The PowerPoint Team Blog

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

Hi, I’m Chris from CoolBeans fame!

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

Our Intern

Slight departure from our typical topics, as today we say a fond farewell to Program Manager Intern Mike Krieger. He's headed back to school next week and we wish him all the best.

We like to give interns work experience on "real tasks." The same kind of work they would get if they were full-time employees.  In the best case they'll get some feature work, somethiing that actually contributes to the shipping product. Mike pretty much hit the jackpot this summer.  A quick review of his work that you'll see in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007:

Photo Album

Mike managed the effort to bring PowerPoint's Photo Album feature into the 21st century, making it compatible with new picture styles, themes, and some user interface clean-up.

Outline

Mike helped out with finishing touches on the PowerPoint Outline Pane as well. Beta users will recall that the slide icon used to look like this:

But will soon look like this:

...which aside from just looking nicer actually improves performance in the outline!

And other great stuff

Without going into detail, Mike was also involved in improving accessibility in our color picker, and was able to work in a research project!  Earlier this week, he sent the team an awesome picture highlighting the new graphics features in Office 2007.  From Mike's mail...

In the tradition of ‘Slide of the Week’ – I was playing around with some of OfficeArt’s 3D effects as part of my photo research, and came up with the following “glassy cover for photo on a dark red frame” design:

 The range of things we can do with OArt in 12 is just amazing. Thanks to the magic of ‘Change Picture’ you can have any pic you want under that glass.  -Mike

Thanks again Mike!

 

Post by Ric Bretschneider

Hear about OfficeArt?

You've probably noticed that we've dropped down a bit in frequency of posts. This is easily explained, we're very busy right now working to ship the best version of Office ever!  We will step up the number of posts again, hopefully very soon!  There's still a lot to write about. 

However, there was time recently to take a phone call.

Shawn Murray  interviewed Howard Cooperstein, OfficeArt program manager and contributor to this blog, for a podcast on Office Art history and the new themes engine in Office 2007.  This was just posted to his blog at  The IW Center.   The direct link to the podcast is here.

Howard is a particularly enthusiastic and deep source for information about OfficeArt and its history.

Hope you enjoy the podcast.  Let us know what you think; we've been thinking about recording some of these ourselves. 

 

Ric Bretschneider - 8/21/2006

Introducing: New PowerPoint Tables!

Special guest post today from Jason Schneekloth, Program Manager for PowerPoint Tables

 

PowerPoint Tables have been given a major revision with this release of Office.  We have put a great deal of work into Tables this release in order to combat many of the pain points users had in the past when working with PowerPoint Tables.  To show off how things have changed for the better and the new features of PowerPoint Tables, let’s take a look at the updated ‘Insert Table’

 

 

 

In the above image we see that the drag enabled insert table UI has been expanded considerably from the default size in previous versions.  Speaking of default sizes for PowerPoint tables, we have done a great deal of work in the area of performance in order to greatly increase the workable table size.  In previous versions of PowerPoint, the UI allowed the insertion of a table with a maximum of 25 rows and columns.  In this release, we have increased that maximum to 75x75 within the UI.  We were able to do this because we made the decision to move away from the metaphor of a table simply being a group of shapes, as it was in previous versions.  This has been one of the largest enabling factors in our performance gains, and as a result, tables are workable at sizes much greater than that of 25x25.  A tradeoff made in order to obtain these gains in performance was the ability to “ungroup” a table.  While this tradeoff means that there are a set of scenarios no longer present, specifically the ability to ungroup a table to animate individual pieces, we feel that the performance gains (not to mention all the other aspects talked about in this section of the blog) along with the ability to use multiple tables and/or shapes in these scenarios will benefit users in a much greater way.

After the user inserts a new table into PowerPoint we instantly see one of the most noticeable changes in tables.  The table, after insert, is a reasonable size, independent upon the number of rows you have in the table.  We no longer maximize the table height to fit a set area but are now only concerned with fitting the width.  The table inserted on the slide can be seen in the following image (with text added after the fact):

 

 

You might notice one more thing about the table.  It is styled by default after insertion.  Table styles will be discussed shortly in detail, but for the time being, in this example we have enabled special formatting for the header row and for banded rows.

 

But My Tables Aren’t In PowerPoint!

One of the other major pain points in working with tables in PowerPoint was the experience of actually moving your tabular data from outside of PowerPoint into PowerPoint.  The experiences in the past with being able to move a table from Excel to PowerPoint, for example, have proven to be problematic for users and in many cases the user would resort to pasting the table in PowerPoint as an image, rather than as an actual table.  Cross-app interoperability of tables between Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, specifically copying tables directly into PowerPoint, has been a top priority for this release.  Information will come into PowerPoint just as it was in the host application when one copies a table from Excel to PowerPoint, or Word to PowerPoint, as can be seen in the following image:

 

 

Gone are the days of pasting a table into PowerPoint as an image (unless you really want to of course)!  With the table now in PowerPoint, one of the most common tasks is to resize the table to better fit the dimensions of the slide and other objects on the slide.  To better maintain the proportions of the table (along with font size) we allow proportional resizes to be made by shift-dragging from the bottom right corner of the table.  This not only resizes the table proportionally, but also adjusts the font size so the entire table maintains proportions.

 

 

Once a table gets into PowerPoint, there are many formatting options available to the user.  The goal was to base a lot of the interactions with PowerPoint tables on the Word model of interacting with a table.  As one can see, the UI for both Word and PowerPoint tables are almost identical.

 

 

All of the basic formatting options exist, such as cell fills, border manipulation, font modifications, etc.  On top of that we now have a set of effects which can be applied to a table in PowerPoint.  These effects allow a person to apply a soft shadow to a table, a reflection, or to apply 3D bevels to a selection of cells within the table.

 

 

 

 

Table Styles!

The pinnacle of formatting available to a PowerPoint table is that of table styles.  Table styles provide a one-stop-shop to formatting the entire table so that it matches the other aspects of the deck in unique and subtle ways.

 

 

A table style basically consists of 7 different types of formatting:

 

1.    Table formatting, including a fill for the entire background

2.    Header Row formatting

3.    Total Row formatting

4.    First Column formatting

5.    Last Column formatting

6.    Banded Row formatting

7.    Banded Column formatting

 

Table style formatting can be extremely useful and maintains a consistent style across the presentation when used in combination with other themed elements (such as shapes, diagrams, or charts).  In the following image I show a single table which has three different table styles applied to it.  Each style application only took a single click from the gallery and the entire look and feel of the table changes.

 

 

There is a shared set of similar table styles across Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  Within PowerPoint there is an extra group of styles referred to as “Best Match for Document”.  You can also see this style grouping within the SmartArt Quick Styles.  In both Tables, and SmartArt, this group represents style choices which exemplify themed qualities to a much greater extent than other styles in the gallery.  Within the realm of table styles, this set includes tables which pull background fills from the theme along with effect properties.  This allows the tables to match extremely well with other objects in all the complex and subtle ways that a theme can define.  In the following image we see use of a table style out of the “Best Match for Document” section.

 

 

  This can help to create a tighter cohesion in design across different elements of a presentation.  This is also a way to get somewhat advanced effects on a table, such as a glow, which can only be enabled on a table depending upon the theme applied.

 

 

Jason Schneekloth - July 20, 2006

Office Themes: The Infinite Variety Generator - Part 2

This is the second in a two part post on how Office Themes can generate effectively limitless variations.  The first part appeared last week. 

 

Office Themes work across the major applications in Office.   Everything in this post can also be done in Word, Excel and Outlook email messages as well.  In PowerPoint the Design Tab is the user interface that provides control over all of this theme variation.  In Word and Excel you'll find the Themes group on the Page Layout Tab.

 

Today we'll focus on changing theme fonts, colors and effects. 

 

   

 

 

Theme Fonts

Every Office theme defines two fonts -- one for Headings and one for Body text.    Changing the theme fonts updates all the title and bullet text in your presentation.  In previous releases you had to go to master view to make this kind of a global change.   

 

The Theme Fonts gallery presents font sets derived from all the fonts used in other themes.  You'll notice the names above each set follows the theme names.  You can also create your own new Theme Font set using the "Create…" command at the bottom of the gallery.

 

   

 

 

Changing Theme Fonts can change the tone of a presentation from casual to formal or vice versa. 

   

 

We'll take the variation in the lower right which uses the Gill Sans MT font set onto the next step.

 

 

Theme Colors

Our Theme Color model, shown in Part 1 of this post, is structured such that all colors schemes work with any presentation or document.   A properly constructed Office Theme Color set will preserve legibility of all content -- in addition to looking great.   In past releases each design template shipped with its own set of color schemes that worked for that design template only.  That model, while quite effective, simply did not translate to Word and Excel where the page background is nearly always white.  We needed a color model that could handle light and dark backgrounds.   Solving this design problem also spawned the idea for the Background Styles gallery described in last week's post.

 

The Theme Colors gallery displays all the color sets from our built in theme set.  And you can create your own Theme Color set using the "Create…" command at the bottom of the gallery.

 

   

 

Changing Theme colors is the most dramatic change you can make to your slides with the exception of changing theme. 

   

 

Let's take the variation to the lower right, which is using Oriel's Theme colors, on to the next step.

 

Theme Effects

Theme Effects give you the power to create cool graphics like a Photoshop professional.  Each effect scheme specifies the way that effects should be applied to your shapes, charts, diagrams and even tables.   Using the Theme Effects gallery you can swap in different sets of graphic effects to quickly change the look of these objects. 

 

   

 

Here are four different effect schemes shown close up on a single shape in the SmartArt diagram from our slide.

 

   

 

Let's take the lower right variation, based on the effects from the Concourse theme.  This is our last step.

 

The Final Result

Here's the final results of our customizations.  The original Trek theme is on the left and our variation based on changes to the background style, colors, fonts and effects is on the right.

   

 

Just to make it a little clearer how far you can vary for the original theme, here's one more twist on the original Trek theme using the solid black background style, new fonts and the effect scheme from the Equity theme.

 

   

 

Every one of our new themes has this kind of customizability.

 

Save It!  Get More!

Once you have customized a theme the way you like it simply choose the "Save Current Theme..." command from the bottom of the theme gallery.   Name it and save it.  Your theme variation will be added to the top of your Theme gallery in the Custom section.

 

   

 

The "Search Office Online..." command will take you to an area of Office Online where you can  download more themes.   It's currently under construction but there will be a set of cool new themes there by the time Office 2007 ships.

 

Exactly How Much Variety?

We're planning to ship twenty themes "in the box."  And each of those themes provides the twenty sets of colors, fonts and effects that fill the customization galleries.   And, as covered in last week's post, there are twelve Background Styles.  So you can calculate the number of variations possible within each theme:

 

   20 Color sets  x 20 Fonts sets x 20 Effects sets x 12 Background Styles =  96,000

 

While that's not quite infinite I mentioned above that you can create your own new color and font sets.  And you can download new themes from Office Online which will give you new colors, fonts and effects.   All of which you can mix and match with any theme.  So that takes you the rest of the way to infinity -- and beyond. ;-)

 

Howard Cooperstein

 

Office Themes: The Infinite Variety Generator - Part 1

Today's post is the first of two parts covering a fairly large and important topic for PowerPoint: applying and customizing themes.  We'll be focusing on the variety you can generate using the controls on PowerPoint 2007's Design Tab. 

 

The Variety Problem

A good place to start is explaining why we have made our themes so customizable.  You probably already know the answer: we get lots of customer feedback that we don't provide enough - surprise - variety in our design templates.  People don't want their slides to look like anyone else's slides.  Obviously many corporations use a branded design template for presentations to their customers; for these presentations being able to alter the design is expressly not the goal.  Even in these cases Office Themes are valuable for maintaining consistent typography, color and layout.  Themes can help presentation creators stay "on brand." 

 

Back to the variety problem: people inevitably get bored with the designs that ship with PowerPoint.  When that happens you can go to Office Online and download some new ones or find free ones on the web or go to one of the many third party companies that make PowerPoint Design Templates.  Even with all that variety often you'll find one that's close to what you want doesn't have the right colors or feels too formal or informal, too dark or too light, etc.

 

When we began planning for Office 2007 we did a lot of research on the kinds of document designs and styles Office users wanted.   We primarily looked at information workers as they comprise the largest segment of our users.   We found that people are most affected by color when deciding whether they liked a particular document design.  Fonts were important in dictating the formality of a document.    The intensity of graphic effects was also important to control to be either more or less "flashy" depending on whether a presentations was for a customer or something internal such as giving a status report.

 

We rolled all of that new research and our experience with past releases of Office into our new theme model.

 

 

Office Themes

For Office 2007 the OfficeArt team built the new Document Themes platform.  Themes extend the PowerPoint design template concept to Word, Excel and even Outlook email messages.   Every Office Theme file works in all of these applications so you can coordinate formatting across slides, documents, spreadsheets and email messages.

 

Earlier this year I wrote a series of guest posts for Jensen Harris.  These blogs provide a good introduction to Office Themes.

 

1. Office Themes: Getting Documents To Sing One (Beautiful) Song
2. The Elements of Office Style
3. Variations on a Theme by Office

 

 

The Design Tab

PowerPoint's user interface has the richest expression of the Office Theme model but nearly everything I'll show you also works in Word, Excel and Outlook email messages. 

 

On the Design Tab we are going to detail the major controls in the Themes and Background groups.

   

 

I'll walk you through the surprising customization you can do to any presentation using this UI.  To give you a better feeling for the variety possible for each control in the user interface we are going to show four possible variations.  The one in the upper left is always the starting point and the one in the lower right will be the variation we take forward to the next step. 

 

Variant 1 [Starting Slide]	Variant 2
Variant 3	Variant 4 [Take to Next Step]

 

There are actually as many as twenty available variations at each step but we're just showing four to give you a sense of the variety.

 

 

Applying Themes

When you choose a theme from the theme gallery you apply a complete set of new colors, fonts, effects, backgrounds and slide layouts to your presentation.   You get it all in one click.  In fact you can just hover over any theme and get a Live Preview before you click.    Here are four themes applied to a simple slide. 

 

   

 

 

The theme in the upper left is the default "Office Theme," the theme in the lower right is "Trek."

 

The "theming" of your slides goes way beyond past releases. Applying a new theme transforms your presentation down to the smallest details.  Your titles can pick up WordArt effects and every table, chart, diagram and shape will update to have the correct colors, fonts and effects.  Even the layouts of your slides can be transformed dramatically from theme to theme though that's not shown above.  See my post on "Picture Layouts Explained" for a better demonstration of this.

 

Here's a surprising fact you may not have known: in PowerPoint 2003 textboxes and AutoShapes never updated their fonts when you changed slide designs.  They do now. 

 

If you like the way the theme looks when it's applied congratulations you are done reformatting your slides with that one click.  If you want to transform your presentation further within your selected theme you've got some great options. 

 

Background Styles

Background styles are unique to PowerPoint this release.  They are incredibly powerful.  In fact I had planned to do an entire post on them but they fit better into the overall story of theme customization.

 

Background Styles leverage our new theme color model which defines two dark and two light colors to be used for text and backgrounds.  The two light colors are always visible over the dark colors when they are used as backgrounds.   And vice versa