PowerPoint Notes

Scrolling Credits in PowerPoint

Creating scrolling credits works differently depending on which version of PowerPoint you are using.

PowerPoint 2002 or 2003:

1. Type some text in a text box or placeholder, or choose an existing text box or placeholder on a slide.

2. Select the text box or placeholder, and choose Slide Show | Custom Animation. This will activate the Custom Animation task pane.

3. In the Custom Animation task pane, click on the Add Effect button to reveal a fly-out menu. In this fly-out menu, choose Entrance | Credits. If the Credits option is not available, choose Entrance | More Effects to summon the Add Entrance Effect dialog box. Choose the Credits option in the Exciting category, and click OK.

4. You might want to change the speed to Medium in the Custom Animation task pane, and the Start option to With Previous (default is On Click).

To create a Star Wars style credits screen, look here…

PowerPoint 97 and 2000:

1. Create a text box – a regular rectangle or any AutoShape. Start inputting your text straightaway – for example:

Goodness God
Amazing Ants
Helpless Haunted House
PowerPoint Perils
Monday Merits

2. Now that you’ve entered all the names or any other text you need, deselect the text box. Click on the periphery of the text box to select the text box, not the text inside the box!

3. Press the Alt key on the keyboard – with the Alt key still pressed, drag and move the entire text box above the area off your slide. Right click your text box, and choose ‘Custom Animation’ from the options in the flyout menu.

4. In the ‘Effects’ tab of the Custom Animation dialog box, choose ‘Crawl From Bottom’ in the ‘Entry Animation’ drop down menu.

5. Proceed to the ‘Order and Timing’ tab and select the radio button representing ‘Automatically’ and change the value to 00:00 seconds. Preview your animation – tweak settings again in the ‘Custom Animation’ box if required.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Menu To Run Multiple Presentations

I have seen a PowerPoint presentation set up as a menu from which to run a number of seperate presentations from different speakers at a seminar. I cant find this in the help files – can someone please direct me to where I can find help to do this.

This is quite simple – follow these steps.

1. Create a new folder and copy all the presentations that you need to link from the menu presentation.

2. Create a single slide presentation, and save it in the same folder. This single slide is going to be the menu slide.

3. Create a text box for the first presentation you want to link from this menu slide, and type something descriptive that allows you to identify which presentation you’re going to link to from a particular text box.

4. Right click one of the text boxes, choose the Action Settings option to open a dialog box of the same name.

5. In the Mouse Click tab, select the Hyperlink to dropdown list and choose the Other PowerPoint Presentation option – and navigate to and choose the other presentation.

6. Repeat steps 3, 4, and 5 as often as required.

7. Save and test your menu presentation.

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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).

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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