The Art of PowerPoint-ing

What is Death by PowerPoint?

2008-09-13T17:14:00Z

Here is a survey by Ellen Finkelstein. If you have any Death by PowerPoint experience, why not share it with us on this survey? By taking up this survey, you will also get a free copy of Ellen's e-booklet, 7 Steps to Great Images.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=8btaxwZWsjzcfZf2i5Qjog_3d_3d

Note: The link to get the free e-booklet is in small print at the end of the survey.

PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2008

2008-08-31T16:39:00Z

PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2008 is a day where PowerPointers get together to discuss, review and submit their latest PowerPoint works. PPTH eCon 2008 (abbrev.) is an annual online convention, which will be held on 27 September, a month after PowerPoint Heaven Anniversary.

There are several events for PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2008. The events include: eCon Awards 2008, Contributor of the Year, Submissions @ eCon, Discussions @ eCon. Check out PPTH eCon 2008 now for more information!

The eConvention starts off with the voting of eCon Awards 2008: Animation/Artwork/Game/Broadcast of the Year, which involves works submitted on PowerPoint Heaven in year 2008. The voting process is a pre-eCon event starting from 1 - 26 September. Vote for the Animation/Artwork/Game/Broadcast of the Year now! Winners will be announced on 27 September.

PowerPoint Heaven 3rd Anniversary

2008-08-26T01:52:00Z

PowerPoint Heaven 3rd Anniversary! Time files, and PowerPoint Heaven is now 3 years old. It feels really good to see PowerPoint animations, games and artworks getting better and better over the past 3 years. In recent years, you can slowly see a wide variety of games coming up. Here's a few examples of PowerPoint games by fellow hardcore PowerPointers: Pointer's Way (maze game) by Mohammad Ahmed Fikree, Music ver. C (music rhythm game) by KDC, Ultimate Sniper (shooting game) by Ted Thayer, and the upcoming highly anticipated Eight Eclipse (RPG game) by Anthony Barfield.

Artworks are catching up quickly. With the introduction of PowerPoint Heaven Discussion Board, you can see a significant improvement and interest on drawing techniques. Several works by our board members (Alex F, Ben Belford, James Niedfeldt and Zum Zum) have also made their way to PowerPoint Heaven Contributors' pool. Also, not to forget our PowerPoint Artworks Specialist, Jeremiah Lee, with his recent work Squall 3D, which has proved to the PowerPoint community that PowerPoint can be a very good drawing platform.

We have also receive large amount of submissions from Korea's PowerPoint Expert Club, all thanks to Mr. Francis Lee, Admin of PowerPoint Expert Club and a former Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, who has been assisting us in communicating with the cafe's members. Contributors from PowerPoint Expert Club have created magnificent masterpieces. Of all the masterpieces, one which is definitely worth mentioning, is Optimus Prime 3D by anubis0129, showing how the head of Optimus Prime from Transformers can be drawn and animated in 3D, all in PowerPoint.

Behind this success is all the PowerPoint Heaven contributors who have been spending millions of hours in exploring the depth of PowerPoint and contributing to the PowerPoint Entertainment community. Since the set up of PowerPoint Heaven, we now have 25 contributors who are constantly maximizing PowerPoint's capabilities. We sincerely appreciate their efforts and contributions. Without them, PowerPoint is simply a presentation tool :)

To celebrate this anniversary, we present you 3 new updates:
PowerPoint Game, Pixel Scene by Anthony Barfield.
PowerPoint Artwork, Kuchiki Byakuya by Boo Jia Hao.
PowerPoint Tutorial, Realistic Walk by Zum Zum.

Coming up next will be the PowerPoint Heaven eConvention 2008, our first eConvention. Stay tuned and get ready to vote for the Animation/Artwork/Game of the year!
Check out the PPTH eCon 2008 forum for more information.

Pausing your animations with VBA

2008-08-10T12:32:00Z

Lets say if you are running a slide that has multiple animations on it. Halfway through the presentation, you may want to pause the animations to explain something. A simple way to do this is to press the "b" key which will black out the screen. Then, press "b" key again to resume the presentation. The downside is that you won't be able to see the content on the screen.

To resolve this, you can make use of VBA. To do so, click Tools > Macro > Visual Basic Editor. Copy the code as shown below:

Sub pauseshow()
ActivePresentation.SlideShowWindow.View.State = ppSlideShowPaused
End Sub

Sub runshow()
ActivePresentation.SlideShowWindow.View.State = ppSlideShowRunning
End Sub

Close the editor once you are done.

Now, create two autoshapes.
Right click on the first one and select Action Settings. Select Run Macro > pauseshow. Click Ok.
Right click on the second one and select Action Settings. Select Run Macro > runshow. Click Ok.
Clicking on Shape 1 will now pause the presentation, while clicking on Shape 2 will resume the presentation.

Changing border color of a table in PowerPoint 2007

2008-07-29T17:09:00Z

Well hidden feature here, which you may not came across unless you chanced upon it. If you have inserted a table in PowerPoint 2007, then gave it a border, you will realize that there's no direct way to change the border color of your preference as compared to previous versions of PowerPoint. It can be done though. Here's what you should do:

Double click on the table to bring up the Table Tools > Design tab.
Under 'Table Styles', set the table to 'No Borders'.
Now, under 'Draw Borders', set it to a different 'Pen Color'.
Set the table to 'All Borders' again.

To give each cell different colors, you can also select 'Pen Color' of your preference. Next, hover over the table border, click and hold. Ensure that the border is highlighted, then drag it to apply the color to the rest of the cells. If it doesn't work, increase the zoom level and try again.

Embedding PowerPoint in a PowerPoint

2008-07-08T02:51:00Z

There are several ways to link presentations from one to another. The downside of linking however, is the fear of link breaking when moving the files from one location to another. A solution to resolve this is to make use of embedding.

To embed a PowerPoint in a PowerPoint, click Insert > Object. Select Create from file, then click on Browse. Look for the ppt file you want to embed. Then click Ok twice. The file will then be embedded with the first slide shown as a thumbnail. There are two ways to open the embedded presentation during slide show view. The first one is to click on the thumbnail, which will open up the embedded presentation.

If you prefer to have it open automatically, click Slide Show > Custom Animation. Select the thumbnail, click Add Effect > Object Actions > Show. Lastly, set the Start from "On Click" to "After Previous".

Put your presentation into TVnima!

2008-06-15T14:09:00Z

I have chanced upon this interesting application while surfing through the web. TVanima, currently in its alpha stage, is an online 3D application that allows you to create a TV news program by inserting media such as photographs, images, narrations and videos. There will be a news presenter who will do the talk for you. You can then publish you finished work onto the web. If you have a PowerPoint presentation that you want to put on web, try TVanima.

PowerPoint Heaven RSS Feed now available

2008-06-09T14:08:00Z

PowerPoint Heaven now offers RSS Feed. For those geeks who use feed readers often, you can now subscribe to the feed and get PowerPoint Heaven's latest updates at: http://pptheaven.mvps.org/rssfeed.xml. The link is also accessible through PowerPoint Heaven frontpage and news section. RSS Feed may replace news section in the near future.

For those who are still confuse, asking "what on earth is rss feed?", you can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss

RSS Feed on web browsers: If you are using IE7, Firefox or Opera web browser, accessing the rss url provided will allow you to subscribe to the feed. IE 6 will give you alien language, unless you know how to read it.

Play YouTube videos in PowerPoint

2008-05-05T16:57:00Z

If you have a YouTube video which you want to play it during the presentation, you can make use of the Shockwave Flash Object ActiveX Control.

To do so, open up PowerPoint.
Click View > Toolbars > Control Toolbox.
Click on the last icon, 'More Controls'.
Scroll down and look for Shockwave Flash Object.
Select the object, then insert it onto the slide.
Once you are done, right click on the object and select Properties.
Open Internet Explorer and look for the YouTube link. Copy the URL which should be something like: http://youtube.com/watch?v=0_jjLOqm2L4
Go into PowerPoint and double click on Custom in the Object's Properties.
Paste the URL under Movie URL.
Amend the url by replacing 'watch?v=' to 'v/' : http://youtube.com/v/0_jjLOqm2L4
Ok your way out and close the properties dialog box.
Now, you will be able to view the YouTube video in slide show!

Rearranging shapes in Organization Chart

2008-04-30T04:41:00Z

You can insert an Organization Chart by clicking Insert > Diagram > Organization Chart. You will though realize that if the shapes are in incorrect order, you cannot reposition or reorder the shapes in the organization chart while AutoLayout is on. Here's one simple and neat trick to reorder the shapes.

Lets say you have 3 subordinates, 1, 2 and 3.
What you want to achieve is to reorder the subordinates in such a way so that it becomes 2, 3 and 1.
To achieve this, select subordinate 1 and drag it onto any of its co workers (either 2 or 3) so that subordinate 1 is under one of them.
Now, drag subordinate 1 onto the superior (the one at the highest).
The order will now become 2, 3 and 1.

PowerPoint Heaven Year 2008 Updates

2008-01-01T16:54:00Z

First updates for Year 2008!

Added 3 new PowerPoint Showcases from the members of PowerPoint Expert Club:

AutoShapes Art: Inspiration, by pso2850. AutoShapes Art: Inspiration is an inspiring piece of artwork done using PowerPoint AutoShapes and well synchronized with the beat of the music.
Text Animations: Marry Me - KDC, by KDC. Featuring advanced text animations mirroring an excerpt of Ellegarden's (a Japanese rock band) motion video, Marry Me.
Text Animations: Marry Me - Bugycraxone, by Bugycraxone. Another similar showcase featuring advanced text animations making use of the lyrics in Ellegarden's Marry Me.

Added new PowerPoint Artworks, Vita, by Zzangdol, which shows an anime character, Vita, fishing besides the pond.

PowerPoint Heaven wishes you a Happy New Year!

Insert flv video into PowerPoint

2007-12-23T18:30:00Z

What is a flv video?
Flash Video, also known as flv, is a file format that is used to deliver video over the Internet. It uses the .flv file extension. Video sharing sites such as YouTube and MySpace make use of Flash Video format.

Inserting flv video into PowerPoint
There are several programs which allow you to view Flash Video. One example is VLC Media Player, which is free and can be downloaded at http://www.videolan.org.

To insert flv video into PowerPoint, one way is to make use of the VLC Media Player.
First, install the VLC Media Player.
Once done, create a folder.
Move the presentation and flv video to the folder.
Now, open the presentation.
Go to the slide which you want to have the Flash Video inserted.
You will need the control toolbox to be displayed.
Click View > Toolbars > Control Toolbox.
On the toolbar, click on the last icon which should be "More Controls". (For PowerPoint 2007, Click Developer tab. Under Controls, click on the icon "More Controls".)
Scroll right to the bottom and look for VideoLAN VLC ActiveX Plugin (both v1 and v2 is fine).
Click Ok.
Now, right click on the control that has been added, select Properties.
This will bring up the properties dialog box.
Under MRL, enter the filename (e.g. abc.flv).
Once done, close the dialog box.

Anthony's PowerPoint Games Preview

2007-11-23T12:02:00Z

Anthony's 2 upcoming titles, Eight Eclipse and Pixels Neon 3 are currently under development. For those who have been following Anthony's games, here are some preview:

Eight Eclipse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bny3rYyAneY
Pixels Neon 3: http://www.mediafire.com/?0zn0schze1b (A little bug here which requires you to rename it to .ppt, then open up the file and start from slide 2 manually).

Perspector 4.0

2007-11-18T05:08:00Z

Perspector 4.0 is out! Some of the key new features include:

Perspector lists can now be created dynamically as people type list items
Easy conversion of PowerPoint bullet lists to Perspector list images
Added the ability to match and preserve color schemes in Perspector images
Professional Edition users can add their own Perspector images to
their Library

Perspector is a PowerPoint add-in that allows you to add amazing 3D capabilities to PowerPoint which enable the creation of exciting and compelling images way beyond those that can be made with PowerPoint on its own.

For full details on the updates and fixes, have a look at: http://www.perspector.com/perspector_400.cfm

Play multiple sounds simultaneously

2007-10-23T20:35:00Z

During a presentation, you might want to have a music playing in the background, then have additional sound effects. The problem is, when the sound effect starts to play, your background music stops. What we want is to have multiple sounds playing at the same time in PowerPoint. Unfortunately, when one starts, the other stops. Here's why:

When you have multiple sounds embedded, PowerPoint will only allow one sound to be played at a time. On the other hand, if you have the sounds linked, it will be able to play simultaneously. Thus, if you have two sounds, the solution is to have one of them linked instead of embedded.

For instance, you can have either both the background music and sound effect linked, OR, have the background music embedded while the sound effect linked.

Microsoft has addressed the issue here, including detailed steps on how to go about doing it:
"Background sound stops playing in a presentation when the presentation reaches a slide that uses built-in custom animation with sound effects in PowerPoint"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894266

Rediscovering PowerPoint Workshop @ NTU

2007-10-21T21:37:00Z

Completed the Rediscovering PowerPoint Workshop at Nanyang Technological University few days ago (Wed, 17 Oct). Thanks to the Hindri, Stephanie, Adeline, Kee, Teddy, Darren and Johnny who have been helping me out! A total of 25 participants. It actually shot up to around 53 participants signing up in the first few hours of registration! But due to the limit of the computer lab, only 25 could be accepted.

Here's a few photographs taken by them. Just to share with you guys!

Figure 1: Poster created by the organizing committee

Figure 2: Rediscovering PowerPoint Workshop @ NTU 1

Figure 3: Rediscovering PowerPoint Workshop @ NTU 2

Figure 4 - Rediscovering PowerPoint Workshop @ NTU 3

Figure 5 - Rediscovering PowerPoint Workshop @ NTU 4

3 new samples on Experimental Lab

2007-10-16T15:29:00Z

Added 3 more new samples on PowerPoint Experimental Laboratory.

Check out the masking and glowing effect sample which demonstrates masking and glowing on images and text in PowerPoint, the Scrolling text sample which demonstrates scrolling long chunk of text using animations or Control Toolbox, and Scanlines sample on animating lines.

Slide Master View Shortcut key

2007-10-07T15:27:00Z

At the bottom left hand corner of PowerPoint (bottom right for PowerPoint 2007), you will see 3 mini buttons. They are: Normal View, Slide Sorter View, and Slide Show. Now here's a quick trick. When you hover over these 3 mini buttons, hold down the Shift key. The mini buttons will now become slide master view, handout master view, and Set Up Show respectively. Thanks to Lucy from PowerPoint newsgroup for providing the useful tip!

PowerPoint Game - Widgets

2007-10-01T17:26:00Z

PowerPoint Game, Widgets, by Anthony Barfield is out. The goal of this game is to get to the end point without hitting the laser enclosing you in. Be careful though, colorful Widgets are blocking your way!

PowerPoint Game - Ultimate Sniper

2007-09-30T15:04:00Z

New PowerPoint Game, Ultimate Sniper has been released on PowerPoint Heaven. Ultimate Sniper is a PowerPoint shooting game. The objective of this game is to accept missions, assassinate your opponents and become the ultimate sniper.

The current version is intended for PowerPoint 2007 and above. (Not including PowerPoint Viewer 2007)

Download: http://pptheaven.mvps.org/ted.html#UltimateSniper
Watch the video preview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XBM2tZMKiU