IT Tips - October 2015

IT Tips – October 2015 

Tatro is a zombie!!!!! 

                                                                                                                                                  

What’s Inside:

Tech Section

·         PowerPoint 2013 tips

o   Adding/Editing content

o   Adding Video to your Presentation

o   Animations and Transitions

o   Things to Remember

·         Kudos

o   Thank you Katelyn & Stephanie! 

 

PowerPoint 2013 Tips                                                        

This has been the summer of Office 2013. Let’s continue that trend with a savory IT Tip about PowerPoint 2013. Am I running out of ideas? Maybe. You’ll just have to stick around to find out.

PowerPoint has a ton of features and I won’t bore you to death by covering every little thing. Instead, I will go over what I feel will be most useful for you. 

Adding/Editing Content

Personally, I find PowerPoint to be simple and intuitive (but I AM pretty cool so maybe it’s just me). Adding text is as simple as clicking a text box and typing out those important bullet points.

PowerPoint also makes it easy to add slides of various types with a multitude of slide-types based on the chosen theme (you should probably be using the IMC theme!).

Watch me add some slides and very important bullet points.

As you can see, PowerPoint works much like Microsoft Word. Simply click a text field and start typing to add content. The editing options are in the ribbon at the top just like Word.

Like most other Microsoft Office programs, you can also add “rich content” such as pictures from your PC, pictures from the web & charts. This, like most tasks, is achieved by using the ribbon.

Watch me add images and charts:

Remember, you don’t want to rely too heavily on pictures and charts, lest you want your presentation to look busy. No one likes a busybody and people like busyslides even less. Trust me.

What if I want to move the content around?

What if I want a million dollars? You’re awfully demanding…

Actually, it’s as easy as clicking the border of the object and dragging it around! When your mouse goes over the border of an object, your cursor will change into four arrows indicating that you can move the object. Simply click and drag with this four-arrow-cursor to move objects.

You will also notice that PowerPoint comes equipped with “Smart Lines”. Smart lines are a handy feature that shows you a dotted line when the object you’re dragging lines up with another object. This is extremely useful for keeping your slide objects lined-up and neat.

Watch me move my content around and notice the smart lines, they are the little dotted lines that appear when two or more objects line-up.

Adding Video to your Presentation

Here be dragons.

Sorry, I’ve always wanted to say that and I lost my patience. Adding video to your presentation isn’t that dangerous. Caution should be taken, but it’s not DRAGON dangerous. You should never meddle with dragons.

Just be mindful not to rely too heavily on video as it will make the presentation file bloated and could annoy your audience.

Adding video is done with the “Insert” tab of the ribbon.

There are two ways to add video to your PowerPoint presentation: from a file on your PC (or shared drive) and from the Internet (YouTube).

Here is how you add a video from a file:

Now let’s add a video from YouTube: 

Remember: Videos added from YouTube will require an Internet connection to play!

Another note: When you get to your video slide, you will have to click play on the video (it will not automatically play).

Animations and Transitions

Animations and transitions are really cool. The former refers to animating objects on a slide while the latter pertains to transition animations between slides.

Let’s talk about animations first. While they’re really cool and great for adding emphasis to an object on a slide, know that less is more. Remember, no one likes a busyslide.

Watch me add some animations using the “Animations” tab on the ribbon!

Notice how you can use the “Animation Pane” to change the order in which the objects appear. It also allows you to preview your animations. 

Now on to slide transitions.

Slide transitions can be very cool. However, try to keep things uniform and avoid chaotically changing the animation style. I’m going to show you several different kinds of transitions but that is just so you can see how they vary. It would be best to stay consistent throughout the presentation.

When you add a transition, it will apply to the current slide. I.E. the transition will occur before the slide you’ve selected appears in the presentation.

More realistically, you will use the same transition throughout the entire presentation. If you choose to do that, there is a handy “Apply to all” button that will apply the desired transition to all slides.

Simply navigate to the first slide, click “Transitions”, choose the transition you want and then click on “Apply To All”.

 
Things to Remember

There are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to PowerPoint:

·       Images and videos will make your PowerPoint presentation file very large. Large files will take a long time to transfer to shared drives and will be impossible to email.

·       Large presentations should be distributed with shared drives and not via email.

·       It will take some time to load large presentations from a shared drive so it’s best to copy them to your computer (you can just drag to the desktop) before trying to open very large presentations.

·       Remember that online videos require an internet connection to play.

  

Kudos                                                        

Katelyn Chaffee and Stephanie Ullrich both suggested a PowerPoint IT Tip. High five!

 

Have a great month, everyone!

-Keith

Please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email if you have a something that you think will make a good tip. You’ll get credit on the blog for your contribution and I might give you a high-five