Picture Pile Effect in PowerPoint

Placing many pictures in PowerPoint can sometimes look quite boring. Here's a way to spruce it up: the "Picture Pile" effect.



This is quite simple to do.

1. Insert the pictures you want


2. Add a frame (choose one of the white ones from the Picture Styles gallery if you're using PowerPoint 2007, or just add a thick outline in older versions of PowerPoint)


3. Rotate each image a bit, and scatter them around!


4. Done.

PowerPoint samples are included here:

• PowerPoint 2007 version


• PowerPoint 97-2003 version

Extreme PowerPoint

My friend introduced me to this website called PowerPoint Heaven recently, and it features lots of cool effects you can achieve in PowerPoint.

Some of the stuff there are really extreme, for example the games. If you open them in PowerPoint you find things like "Rectangle 576" - meaning that there are hundreds of elements on one slide. In fact some of the things there strongly recommend you turn on hardware acceleration in PowerPoint (well maybe you didn't know there was such a thing eh?) or performance will suffer (due to the many elements). And there's aggressive use of triggers (when a custom animation happens because you click something - I didn't know about this before either). The effects are mostly PowerPoint XP/2003 only, because only from PowerPoint XP onwards had the advanced custom animation been added.

However there are a few tips on the website that are applicable to everyday PowerPoint use, and you might want to take a look.

Give your PowerPoint Shapes a more professional look

Note: If you're using PowerPoint 2007, don't bother reading this, because PowerPoint 2007 already has the following effects in the gallery and thus can be achieved with one click!

Shapes in PowerPoint always look flat like this:


Now what about this?


Here's how to do it:

1. Remove outlines


2. Add shadows


3. Change background colour to gradient


4. Change text font/colour/size

Yes it's that simple... here's a sample PowerPoint presentation that illustrates the above steps.

Anyway the above tips are also applicable to Word as well, in case you want to make the shapes in Word look nicer.

ZoomIt: A little presentation aid

ZoomIt is a program that isn't technically part of Microsoft Office, but it can come in handy during presentations. Check out the website to know more about it.

Some cool PowerPoint effects

I just happened to chance upon this website - The Powerpoint WOW - Special effects with images - a few days ago that shows some cool stuff that can be done in PowerPoint. I think it is only valid for PowerPoint XP and 2003 though - if I'm not mistaken PowerPoint 97 and 2000 (these are really quite ancient) do not have the transparency effects.

Note that if you're using PowerPoint 2007 then some of the points in the article aren't relevant because the effects are already available predefined in PowerPoint 2007. Which is quite nice.

Help! The file size of my document grew tremendously after embedding fonts!

Well I faced this problem just yesterday.

Embed only used characters
Firstly you probably have chosen to embed the entire fonts instead of only the characters in use. If you don't intend to edit the document, or the computer you will edit the document on already has the fonts, then you don't have to embed the entire font, which will reduce the file size significantly.

Replace unused fonts
But what if you really want to embed the fonts for editing? Then we have to see which fonts are being used, and replace them as necessary using the "replace fonts" tool in the office applications. PowerPoint/Word may think that some fonts are in use when actually they are not (or are used in some hidden places that do not matter) so you can replace them away and save the need to store yet another font. Note, however, that some fonts such as Wingdings may not appear to be used but are actually used for things like bullets, so you cannot replace them.

Stop embedding double-byte (Asian text) fonts
However most likely if the file grows beyond 10MB suddenly is due to the embedding of a double-byte (usually for Asian Text) font. This can happen if you accidentally type some Asian text into the document, and PowerPoint/Word switches to such fonts. Or perhaps you just made use of such fonts, even for Western characters. Each of these fonts can be 10-20+ MB, thus making the document size explode.

A solution is to replace the double-byte fonts with the smallest double-byte font you have (since you cannot replace a double-byte font with a regular font). For this purpose I have made (using a trial version of TypeTool) a font called Fake doublebyte font that contains only one Chinese character. Note that PowerPoint/Word recognizes the font as a Chinese font, so it only appears in the list if you try to replace a Chinese font and not, say, a Korean font. However we can make use of the font simply by typing the font's name into the box itself instead of selecting from the list in the "Replace Fonts" window.

Convert to HTML and replace font names
Some people have also suggested converting the document to HTML and then replacing the problematic font with another font in the HTML, but I've had some problems getting it to work. You might want to read the following links for more information about this: Why won't Replace Fonts work? Understanding Unicode fonts, How to find and delete embedded fonts in PowerPoint, Asian/Double-Byte fonts can't be replaced.

Introduction

This blog is dedicated to tips about using Microsoft Office, specifically Word, PowerPoint and Excel.

During the course of a school project, I had learnt to make use of many of the features in the three programs, as well as figured out interesting things that I can do with them. And since these tips can be rather useful, I decided to share them right here! =)