PowerPoint Notes

PowerPoint Narrations show up as Unix Executables!

If some narrations in your PowerPoint:mac presentations don’t play, that might be because they somehow ended up being Unix executable files! Yesterday, I got this client presentation that had all the narrations, but PowerPoint would not play them because they were not the AIFFs that PowerPoint was expecting. So what is the solution? It’s not too difficult — you’ll need to download a free copy of Audacity for Mac.

1. Open Audacity and choose Project | Import Raw Data.

2. This will bring up the Finder — navigate to your Unix Executable file and click Open.

3. Audacity will bring up the Import Raw Data sheet — make sure you select the Two channels (stereo) option and set the sample rate to 44100 Hz. Then click Import.

4. Audacity will recreate your sound from the raw data — hear it to confirm that this is exactly what you need, then proceed to save it.

5. Choose File | Export as WAV and overwrite the existing Unix Executable file (do make a backup of that file first as a precaution).

6. Audacity will add the WAV extension anyway — you might want to remove the extension in Finder and check if the narration plays well inside PowerPoint. If it doesn’t, just delete the sound icon on the slide that contained the narration, and re-insert the narration using the Inserts | Movies & Sounds | Sound from File option.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

PowerPoint for Windows Versions

Can you please provide me with a list of PowerPoint versions with their corresponding version numbers – for example Version 10 = PowerPoint 2002?

Here are the corresponding versons:

Version 11 – PowerPoint 2003
Version 10 – PowerPoint 2002
Version 9 – PowerPoint 2000
Version 8 – PowerPoint 97
Version 7 – PowerPoint 95
Version 4 – PowerPoint 4
Version 3 – PowerPoint 3
Version 2 – PowerPoint 2

There were no versions 5 and 6 of PowerPoint since Microsoft wanted all components of Office 95 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access) to share the same version. Since the last version of Word before that was 6, all Office applications included in Office 95 became version 7.

And PowerPoint was a Mac product ported to Windows only after version 2 – so there was no version 1.

Anyway, most of this is historic – you’ll rarely stumble across a presentation created in anything older than PowerPoint 97 (i.e. version 8).

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Start a PowerPoint Presentation Without Clicking

Is it possible to make your presentation start by clicking on the Spacebar key only, but without unplugging your mouse?

This certainly seems doable, and PowerPoint MVP David Marcovitz provides a solution. Follow these steps:

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed Under: Techniques
Tagged as: David Marcovitz, Interactivity

Windows Media Player, Ripping and DRM

Many times, you want to rip some tracks off a music CD and play it within your PowerPoint presentation, maybe as a background score that plays throughout the presentation. However, you might find that PowerPoint refuses to play those tracks! What is happening here?

Especially if you use Windows Media Player to rip the CDs, the real culprit might be DRM, which stands for Digital Rights Management and is a concept promoted by the music industry to prevent illegal distribution of their content. So, what’s DRM doing inside PowerPoint? That’s a good question – and DRM fits right into the PowerPoint world since most PowerPoint presentations are intended to be shown and distributed anyway.

However, I’ve ripped MP3s from music CDs using the new Windows Media Player 10 and no DRM is added to that – so why do some tracks get controlled by DMA and other don’t?

PowerPoint MVP Austin Myers throws some insight into whatever is happening behind the scenes:

Windows Media Player doesn’t add anything to it unless you tell it to. There are several “levels” of DRM built on newer music CDs and Windows Media Player simply passes them along into the ripped file. What can or cannot be done with it after that point depends upon how the content creator set DRM in the original file. In most cases you can rip to your machine for private use, but you cannot use it in a distribution application like PowerPoint (or BitTorrent).

Thank you, Austin.

Austin Myers creates a PowerPoint add-in that helps you shoo away your multimedia woes in PowerPoint. It is called PFCMedia and you can download a trial copy from his site…

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Change Alignment of Numbers in a Chart

Here’s a question: How can I change the alignment of all the numbers in a PowerPoint chart, i.e., the numbers (values) that are above the columns? I know how to change one individually, but how do you change the alignment (for example, from 0 degrees to 45 degrees) of all the values in just one or two steps?

PowerPoint MVP, Echo Swinford provides a solution.

1. The values are called data labels. Click the chart area so that they’re not selected.
2. Then click one data label *once* so that you see black squares around *all* the data labels in a data series.
3. Now right-click and choose Format Data Labels. If the right-click is difficult and makes you select just the one individual data label, then choose Format on the menu at the top of the screen and from there, choose Selected Data Labels.
4. Then head to the alignment tab and type in 45.

Tip: You can find tons of hard-to-find chart related ideas on Echo’s chart page.

Filed Under: Techniques
Tagged as: Echo Swinford