We’ve just found an interview with Claudyne Wilder, where she spoke about the new edition of her best-selling book Point, Click & Wow.

For those of you who read Indezine  - there’s a special offer on right now.

“This book is worth its weight in gold. Once you buy it, you’ll have, in one place, a fantastic resource that can unlock for you all the secrets of the greatest presenters. It not only covers the 3 Ts (presentation tips, techniques and technologies) it also helps you to understand and connect with your audience so that you can be a much more successful and relaxed presenter than you may have ever thought possible. And, thanks to Claudyne’s enthusiasm for the subject, you’ll find Point, Click and Wow! to be a fun read, as well!”
- Dennis Ricks, President & CEO, CrystalGraphics, Inc

You can order the book now directly from Claudyne, and receive a free Delivery Skills job aid card, plus one of her PowerPoint formats from her CD: Presentations in a Hurry!!

This offer ends on January 31st, 2009.

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!

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.

So you’ve finished your Business PowerPoint presentation. Everyone’s enjoyed what you’ve had to say - and it’s now time for questions.

“Would you mind going back to the slide with the pretty graph on” a member of the audience asks.

So you hit escape, reveal the photo of your daughter with jam on her face on your desktop, amongst the 35 other icons of stuff, including a link to one of your audience’s competitors who you’re pitching to later in the day…

How about you get organised and professional!?

Step 1

Always end you presentation with a Q&A / Thank you slide - as opposed to you being surprised it was the last slide.

Step 2

Always ensure that you have a print out of handouts with you.

Step3

When someone asks you to go back to a particular slide - you will still be in “Full Screen mode” because you are on your holding last slide. Refer to your hand out to see which slide number you need to go to and then…

Type the slide number on the keyboard followed by “Enter” and PowerPoint will automatically jump to that slide.

If you want to divert the audience’s attention away from the screen to focus on you… either press “W” for a blank white screen or (surprise, surprise) “B” for a blank black screen.

Genius!

So then, you’re one of the lucky/unlucky ones (delete as applicable) and have a shiny new copy of Office 2007 on your desktop - the envy of the office no doubt… until you try to send them a PPT file. Of course they can’t open it - nor can the client you’ve just sent it to either. Two phone calls / emails (delete as applicable) in the space of 5 mins as they anxiously try to get into your fine presentation work.

You could of course send them to the PowerPoint convert zone right here on this site… or you could get smart and set your application up correctly… just like this in fact:

For Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007, if you use the following technique as soon as you install the Office 2007 software, you will ensure you never get that frustrated colleague on the phone.

Step 1: Click on ‘POWERPOINT OPTIONS’

PowerPoint 2007 options screen

Step 2: Select ‘SAVE’ from the sidebar.

Step 3: Select the top drop down - ‘Save files in this format’ and select ‘PowerPoint Presentation 97-2003′.

Being smarter by saving down

As an optional extra - another really useful box to check is the ‘Embed fonts in the file’ box. In Office 2007 there are a number of extra fonts included - Calibri being one, which are not included in Office 2003 and earlier. If you have been building a presentation in Office 2007 using Calibri and send it on to a colleague with Office 2003, it will not look as expected, as they do not have the font. Selecting this box will make the file a little larger, however it will ensure the presentation reads correctly.

Step 4: Select OK.

Point to note - when saving PowerPoint 2007 files (.pptx) down to PowerPoint 2003 (.ppt) there would be a minor loss of fidelity if you’ve used advanced features in the file - for example Smart Art. The file will look correct, however users of PowerPoint 2003 will not be able to edit that particular slide using the Smart Art functionality.

I’ve used this ’save down’ feature for about 18 months now - and it’s never caused a problem yet! Compare that with the number of times around the office have I heard frustrated Business PowerPoint colleagues with file version problems!

Being Smarter - it’s the name of the game.

The first method of conversion from PowerPoint 97,2000,2003 (.ppt) or PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx) in our PowerPoint convert zone is aimed more at users who are likely to save PowerPoint files (or any other Office document types for that matter) as .PDFs on a regular basis.

It’s not well known or publicised (like so many things in life) that PowerPoint can save files as PDFs from inside the program, using FILE > SAVE AS. Unfortunately, unless you download the add-in (plug-in), it isn’t a piece of functionality which comes as standard (unhelpful or what?!)

This method will only work for Office 2007. Once the add-in has been installed, it will provide this conversion functionality in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Firstly, click http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA101675271033.aspx

It will take you to this office online page:

Office Online

Select the Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS Add-in for 2007 Microsoft Office programs link (don’t you just love Microsoft’s brevity in their product naming!)

It will then take you to a validation page to ensure that you are using a genuine version of Microsoft Office. If yours is not - then I suggest you leave here and go and buy a legitimate copy…

Click the ‘continue’ button. You may have to install a small piece of software if using Internet Explorer. You will then get a validation code to paste into the Step 2 box.

Press the download button and then I would suggest you select ‘RUN’ as opposed to ‘SAVE’ when the download box appears. The application will then download. Follow the simple wizard and it will install.

If you then open PowerPoint 2007, at first glance it’s not obvious that anything’s happened. Go to the ‘SAVE AS’ drop down… and lo and behold, you can now save to PDF, like any other file. Excellent - a really easy way to protect and distribute those Business PowerPoint presentations.

PDF add-in - simple, free and convenient