The Art of PowerPoint-ing

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

PowerPoint Animation - Animation Vs Newbie

2007-09-27T18:51:00Z

This is a PowerPoint Animation inspired by Animator vs Animation, with a stick figure interacting on PowerPoint 2007 interface. Done by 구름 (castleofgod) for Korea's PowerPoint Expert Club Intro Animation Contest 3. Original work coming soon on PowerPoint Heaven.

Link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=4B2wq-Hqadw

PowerPoint music rhythm game

2007-09-26T13:59:00Z

New updates on PowerPoint Heaven. Added new PowerPoint Game, Music ver. C, by KDC (kdc1130) from Korea's PowerPoint Expert Club. Music ver. C is a PowerPoint music rhythm game. The objective is to test the player's ability to follow a musical beat and stay with the rhythm of Pachelbel's Canon.

Link: PowerPoint Game, Music ver. C
Watch the Preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8m1IGaAE8Q

Also, 2 new PowerPoint artworks, Haruhi Greeting and Yuki Greeting, by Jeremiah Lee (Jerry).

Invisible Linking

2007-09-24T15:35:00Z

Invisible Linking is a technique which allows you to hyperlink your presentation automatically. The traditional way of hyperlinking to specific slide, custom show, or even url is to add the hyperlink onto a button. Thus, once you click on the button, you will be transferred to the location. But what if you want to have this done automatically? Here's how it can be achieved:

First of all, remove the button as we don't need to have it there.
Instead, add a rectangle that covers the entire slide.
Double click on the rectangle, set fill color to 99%. Line color to no line.
Click Ok.
Right click on the invisible autoshape, select Action Settings.
Select Mouse Over tab, set it Hyperlink to the Slide/URL/Custom Show etc.
To make the mouse over work, Click Add Effect > Entrance > Appear.
Set the Start from "On Click" to "After Previous".
Double click on the added effect.
Select Timing tab, set delay to 0.1 seconds or a time of your preference.
Click Ok.
The last step is to ensure that your mouse pointer is visible at the point of the invisble linking. Depending on how your presentation has been set up, this step is optional if your mouse pointer shows up at the point of invisible linking. There are several ways to achieve this:

Have the slide show running in Kiosk mode (Slide Show > Set Up Show > Browsed at kiosk) or,
Have the mouse pointer visible during slide show view (Right click in slide show, click Pointer Options > Arrow Options > Visible).

There are many other ways that you can make use of the invisble linking. For instance, this technique allows you to hyperlinking automatically from Presentation A to Presentation B's Custom Show either by a single click/ or not at all (example). Or perhpas, forcing an end show automatically (rather than looping the presentation) when running in kiosk mode (example).

Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3)

2007-09-19T08:50:00Z

Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3 is out! The service pack includes several security updates and stability improvements. The download is available at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=E25B7049-3E13-433B-B9D2-5E3C1132F206&displaylang=en

Inserting YouTube videos on PowerPoint

2007-09-16T02:08:00Z

PowerPoint MVP Shyam Pillai has made a wonderful add-in "YouTube Video Wizard". This add-in allows you to easily insert YouTube videos onto a PowerPoint slide. All you need to do is to provide the YouTube video URL that appears in the browser address bar and the rest is taken care of by the add-in. The add-in works for PowerPoint 97 and the later versions.

The add-in can be downloaded at: http://skp.mvps.org/youtube.htm