I Came, I Saw, I Learned...

PowerPoint: Instant Font Usage

by AJ George 

I was recently editing a PowerPoint presentation that someone else had created. Master slides were not used and the formatting was a bit inconsistent. I thought to myself that it would be helpful to see a list of fonts used in the presentation. Then I remembered that there is such a list! It's a bit of a hidden feature so I had completely forgotten it existed. Here's how to see a list of fonts used in a presentation.

1. In PowerPoint, choose File > Info.
2. At the far right of the screen you will see a small preview image of the presentation. Directly below the preview, click the arrow next to Properties to view a drop-down menu. (What a sneaky little hidden menu!)
3. Choose Advanced Properties to open the Properties dialog box.
     
4. Click the Contents tab to view all the fonts used in the presentation.
    

See also:

• How to Save a Presentation with Embedded Fonts
• How to Find and Delete Embedded Fonts

***

AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations. 

PowerPoint: Chart Templates

by AJ George 

I was perusing the Microsoft Office Forums and came across an unanswered question from someone about chart formatting. This PowerPoint user wanted to be able to create multiple charts with the same formatting (ie bars on a graph with a gradient effect) without having to individually format each separate piece of every new chart. An attempt at copying and pasting the slide using the Keep Source Fformatting option did not keep the chart's formatting. The person struggling with this issue also mentioned that there were more than 300 charts that needed formatting and dreaded the prospect of having to individually format each one. Are you in the same situation? No worries! Here is how to create a chart template to be used with new charts or to be applied to existing charts.

How to Create a Chart Template

1. In PowerPoint (2007 or 2010), choose Insert > Illustrations > Chart (to open the Insert Chart dialog box.)
2. Select your desired chart and click OK.
3. On the PowerPoint slide, right-click each individual element of the slide that you would like to format and choose Format Data Series. (The Format Data Series dialog box will open.)
4. Format to your liking and click the Close button.

Note: Don't bother editing the excel spread sheet at this point, your data will not be saved with the template.


5. Ensure the chart is selected on the slide and chooseChart Tools > Design > Type > Save As Template(to open the Save Chart Template dialog box).

    
6. Give your chart template a name and click the Save button.

How to Use a Chart Template

1. In PowerPoint, choose Insert > Illustrations > Chart (to open the Insert Chart dialog box).
2. Click the Templates folder at the top left.  


 
3. Select your chart template from the gallery and click the OK button.

Note: If you would like your chart template to be the default chart style, click the Set as Default Chart button (as seen above) on the Insert Chart dialog box. To edit the template, click the Manage Templates button.

From there your data sheet will open and you will be able to enter your data. But what if you're in the same situation as the person in the MS Office forums and you already have charts that you'd like to reflect this formatting?

Apply a Chart Template to an Existing Chart

Please note that applying a chart template to an existing chart may cause your system to crash. Ensure you save frequently.

1. In PowerPoint, select your chart on the slide.
2. Choose Chart Tools > Design > Type > Change Chart Type (to open the Chart Type dialog box).




3. Click the Templates folder at the top left, select your chart template from the gallery, and click the OKbutton.

Your chart will now reflect the formatting of the template.

***

AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations.

PowerPoint: Find and Delete Embedded Fonts

by AJ George 

Last week I covered how to embed fonts in a PowerPoint presentation. On the flip side, what if you receive a presentation and have issues opening it because of an embedded font? This seems to be a relatively rare issue, and may not affect you (or the person receiving your presentation) if you used a fancy script font. The problem seems to be more related to the inclusion of certain fonts in the system, like Asian fonts that read the opposite direction. Sometimes, when sending these presentations off (particularly over-seas) there can be issues.

This issue was brought to my attention, so I began to explore and document how to find and delete embedded fonts. However, I found that the folks over at PPTools already have a pretty in-depth write up on this, including multiple solutions. Check out this link for what to do if your presentation contains Asian texts and formats that PowerPoint can't display.

Several great solutions are provided, but I would like to throw one more in the mix that might also work for you. If you know there is a font throwing a kink in the works but can't find where it is used within the presentation, try the following:

1. With your presentation opened in PowerPoint 2010, choose File > Save & Send > Create Handouts.
2. Click the Create Handouts button.  

This will send your presentation to MS Word. Since we are not actually interested in the handouts, you can choose anything from the Send to Microsoft Word dialog box and click OK. MS Word will open.


3. In Word 2010, press [Ctrl] [F] on your keyboard to bring up the Navigation pane.
4. Click the more arrow to the right of the Search Document field.




5. Select Advanced Find from the drop-down menu.

The Find and Replace dialog box will open.


6. At the bottom of the dialog box, click the Formatbutton and choose Font.
7. In the Font field, type the name of the offending font and click OK.

This will return you to the Find and Replace dialog box.


8. Leave the Find What field blank and click the Find Next button.

Word will find where the font was used so you can delete whatever is causing the hiccup back in your PowerPoint presentation.

***

AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations. 

PowerPoint 2007 & 2010: Save a Presentation with Embedded Fonts

by AJ George 

 

When creating PowerPoint presentations and moving them from one computer to another, one area of concern is fonts. If you've used specific fonts within a presentation, the same fonts need to be installed on any computers that will open the presentation. To prevent missing fonts from being an issue, there's a good chance you can embed the fonts you used to ensure your presentations look the way you designed them.

 

Good chance? I say "good chance" because not all fonts are embeddable. Fonts must be of the TrueType variety. Additionally, fonts must not have licensing restrictions that prevent embedding. If you are using standard fonts (Arial, Times, Verdana, etc), you probably won't need to worry about licensing restrictions. That being said, if you're worried about someone not having your font on their system, you probably aren't using the standard fonts. 

 

Determing if a Font Is Embeddable

 

If you're using a Mac, I've got bad news... the Mac versions of PowerPoint can't embed fonts, nor can they use fonts embedded in a PC-born presentation.

If you're using a PC, the fonts need to be TrueType for them to embed. In PowerPoint, you'll notice all fonts have either aTT (TrueType) or an O (OpenType) next to them in the font list. But here's the catch: some OpenType fonts have TrueType font data and can also be embedded.  If you'd like to know if your OpenType font contains TrueType font, view your computer's Fonts folder (Start > Control Panel > Fonts). Right-click within an empty space within the folder and choose View > Details. Fonts with file names ending in .ttf (whether TrueType or OpenType) contain TrueType font data and can be embedded.

But wait, there's more! All embedding licenses are not created equal. There are three different types of embedding licenses.

Installable: Fonts may be embedded in documents and permanently installed on the remote system.

Editable: Fonts may be embedded in documents, but must only be installed temporarily on the remote system.

Print & Preview: Fonts may be embedded in documents, but must only be installed temporarily on the remote system. Documents can only be opened as read-only.

Installable is great, but is pretty hard to come by. In most cases, you're going to be looking for an Editable font. Unless you just want your presentation to be viewed, and not modified or edited in any way, I would steer clear of Print & Preview fonts.

So, how do you know which type of license your font has? The easiest way is to download and install Microsoft's TrueType Font Properties Extension. Doing so allows you to right-click a font from the Fonts folder and chooseProperties to see the Embedding license (among many other properties).

Note: Navigate to your Fonts folder and right-click a font before downloading the properties extension. You may already have a Properties option there.

Whew, that was an awful lot like work! On a positive note, finding out whether or not your font is embeddable is the hardest part. Once you know that a font can be embedded, embedding it is a simple process.

1. Open your presentation in PowerPoint.
2. If you are using PowerPoint 2007, click the Microsoft Office Button > Save As. If you are using PowerPoint 2010, choose File > Save As.
3. From the Save As dialog box, click the Tools button and select Save Options.
4. Select Embed fonts and then click OK.
5. At the bottom of the Save area, select Embed fonts in the file. From there you can choose whether to embed all the characters, or just those used in the presentation. If you are forwarding the presentation for further editing, you may want to include all characters.
6. Click OK.

Keep in mind that embedding fonts will increase the file size of your presentation, especially if you embed all of the font's characters.

***

AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations. 

PowerPoint 2010: Use Video Bookmarks to Trigger Animations

by AJ George 

During a previous article on Perfecting Motion Paths, I made a short PowerPoint video illustrating the final motion path animation. Let's say I'm going to teach a class on how to use Motion Paths. In the class, I'm going to give a presentation that shows this video. In the video there are two uses of motion paths, and I want a little blurb to pop up when the second one starts, alerting my learners that this is a separate motion path.  Did you know that this can be accomplished in PowerPoint by using video bookmarks to trigger animations? Here's how:

Add a Bookmark to a Video

1. In PowerPoint, insert the video on the desired slide (Insert > Video).
2. Set the video to play automatically (Video Tools > Playback > Video Options > Start > Automatically).
3. Play the video. (Pause it when you reach the point where you would like to trigger an animation.)
4. Choose Video Tools > Playback > Bookmarks > Add Bookmark.



A yellow dot will appear on the video control panel, signaling there is a bookmark.

Add a Triggered Animation to a Bookmark

1. Add the text (Insert > Text Box), shape (Insert > Shape), or image (Insert > Picture) you would like to appear at this bookmarked spot of the video. You can put it anywhere on the slide.
2. With the inserted object selected (in this case I inserted a text box), add an entrance animation (Animation > Advanced Animation > Add Animation).
3. Click the Trigger button to the right of the Add Animation button you just clicked (Animation > Advanced Animation).
4. From the drop-down menu select On Bookmark and choose your desired bookmark (you can add more than one bookmark to a video, so there may be several).





5. With the inserted object selected, add an exit animation (Animation > Advanced Animation > Add Animation).
6. View the Animation Pane (Animation > Advanced Animation > Animation Pane­)

You will notice that the exit effect is set to happen prior to the bookmark trigger. We will fix that next.


7. On the Animation Pane, select the exit animation (it will be the one with a red star in front of it).
8. At the bottom of the Animation Pane, click the Re-Order button pointing down until your exit animation appears on the pane below the entrance animation.
9. Click the more arrow for the exit animation and choose Timing from the drop-down menu.



The Disappear dialog box will open. 


10. From the Timing tab, ensure After Previous is selected from the Start area. Adjust the number in the delay field to anything you like. In this case, my video is short, so I have set my delay to just .5seconds.




11. Press [Shift] [F5] on your keyboard to preview the slide and ensure the triggered animation is working properly.

***

AJ teaches a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations.

PowerPoint 2007 & 2010: How to Turn an Image Into An Animated Puzzle, Part II

by AJ George 

Last week I showed you how to animate a picture in PowerPoint so that it came in as a puzzle, piece by piece. That was cool. But if you followed along last week, read on to find some bonus tips for making the animation a little more realistic and adding some finishing touches.

How to Make an Animated Puzzle Look More Realistic

1. From the Selection and Visibility Pane, select all of the puzzle pieces.
2. On the slide, right-click one of the puzzle pieces and choose Format Object.
3. From the Line Color category, change the line color to black.
4. From the Line Style category, change the line Width to 1 pt.
5. From the 3-D Format category, in the Top Bevel area, change the Width to 5 pt and the Height to 2 pt.
6. Click the Close button.

The puzzle pieces will now appear 3-dimensional. 

 

Make the Puzzle Pieces Disappear

1. Select everything on the slide (press [Ctrl] [A]).
2. From the Animations pane, choose Advanced Animation > Add Animation.
3. From the Exit category, choose Disappear.

All of the items on the slide will appear selected on the Animation Pane with the Disappear animation applied to them.  


4. Click the more arrow on the last animation effect and choose Timing.
5. From the Timing tab, click the Start drop-down menu and select With Previous. Increase the Delay to whatever you would like. (I would suggest something like 2 seconds.)

Voila, you've done it! I see this effect being really nice in conjunction with a team photo to show how everyone is a part of the bigger picture, but I'm sure there are many other applicable uses for it. How will you use this animation? I'd love to hear from you. 

***

AJ will be teaching a live, 3-hour class that offers tips/tricks for improving the look and feel of your PowerPoint presentations: Slide Sprucing: Remodeling Lackluster PowerPoint Slides for eLearning and Presentations. The class is later this month and there is still time to sign up.

PowerPoint 2007 & 2010: How to Turn an Image Into An Animated Puzzle

by AJ George 

A recent question in the Microsoft Office forums inquired about the process of animating a picture in PowerPoint so that it came onto the slide piece by piece--like a puzzle. The question was answered, but the answer was not exactly what the original poster had wanted. The answer explained how to make a picture look like a puzzle, but not how to have the separate pieces come in one-by-one. That is what I will cover today.

The original answer referenced this tutorial: Puzzle Pictures in PowerPoint. The tutorial includes a pre-made puzzle framework from PowerFrameworks, which I will also use.

Make an Image Look Like a Puzzle.

1. Download the puzzlepicture zip file at this link.
2. Unzip the file.
3. Start PowerPoint.
4. From within PowerPoint, navigate to the unzipped puzzlepicture folder and open sg002_1200_rectangle.pptx.

A presentation will open with an image of a whale overlaid with puzzle pieces.  

Note: If you are using an earlier version of PowerPoint that does not support .pptx files, follow the instructions here for using the .ppt file.


5. View the Selection and Visibility Pane by choosing Home > Drawing > Arrange > Selection Pane.
   
   You will see 12 puzzle pieces (these are the numbered Freeforms) and one rectangle.
   
       



6. Click the Hide All button at the bottom of the Selection and Visibility pane to hide everything on the slide.
7. Right-click the slide and select Format Background.

The Format Background dialog box will appear. Currently there is a picture of a whale set as the background so Picture or Texture fill is already selected.


8. From the Insert from area, click the File button.
9. Navigate to your own image, select it and click the Insert button.

Your image will now be the background of the slide.  

Note: If you notice sluggish response times in PowerPoint, consider inserting a lower resolution image.


10. Close the Format Background dialog box.
11. On the Selection and Visibility pane, click the Show All button to make all items visible again.  The puzzle pieces are already formatted with a background fill, so the pieces are comprised of the image you inserted. If you simply wanted your image to look like a puzzle, you would be done. Continue on if you would like your image to appear on the slide one piece at a time.

Animate the Puzzle Pieces

1. View the Animation Pane by choosing Animations > Advanced Animation > Animation Pane.
2. On the Selection and Visibility Pane, hold down the [Ctrl] key while clicking to select each of the 12 Freeform puzzle pieces.
3. From the Animations tab, select the Appear animation.

All of the puzzle pieces will appear selected in the Animation Pane.


4. Click the more arrow on the last animation effect and choose Timing.
   
   


The Appear dialog box will open.  


5. From the Timing tab, select After Previous from the Start drop-down menu and increase the Delay number to stagger the appearance of the puzzle piece. I went with .5 seconds, but you can choose whatever you like.
6. Click the OK button.
7. On the Selection and Visibility pane, click the Hide All button to hide all the puzzle pieces. Click the box next to Rectangle 16 to make it visible.

You will be left with a large blue rectangle. 


8. Right-click the rectangle on the slide and choose Format Shape.

The Format Shape dialog box will appear.


9. From the Fill category, change the fill color to whatever you would like. (For my project, I wanted it to appear as though initially the slide was blank, so I chose white.)
10. Click the Close button to close the Format Shape dialog box.
11. On the Selection and Visibility pane, click the Show All button to make all items visible again.
12. Press the [F5] key on your keyboard.

Your image will now come in as a puzzle, one piece at a time.

To use the slide in any other presentation, select the slide from the slide sorter pane (or in Slide Sorter view) and copy and paste it into your desired presentation.

Note: When pasting into another presentation, be sure to paste using the Keep Source Formatting option. Learn more about pasting options here.

Check back next week for tips to make your animated puzzle look more realistic!

PowerPoint 2010: Turn Off Picture Compression

by AJ George 

You may not realize it but PowerPoint is lowering the quality of the images in your presentations. How? By default, PowerPoint is set to compress the images in your files. In most cases compressing the images is a good idea because smaller images mean smaller overall presentations. In some cases however, you may wish to maximize the image quality. For example, if the focus of your presentation is a collection of photographs, the loss of quality due to the compression is problematic. 

Here is how to turn off picture compression:

1. In PowerPoint, choose File > Options to open the PowerPoint Options dialog box.
2. Select the Advanced category.
3. From the Image Size and Quality area, choose the presentation that you don't want PowerPoint to compress from the drop-down menu.
4. Select Do not compress images in file. 
   
5. Click the OK button. 

***

Having a problem getting PowerPoint to behave? Email your issue. I may be able to help and then share the solution here.

PowerPoint & eLearning: PhotoPin, a New Stock Photo Resource

by AJ George 

I have previously written about my favorite stock photo resources.  I've also posted about how to find Google images you can actually use for commercial use.  In that same vein I'd like to present Photopin, a new resource that may be useful in your search for budget-friendly stock photos.

The photos are lifted from Flickr and are, by and large, Creative Commons licensed. This type of license allows free use but they'll need an attribution link. (If you'd like to pay for the photos instead of just linking to them, you have the option to do that through Fotolia instead.)

 

Having this many easily searchable Creative Commons images at your fingertips will be immensely useful if you are a blog writer. If, however, you would like to use the images in your eLearning, you will probably need images labeled for commercial use. No worries. After entering your search term and clicking Search, you can select Commercial from the License Type area in the upper left.

A word of caution: be sure to re-select the Commercial option for each search you do, as the choice does not stick between searches. Additionally, make sure that you follow the Flickr link for each image to check out the full License details, located in the lower right of the Flickr page.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2007: Troubleshooting Pasted Slides

by AJ George 

Here's the scenario: You are an eLearning developer and receive a PowerPoint presentation from another party (a client, colleague, SME, etc). You've decided to paste some of the slides into another PowerPoint presentation following your own finely crafted master layouts. After you do this, you notice the formatting didn't quite take. Perhaps the bullets are positioned incorrectly. Maybe the title is incorrectly formatted. The whole thing is a big ol' mess. The cause is most likely that your presentation source did not use a master slide, or did not use standard content placeholders. Try this to clean up the mess.

1. Open the presentation into which you want to paste slides.
2. View the slides in Slide Sorter View by choosing View > Presentation Views > Slide Sorter.
3. Open the presentation from which you want to copy slides.
4. View the slides in Slide Sorter View by choosing View > Presentation Views > Slide Sorter.
5. From within that second presentation, copy the slide to be pasted by selecting the slide and pressing [Ctrl] [C] on your keyboard.

Note: If you are choosing more than one consecutive slide, hold down the [Shift] key while you select the first and last consecutive slides and then press the Copycommand. If you are choosing non-consecutive slides, hold down the [Ctrl] key and then press the Copycommand.


6. From View > Switch Windows select the presentation that is to receive the pasted slides.
7. In Slide Sorter view, click where you would like to paste the slides and press [Ctrl] [V]. By default, the pasted slides will follow the destination slide's layout. (However, if you're reading this, the layout is probably not looking quite right.)
8. With the pasted slides still selected, choose Home > Slides > Layout and then choose your desired layout. This should fix most of your issues.
9. If the content of your slides is still out of whack, it is probably because the original author used separate text boxes for text. To see what is on the slides outside the standard content placeholders, view the selection pane by choosing Home > Drawing > Arrange > Selection Pane. On the selection pane, locate the formatted Content Placeholder into which you would like your text to appear. Click the eye icon next to it to hide it. Any text that is still visible once you hide the Content Placeholder may be in one or several separate text boxes. You'll fix that next.
10. Select one of the individual text boxes on the slide and copy the content (highlight the text and press [Ctrl] [C]).
11. Delete the text box.
12. On the Selection Pane, click the eye icon next to the Content Placeholder to view it again.
13. Press [Ctrl] [V] on your keyboard to paste the deleted text box's content into the placeholder.
14. Repeat steps 10-12 for any remaining text boxes on the slide. 

Once you have placed all of the text into Content Placeholders, your slides will follow your master slides' layouts.

***

Having a problem getting PowerPoint to behave? Email your issue. I may be able to help and then share the solution here.