun. One of the more fun ones is to watch a really good presenter...

Friday the PowerPoint team had the pleasure of bringing Nancy Duarte to the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus to reprise her keynote address: A Personal Journey.

Duarte is the CEO and founder of Duarte Design a presentation focused design firm that counts some of the biggest technology companies as clients. They're the group that worked with Al Gore on the slides used in the Oscar winning film An Inconvenient Truth.

Of course Duarte delivered the goods Friday for a full house of softies who turned off their cell phones and stayed all the way through a lively post presentation Q&A. Truly a personal journey, the presentation covers a short history of her business, the effects world and technology trends are having now, and where she expects this to go in the future.

Duarte has graciously shared her work with us, and you, by way of these recorded slides and audio.  Enjoy and learn!

Nancy Duarte, as the crowd assembles and presenting (inset).

Ric Bretschneider - January 13, 2008

Quick, Try This: Secrets of the PowerPoint Status Bar - View Switching

Party Tricks.

There's a category of software functionality that, despite the best intention of the designers and developers, somehow never seems to make it into general use. 

Sometimes these are essential features, and that's a really bad thing because a customer's failure to find an essential feature means the developers wasted their efforts.  We don't blame the customer, we blame ourselves and try to fix things down the road.  Luckily we're pretty good about usability testing and don't have many of those in PowerPoint.

Other times they're not essential features, they're quick access or alternative methods for accessing functionality that is easily found elsewhere.  Because users can find these features in obvious locations, the failure to find the quick access method isn't all that bad.  And it's kind of fun to expose them to users, see the delight in their eyes... kind of like party tricks.

View Switching

View switching in Office applications is pretty easy, especially in 2007 where the new ribbons have given views have their own tab.

You can rest assured that this Presentation Views group provides you with all the access you need to be successful in PowerPoint. The rest of this article is just about getting to these views faster, and admittedly to one or two surprise views that you may have never seen before.

Status Bar View Switching

For many releases now PowerPoint has had a view switching control in the status bar.

Note: Although we're showing pictures of Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, these features work for any version of PowerPoint that has the view switching control.

The view switcher group lets you, with a single click, switch between the main document views.

Very handy of course, and most PowerPoint users make use of one or more of these buttons on a regular basis.

What's not obvious to most folks is there is hidden access to multiple views in each of these buttons!

Shifty Control of Views

Here's where the fun starts.  You can "modify" the effect of clicking on any of these buttons by holding down the SHIFT key or CTRL key while you click each button.  This gives you a number of additional views you can quickly shift to.  Here are the main commands.

Shift-Click Slide Show

Quick access to the Set Up Show Dialog

The Set Up Show dialog is accessible from the Slide Show tab, but getting at it by shift clicking the Slide Show button, changing a setting or two, and then using the same (un-shifted) button to launch slide show has a certain conservation of movement that you may appreciate.

Shift-Click Slide Sorter

Switches to the Handout Master View

Handout masters are one of the lesser-used features in PowerPoint, as the default settings are well chosen, but if you need to customize that default this is the view for you.  Whether you need this style of quick access, well, again that's up to you.

  Shift-Click Normal

Switches to the Slide Master View

Shifting between Normal and Master View quickly is one of the most useful of these "party tricks." If you find yourself making master design changes and keep flipping back to normal view to check how your modifications are working - this is a terrific time saver.

Add some CTRL

OK, now that you "get" the SHIFT-Clicking functions, let's go a step deeper.  A second level of hidden switching can be reached if you hold down CTRL and SHIFT at the same time while you click the buttons.

CTRL-SHIFT-Click Normal

Hides everything except the slide

This closes the notes pane and the Thumbnail/Outline pane to provide you the largest view of the current slide. You can easily bring back the hidden panes by clicking the Normal button again (without any keys).

CTRL-SHIFT-Click Slide Sorter

Expands the Outline to the full window

This view isn't actually available through the Views tab, so it's one of two "bonus" views I'm showing you today.  It nostalgically harkens back to PowerPoint 1.0, where the software didn't have split panes and could only show you the slide and the outline in different views.  Still, if you want to isolate your work to just the text and presentation structure before working up slides, this might be the right view for you.

CTRL-Click Slide Show

Displays a 1/4 screen preview of the slide show. 

Note that CTRL-SHIFT-Click Slide Show just brings up the same Set Up Show dialog that Shift-Clicking activates.

Legend has it that this miniature view of the slide show was put into PowerPoint by a developer who wanted a way to quickly check some code changes he was working on.  It has been in PowerPoint for many releases, but remains one of the truly hidden features in the product.  The miniature view is a full featured slide show, complete with transitions and animations, all of the standard navigation and even the final "click to exit" black screen.  While it is running you can click back into the normal view, make changes to the slides, and resume the show displaying those changes.  I'll leave it up to you to decide whether this is actually a brilliant lost feature or simply a fun PowerPoint party trick.

Ric Bretschneider

12/31/2007

Themes: The Tool is Here

Hello, did you miss us?

Hi, and welcome back.  We know it's been a while. We appreciate all your mail, even on the old articles, and while it's way too early to start writing about the next release we hope to roll up some interesting new subject matter in this blog very shortly.  Today, we have this exciting announcement.

Yes, themes again

We wrote a lot in last year's series of blogs trumpeting the coming of shared themes for Office 2007.  If you missed those, you might want to take a minute or so to check out the archive of those articles. Its important to remember that while themes really shine in Microsoft PowerPoint, the same themes can be used on Microsoft Excel and Word documents, providing a professional unified look for all your business communications.

Today's post is for those users already looking for a little more power and help in creating themes.  While you can go a long way using PowerPoint to modify and create new themes, you really benefit from a utility specifically made to help you see all the color and font issues in specific composition screens where you can easily adjust them as necessary. And that's what the Theme Builder is all about.

Announcing the Open XML Theme Builder

The Open XML Theme Builder helps you create great new themes for Office 2007 documents. It's a pretty cool little tool, you'd probably like to see a picture of it right about now.  OK.

Main UI: Open XML Theme Builder

Here's a short message from Jason Schneekloth, Microsoft program manager for the Theme Builder:

The Open XML Theme Builder tool provides a simplified user interface for creating custom themes which can be used to define the look and feel of documents created within Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® 2007, Microsoft® Office Excel® 2007, and Microsoft® Office Word 2007. The tool gives users the ability to quickly and easily design the look of a document without having to understand the inner workings of XML.

This is the latest rendition of the program we used to create the great themes that shipped with Office 2007.  The tool lets you open a theme, adjust it's elements, test it, and save it out. 

For example, here's the Urban theme loaded in the tool.  Notice how the color elements are arrayed so you can see how, independent of the presentation design, the colors work together or where there may be problems.

Colors and Fills tab with the Urban theme loaded

After you've worked through the color and font choices the tool can launch PowerPoint for an in-place check of your efforts.  Again, the urban theme checked out in PPT.

Checking the theme in PowerPoint

The theme is loaded into PowerPoint and applied to a sample document that contains slides of color swatches and layout samples.  This gives the new scheme a real world shakedown.  You can pop back and forth between the tool and PowerPoint, checking your changes and their effects as much as you like.  It's really very cool.

Important note: Because changes are saved directly back on the theme you opened, you should make a point of working on copies of your installed themes. We suggest you copy your Office themes files to a new folder on your desktop or in your documents folder. 

OK, so gimmie

So you may be asking yourself, "Where do I get this marvelous tool?"  Glad you asked.  It's available on CodePlex.

"What's CodePlex?"  Boy, you're full of questions.  CodePlex is Microsoft's open source project hosting site.  Yes, this is an open source project.  The Theme builder project is at http://www.codeplex.com/openxmlthemebuilder 

Yes, there's plenty more we could write about how the CodePlex community helps projects advance and grow, and how exciting it is to use this as a home for the Theme Builder, but you get the idea.  We invite you to read up on CodePlex and the Theme Builder site at the links above.  We're trying to keep this short.

R.T.F.M... um... well...

More important for most of our readers will be the question of how to actually use the Theme Builder.  Especially since there's no documentation in the release yet. It's not impossible to figure out by exploring the UI, but you could probably do with a bit of help before you get in too deep.  Luckily, the PowerPoint MVPs have had access to this tool for a bit, helping with feedback and debugging, and several are working on training and instructions already. 

MVP Echo Swinford is adding Theme Builder instructions to her site at Echo's Voice.  Specifically http://www.echosvoice.com/2007_tutorials.htm. She has a “adding custom colors to the color picker” tutorial, and will soon add one on including two color schemes in the theme.  She plans to expand this to include more theme builder-specific training.

We caught MVP Geetesh Bajaj a little off guard with our timing, he's currently on vacation and can't open up his articles on learning themes just yet.  Hopefully these will be available shortly after the 23rd, nifty timing that. Geetesh publishes his writing and a lot of lovely design templates at Indezine.com.  Tentatively the link will be http://www.indezine.com/products/powerpoint/learn/themes/ (You'll get a password prompt until he opens the document up for reading.)  But check out Indezine while you're at it, there's plenty of great PowerPoint reading there right now.

Finally, there will be links to all of this in later PPT Blog posts, as well as at another MVP maintained site, Steve Rindsberg's PPT FAQ. Steve will modestly protest that he only collects the work of others for the site, but the fact that he's put together one of the most comprehensive PowerPoint answers sites around is no modest achievement. Steve will link PPT FAQ to additional instructions as they become available.

So, there you have it.  An early holiday present. As you might expect, the PowerPoint team is really heads down building the next version right now, but we're interested in what you have to say about this and other topics.  So do write! 

Talk to you again soon,

Richard Bretschneider
Senior PowerPoint Program Manager

Quick Try This: 3D, The Fuel for Hotter Slides

We break from our Winter break with a guest post from Chris Becker.  Chris is one of our team's developers who wanted to share some observations on using 3D in PowerPoint 2007. The result is a quick set of steps you can walk through and explore the power of the new text and graphics engines.  -RB

3D is one of the great new features of PowerPoint 2007, so I wanted to highlight what some of the new features are and how they can be used.

For starters, how do you get a 3D shape? All shapes are 2D until you add a bevel or rotation onto them. Let’s start with a simple shape:

A great way to start with 3D is to use one of the presets. This is the first item under the Shape Effects button:

Choosing any of these items will add a bevel and/or a 3D rotation. I chose Preset 10, and I now have a very nice looking 3D shape:

Using the Bevel and 3D Rotation galleries under Shape Effects, I can customize the look and angle of the shape. You can also change the fill color just like you would on a 2D shape (I’ve darkened it here slightly to show off the bevel better):

Finally, you can add text just like you can with a 2D shape by selecting the shape and typing onto it. The text is rotated in scene with the shape:

Of course, text can have bevels as well, just look under Text Effects. Here I’ve chosen one of the 3D WordArt styles:

And now we have a professional looking, 3D graphic created entirely within PowerPoint! Why is this better than rigging it up in another application and pasting it in as a picture? Obviously it is easily editable within PowerPoint with no application switching, but also when resized this shape will re-render at the correct size (no blocky bitmap artifacts), it responds to themes and can be copy and pasted natively between PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Outlook!

Thanks Chris! 

Office 2007 Released to Manufacturing

Yes! Friday was the big day. We're all thrilled of course. There will be plenty of news coverage, but for now let us suggest the following links for the juicy details:

The Microsoft Press Release - The official announcement. 

Jensen Harris: An Official User Interface Bog - Personal details about the ship party and box photos.

Thanks to our readers, especially those who comment. We do listen. You do have impact. We hope it shows.

Enjoy Microsoft Office 2007, and we can't wait to see what you do with the new PowerPoint and OfficeArt!

Ric Bretschneider - 11-6-2006

Quick, Try This: Setting Your Default Theme in PowerPoint

With so much new in this release of Office, its easy to overlook some of the less-earth-shattering-yet-still-cool-goodness we've baked in for you.  This is a series of short posts highlighting a few of these unsung heroes, things to try out in the beta releases or later when you have the released product.  - Richard Bretschneider

This first "quick" feature is doubly interesting; besides the fact you may have missed it in PowerPoint 2007, you may have missed it in PowerPoint 2003!  It's setting a default design or theme for new documents. 

Setting a default design is particularly useful if you work in an company or organization that requires you to use an corporate template.  But you'll find it just as cool if you simply don't like the default template and want to always start with something else.  Whenever you open PowerPoint the design you chose is automatically applied to the new document, and you're ready to go! 

As you're probably aware by now, Office 2007 introduces Themes; professionally created collections of colors, effects, and fonts, which can be applied to Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.  Themes provide a uniform professional look across different document types, as well as providing powerful customization options.  Read Howard's earlier blog if you aren't already aware of this exciting change in Office 2007.

Make It Yours

Both PowerPoint 2003 and 2007 set the default design in a similar manner, but the user interface for selecting themes has changed from the side panes of Office 2003 to the ribbon galleries in Office 2007.  We'll review 2003 first, then show you how it works in 2007. 

In PowerPoint 2003, you'll want to make sure the template you want to make your default appears in the pane.  To add a template to the pane, select Browse from the bottom of the pane.   You'll use the file dialog to select your template.  It is applied to your document and added to the list in the pane. 

To make a template your default, right-click the template thumbnail, and select "Use for All New Presentations" from the menu. 

Deja 2007

PowerPoint 2007 makes some subltle changes here, but essentially it's the same set of steps in a new bit of user interface.  The Theme gallery of the Design tab has a browse menu item where you can add any theme or template not already in the gallery.  Again, this applies the design to your current document, and also adds it to the list of active themes.

With the gallery open, right-click the theme thumbnail you want to make the new default.  This drops a familiar-looking menu, including the command that sets your default theme for new presentations.

OK, that was easy, but how do you get back to the original?

In both versions of PowerPoint you can change back to the original default by using the same Set as..." command.  In PowerPoint 2003, the default design template is named "Default Design" and is at the beginning of the Available For Use section of the Slide Design pane.  In PowerPoint 2007 the default theme is named "Office Theme" at the beginning of the Built-In secton of the gallery.

So, hope you enjoy the power of choosing your own defaults!

NEXT UP: SECRETS OF THE POWERPOINT STATUS BAR