Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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If you've been reading my updates (and I hope you have), you know that my main area of interest in Office is presentations, so I focus mainly on PowerPoint and a bit on Visio.

In terms of PowerPoint, especially with the bad rap it's gotten lately, there is a holy grail among presenters - and that is to differentiate their presentations from the masses.

In a future update I intend to introduce some very cool add-ins that let you compress presentations and use interactive characters that walk across the screen. In an earlier article for this site, I introduced readers to a superb add-in called Apreso from Anystream, that lets you compress your presentation and your video narration for training, in case you can't be there for some reason.

Then, a few weeks ago, my editor here at InformIT told me that she had been hounded (er, approached) by a PR person on behalf of a company called Instant Effects which had another add-in for PowerPoint, and would I try it.

Never one to go against the wishes of an editor, I did, and I must tell you that for simply changing the look of a PowerPoint presentation with an entire gallery of dazzling effects, I haven't seen anything like it.

See? It's always a good idea to listen to your editor. -Ed.

I know that there are other similar tools, but the difference with OfficeFX is that it takes advantage of 3D rendering technology. That's the good news.

The other side of the coin is that you need a very high end computer to use the program. One reason it's taken me this long to cover the product is because installation is not a snap, or at least it wasn't for me, and you really need to have a powerful graphics card, among other components, to render the effects and even run the program.

Besides a graphics chip like the ATI Radeon, the program requires the .NET Framework (available from Windows Update) and DirectX 9. A pre-installation panel reviews your system and tells you whether you can continue setup.

I discussed this with Don Brittain, the CEO of Instant Effects, and he said that in his view the product is 18 months ahead of the hardware cycle. This means that you need the very latest laptop to make sure you can show an OfficeFX show. But here's how it works.

Like most PowerPoint (or Office) Add-Ins, OfficeFX sets up a toolbar of its own inside of PowerPoint. Then, by clicking the OfficeFX tab (just above the Outline panel), you open a complete interface for adding the gallery of effects to your presentation.

You do this on top of an actual presentation, such as the one I show here that has been created from the AutoContent Wizard.

Figure 229

Now if you click the FX button to start the presentation, you will see it rendered in striking 3D animation. The image here doesn't do it justice, as the ocean floor is animated and shimmering with light like a Caribbean seascape. This makes it much more than just a new set of background design templates.

Figure 230

By clicking the Preferences tab, you can expand OfficeFX to include Slide Master content on all slides, and add theme animation to the bullets. You also have the option of using PowerPoint bullets or OfficeFX bullets.

Figure 231

Again, in the presentation itself, OfficeFX takes over. Its animations replace PowerPoint's. For example, to accentuate a point you would not use the Emphasis effect in PowerPoint's Custom Animation; instead, you click on the bullet a second time and see a new animation to highlight the concept.

Figure 232

But wait, there's more. You can add additional slide transitions (which again override the PowerPoint transitions). Plus, there is cool stuff for some themes, like this one, with a dolphin swimming through one or more slides.

Figure 233

In some ways, this is like all of the PowerPoint backgrounds and now the diagrams, in that before lots of audiences see this stuff it is very eye-catching and effective. It's Instant Effects' challenge to create more dazzling backgrounds and themes; that is presumably part of their business model.

By the way, I added my own box and used Entrance effect in Custom Animation to test it, and it worked right along with OfficeFX. Now, here's the dolphin swimming through my chart.

Figure 234

On the other hand, refining the chart animation using Effect Options no longer seems to work. I am just getting started, so I will keep you posted.

Another neat OfficeFX trick is animated 3D objects, which are actually proprietary FXML files that render in real time during the presentation. While the objects are not perfectly controllable by the user, you can turn them in any angle as they move through the slide. The company can help you add and create such models for your own presentations.

Figure 235

The bottom line is that if you want to catch your audience's eye, you can use OfficeFX for part of your show. Then, during the break or whenever, switch out of OfficeFX and return to a traditional slide show, if necessary, to work with more structured elements like animated charts and diagrams.

A cool way to use OfficeFX is to create a video of your presentation, effects and all. We might go into this in another update, but with so many graphics cards having video outputs (to enable gamers to play on a TV monitor), you should be able to use one of these cards to output your presentation to a VCR, and record it in real time. For audio, use a microphone, or the speaker output from your soundcard connected to the AV audio in of the VCR.

Remember that to run the OfficeFX version, besides having the hardware on your system, you also need to start the presentation from the OfficeFX interface. This means that it does not alter the underlying presentation (which you can always show without OfficeFX).

I found switching between OfficeFX and non OfficeFX to be a bit tricky; it will require practice. On the other hand, when you save your PowerPoint file from within the OfficeFX menu, the effects you've created are also saved with the file, so reusing them is easy.

There are also tutorials and demos that are loaded with the program. If you go to the company's Web site, you can see movies of the effects in PowerPoint as well.

If you're looking to widen eyes among your audience, using OfficeFX is definitely an option to consider.

(OfficeFX is currently available for download at www.instanteffects.com for $149.95 and an early adopters price of $99.95. )

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