PowerPoint Articles

Step by Step / Updated 08-10-2022

In PowerPoint 2013, a hyperlink is simply a bit of text or a graphic image that you can click when viewing a slide to summon another slide, another presentation, or perhaps some other type of document, such as a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet. The hyperlink may also lead to a page on the World Wide Web. Adding a hyperlink to a presentation is easy. Just follow these steps:

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-05-2022

PowerPoint 2019 is the most powerful presentation software available to create and edit slide show presentations for work, home, or school. PowerPoint 2019 offers a number of helpful keyboard shortcuts for performing tasks quickly. Here are some shortcuts for common PowerPoint formatting, editing, and file and document tasks. Additionally, after you’ve created your masterpiece, you can use a number of shortcuts when running your slide show.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-17-2022

PowerPoint 2021 is the most powerful presentation software available to create and edit slideshow presentations for work, home, or school. PowerPoint offers a number of helpful keyboard shortcuts for performing tasks quickly. Take a glance at some of those shortcuts below for common formatting, editing, and file and document tasks. Additionally, after you’ve created your masterpiece, you can use a number of shortcuts when running your slideshow.

Article / Updated 11-16-2018

Microsoft PowerPoint 2019 provides a bit of picture editing wizardry in the capability to remove the background from a picture. For example, the following image shows a picture of my dog Lucy with the background removed. (Background removal works best with picture that have a clear high-contrast distinction between the picture’s subject and the background.) To accomplish this bit of photo-editing magic, follow these steps: 1. Select the picture whose background you want to remove. 2. On the Picture Tools → Format tab, click the Remove Background button (found in the Adjust group). When you do, PowerPoint attempts to determine which part of your picture is the subject of the picture and which part is the background. PowerPoint creates a bounding rectangle that contains what it believes to be the subject of the picture. Then it analyzes the colors in the picture to determine what it believes to be the background portions of the picture. The background is then displayed in purple. In addition, a special Background Removal tab appears on the Ribbon. This figure shows PowerPoint’s initial attempt at removing the background from the picture of Lucy. As you can see, PowerPoint has found most of Lucy’s head but managed to cut off the top of her head, her nose, and her right eye. The result is a little disconcerting. 3. If necessary, resize the bounding rectangle to properly enclose the subject. This figure shows the results after I resized the bounding rectangle to include all of Lucy’s head. 4. If necessary, use the Mark Areas to Keep and Mark Areas to Remove buttons to refine the location of the picture’s background. For example, if an area that’s part of the subject is shown as background, click the Mark Areas to Keep button. Then, either click in the area you want included or click and drag a line across a large portion of the area to be included. PowerPoint will attempt to discern which part of the picture you marked and include that area in the picture’s subject. Note that you don’t have to circle the area you want to include, nor do you have to be too precise. PowerPoint will do its best to figure out which portions of the image to include based on your mark. Similarly, if PowerPoint has mistaken part of the background for the subject, click the Mark Areas to Remove button and click or draw a line within the area that should be removed. If PowerPoint misinterprets your mark, press Ctrl+Z to undo your action. Or, click the Delete Mark button and then click the mark you want to delete. 5. Repeat Step 4 until you’ve successfully removed the picture’s background. 6. Click the Keep Changes button. The slide returns to normal, with the background of your picture removed.

Article / Updated 11-16-2018

In Microsoft PowerPoint 2019, you can control several important aspects of how an audio file is played by selecting the file to reveal the Audio Tools contextual tab on the Ribbon and then opening the Playback tab, shown here. As you can see, this tab contains several controls that let you edit the way the sound file is played. Control when a sound is played By default, sounds are not played until you click the sound icon that appears on the slide. If you want a sound to play automatically when the slide is displayed, change the option in the Start drop-down list (found in the Audio Options group on the Audio Tools Playback tab) from On Click to Automatically. If you select On Click or Automatically, the sound automatically stops when you move to the next slide. To allow the sound to continue over several slides, select the Play Across Slides option from the Start drop-down list. Loop a sound If the sound file isn’t long enough, you can loop it so that it plays over and over again. This feature is most useful when you have a subtle sound effect, such as the sound of waves crashing, that you want to continue for as long as you leave the slide visible. To loop an audio clip, just select the Loop Until Stopped check box found in the Audio Options group. Hide the sound icon By default, the icon representing an audio clip is visible on the slide during your slide show. Assuming that you have set the sound to play automatically, you probably don’t want the icon visible. The Audio Options group includes a check box titled Hide While Not Playing, but it hides the icon only when the sound is not playing; the icon is visible when the sound is playing. The easiest way to get the icon off of your slides altogether is to simply drag the icon off the edge of the slide that contains it. The sound will still be a part of the slide, so it will play automatically when the slide is displayed. But because the icon is off the edge of the slide, it won’t be visible to your audience. Fade the sound in and out The Fade In and Fade Out controls let you gradually fade your audio clip in and out. By default, these controls are both set to 0, so the audio clip begins and ends at full volume. By changing either or both of these controls to a value such as 2 or 3 seconds, you can smoothly fade the sound in or out for a more subtle effect. Trim an audio clip Clicking the Trim Audio button brings up the Trim Audio dialog box, shown here. This dialog box enables you to select just a portion of the audio clip to play in your presentation by letting you choose start and end times. You can choose the start and end times by dragging the green start pointer or the red end pointer over the image of the audio file’s waveform. (You can often tell where to stop or end the audio clip by looking at the waveform that’s displayed in the Trim Audio dialog box.) You can also enter the time (in seconds) in the Start Time and End Time boxes. (Ideally, you should select the start and end trim points during silent portions of the audio file, to avoid abrupt starts and ends.)

Article / Updated 11-16-2018

You can easily share a PowerPoint 2019 presentation with a friend or colleague by sending an invitation via email. The invitation email will include a link that will open the presentation in a web-based version of PowerPoint called the PowerPoint Web App. From the PowerPoint Web App, the user can view the presentation. If the user has PowerPoint installed on his or her computer, the user can also open the presentation in PowerPoint, edit the presentation, add comments, and save the edited presentation in the original OneDrive location. Here are the steps to send an invitation: 1. Save your presentation to OneDrive. 2. Choose File → Share. You are returned to the presentation with the Share task pane open, as shown here. The Share with People page appears, as shown. From this page, you can craft an email message that will be sent to the people with whom you’d like to share the presentation. 3. Type one or more email addresses in the Invite People text box. If you have more than one email address, just separate the addresses with commas or semicolons. You can click the Address Book icon to the right of the text box to bring up your address book. Then, you can select names from your address book rather than type the email addresses manually. 4. Choose the sharing permission you want to grant. The two options are Can Edit and Can View. Use the drop-down list below the Invite People text box to select the permission. 5. If you want, type a message in the Include a Message [Optional] with the Invitation text box. The message is included in the email that is sent to the recipients. 6. Click Share. A confirmation message appears, indicating that the emails have been sent. The figure shows a typical invitation email. To open a shared presentation in PowerPoint Web App, simply click the link in the invitation. The following figure shows a presentation opened in Web App. You can view the entire presentation in Web App, or you can open the presentation in PowerPoint by clicking the Open in PowerPoint button. (Note that to open the presentation in PowerPoint, you must have a copy of PowerPoint installed on your computer.) If you want to manually send your own email with a link that allows users to view or edit your presentation, you can choose File → Share → Get a Sharing Link. This displays a page that allows you to create a View Link or an Edit Link, which you can then copy and paste as needed.

Article / Updated 11-16-2018

Microsoft has integrated cloud computing into PowerPoint 2019 by providing its own dedicated cloud storage resource, called OneDrive, and designating it as one of the primary places you can store your PowerPoint presentations. (OneDrive used to be called SkyDrive, but Microsoft had to change the name because of a trademark lawsuit.) When you install Office 2019, you are given the opportunity to create a free OneDrive account that offers up to 15GB of free cloud storage, with the capability to purchase additional storage. If you subscribe to Office 365, you get 1TB of cloud storage. In addition to storing PowerPoint presentations on OneDrive, you can also share your presentations with other OneDrive users so that you can collaboratively view and edit your work. Before you can share a presentation with another user, you must first save the presentation to your OneDrive account. To do so, just follow these steps: 1. Choose File → Save As. The Save As page appears, which offers several locations to which the presentation can be saved, as shown. The default location is your OneDrive account. 2. Click the OneDrive location where you want to store your presentation. The Save As dialog box appears, as shown. As you can see, this dialog box automatically navigates to your OneDrive account’s Documents folder. 3. Navigate to another OneDrive folder or create a new OneDrive folder. You can navigate OneDrive as if it were a local hard drive. And you can create a new folder by clicking the New Folder button. 4. Change the filename and then click Save. The presentation is saved to your OneDrive.

Article / Updated 11-16-2018

What do you do when you’re plodding along in Microsoft PowerPoint and realize that the slides you’re trying to create probably already exist in some other presentation somewhere? You borrow the slides from the other presentation. Note that in the old days, the only way to steal slides from another presentation was to get on your horse and chase down the other presentation (that is, find the presentation on your hard drive), jump on board (open the presentation), and steal the slides at gunpoint (copy the slides you want to steal and paste them into the new presentation). You can still steal slides that way — in fact, Microsoft has created a special command that makes it easy to steal slides directly from another presentation. But if you steal slides often and want to become a career criminal, the real way to do it is to set up a slide library, which is a central repository for slides. The slide library lives on a server, so anyone can access it, and it’s managed by SharePoint, so it has a bunch of nice SharePoint-like features. How to steal slides from another PowerPoint presentation Stealing slides from another presentation isn’t a serious crime. In fact, Microsoft provides a special command on the Insert tab on the Ribbon to let you do it. Here are the steps: 1. Open the presentation you want to copy slides into (not the one you want to steal the slides from). 2. Click the Home tab on the Ribbon and then click the New Slide button and choose Reuse Slides. (Reuse Slides appears at the bottom of the New Slide menu.) This step displays a Reuse Slides task pane, which appears on the right side of the screen, as shown. 3. Click the Open a PowerPoint File link in the Reuse Slides task pane. This summons a Browse dialog box. 4. Locate the presentation you want to steal slides from and then click Open. The slides from the presentation you selected are displayed in the Reuse Slides task pane, as shown. You’re now privy to one of the coolest effects in PowerPoint: When you point at one of the slides in the Reuse Slides task pane, the slide magnifies to twice its original size so you can better see the contents of the slide. 5. (Optional) Select the Keep Source Formatting check box if you want the slides to retain their original formatting. Normally, you should keep this option deselected. With the option deselected, the slide assumes the theme of the presentation it is inserted into. 6. Click the slides you want to steal. Each slide you click is added to the presentation. 7. When you’re done, click the X at the top right of the Reuse Slides task pane to dismiss it. That’s about all there is to stealing slides from other presentations. How to save slides in a PowerPoint slide library If you’re lucky enough to work at a company that uses SharePoint, you have several additional PowerPoint features at your disposal. One of the most useful is the capability to create and use slide libraries, which are special types of document folders that store individual slides, not whole documents. When you’ve saved slides in a slide library, you can easily insert them into a presentation. And as an added bonus, you can have PowerPoint check to see whether the slides have changed and automatically update them with the changes. Pretty cool, eh? To save one or more slides to a slide library, you must first create the slide library. That’s a task better left to a SharePoint system administrator, so you can skip that step here. Instead, assume that the slide library has already been created for you, and you’ve been provided with the URL (that is, the web address) of the slide library and any login credentials you might need to access it. Here are the steps for adding slides to a slide library: 1. Open the presentation that contains the slides you want to add to the library. 2. Choose File → Share → Publish Slides; then click the Publish Slides button. This step brings up a dialog box that allows you to select the slides you want to share. 3. Select the slides you want to add to the library. To select an individual slide, select the check box next to the slide thumbnail. To select all the slides in the presentation, click the Select All button. 4. Enter the URL of the slide library in the Publish To text box. Or if you prefer, you can click the Browse button to browse to the library. 5. Click the Publish button. The slides are copied to the slide library. 6. (Optional) Play a game of Solitaire. Depending on the speed of your local network and how many slides you selected, PowerPoint might take a while to publish the slides (probably not long enough for a game of Solitaire, but your boss doesn’t have to know that). You’re done! The slides have now been added to the library. How to steal slides from a PowerPoint slide library If you have access to SharePoint, you can incorporate a slide from a SharePoint slide library into a presentation by following these steps: Open the presentation you want to copy slides into (not the one you want to steal the slides from). Click the Insert tab on the Ribbon and then click the New Slide button and choose Reuse Slides. This step displays a Reuse Slides task pane. Click the Open a Slide Library link in the Reuse Slides task pane. This step summons a Browse dialog box. Locate the Slide Library you want to steal slides from and then click Open. The slides from the presentation you selected are displayed in the Reuse Slides task pane, in the same way that slides from a PowerPoint file are shown. (Optional) To keep the original formatting for the slides, select the Keep Source Formatting check box. Normally, you should keep this option deselected. Click the slides you want to steal. Each slide you click is added to the presentation. When you’re done, click the X at the top right of the Reuse Slides task pane to dismiss it.

Article / Updated 11-16-2018

Microsoft PowerPoint 2019 is great for preparing presentations to give in person. But what about giving presentations when you can’t be there? With digital video cameras practically being given away in cereal boxes these days, just about anyone can record a video of himself giving a presentation. Wouldn’t it be great if you could easily combine the slides from a PowerPoint presentation with a video of you presenting it? Then anyone can watch the presentation later, when you can’t be there. Good news: You can! In fact, creating a video version of your presentation is a snap. First, you set up the timing you want for each slide and for each animation within each slide. You can even add a voice narration to each slide. After the timings and narration are all set up, you just click a few times with the mouse, and your presentation is converted to video. How to add timings and narration to your PowerPoint slides PowerPoint includes a nifty feature that lets you record the timings for each slide and for each animation element (such as bullet points appearing). At the same time, you can record your own voice to use as a narration for the presentation. To record the timings, you essentially rehearse the presentation as if you were giving it to an audience. PowerPoint keeps track of the time between each mouse click or other action and records those timings along with the presentation. As for the narration, you simply speak your narration into a microphone, and PowerPoint attaches your recorded voice to each slide. Then, when you play back the presentation, the slides are automatically synchronized with the narrations you recorded. Note that you can also record PowerPoint’s built-in laser pointer. Then, when you play back the show or create a video, the pointer will dance across the screen automatically! You need a microphone plugged into your computer to record narrations. I recommend you get the kind that’s built into a headset rather than a hand-held microphone. The headset microphone will provide more consistent voice quality, plus it will leave your hands free to work your keyboard and mouse while you record the timings, narration, and laser pointer. To record timings and narration, first plug a microphone into your computer’s microphone input jack. Then, open the presentation and follow these steps: 1. Open the Slide Show tab, choose Record Slide Show and then choose Start Recording from Beginning. PowerPoint switches to Presenter View. 2. Click the Record button begin recording the slide show. A countdown appears on the screen: 3 … 2 … 1, and then the recording begins. 3. Speak your narration into the microphone. Press Enter or click the mouse button each time you want to advance to a new slide or call up a new animation element (such as a bullet point). 4. If you want to use the laser pointer on a slide, hold down the Ctrl key and then click and hold the mouse button and use the mouse to control the laser pointer. When you release the mouse button, the laser pointer disappears. 5. If you need to pause the recording at any time, click the Pause button that appears at the top left of the Presenter View screen. The recording is suspended; you can click Record again to resume recording. 6. When you’re finished recording, click Stop. Recording will automatically end when you exit the last slide, so you can skip this step if you record the entire presentation. 7. Switch to Slide Sorter View. Slide Sorter View allows you to see the timings associated with each slide, as shown here. 8. If you messed up on any slide, select that slide, click Record Slide Show, and then choose Start Recording from Current Slide. Then re-record the timings and narration for that slide. Press Esc to stop recording. You can re-record more than one slide in this way; just press Enter or click the mouse to advance through all the slides you want to re-record. Press Esc to stop recording. 9. Press F5 or click the Slide Show button on the right side of the status bar to begin the slide show so you can see whether your narration works. The slide show begins. The narration plays through your computer’s speakers, and the slides advance automatically along with the narration. The laser pointer should also appear if you used it during the recording. Here are some additional things to keep in mind about narrations: As you record the narration, leave a little gap between each slide. PowerPoint records the narration for each slide as a separate sound file and then attaches the sound to the slide. Unfortunately, you get cut off if you talk right through the slide transitions. The narration cancels out any other sounds you placed on the slides. To delete a narration, click the Record Slide Show button, click Clear, and then click either Clear Narrations on Current Slide (to delete narration from just one slide) or Clear Narration on All Slides (to delete all narration). How to create a PowerPoint video Creating a video from your presentation couldn’t be much easier. Here’s the procedure: 1. (Optional) Record the slide timings and any narration you want to use. For the procedure to record timings and narration, refer to the preceding section. If you skip this step, each slide will be displayed for a fixed duration in the resulting video. 2. Choose File → Export →Create a Video. The Create a Video Backstage View screen is displayed, as shown. 3. Select the video quality. The first drop-down list on the Create a Video page lets you choose whether your video is targeted at computer displays, the Internet, or portable devices. 4. Select whether to use recorded timings and narrations. If you choose not to use recorded timings, you can set the duration to display each slide. (The default is 5 seconds.) 5. Click Create Video. A Save As dialog box appears. 6. Select the folder where you want to save the file and enter the filename you want to use. By default, the video file will be saved in the same folder as the presentation and will have the same name, but with the extension .wmv. 7. Click Save. The video is created. Depending on the size of the presentation and the quality you selected, the video may take a long time to create. A progress bar appears in the status bar to indicate the video's progress. You can continue doing other work in PowerPoint while the video is being created, but your computer will probably respond sluggishly until the video is finished. 8. When the progress bar completes, the video is finished! You can view the video in Windows Media Player by navigating to it in Windows Explorer and double-clicking the video’s .wmv file.

Article / Updated 11-16-2018

The Design Ideas feature in Microsoft PowerPoint 2019 examines the content of a selected slide and offers you a variety of design choices based on what it finds. To use this feature, simply select a slide that you think needs some improvement and click the Design Ideas button in the Design tab. This figure shows how the Design Ideas feature has suggested some design alternatives for a slide that contains a picture of William Shakespeare. To use one of the suggestions, simply double-click it in the Design Ideas pane. In some cases, the Design Ideas feature will suggest artwork to complement your slide. PowerPoint actually examines the text on your slide to select relevant artwork. For example, this figure shows suggestions made for a title slide that mentions the word Shakespeare twice. PowerPoint has figured out that the classic comedy and tragedy drama masks might be appropriate for this slide. Note that the first time you use the Design Ideas feature, PowerPoint will ask for your permission. Be aware that the Design Ideas feature submits the content of your slides to Microsoft’s servers to generate design recommendations. If you’re concerned about the privacy of this feature, you may want to refrain from using it.