Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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A great way to learn some of the cooler features of PowerPoint, such as animation or slide control, is to create a project for personal pleasure – like the holiday project the Office Guide is doing this year.

Instead of sending an ordinary Christmas card, we'll make a simple self-running PowerPoint presentation that we can e-mail or post for download.

Since I am not much of an artist, I first go to the Clipart Task Pane, enable my Web search, and type in Christmas.

Figure 416

Admittedly, this was not a terribly successful search – I attribute it to political correctness on Microsoft's part – but I did get a decent Santa Claus out of the deal, which I can copy and paste into my slide.

Figure 417

We'll take advantage of the Title and Subtitle layout for some really original text, and apply a template from the Design Gallery (Slide Design Task Pane).

Figure 418

We're already ahead of the game, but let's get really fancy. We'll create another slide and populate it with images.

We click Insert > Picture > from File and locate a few nice shots, and select them all using the SHIFT key.

Figure 419

When they enter the slide, they are all selected and scrunched up on top of each other. Yuck.

Figure 420

By clicking away from them and deselecting them, we can reselect the images one by one, and drag them to new positions in the slide.

Figure 421

Remember, we want this active and animated!

We'll start with the second slide, and make the pictures come in one at a time. We change to the Custom Animation Task Pane, and assign each picture its own Entrance Effect, in the order we want them to appear.

Figure 422

When we're done, we go to the first slide and make those objects appear one at a time as well. We can see the results in the Order List in the Custom Animation Task Pane.

Figure 423

We want music! Click Insert > Movies and Sounds > Sound from File, and select a tune to work in the project.

Figure 424

Now, we need to set it to play automatically.

Figure 425

And we need to move the tune up in the Animation Order List to the top. We should also move the ugly speaker icon off the screen.

Figure 426

We're not quite done with the music; we need to make sure it plays all the way through. Click the down arrow on the sound in Custom Animation to locate Effect Options, and in the Play Sound dialog box, make sure it plays through the last slide in the show.

Figure 427

Now we're ready for the big show, and to automate the whole thing. We could have used Custom Animation to set everything on After Previous, but that's a whole lot of extra work.

TIP

If you want to add a slide transition, now is the time to do it. You can select both slides in Slide Sorter view and give them a Random Transition or choose an individual transition for each slide.

To automate making everything automatic – ho ho ho – we click Slide Show > Rehearse Timings.

Figure 428

Our slide show runs, and a tiny VCR-like control appears on the screen. We simply play our show the way we ordinarily would, making the elements enter with the mouse click in the time progression we want.

Figure 429

When the show is done, answer YES to the big question PowerPoint asks – do you want to save the timings?

Figure 430

Now each time the show runs, all the stuff happens automatically!

Try it and see.

TIP

If you are concerned about making changes or fine tuning, save a version of the presentation before doing the rehearsal and saving the timings.

An easy way to distribute this to people with PowerPoint is Saving As a *.PPS Show file; that opens the show automatically.

Figure 431

A cool alternative, if you have PowerPoint 2003, is to use Package to CD under the File menu, and either burn the package to a disc or save it all to a local folder first.

This will also include the New PowerPoint Viewer, letting anyone with Windows XP watch the show even if they don't have PowerPoint installed.

Figure 432

TIP

This also makes it possible to add a movie to the presentation. The Pack to CD feature includes the movie and its links in the final package.

You can send the entire folder as a Compressed Zip Folder and have the recipient open the Viewer to watch the show.

If you're worried about file size, or the fact that some folks don't have PowerPoint, use the File > Save as Web Page feature, and make sure you enable your slide animations in the Web Options panel inside the Publish wizard.

Figure 433

If that's not a viable option, you can send the web page to others via e-mail, particularly if you use the save as MHT file option we described in an earlier update. You will lose the music and you can't use video, but this allows you to send a single file viewable in Internet Explorer; otherwise, you need to send the HTM file and the supporting folder of images.

In any case, you've created a totally original holiday greeting for your family and friends, and you've learned how to use the advanced features of PowerPoint at the same time.

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