Create your ending slides in a new presentation and save the presentation. If you already have saved your main presentation, be sure to save this presentation in the same folder!
Choose Slide Show> Set Up Slide Show (or Set Up Show). In the Set Up Show dialog box, choose Loop Continuously Until ‘Esc’ and click OK.
Set up automatic timing for your looping ending. Select all the slides in the Slides pane (click the first, press and hold Shift, and click the last). In PowerPoint 2003, choose Slide Show> Slide Transition. In PowerPoint 2007, click the Animations tab. In PowerPoint 2010, click the Transitions tab. In 2003, in the Advance Slide section of the Slide Transition task pane, check Automatically After and enter a number of seconds. In PowerPoint 2007, do this on the Animations tab. In 2010, do this on the Transitions tab. I found that 3 seconds worked well for simple slides. Uncheck On Mouse Click.
Save this presentation. You can close it, but you don’t need to.
Now go back to your main presentation and insert a shape on the last slide. If you want it to be invisible, see the instructions in the post on creating a looping introduction–the link is at the top of this post. (If you do make it invisible, be sure you know where it is! I recommend placing the shape at a corner of the slide.)
Choose Insert (tab)> Hyperlink.
In the Insert Hyperlink dialog box (shown below), choose Existing File or Web Page on the left. Then navigate to your the presentation containing your looping ending slides and click OK.
Save your main presentation.
Go into Slide Show view and display the last slide. Click your hyperlink. You should immediately see your looping ending, which will loop the slides you created.
Caution: If you move either presentation, the hyperlink won’t work. If you saved both presentations in the same folder, you can move both of them to another computer and the hyperlink will work as long as the two presentations are still in the same folder.
Please leave a comment! I’d like to know how you use this technique — and why.
Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.
When you create a presentation, you start with the content. But how do you know if your content is clear and logical? Here are some questions you can ask yourself. This information is from a booklet, “Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools,” put out by the Foundation for Critical Thinking Press.
Purpose
Ask yourself what your goal is. For example, sometimes people convince themselves they are only trying to inform, when they are really trying to persuade.
Concepts
What is the main idea you’re talking about? How can you explain that idea clearly to the audience?
Questions
What questions are you bringing up — and trying to answer? Are they appropriate for the audience and situation?
Information
What information or data are you using to get to your conclusion? Do you need more information to truly answer the questions? Do you have experience that helps you answer those questions?
Conclusions
How did you reach your conclusion? Could you interpret the information differently to arrive at a different conclusion?
Assumptions
What are you taking for granted? What assumptions or point of view did you use to come to your conclusion? Does the audience share those assumptions? Or do they have a different point of view?
Consequences
What are the implications of your conclusions? What actions are suggested from your conclusions? Will the audience take those actions?
Asking yourself these questions will help you make your presentation more precise and more relevant to your audience. Can you think of other questions to ask yourself while working on your presentation content?
Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.
You have a table of Excel data and you need to discuss it in detail at a meeting. But there’s no way it will fit on one slide. What are your options?
You could print out the data so people can see it up close. I recommend doing this when necessary.
You could split the data onto 2 slides and use a dynamic transition between them. Dynamic transitions are new for PowerPoint 2010.
What’s a dynamic transition?
A dynamic transition has two special features:
The transition applies to your slide content, but not the background. This makes your content seem to move independently from the background.
The transition works backward when you move to the previous slide.
You don’t need to add the transition to the first slide of a set.
I recommend using transitions very sparingly. When a presentation has a transition applied to all slides, I find it distracting. Don’t you? You want your audience to focus on the content, not the special effects!
But occasionally, a transition can actually help your audience understand what you are saying. When you need to span data over 2 or more slides, the Pan dynamic transition can help.
Here are two slides that provide historical data on health expenditures in the United States. In many cases, a chart (graph) would work better, but let’s say that your audience wants to analyze the specific numbers, so you need to use a table. You can see that this data wouldn’t fit on 1 slide, because it covers a span of 20 years!
Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.
In my blog post, “6 steps to create cool stickout photos in PowerPoint,” I explained a dramatic technique to create photos that “stick out” from a background. I held a contest (the deadline was 3/5/2011) and it was my most popular contest ever! I received many entries and I thank you all!
I chose 3 winners based on the final look and checking the PowerPoint file to make sure that there were 2 photos, formatted as described in the technique. Congratulations!
The hand truck
Rae Drysdale submitted this slide. The back photo has lots of other content and the front photo was cropped at the bottom, making the part of the truck that seems closest to you stick out. Rae also added a shadow, for a more dramatic look.
The Saluki (it’s a breed of dog)
Thanks to Judy Capie for this entry. The back photo has a gray background and is cropped from the bottom. The front photo has no background, so the dog’s feet are the “stickout.”
An industrial example
This is from Joel Darr.It’s an interesting example, because the background of the back photo was cropped both from the left and the right. The front photo, with its background removed, therefore sticks out on both sides. That’s an interesting variation!
Again, congratulations to the winners, who will receive a free copy of “Slide Design for Non-Designers” or another ebook of their choice from my estore.
Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.
In PowerPoint 2007 and later, you can easily convert bulleted text to diagrams that look great — with just a few clicks. For example, you can change this to this.
Why is the diagram better?
It shows a relationship among the 3 components, something the bullets don’t do
It’s more visually striking, so it attracts the attention of your audience. As a result, they’re more likely to remember what you say
These diagrams are called SmartArt. Creating such a simple one is simple:
Click inside the text placeholder to select it.
On the Home tab, click Convert to SmartArt.
Choose the layout you want from the gallery. If the layout you want isn’t visible, click More SmartArt Graphics, where you can choose from all the options.
You can stop there, but I highly recommend trying out the Change Colors button on the SmartArt Tools Design tab as well as the SmartArt gallery options.
However, sometimes you want a more complex diagram. Here’s the start of one.
The problem is that I want to fill the outer circles with images, but the SmartArt layout doesn’t allow that. While I can copy and paste an image into the circle, I can’t click it and insert an image file from my computer. How can I get around that inflexibility?
When you select SmartArt, it has a border around it. You can also select objects within the SmartArt and edit them, but within limitations. Sometimes, you just can’t get the results you want.
The answer is to convert the SmartArt to individual shapes. You can do this in a couple of ways, but the simplest is to ungroup it — twice. Just select the SmartArt, right-click and choose Group> Ungroup. Then do it again. Now you have individual shapes.
That means you can format them however you want.
Here’s the final result, after filling the outer circles with pictures.
Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.
A subscriber turned me on to Before & After Magazine‘s YouTube videos, showing great design tips. I thought I would show you how to create one of their effects in PowerPoint. Read to the end, because there’s a contest with a prize for 3 winners!
First, watch their video
How to create “stickouts” in PowerPoint
How can you create cool stickout photos in PowerPoint? Here are the steps:
1. Insert a photo that is appropriate for this technique. You need a strong object in the foreground, because you’ll remove its background. You also need an object that has a component that you want to “stick out.” I used a photo of a jet, taking a cue from the video.
Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.
I’ve discovered that some people don’t know how to resize images in PowerPoint and also don’t know how (or when) to crop an image. These are basic and important skills and you’ll use them even in other programs, because they are universal.
How to resize an image
Sometimes you insert an image and it’s the wrong size. You resize an image when it’s the right shape/proportion, but just the wrong size. To resize an image select it so that you see “handles” on the corners and sides. The image to the right has an arrow pointing to one of the handles.
Then click and drag a corner handle inward or outward.
ALWAYS USE THE CORNER HANDLES TO RESIZE AN IMAGE! The side and top handles are useless and should not exist. Using a side or top handle will distort the image and make your people look fat or undernourished. Just say no to the temptation and read on below where I explain what to do if the shape of your image needs to be adjusted.
If you resize an image too much, especially to make it larger, you run the risk of losing resolution. The image will look grainy (and unprofessional). Check your images in Slide Show view to see if they are still clear. If not, find a different image that has more pixels.
In the image to the right, the proportion is good; only the size is too big So, I moved it to the lower-right corner of the white area and used the upper-right corner handle to make the image a little smaller. Here’s the result.
How to crop an image
But what if you need to reshape an image? Maybe it’s too wide or too high. That’s a different issue with a different solution. You need to crop the image. When you crop the image, some of it will be hidden (or perhaps lost forever). But that’s the only way to get the shape you need without distorting the image. Read more! →
Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.
You can insert a live Excel spreadsheet onto a slide so that you can use Excel while in Slide Show view.
There are other ways to get Excel data onto a slide, so why would you want an active Excel spreadsheet? Let’s say that you’re presenting some results of your financial analysis and your boss asks, “How did you get those results? Show me the spreadsheet.” You could switch to Excel, but it might be more slick to have it available in your PowerPoint presentation.
Slick? What does that mean? It just means that the process is less disruptive and more continuous, so it looks more professional. Try out this unusual technique and see if you like it.
Here are the steps:
Choose Insert (tab)> Object> From File. In the Insert Object dialog box, choose the Create from File option.
Click Browse, navigate to the Excel file, and double-click it. Click OK. You now see the spreadsheet on your slide. You may see all of it or part of it, but when you show it in Slide Show view, you’ll be able to pan and zoom to display what you want.
In PowerPoint 2003, choose Slide Show> Custom Animation. In 2007 and 2010, go to the Animations tab. In 2007, click Custom Animation.
With the spreadsheet selected, choose Add Effect in 2003 and 2007. Choose Add Animation in 2010. From the categories choose Object Actions or OLE Action Verbs. Then choose Edit or Open; it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Leave the default On Click setting, so that the animation happens when you click.
When you go into slide show view, you’ll see the same thing you saw when you inserted the spreadsheet. Now click and the Excel spreadsheet will open. Depending on your version, the spreadsheet may be in front of your slide or you may simply switch to Excel. In either case, you can now do anything that you can do in Excel, including edit the data and use Excel’s tools.
What you’re seeing is a temporary view of your spreadsheet inside PowerPoint. See the highlighted text: “Worksheet in PowerPoint Slide Show.”
To go back to your slide show, just close the spreadsheet, using the X button.
Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.
I majored in History in college and one of the few things I remember from all my History courses is a story about Czar Peter the Great traveling to Europe, but wanting to remain anonymous. The problem was that he was 6 feet tall, unusual in those days, so everyone had to pretend they didn’t know who he was. Why do I remember that story, having forgotten thousands of other statements? It was interesting and funny. It wasn’t boring. It was a story.
You can incorporate stories about customers, people who make a product, and so on. A story can tell the background behind your main message.
But fewer people talk about a storyline. By that, I mean the structure of your presentation. Just like a story has a beginning, a middle and an end, so does a presentation. Just as a story is about people, your presentation should be about people, sometimes the audience, but sometimes other people. (Even if your presentation isn’t about your audience, like a history lesson about ancient Greece, it should be for your audience.)
Think about how you organize your content in terms of a storyline. It doesn’t have to be a story, per se, but there should be a storyline. There’s the:
Beginning: Your opening, explaining the situation and why it’s relevant to your audience.
Middle : How you develop your points
End: The conclusion and a call to action, if appropriate
Try labeling your script to mark these 3 parts of the presentation. It will help you understand your structure better and, ultimately, improve your presentation.
How do you use a storyline structure in your presentations? And how to you incorporate actual stories in your presentations?
Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.
Do you buy electronics and more on Amazon, Newegg, or other sites? If so, I’d like to introduce you to a new, free service that will help you get the lowest price.
Many people don’t realize that prices fluctuate constantly, particularly on websites like Amazon, which allow third party vendors to continually undercut one another.
For example, consider the price variations for a Samsung 59-Inch 1080p 3D Plasma HDTV over three months (Jul 10 to Oct 10, 2011): $1,850, 2,251, 1,920, 2,000, 2,251, 2,145, 2,218, 2,225, 2,145, 2,200
You could have spent as much as $2,251 — or as little as $1,850!
Wouldn’t it be great if you could catch these price fluctuations at their lowest point? Now you can, with a free, easy to use tool called BuyLater (You can install it quickly at www.BuyLater.com). BuyLater is a browser extension (compatible with Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Safari) that adds a button to Amazon and several other shopping websites. Simply click the BuyLater button to track an item and you will receive an email when the price drops. The best part is that you don’t ever have to leave the site you’re shopping on.
BuyLater is a great tool for anyone who shops online. You can track prices on Amazon and other websites for every type of product imaginable. BuyLater is especially useful when you’re waiting to make a large purchase. For example, the price for a Cartier Women’s Pasha Stainless-Steel Ceramic Black Dial Watch over three months (Jul 10, 2011 to Oct 10, 2011) has ranged from $4,092 to $3,783 — a variance of $309!
BuyLater makes it easy to be an informed shopper and save where it counts, which means that you can focus less on shopping and more on what you love. I’ve used it to track food items, soy candles, electronics, and more and was amazed at how often the prices changed.
Why is it free? The company makes its money as an affiliate of Amazon (and other sites that offer an affiliate program), so you pay nothing!
Here’s my take on it. Just as buyer reviews on Amazon and other sites have changed the way you decide what you buy, BuyLater will change when you buy.
Full disclosure: My son is one of the developers of BuyLater and I’m so proud!
Ellen Finkelstein can train you or the presenters in your organization to create high-impact, engaging, professional presentations for training, sales, business, or education. For more information, please click here.
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You'll find free tips, techniques, articles, and tutorials here, all designed to help you succeed when you present. This blog gives you knowledge. I'm passionate about turning Death by PowerPoint into Life by PowerPoint. Discover books and courses to help you become an outstanding presenter. Find out more about training, consulting, webinars and coaching on presentation skills and PowerPoint.
When you create a presentation, you start with the content. But how do you know if your content is clear and logical? Here are some questions you can ask yourself. This information is from a booklet, “Critical Thinking Concepts & Tools,” put out by the
You can insert a live Excel spreadsheet onto a slide so that you can use Excel while in Slide Show view.
An age-old way of making a topic interesting, so the audience pays more attention
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