As ever, the folks at Lifehacker.com are on the ball and have spotted this new application which allow you to produce, edit and share Business Powerpoint style presentations online at 280 slides.

Check out the post and screenshots here.

This step-by-step ‘PowerPoint Convert’ guide illustrates how to convert a Business PowerPoint slide show into the YouTube video format (MP4) so you can share presentations with a global audience.

Step 1: Open your presentation file in Slide Show mode to setup the exact time duration for each slide. There are two ways of doing this:

a) Use the “Record narration” feature if you want to include audio in your presentations. Record your voice as you move through the slides and click ‘yes’ when you are prompted to save the changes.

b) Use “Rehearse timings”  for silent PowerPoint videos. This option lets you define how long a slide should display on the screen before the presentation move to the next slide.

Enhance your ppt first of all

Step 2: To continue with the process, you will need to register (for free) at www.authorstream.com and upload the PPT file you saved in Step 1. AuthorStream is a hosting service where you can upload PowerPoint files as large as 1GB

Step 3: Once registered, click on the ‘Upload PowerPoint’ tab and follow the instructions:

authorstream upload screen

Step 4: Once uploaded, AuthorStream will convert the PowerPoint file into a MPEG4 video (mp4) that can be uploaded to YouTube or can be watched on an iPod.

This is not an instantaneous process, but depending on the file size, you will get an email notification as soon as your PowerPoint video is ready for download from the web.

Success!

Step 5: Log in to YouTube and upload your newly created MP4 file, ready for broadcasting and sharing with the world!

All of the Microsoft Office 2007 applications have the option to change the color scheme of the application. The default color scheme is light blue and if you’re like me and like a bit of variation in your life from time time, then dive in and give it a go. On a serious note - screen aesthetics - layout and colour are a big subject, covered all over the web. If you spend 8 hours looking at a screen - you may as well look at a screen you actually get on with.

Business PowerPoint takes a look below at how to change it…

To change the color scheme, click on the Office button on the top left hand corner.

Click the PowerPoint Options and highlight the Popular tab. Here you can find the color schemes.

Colour scheme drop down

Note that if you change the scheme for PowerPoint 2007, it will also change in Excel 2007 and Word 2007 too.

This is how the different colours look:

Silver scheme

Black scheme

Go on and be adventurous - you might enjoy it…

Now this next tip may not seem like a Business Powerpoint concept at first glance - however I know from experience the number of times I’ve used PowerPoint to paste in a load of images or screenshots from a particular project to distribute to people. I wish I’d used this technique more often.

Typically, you go to a slide, insert > image from file > browse to the image > insert > resize it, align it on the page and then move on to the next one. If you’re doing this for 20 images - it’s going to take 20 minutes. If you then need to go back and change the style for each of them - there’s another 5 mins gone from your day.

I’ve just created a deck with 50 images in it, neatly sized, framed and aligned in 10 seconds… Let me show you how it’s done using PowerPoint 2007 (although the same functionality is in PowerPoint 2003:

Create a new deck and then choose Insert > PhotoAlbum > New PhotoAlbum.

Add a new PhotoAlbum

A pop-up window opens. Select the photos you want to insert in the album. After adding the photos, you can rotate them or change brightness/contrast if you wish. You can also choose how many to place on each page. The full screen option is really useful.

Photo Album dialogue

You can also select a theme for the photo album from the theme folder which should open by default.

Once completed, click “create” and your photo album is ready for distribution.

The finished product

You can now prepare for that 21st birthday speech or board presentation and worry about the jokes, rather than the formatting.

The power of the ALT key

As an example, if you wanted to insert a text box: Click “ALT” and you will see N under the title ‘Insert’ in the menu bar. Press “N” and you will be taken to the ribbon options for Insert and there you will see again all the keyboard shortcuts for different features. “X” is used to insert a text box.

Some cool shortcuts

Whilst I could give you a huge long list of keyboard shortcuts for you to memorise for PowerPoint 2007 and earlier versions, I thought I’d just give you some ‘cool’ ones… well I think they are anyway.

When editing…

It’s annoying when things ’snap to grid’ when you don’t want them to. Next time that happens when you are dragging or resizing things - press “ALT” at the same time - and you will find you have then got complete control over what you are moving.

To resize an object but retain its proportions, hold down “SHIFT” at the same time as dragging.

Watch a presentation from the slide you are on in slide show mode when editing CTRL F5

Whilst actually presenting…

Go to Slide <number>          <number> ENTER
Black/Unblack Screen            B or .
White/Unwhite Screen           W or ,
Show/Hide Pointer                 A or =
Erase Screen Annotations      E

For those of you who are interested in experimenting in the Business PowerPoint world - this is very cool. A new ‘add-in’ from the little known folks at the Microsoft Office labs (who actually do really good stuff but don’t shout about it).

‘pptPlex’ is a research prototype as an exploration of an alternative method of presenting Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 slides. This plug-in allows you to arrange slides on a canvas then zoom between the slides during the presentation. You can move around the canvas and show groups of slides, individual slides, or even zoom in to show a particular section of a slide.

It was originally demonstrated by Bill Gates at the MS CEO Summit 2008.

The best way to see what it is all about is to watch the video. It’s a short 1′12″ video (I just wish the presenter didn’t have a cold!)

If you like what you see, click here to download, install and play!

Welcome to Business PowerPoint - part of the Being Smarter network - making people’s lives easier and boosting business performance.

I’ve spent the last 15 years working in large and small business and have often been frustrated with the way people shy away from using technology - they put it into the ‘too difficult pile’. If you invest time in learning some of the useful bits of technology it can make your life so much easier and give you more time to do the things you actually should be doing. It can also make you look good too!

Business Powerpoint is a growing resource of PowerPoint tips to make your time spent creating presentations shorter and more productive. More and more it seems that the business tool of choice for creating almost any type of business document is PowerPoint. This site aims to help you get the most from the application - whatever version of it you are using.

The Powerpoint Convert zone shows you ten different ways of converting your .PPT and .PPTX presentations to different formats for sharing and distribution.

The PPT template zone shows you how to get the most of the .POT format - not everyone really understands how to use it properly. It then contains a number of links to free template downloads for creating that specific presentation.

The PowerPoint tips zone is a place for all sorts of top tips on how to do things quicker, smarter, better within the application. I bet there’s at least one thing you could pick up and use straight away you never knew… there’s my challenge to you!

Enjoy the site and let me know what other things you’d like to see covered.

Many people choose to print handouts to give out before / after giving a Business PowerPoint presentation. I will lay a little bet with you that when you print out handouts in black and white, when graphics are involved, they often don’t come out as you would expect.

There’s an easy way to fix this…

From the “view” menu choose “black & white”. This will show you what your hardcopy will look like.

Greyscale toolbar

To alter the way any object will print, simply right click on that object, and then choose the appropriate option. ie. “Black with White Fill”. In PowerPoint 2007 you will also find tone versions in the ribbon toolbar as shown above.

It’s always a good last minute check to make before you distribute your slides. No more saving two versions of a presentation (one for black & white, one for colour). Very handy.

Check back every now and again as Business PowerPoint will keep bringing you new links to tried and tested ppt template sites

Ppted is a series of powerpoint backgrounds and ppt templates for - collections include coordinated color schemes, slide and print backgrounds, and several collections include extras like wide screen variations
and transparent PNG graphics.

PowerFinish has a collection of excellent coordinated ppt templates to add impact to your presentation.

Crystal Graphics provides their range of excellent PowerPlugs templates “for energizing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations”.

Animation Factory has a range of ppt templates.

Template Ready provides several sets of professionally designed PPT templates.

123Ppt.com has PPT templates, a PowerPoint background section, photo library, fonts, background
music, sound effects, and presentation services.

DigitalJuice - a well known set of templates for PowerPoint - a huge collection spread over 15 CDs.

The PowerPoint Charts site has sets of pre-formatted charts, graphs, and tables for presentations.

Zapit Media offers PPT templates with functionality and impact at its core. They also have free samples.

Office3D’s PresentPack is a set of professionally designed templates.

Template Kit is a rich resource of corporate backgrounds for business PowerPoint creators.

aBetterPresentation.com has CDs of PPT templates in categories like Professional, Holiday, Church, Education, etc.

Compadre for PowerPoint is a set of over 120 templates from the company which also makes Amigo -
a great charting add-in.

PowerPoint Template CD.

Template Central is another repository of elegant PPT templates.

The PowerPoint Template Center has many templates you can download.

Business PowerPoint now examines the mystery of the ppt template.

A PPT template is a “pre-made” presentation environment. When a template is applied to a presentation, the Title Master and Slide Master (text slide or secondary slide) are pre-laid-out for you to add text and other objects, but with the typeface, font colour, and size already predetermined. Each of these attributes can still be manipulated on each and every individual slide if required.

To apply a PPT template to your PowerPoint 2007 presentation, follow the following simple steps:

Open PowerPoint, click “New” and then “Installed Templates”. Select “Photo Album” (as an example).

Select a ppt template (.potx)

Note that the presentation now opens with this preapplied template. The file that has been applied is a .potx file… a template file for PowerPoint 2007. Notice this is quite different to the .pptx file - the actual PowerPoint file you would want to save and work on. To illustrate the point, notice that this presentation has still not been saved - it’s still known to the system as Presentation2. You should save it straight away to ensure you don’t lose any data.

A PPT template and theme contains a bunch of pre-formatted elements including the colour scheme:

Theme colours

And slides being the most important. If you select “New Slide” from the menu - you will see the many different templated slides, ready for insertion into the presentation.

New slides

One of the best tips I can offer is to use the “Slide Master” page to design the style of your pages BEFORE you start designing your presentation.

This is the place to put your company logo for example, rather than placing it on every single slide. This will save oodles of filespace and will ensure it’s always in the right position on every slide.

For links to ppt template galleries, click here.