The PowerPoint® Blog

A teleprompt system allows a speaker to look naturally into the audience/camera while hiding the fact that they are reading a script.

The most common telepromptor equipment I see for my shows are "presidentials", which have a small profile and do not pull the audiences attention from the presenter.

The presenter supplies their script to the teleprompt operator, who then runs it in a word-processor like application that allows the script to be scrolled at the pace of their speaking (this is a very simplified explanation/description).

- Troy @ TLC

If you are looking for a template, or at least some nice backgrounds, this site has a large collection (250+) of PowerPoint templates that are free for download. Better yet, there is no log-in, capturing your email address or any other ill marketing stuff. You do have to endure pages full of ads, but that's it. Take a look at www.freepowerpointdownload.com

The templates are nice, but very simple on the formatting (eg. you will probably want to adjust things on the Master Slides). Here is one I downloaded from the Christmas themes to preview the quality:

- Troy @ TLC

I email a lot of PDF proofs of presentations for client review. They are smaller in file size and not editable. If you are using PPT07 creating a PDF is done through the SAVE AS dialog, not the PRINT dialog.

If you go to START >> SAVE AS and see this option: "Adobe PDF"

Then you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat with Distiller installed, or another Adobe PDF creation option installed.

But what you really want is this option: START >> SAVE AS >> PDF

This is Microsoft's PDF print driver and it works incredibly fast, makes perfect PDFs of slides (including semi-transparent .png's and autoshapes) and is my preferred method.

If you do not have this option don't worry, it is not installed by default. Just head over to Microsoft's website, go the Download Center, do a search for "Office PDF" and you will find these 2 links:

The PDF printer is free, and the XPS format is a Microsoft equivalent to PDF (not highly used yet), so you can choose to install it or the PDF only version.

- Troy @ TLC

If you have visited ThePowerPointBlog in the past, you may notice things look a bit different - as of yesterday. I have (finally) upgraded to the latest version of the blogging software (b2evolution) which has many, many more features over the version I was previosly running (hey, it was cutting edge when I installed it 3 years ago!).

So in addition to the nicer, more high-tech look and layout I will be focusing on some of the new tools avaialable over the next few months (like in-line video tutorials and enabling viewer comments!).

- Troy @ TLC

I often see "Continued" or "More" in slide titles to indicate the slide contains a continuation of information from the previous slide. So the title looks like this:

But the "(CONT)" is not part of the topic and is distracting to the title. It takes more effort, but I recommend manually adjusting the font size of this special set of information to not be as distracting and to help provide a hierarchy of information. The adjusted text looks like this:

- Troy @ TLC

Here is another sample from a recent presentation. The original slide, show at the top, was difficult to understand and did not convey the needed message. I proposed two layout options to the presenter.

PowerPoint is much more than bulleted text, but even diagrams need to be well thought out and designed to help the presenter convey a message.

- Troy @ TLC

From yesterday's post here is the real purpose of keeping a hidden backup. I saved out the chart as a .png image. Opened it in Photoshop, used the bars for reference to create a cut out line for the image. Then saved the new 'chart' out as a .png image and placed on the slide.

- Troy @ TLC

For many projects I find myself ungrouping charts for custom animation or any number of other reasons. But what often happens is there is need to adjust the chart... oops it is now 50+ individual text boxes and autoshapes.

My solution is before I break apart a chart is to create a duplicate it.

Then shrink the duplicate to a miniature size.

I then move the miniture version off the slide so it is not seen during a slide show (or I have also 'hidden' it under another graphic).

Now I can ungroup the chart on the slide and do whatever the special needs are - and still have a backup option should the data need to be adusted.

- Troy @ TLC

It's the last day of October - and Halloween. Kids are ready to go trick-or-treating and everyone is set to have fun! Last weekend Lori and I hosted our annual Pumpkin Carving Party. Everyone had lots and lots of fun and there were some really creative ideas - as well as some classics. Among the food, carving and kids the time comes for everyone to vote for the 'kid' and 'Big Kid' winner in 5 categories. My girls each won in one of the categories and my cell phone challenged pumpkin guy won one too! Have a safe and fun Halloween.

- Troy @ TLC

This year my girls are enjoying the fun dressed as a Jester, Super Girl, and a Pirate Maiden. Hope you have lots of fun - especially if you have kids!

My treat to everyone is a custom PowerPoint template!

Artwork I developed this template from was purchased at Stockexpert.com.
To download the template (as a .ppt) click here (300k).

- Troy @ TLC