The PowerPoint Ninja Blog covers practical PowerPoint topics, tips, and tricks.
Oct 23 2010
I’ve had a few questions about how to re-create the shaft gradient fill effect that was a default option in PowerPoint 2003. If you still remember PowerPoint 2003 (it’s two versions old now), there was a gradient option that created a rounded/pipe/shaft-like effect.
I know your life has been empty without it since switching to PowerPoint 2007. I want to fix that nagging empty feeling. Continue reading “Shaft Gradient Fill Effect in PowerPoint 2007”
Apr 05 2010
Sometimes you want to adjust a group of objects together and other times you want to adjust just one element within a group. (c) Thinkstock
Recently, a new PowerPoint 2007 user from Australia contacted me about being frustrated with one of PowerPoint’s new features. You may have run across this inconspicuous feature when you attempted to move a grouped object and rather than moving the entire grouped object, you end up accidentally moving just a sub-element of that object. You may have wondered what is going on because in PowerPoint 2003 you would have to ungroup an object before you could reposition any of its sub-elements. Continue reading “Editing Grouped Objects in PowerPoint 2007”
Jan 31 2010
SmartArt is not PowerPoint + Bob Ross.
PowerPoint is often criticized for encouraging presenters to rely too heavily on bullet points and not helping people to communicate more visually. Microsoft added a feature known as SmartArt to help convert text into various stylized graphics. When you’re designing your PowerPoint presentation, you can quickly rotate through various shapes, colors, layouts, and styles in order to find the right graphic for your presentation.
For novice or casual PowerPoint users, SmartArt can be a handy tool for quickly making your presentation more visual and professional looking. If you decide to use SmartArt in your PowerPoint slides, you need to be careful because SmartArt is dumb. Continue reading “PowerPoint SmartArt is Dumb”
Jun 11 2009
How can I get this 18 MB PPT file to our client in Chicago in the next 7 minutes? (c) iStockPhoto / contour99
You killed yourself to complete a PowerPoint presentation on a short deadline. You put a lot of time and effort into your slides — crafting a cohesive message, choosing some great images, and building some advanced animation effects. What a relief that you were able to submit everything on time, and you’re confident that you’ll receive great feedback on all your hard work (promotion, hello?). Continue reading “Tips for Sharing Large PowerPoint Files”
May 16 2009
Push pins in PowerPoint 2007 can be time savers (c) iStockPhoto/Talaj
If you work with multiple PowerPoint presentations each week, it can be difficult to quickly find key presentations when you need them at a moment’s notice. I’m frequently reviewing other people’s PowerPoint slides and going back and forth between several of my own presentations. There are a couple of new features in PowerPoint 2007 that can benefit heavy PowerPoint users and save you time. Continue reading “PowerPoint 2007: Recent Documents and Push Pins”
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