Alt-1 takes you to the top-level folder of the drive on which Windows (and usually your other software) is installed.
Alt-2 takes you up one folder level.
Alt-3 starts your Web browser and lets you search the Web for information.
Alt-4 deletes any selected file or files.
Alt-5 creates a new folder.
Alt-6 cycles among the various file views in the dialog box (List, Details, Properties, and Preview).
Alt-7 opens the Tools pop-up menu. Use the arrow keys to highlight the option you want from it, then press Enter to choose it.

RIGHT-SIZING PICTURES.
When you insert scans and other similar digital pictures into PowerPoint, you walk a fine line between choosing an image that's too big (and that slows down your presentation) and choosing one that's too small (resulting in the dreaded "jaggies" when you display it). How do you know what the ideal size for an image should be?
If your presentation is intended for screen show for use on a laptop, monitor, or video projector, deciding the correct size for the image is actually pretty simple. You need to know the video resolution of the computer the show will run on first. To find this out, right-click the desktop and choose Properties from the pop-up menu. On the Settings tab, you'll find the current resolution listed under Screen Area. A common value you'll find there is 800x600 pixels for laptops or 1024x768 for desktop machines.
For images that will occupy the entire screen, that's your answer. If the screen itself is 800x600 pixels, you want your full screen images to be 800x600 pixels also. If your images are a little larger or smaller than this, it's probably nothing to worry about--just use them as is. But if they're considerably larger, try using a paint program to "downsample" them to the correct size. They'll display faster and probably will look better on screen.
If you'll be using an image smaller than full screen, it needs proportionally fewer pixels. For example, if the image will occupy only one-quarter of an 800x600-pixel screen, it needs to be only 800/4, or 200, pixels wide.
If you're interested in learning more about resolution, scanning tips, and the like, visit Wayne Fulton's excellent Scan Tips site at http://scantips.com

PRESENTATION ADVICE.
Looking for some concise, simple advice about how to put together an effective, compelling PowerPoint presentation? Pay a visit to http://www.altman.com/0100.htm and read The Art and Science of Presentation Graphics. If you use CorelDRAW to produce graphics for your PowerPoint presentations, take the time to browse the rest of Rick Altman's site. There's plenty of useful information here for Draw and Ventura Publisher users.

HIDING SLIDES Version 4.x, 95
When you create a PowerPoint slide show you may not want to show all the slides to all audiences. To hide a slide, choose View|Slide Sorter. Click the slide you want to hide and then choose Tools|Hide Slide. Now when you run the slide show, the hidden slides will be skipped.
As sure as you hide a slide, someone in the audience will ask for information on the hidden topic. If this happens to you, you can show the hidden slide with a minimum of fluster. When a hidden slide is next in line, a large asterisk appears in the slide window near the lower-right corner. When you click on the asterisk, PowerPoint will move to the hidden slide and display it. Note: You may have to move the mouse slightly to make the asterisk appear.

FANCY POWERPOINT ANIMATION
Want to use some really cool animation in a PowerPoint slide? If so, read on.
In PowerPoint 97, you can make a Clip Art figure come together a little at a time. To check this out, insert a Clip Art picture. Click on the picture to select it and choose Draw|Ungroup. Click on Yes when the dialog box appears and then click somewhere away from the drawing to deselect it. Now click on Custom Animation in the Animation effects floating toolbar. (It's the only one available at this point).
When the Custom Animation dialog box opens, you will see a list of items labeled Freeform 1, Freeform 2, etc. Their names depend on what the original objects were; for example an oval will be called Oval 1, a rectangle will be named Rectangle 1, text will be called Text 1, etc.

POWERPOINT TEXT
Many designers use the existing templates when designing a slide presentation. It's easy to add text when all you have to do is click once in the right spot and type away.

MUSICAL SLIDES
If you'd like to add some background sound to your PowerPoint slide presentation, choose Insert|Movies and Sounds|Play CD Audio Track. When you insert the CD sound object, PowerPoint will open a dialog box in which you can set the playing conditions (number of tracks, loop).

Since the previous event is the opening of the slide, the CD will begin playing x (whatever you chose) seconds after you open your first slide

SEND IT TO POWERPOINT Version 4.x, 95
If you write your PowerPoint outlines in Word, here's a tip you can use. Open Windows Explorer and locate the PowerPoint.exe file (its location depends on where you put it during installation). Next, open the Windows folder in Explorer's left pane and scroll down so you can see the SendTo folder. Now use the right mouse button to drag the PowerPoint.exe icon to the SendTo folder. When the icon is over the folder, release the button and then choose Create Shortcut(s) Here.
Now, to get your Word outline quickly into PowerPoint, just right-click on the file in Windows Explorer and then choose Send To|PowerPoint.

Here's how to set it up. Open Windows Explorer and locate the PowerPoint.exe file (depends on where you put it during installation--the default is C:\Program File\MS Office 97). Now double-click on the Windows folder in Explorer's left pane and scroll down so you can see the Send To folder. Now use the right-mouse button to drag the PowerPoint.exe icon to the Send To folder. When the icon is over the folder, release the button and then choose Create Shortcut(s) Here.

ALIGNING POWERPOINT OBJECTS
When you have a group of objects on a PowerPoint slide, you may want to align all of them so that they fall into the general categories of left, center, or right. Unfortunately, some users find this procedure difficult. It isn't difficult; it's just that it requires two steps.
Let's say you have three randomly placed objects on your slide and you'd like to place the top one on the left, the center one in the center, and the bottom one on the right.
You need to tell PowerPoint what kind of alignment you want to use now. So click on Draw (at the bottom left of the PowerPoint window) and choose Align or Distribute|Relative To Slide. Now you're ready to click on the top object to select it.
Once the object is selected, click on Draw and choose Align or Distribute. When the submenu opens, choose Align Left, Center, or Right--or even Top, Middle, or Bottom).

PICKING UP A POWERPOINT STYLE Version 4.x, 95
Say you have a PowerPoint slide with a picture that you've spent quite a bit of time getting to look just right. Perhaps you've added some shading or made some other style changes.
Now let's suppose that you'd like to use the same style with other pictures. You don't have to go through all the steps with the remaining pictures--simply click on your perfect picture to select it. Next, choose Format|Pick up Object Style. Now go click on the picture to which you'd like to apply the style and choose Format|Apply Object Style. That's it--your perfect style will be applied to your new picture.

MORE POWERPOINT STYLE PICKUP Version 4.x, 95
We told you that you can copy a PowerPoint object's style by selecting the object and then choosing Format|Pick Up Object Style. Then you select a target object and choose Format|Apply Object Style.

BLACK-AND-WHITE SLIDES
When you create a PowerPoint slide show, you'll often find it convenient to print the slides, perhaps for handouts, and perhaps just for your own use. In any case, most of us end up printing the slides on a black-and-white laser printer.
If you'd like to see how your slides will look when printed in black and white, choose View|Black and White. This toggle command turns the entire slide show into black and white. When you select the command again, the color will come back. You may find the black-and-white slides somewhat disappointing. Some may be too dark to print well. If this is the case, right-click on the offending figure and choose from one of the options. Light Grayscale is a good first choice.
Changes you make via this method will not have any effect on your color slides. When you choose View|Black and White again, the full color returns.

PERFECT BLACK-AND-WHITE SLIDES Version 95
When you need to print slides for handouts, chances are you'll print them in black and white on a laser printer. You can print good quality slides on a laser printer, but usually not by good fortune alone. To see how those PowerPoint slides will look in black and white, click on the B&W View button in the toolbar. It's the button that has blue, green, and red on the top left diagonal corner, and white, gray, and black in the bottom left diagonal.
When you click on the B&W View button, all your slides will display as gray scale. And you'll probably notice that many of them look too dark to print well. To correct the situation, right-click on the slide and Black and White|Light Grayscale from the menu. This is usually a good choice for black-and-white printing.
When you're finished, click on the B&W View button to toggle back to color. Selections that you made from the Black and White menu have no effect on the color version of the slides.

MICROSOFT GRAPH IN POWERPOINT
If you're working in PowerPoint and would like to insert an existing chart into a new presentation, here's how: When you create a new slide, PowerPoint displays the New Slide dialog box to let you choose the type of slide you want. There are 24 slide layouts available, and three of them include chart placeholders. These three have a chart graphic on them. If counting from left to right in the New Slide dialog box, they are slides number 5, 6, and 8. After you select one of these three slide formats, you can insert a chart by simply double-clicking inside the chart graphic.

POWERPOINT PRINTING Version 4.x, 95
When you choose File|Print in PowerPoint, note that you have several options. If you click on the down arrow at the right of the Print What list box to expand the list, you'll see them. You can select from Slides (the default), Handouts (two slides per page, three slides per page, six slides per page), Notes Pages, or Outline View. Make your choice and click on OK to continue.

INSERTING A CHART IN AN EXISTING SLIDE
In the last tip, we told you how to insert a chart in a new slide (click on New, select slide number 5, 6, or 8 from the New Slide dialog box and double-click on the chart graphic). There are times when you might like to place a chart on an existing slide. To do this, choose Insert, Chart and then place and size the chart to suit the slide.

MANUAL ANIMATION IN POWERPOINT
Although you can automate almost everything in a PowerPoint slide, you may prefer to initiate some action manually. The problem with using all automatic animation is that you're tied to the timing of the slide show. When you need to allow some flexible time for questions and comments, you should consider triggering some of your slide animation manually.
Let's say that on a particular slide, you'd like for an object to move into the slide from the left. Right-click on the object you want to animate. When the menu opens, choose Custom Animation. Click on the Effects tab and choose the animation effect that you want to apply to the object. Now click on the Timings tab and select the Animate and the On Mouse Click radio buttons. Click on OK to close the dialog box and record your changes. Now choose View, Slide Show and click on the mouse button to initiate the animation.

SIGNMAKER
PowerPoint does a great job with slides. But you're not limited to only slides. PowerPoint can be quite a sign maker too. To use PowerPoint for signs, you should choose File, Page Setup and then click on the arrow at the right side of the Slides Sized For list box to expand the list. Select Letter Paper. Click on OK to close the dialog box and store your changes. Now go ahead and make your sign. If you have a color printer, you can produce some especially cool stuff.
You can also use PowerPoint to make banners. Just choose File, Page Setup and then select Banner from the Slides Sized For list box. Now click on OK and make your banner.

INSERTING A MICROSOFT GRAPH IN POWERPOINT
If you're developing a new slide show and want to use some charts, you can use them very easily by selecting the right slide type up front. When you create a new slide, PowerPoint opens the New Slide dialog box from which you can select the type of slide you want. There are 24 slide layouts available, and three of them include chart placeholders. The three that use charts are (counting from left to right in the dialog box) slides five, six, and eight. After you select one of these three slide formats, you can insert a slide by simply double-clicking inside the chart graphic.

PASTING FROM POWERPOINT
In previous tips, we've discussed linking (and pasting) objects from Office programs into other Office programs using the Paste Special command. For example, you can link Excel worksheets to Word documents by copying the worksheet and then choosing Edit, Paste Special in Word. However, you can't link PowerPoint files to another program's documents by using the Paste Special command.
If you select and copy a PowerPoint slide, you can move to a Word document and choose Edit, Paste, or Edit, Paste Special. If you choose Paste Special, you'll notice that linking is not an option. So you might as well just save time and choose Paste.

If you want to link a PowerPoint slide to a Word document, choose Insert, Object, and click on Create From File. Select Link To File and then click on Browse to choose the file. Select the file and click on OK. When you get back to the Object dialog box, click on OK to insert the file and close the dialog box.

ROTATING AND FLIPPING
When you draw objects in PowerPoint (or other Microsoft Office 97 applications) you can add interest to your slides by rotating or flipping some of the objects. Let's say you have one of your own drawings on a PowerPoint slide. If you'd like to show the same object or alter the slide using a different view, you can select the object, choose Ctrl-C to copy it, and then move to a new slide and choose Ctrl-V to paste it.
Now that your object is in place on the new slide, click on it to select it and click on the Free Rotate tool in the Drawing toolbar (it's a circle with a green dot in the center). Now you can grab a corner of the object to rotate it. If you'd like to flip the object, select it and choose Draw, Rotate or Flip and then choose the type of Flip you want to apply.
You'll notice that you can't rotate or flip ClipArt objects because you can only work with PowerPoint objects. As we've mentioned before, you can convert ClipArt to PowerPoint objects. To do this, select the object and choose Draw, Ungroup. You'll be asked if you really want to covert the object. Say yes.
Now, leave the object selected and choose Draw, Group. The object is now a PowerPoint object; you can flip it or rotate it to your heart's content.

USING TABLES IN POWERPOINT
You use tables in Word. Why not use of some of those attractive, and very clear, Word tables in your PowerPoint slides?
Let's say you're working on a presentation and you already have a table in a Word document that describes a particular operation. There's no point in spending a bunch of time redoing the whole thing for your PowerPoint presentation.
Get the table just the way you want it. Use AutoFormat to choose the most attractive format. You might want to change the format because what looks good on paper might not look as good as a slide. Now select the table and then press Ctrl-C to copy it. Now open your PowerPoint slide and press Ctrl-V to paste the table into the slide.
Once you've pasted the table into the PowerPoint slide, you can use the mouse to size and place the table.

ANOTHER APPROACH TO ANIMATION
We've often described methods that you can use to add animation to your PowerPoint slides. Here's another one that you might like to try.
You can create animation using PowerPoint's cropping feature. First, open a new slide and insert a picture. Choose Insert, Picture, Clip Art and insert the one of your choice. Now size and position the picture.
Click on the picture to select it and then press Ctrl-C to copy it. Press Ctrl-M to create a new slide and press Ctrl-V to paste the picture into the new slide. Now select the picture and choose the Cropping tool from the Picture toolbar. Grab the picture by the top and drag down until you've cropped as much as you want. Once again, make sure the picture is selected (click on it if it isn't) and press Ctrl-C to copy the cropped picture.
Next, press Ctrl-M again to create a new slide and then press Ctrl-V to paste the copied picture. Keep repeating this procedure until you've created all the incremental views of the cropped image. When you view the slide show, the full image will appear on the first slide and then slowly disappear from the top down as the show runs.

Of course, you can also crop from the bottom up or from one of the sides. Or you could start with a cropped image and make it appear more fully in each slide. All you have to do is reverse the sequence--or use Slide Sorter to rearrange the slides you created.

SLIDE SHOWS ON THE WEB
If you'd like to see what you can do with PowerPoint in the way of Web publishing, check this out. Run PowerPoint and choose File, New. Now click on the Web Pages tab and then double-click on Sample Banner1.pot. Now choose Slide Show, View Show to see how the show looks in PowerPoint. At this point, you can save your new file. Choose File, Save As, give the file a name, and click on Save.

To make an HTML file, choose File, Save as HTML. When the wizard opens, click on Finish. After the files are saved, you can use your browser to view the files. Load Index.html.

ALIGNMENT Version 4.x, 95
When you have a group of objects on a PowerPoint slide, you may want to align all of them so that they fall into the general categories of left, centre, or right.

Let's say you have three pictures on a slide. You'd like to have them all appear to be standing on the same floor. Click one of the figures and then press and hold the Shift key while you click the other two to select them. Choose Draw, Align. Next select Bottoms. Now all the figures will be aligned across the bottom.

DISTORTING FOR APPEARANCE Version 4.x, 95
Ordinarily when we discuss resizing inserted pictures (such as Clip Art) we tell you how to do it without distorting the picture. There are times, though, when you might want to distort a picture to enhance its appearance. For example, suppose you're making up a document (Word or PowerPoint) for a weight-loss program. Perhaps you'd like to show a before-and-after cartoon. To do something like this, you could import one of the Clip Art images of a cartoon person. There are several available.

Since you may want to import the pictures into a Word document, press Ctrl-A to select both and then choose Draw, Group. From now on they'll stay together. You can click the picture and choose Edit, Copy to copy it to the Clipboard. Then you can move to Word and choose Edit, Paste to paste the picture into your Word document.

CHANGING SLIDE BACKGROUNDS
You can change the background of all the slides in a slide show. Alternatively, you can change the background of just one slide (or as many as you like).

Be careful with this feature. You can very easily change the background so drastically that the slide will give the audience a bit of a shock when it appears. If you decide to use different backgrounds during a slide show, make sure you make several practice presentations and ask for opinions on the background change. If you get even one negative comment, reconsider the background change.

TABLES
Although PowerPoint doesn't offer a way to create tables, there's nothing keeping you from importing a table from Word or Excel.   Look in the PowerPoint toolbar and you'll find a button with the Word W in its icon. Usually right next to the Word button, you'll see a button with the Excel X in its icon. These buttons are Insert Microsoft Word Table, and Insert Microsoft Excel Worksheet.
Click the Insert Microsoft Word Table button. A menu of 20 squares (a five-by-four table) will open. Select from this menu to tell PowerPoint what kind of table you want to insert. Once the table is in place, you can deal with it just as you would in Word.
To see how Excel works in PowerPoint, click the Insert Microsoft Excel Worksheet and then choose from the menu just as described for the Word table.

EXPAND
PowerPoint 97 has a new command that you might find useful--especially when you're trying to cram a lot of info into a slide show. The command is called Expand Slide. When you have a slide that looks a bit too crowded with text, you can see how Expand Slide works. So, open a blank slide, one that has text boxes in place, and add text. Then add some more text, and when you're finished, add some text. Now, to make the test a bit simpler, choose View, Slide Sorter. Next, choose Tools, Expand Slide. PowerPoint will now split the text across a group of new slides. You can go with the PowerPoint version. You can also move parts of the expanded slide into a new slide and customise things a little.

SLIDE RECYCLING
If you've been doing PowerPoint presentations for quite a while, you may find that you could use some of your old slides--or at least parts of your old slides.
If you want to use the entire slide (maybe changing a date and a bit of text), all you have to do is select the old slide (Ctrl + A) and press Ctrl + C to copy it. Now move to a fresh slide in your new presentation and press Ctrl + V to paste it.
If you only need parts of the slide (perhaps some special drawings that you want to avoid re-doing) you can select only the part of the slide you want. Press Ctrl + C to copy the selected object and then move to the new slide and press Ctrl + V to paste.
If all the artwork is grouped together, and you want only a portion of it, select the whole thing and press Ctrl + C. Move to the new slide and press Ctrl + V to paste the object. Now, with the object selected, choose Draw, Ungroup. Now you can get rid of all the extraneous stuff. Just select it and press Delete.
Remember that you can't ungroup BMP files, so there's no easy way to grab part of a BMP picture.

MAKING THOSE CHARTS MOVE
In the previous tip, we pointed out that you can copy an Excel chart by right-clicking the chart and choosing Copy. Then you can move to PowerPoint and press Ctrl-V to paste the chart onto a PowerPoint slide.
Once the slide is in PowerPoint, you can animate those chart components if you wish. This is possible because you can Ungroup the chart. Try this:
Select the chart and choose Draw, Ungroup. Next, press Ctrl-A to select all the components. Now hold down the Shift key while you deselect all the chart components that you want to animate. Once you've deselected all the necessary components, release the Shift key and choose Draw, Group.
Now you can right-click the chart and choose Custom Animation. Click the Timing tab and select Animate. Select the components to animate and then click the Effects tab. Select the animation effect you want for each component. To see how your animation looks, click Preview. When you're finished, click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

POWERPOINT SLIDE SHOWS
When you're working on PowerPoint slide shows, you might find it handy to start those shows from your desktop. Run Windows Explorer and locate your slide show data file. Use the right-mouse button to drag the file's icon to the desktop. Release the mouse button and, when the menu opens, choose Create Shortcut(s) Here.
To run the slide show, right-click your new shortcut, and choose Show. PowerPoint will open, display your show, and then close.

RUN IT NOW
When you're working on PowerPoint slide shows, you might find it handy to start those shows from your desktop. Run Windows Explorer and locate your slide show data file. Use the right-mouse button to drag the file's icon to the desktop. Release the mouse button and, when the menu opens, choose Create Shortcut(s) Here.
To run the slide show, click your new shortcut and choose Show. PowerPoint will open, display your show, and then click to close.

USING BUTTONS TO NAVIGATE AMONG SLIDES
PowerPoint's Action Buttons open a whole world of versatility for slide-show producers. You can use a button to go anywhere from anywhere. You can even invoke a Web site on the Internet during your slide show (you'd better get connected ahead of time though--you don't want your audience to sit and wait while you dial your ISP). Let's look at some Action Buttons and their options.
Let's say your slide show requires a look at some data. And several times during the show, you need to refer to the same data slide. On any slide that refers to this data, place an Action Button. Let's set up an example slide show.

You can use any button to perform any operation. For example, the Previous Slide button in the Action Buttons box has a back arrow icon and defaults to a Previous Slide link. However, after you draw the button the Action Settings dialog box will open and you can choose any HyperLink condition you want.
The Action Buttons are extremely versatile. You can use them to navigate anywhere in your slide show, and you can insert any text into any button.

POWERPOINT HOLD
During a computer-based slide show, you may need to pause for a moment and explain something. Perhaps you have to deal with an unscheduled question. In any case, the best way to handle this pause is to stop showing slides. But, rather than letting the current PowerPoint slide stay on the screen while you address a point, why not turn the screen black?
To turn the screen black, simply press B. That's it--just press B for black. When you're ready to resume the show, press B again. Alternatively, you can pause a show with a white screen. To do this, press W. To resume, press W again.
To show or hide the pointer, press S. To go to the next slide (if the slide is hidden), press H. And you can end the slide show by pressing Esc.
Here's a trick that you might find useful: When you're at the last slide, and ready to end the show, press B to turn the screen black. Let the screen remain black until the audience is gone. Then press Esc to stop the slide show.

ONE LETTER AT A TIME
If you would like WordArt text to appear on a slide one letter at a time, just create each letter separately. For example, if you'd like to use WordArt to create the word Sell you can choose Insert, Picture, WordArt and choose the style you want. When the Edit WordArt Text dialog box appears, enter only the S. Repeat the procedure for the e, l, and l.
If you want all the letters to appear on the same line as though you had generated the word all at once, rather than as individual letters, click one of the letters and then press and hold the Shift key while you click the remaining letters. This will select all the letters. Next, choose Draw, Align or Distribute, Align Bottom. This will set all the letters to the level of the lowest letter.
To animate the letters, first right-click the last letter in the word and choose Custom Animation. When the Custom Animation dialog box opens, click the Effects tab. Click the arrow at the right of the Entry Animation list box to expand the list. Select the effect you want to use and click OK (we chose Appear). Repeat this process for each of the letters.
After you've chosen some animation for each letter, right-click one of the letters and choose Custom Animation. When the Custom animation dialog box opens, click the Timing tab. Now, select each of the objects and select a timing. After you select a timing for each letter, click OK.
You're ready to test your slide animation now. To do this, choose Slide Show, View Show.

A NOTABLE REHEARSAL
Here's a useful technique you can employ during your PowerPoint slide-show rehearsals.
When you rehearse a slide show before an audience, it's a good idea to make notes of the audience's comments. An easy way to do this is to use Meeting Minder. To use this utility during a slide show, right-click the current slide and choose Meeting Minder. Click the Notes Pages tab and enter your notes. Click OK to close the dialog box.
After the slide show, go to the slide for which you want to view notes and choose Tools, Meeting Minder. Click the Notes Pages tab and read your notes for that slide.

WORDART SHADOWS
Instinct and experience lead you to look in WordArt to add or delete WordArt shadows. However, there's nothing there that controls the shadows.
Here's what to do. Select the WordArt object by clicking it once. Now, click the Shadow icon in the Drawing toolbar (it looks like a square with a shadow). When the Shadow dialog box opens, click No Shadow. As you can see in the Shadow dialog box, this is also the place to change a shadow to a different type of shadow. And it's the place to go when you want to add a shadow where there is none.

SOFT SHADOWS.
You know you can add shadows to PowerPoint objects, but what some users don't realise is that you have a considerable amount of control over the appearance of the shadows. Let's take a look at how you can enhance the appearance of your slides with softer shadows for your art objects.
Open a blank slide and draw an oval (click the Oval button in the Drawing toolbar). Click the new oval to select it. Now, click the Shadow button (it looks like a square with a shadow behind it) and select a shadow type.
Click the Shadow button again. Click the button labelled Shadow Settings. When the Shadow Settings toolbar appears, click the list-box arrow at the right side of the Shadow Colour button (it's the rightmost button). For that softer shadow effect, click Semitransparent Shadow. If you like, you can also click More Shadow Colors and select a new colour for your shadow.
Note that there are also buttons you can use to nudge the shadow. This is an effective way to change the position of an apparent light source.

ANIMATION ZOOM
Although the zoom out animations are very effective in PowerPoint slides, we thought you'd like to know about a potential problem. Try this:
Run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt and double-click a picture to insert it onto the slide. Move the picture near the top of the slide using the mouse. Right-click the picture and choose Custom Animation. When the Custom Animation dialog box opens, click the Effects tab. Click the arrow at the right side of the Entry Animation list box to expand the list and then select Zoom Out From Screen Bottom. Now, click the Timing tab and select the radio buttons labelled Animate and On Mouse Click. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your selections.
To test the animation, choose Slide Show, View Show. When the slide show opens, click the mouse to see the animation. Now use the mouse to resize the ClipArt picture and test the animation again. If it still works, increase the size a bit more. You'll soon reach a size at which the animation will fail and the picture will simply appear on the screen. This isn't a big deal, but we wanted to let you know about it before you start wondering why some of your animation fails.

NETWORK PRESENTATION
If your system is attached to a network, you can present your slide show over the network. All you have to do is get the boss, or (more likely) one of the IT employees, to set up the computer and co-ordinate the show with you. At the boss' end, the IT person will have to run PowerPoint, choose a blank presentation, and choose Tools, Presentation Conference. When the Presentation Conference Wizard opens, the IT person needs to select Audience and click Next, then click Finish and wait for you to connect.
At your end, you need to choose Tools, Presentation Conference. When the Wizard opens, select Presenter and click Next. Now, select the tools you want to use and click Next (make sure you select Slide Navigator). Type in the computer name (we assume you already know this--the IT person in the boss' office will know) and click Add. Click Next and then click Finish.
When the connection is made, you'll see on your screen a slide show window, and all the necessary navigation tools. The boss, at the other end, will see only the slide show. When you finish the show, click End Show and then click OK.
This feature offers other useful possibilities. Let's say that you have a laptop that you can connect to the network. You could then connect to a desktop computer that's driving a large screen monitor and control the whole show from a corner of the room.

DEFINED BOXES
"Why does Microsoft put titles in the defined boxes? If you choose a slide layout that has three of these boxes when you only need two, then you have to waste time deleting all that extra stuff so it won't appear on your slide show."
We have good news for you: That stuff won't appear on the slide during a show. You don't have to delete anything. And you only have to fill in those areas on the slide template that you want to fill in. Give this a try. Run PowerPoint and choose one of the predefined layouts. Let's say the layout says Click to Add Title, and Click to Add Text. Before you do anything else, choose Slide Show, View Show. When the show starts, you'll see nothing but a blank slide. The prompting text doesn't appear. So, if you choose not to place a title in the Title box, that space will appear empty in the slide presentation.

OUTSTANDING OBJECTS
Frequently, you can apply 3-D effects to a ClipArt object to enhance its appearance. Let's take a look at an enhanced map.
Run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt and then select Maps - U.S. Double-click one of the U.S. maps to insert it. Now choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt again and this time, double-click one of the states to insert it into your slide. Now, select the state and choose Draw, Ungroup to ungroup the picture. When asked if you're sure you want to do this, click Yes.
With the state selected, click the 3-D button (the icon resembles a 3-D cube). For the purpose of this example, select the 3-D effect that shows a long shadow to the left (3-D Style 16).
Click the state map to select it and choose Draw, Order, Bring to Front. Now, you can adjust the size and position of the two pictures to make it appear that the large 3-D state map rises out of that state's location on the U.S. map.

BACKGROUND EFFECTS
There are all kinds of animation tricks you can use with your PowerPoint slide show presentations. Most of these animations deal with objects on the slides. Another useful approach is to animate the background. If you change the background from one slide to the next, you can approximate some of the techniques used in TV commercials.
Run PowerPoint, open a slide show and right-click the first slide. When the Background dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the Background Fill list box. When the list expands, click More Colors and then click the Custom tab. Choose a colour and click OK. Back in the Background dialog box, click Apply.
Now, move to the next slide and repeat, this time choosing a different shade of the same colour. Continue for as many slides as needed. When you run the slide show, the background will progressively change shades. Of course, the more slides you use, the more subtle the change will be between each one.

SLIDE EFFECTS
Remember the first time you saw the Wizard of Oz? Remember how striking it was when the film suddenly went from black and white to colour? Well, you can use the same technique in PowerPoint slide shows. Open a blank PowerPoint slide and choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt. Select a picture and double-click to insert it. Use the mouse to size the picture and locate it where you want it to appear on the slide. Now, make sure the picture is selected and press Ctrl-C to copy it. Next, press Ctrl-M to insert a blank slide. Press Ctrl-V to paste the picture onto the new slide.
Go back to the first slide now and select the picture by clicking it. The Picture toolbar will open when you select the picture. (If it doesn't appear, simply right-click on the image when it is highlighted, then click Show Picture Toolbar. You may now move it up and place it on your toolbar.) Click the Image Control button (its icon is two bars--one greyscale and one black and white) and choose Grayscale.
Now, choose Slide Show, View Show. When the first slide appears, click the mouse to move to the second slide. The picture will remain in place, but will suddenly appear in colour.

TEXT & CLIPART
If you need to place some standard text over ClipArt pictures in a PowerPoint slide choose the Text tool (the button's icon is a large "A") and draw your text outline. Type in the text and then click away from the text. Now, click on the text. When the outline appears, grab the edge with the mouse, and move the text over your picture.
If the picture is dark, you may want to change the text colour so it will show up over the picture. To do this, select the text and choose Format, Font. When the Font dialog box appears, click the arrow at the right side of the Color list box and choose a new colour. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

ANIMATING CLIPART
You can greatly enhance such animation if you set the timing between slides to zero. When you do this, the slides will run at the maximum speed of the computer.
As we've mentioned in the past, you can ungroup a ClipArt picture and then place a different view of the picture on a series of slides to produce animation. Let's say you insert a picture (choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt). Select the picture and then choose Draw, Ungroup. Now, click away from the picture and then press Ctrl-A to select everything on the slide. Press Ctrl-C to copy the selection and then press Ctrl-M to insert a new slide. Once the new slide is in place, press Ctrl-V to copy the ClipArt to the new slide.
Now, select a portion of the picture and move it slightly away from the remainder of the picture. Press Ctrl-A again and then press Ctrl-C to make a copy. Press Ctrl-M to insert a new slide, and then press Ctrl-V to copy the picture. Now, select the same portion of the picture and move it a bit farther away from the main picture. Repeat this process for as many new slides as you need to produce reasonably smooth animation.
If you now choose Slide Show, Slide Transition and then select the check box labelled Automatically After. Then you enter zero (0) into the Seconds entry box. Click Apply to All to set the timing to zero on all the slides in the show and close the dialog box. Now, choose Slide Show, View Show, and you'll see that the animation is very quick.
You should give this a try to see if you like the effect. However, the speed depends on the computer's clock speed and a number of other factors. The animation may appear rather jerky at times because the computer is doing another job. You'll have to judge for yourself whether this technique is useful to you in any given show. Also, when you take your slide show out on the road, you may not know how the effect will work on whatever computer you'll be using.
When you set transitions to zero, they can be erratic because it leaves your timing at the mercy of the computer: The transitions occur when the computer has time to make them. If the computer is slow, the transitions will be slow. If the computer is busy with another job when the time comes for a transition, the transition has to wait. You should only set transitions to zero when it's absolutely necessary and when you can use a pretested computer.
The reason you might try zero to see how it works is that PowerPoint doesn't allow controlled transitions of less than one second. So you have no choices between zero and one. Therefore, if the transition you need to use doesn't work well at zero, you have no choice but to go with one second as a minimum.

RECOLOURING CLIPART
As we've discussed in the past, you can insert ClipArt pictures into PowerPoint slides and then recolour the pictures. Under some circumstances, you can inadvertently mess up colours in subsequent ClipArt pictures. Let's give this a try.
Open a blank PowerPoint slide and choose Insert, ClipArt. Select a picture with a lot of solid colour--we used the U.S. Flag. Right-click the object and choose Recolor. When the Recolor Picture dialog box opens, select your picture's predominant colour (we chose red) and then click the arrow at the right side of the New Color list. Choose a new colour (such as green or light blue) and click OK.
Now we have a green, white, and blue flag. Let's say we now decide to use the Canadian Flag instead of the U.S. Flag. So, we double-click the picture to open the Clip Gallery. We find the Canadian Flag and double-click it to insert it into the slide in place of the U.S. Flag. The Canadian Flag is now green and white, rather than red and white.
The recolour operation is carried over when you insert a new picture this way. To insert a new picture without the format change, simply choose Insert, ClipArt and select the new picture. This new picture will carry its original formatting.

EASY AS PIE
When you work with charts in PowerPoint, you have some options that you don't have in Excel. For example, if you'd like to use some ClipArt pictures along with your pie chart (or other chart types), you can follow the procedure discussed here.
Although you can insert a ClipArt picture onto the slide and then drag it over the chart area, this doesn't attach the ClipArt to the chart in any way. To associate the ClipArt with the chart, first insert the ClipArt as you normally would (choose Insert, ClipArt and select a picture to insert). Once the ClipArt is present on the slide, click it to select it and then press Ctrl-X to cut the picture and place it on the Clipboard. Now, double-click inside the chart area and then choose Edit, Paste.

CURTAIN UP - Version 4.x, 95
Would like to be able to start a slide show by clicking the presentation's icon?
When you double-click a presentation icon, PowerPoint merely opens with the presentation file loaded.
To start a slide show, locate the presentation's icon and right-click it. Choose Show from the menu and your show will start without visibly starting PowerPoint. When the show terminates (you press Esc or whatever you do to terminate your show) PowerPoint will close without your audience ever seeing it open.

GRAB THEIR ATTENTION - Version 4.x, 95
We ran a tip on how to set up a clock that displays how long it will be before the show starts. You could adapt that tip to create a "neon" sign. Let's run through the steps.
Open a new blank slide and click the Text tool (its icon is a big A). Now, use the mouse to draw the area where the text will appear. Type in your message--something like this:
The development seminar will begin shortly
Set the font and font size by selecting the text and choosing Format, Font. While you're in the Font dialog box, select a light grey for the text colour. Click OK after you've made all your changes.
Now, press Ctrl-A to select all the objects on the slide. Next, create a new slide (press Ctrl-M) and then press Ctrl-V to paste the original slide contents onto the new slide. Select the text on the second slide and choose Format, Font. When the dialog box opens, choose a new colour for the text--choose a bright red or blue.
To make the text blink, choose View, Slide Sorter. Right-click the first slide and choose Slide Transition. When the dialog box opens, select Automatically After and enter 1. Repeat with the second slide. Now, choose View, Slide Show. When the Slide Show dialog box appears, select Use Slide Timings and Loop Continuously Until Esc, and then click Show. As PowerPoint cycles between the two slides the text will appear to blink on and off.

A CONVERSION MACRO
Let's say that you've just inserted a ClipArt picture into a PowerPoint slide. You'd like to rotate the picture, but the command isn't available. You can select the picture and choose Draw, Ungroup. You'll get a dialog box warning that you're about to convert the picture to a Microsoft Office drawing. Since this is exactly what you're after, click Yes to continue. If you only need to rotate the picture, and don't want to make any other changes, then you can immediately regroup the picture by choosing Draw, Group. Now, you can select the picture and choose the Rotate tool.
An easier way to do all this is to write a macro for the job. To write the macro, run PowerPoint and press Alt-F11 to open the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) editor. Choose Insert, Module. Enter the following exactly as shown here.

Sub Convert()
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.Ungroup.Select
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.Group.Select
End Sub

After you enter the code, choose File, Save As and save the presentation.
You might like to put the Convert macro button in the PowerPoint toolbar. To do this, choose View, Toolbars, Customize and click the Commands tab. Locate Macros in the Categories list and click it. Your new macro will appear on the right side of the dialog box under Commands. Now, use the mouse to drag Convert to the toolbar. When you locate a spot for the new button, release the mouse button. Click Close to close the dialog box and save your selections.
To use the macro, click once on an inserted ClipArt picture to select it and then click the Convert button. The macro will Ungroup the object and then immediately group it again. This converts the picture to a Microsoft Office drawing so you can use all of the standard drawing tools.
Note--this macro will run only in the current slide show.

CTRL EQUALS PERFECTION - Version 95
You may know that you can make a perfect circle or square in PowerPoint by selecting the appropriate tool and then holding down Shift while you draw the object. But what do you do if you've already created the drawing, and now you want to make it perfect? Just select the object and then hold down Ctrl while you double-click one of the corner sizing handles. If you want to change the size, hold down Shift while you resize the drawing.

SPOTLIGHT EFFECT.
Open a blank slide in PowerPoint and choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt. Choose a picture and click Insert. Size the picture and then click the Oval tool in the Drawing toolbar. Draw a circle that partially covers the ClipArt picture. With the circle selected, click the arrow at the right side of the Fill Color button (the icon looks like a bucket pouring paint). When the menu opens, choose More Fill Colors. Select the check box labelled Semitransparent and then choose a very light colour (white isn't a bad choice) from the colour list. After you make your selection, click OK to close the dialog box and save your new selections.
You can enhance the spotlight effect by carefully adjusting the colours of your ClipArt as well as the spotlight color.

CURTAIN UP - Version 4.x, 95.
Want to be able to start a slide show by clicking the presentation's icon? (when you double-click a presentation icon, PowerPoint merely opens with the presentation file loaded).
To start a slide show, locate the presentation's icon and right-click it. Choose Show from the menu and your show will start without visibly starting PowerPoint. When the show terminates (you press Esc or whatever you do to terminate your show) PowerPoint will close without your audience ever seeing it open.

A CONVERSION MACRO.
Let's say that you've just inserted a ClipArt picture into a PowerPoint slide. You'd like to rotate the picture, but the command isn't available. You can select the picture and choose Draw, Ungroup. You'll get a dialog box warning that you're about to convert the picture to a Microsoft Office drawing. Since this is exactly what you're after, click Yes to continue. If you only need to rotate the picture, and don't want to make any other changes, then you can immediately regroup the picture by choosing Draw, Group. Now, you can select the picture and choose the Rotate tool.
An easier way to do all this is to write a macro for the job. To write the macro, run PowerPoint and press Alt-F11 to open the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) editor. Choose Insert, Module. Enter the following exactly as shown here.

After you enter the code, choose File, Save As and save the presentation.
You might like to put the Convert macro button in the PowerPoint toolbar. To do this, choose View, Toolbars, Customize and click the Commands tab. Locate Macros in the Categories list and click it. Your new macro will appear on the right side of the dialog box under Commands. Now, use the mouse to drag Convert to the toolbar. When you locate a spot for the new button, release the mouse button. Click Close to close the dialog box and save your selections.
To use the macro, click once on an inserted ClipArt picture to select it and then click the Convert button. The macro will Ungroup the object and then immediately group it again. This converts the picture to a Microsoft Office drawing so you can use all of the standard drawing tools.
Note--this macro will run only in the current slide show.

EASTER EGG. - Version 95
If you'd like to view an Easter Egg in PowerPoint 95, choose Help, About Microsoft PowerPoint. When the dialog box opens, double-click the PowerPoint emblem in the upper-left corner of the dialog box. A window will open displaying the names of those who contributed to the development of the program. After you're finished viewing the credits, click the Close box at the upper-right corner of the window (the icon is an X).

ADD TEXT TO SHAPES - Version 4.x, 95.
You can add text to PowerPoint shapes as you draw the shapes or after the shape is already drawn and in place. Try this: Open a blank slide and select the Rectangle tool. Draw a rectangle and then, while the rectangle is still selected, type Rectangle Click somewhere away from the drawing to deselect the shape. Now, you can move or resize the shape, and the text will remain anchored to the shape.
To add text to an existing shape, select the shape and type in the text. Click away from the shape to deselect it. The result is exactly the same as if you typed in the text when you first drew the shape. So, if you don't know what text you want to use when you draw the shapes, you can always add the text later.

MICRO SELECTION
Q. Is there an easy way to select very small objects in a PowerPoint slide? I recently made a drawing that consisted of a set of ovals and rectangles. After I made all the components, I needed to move them into place. What I found was that I had trouble selecting the small objects to move them. Is there a way around this problem?
A. Here's a method for selecting even the smallest objects. Press Esc to make sure nothing is selected. Now, press the Tab key until you've selected the desired object.
You can use this technique to select very small objects and also to select objects that are hidden behind other objects. Try this: Draw a small rectangle. Now, draw a larger rectangle over it so you've completely obscured the small rectangle. Press Esc to make sure all the objects are deselected, then press Tab until you've selected the small rectangle.

SCROLLING CREDITS.
You may like to list all those who contributed to a slide show at the end of the show. Rather than just list the names, why not use scrolling credits--just like in the movies?
To create your scrolling credits, open a blank slide. Now, click the Text Box button in the Drawing toolbar and use the mouse to draw the box. At this point, don't worry about the box size or position.
Type in the names, pressing Enter after each name, as in the example shown here.

Once you've entered all the names (and any other info you need) in the text box, press Esc to make sure the text box is selected, and press and hold down the Alt key. With Alt pressed, grab the bottom edge (not the boxes) of the selected text box with the mouse and move the entire text box upward off the slide (holding down Alt allows you to move objects off the slide).
Now, right-click the text box (the bottom edge) and choose Custom Animation. When the Custom Animation text box opens, click the Effects tab. Click the arrow at the right side of the Entry Animation list box to expand the list. Locate Crawl From Bottom and select it.
Check the list box labelled Introduce Text. If it isn't set to All at Once, click the arrow at the right side of the list box and select All at Once.
Click the Timing tab and select the radio buttons labelled Animate and Automatically. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.
To see how your scrolling credits look, choose Slide Show, View Show from the menu bar. You should now see your scrolling credits run from the bottom of the screen and disappear at the top.
You can also animate WordArt in the same way. Just enter the WordArt text and right-click it. Choose Custom Animation and follow the procedure already described. WordArt scrolls a bit more slowly than standard text.

CHARTING YOUR COMPANY STRUCTURE.
Beloved by all managers, one of the more popular items in a presentation is the organisation chart. The complete chart shows the position of virtually everyone in the company's management--who reports to whom after the latest reorganisation. Even if you haven't been asked to do an organisation chart yet, you probably will be, so you might as well prepare yourself.
We've had several reader requests for information on organisation charts, so let's take a look.
To insert an organisation chart into a slide, choose Insert, Object. When the Insert Object dialog box opens, locate MS Organization Chart and select it. Click OK to continue. This opens the Microsoft Organisation Chart window. Using the existing template as a guide, type in the names and titles for your organisation. You can delete and add boxes to make the chart fit your company. To delete a box, select it and press Delete. To add a box, click the appropriate button (Manager, Assistant, and so on) in the Organization Chart window and then click the existing box to which you want to attach the new box.
After you finish adding names and titles to your chart, choose File, Exit and Return to Presentation. You'll be prompted to update the presentation. Click Yes to continue. The Microsoft Organization Chart window closes and the chart appears in your PowerPoint slide. If you need to edit the chart further, double-click it and the Microsoft Organization Chart window opens.

TITLE SLIDE - STARS - Version 4.x, 95
The slide starts with a completely black background, then stars begin to appear, followed by the title assigned to the slide show. This Star Wars type of opening is a very effective attention grabber.
To build the slide, run PowerPoint and open a completely blank slide. Choose Format, Custom Background. When the Custom Background dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the list box and choose solid black from the colour palette. Click Apply to apply the colour change to the current slide.
Now, let's add some stars. Double-click the Oval tool and then hold down the Shift key while you draw some random small circles. After you've drawn some circles over the entire slide, press Ctrl-A to select them all. Click the Fill Color button in the Drawing toolbar and set all stars to white (or the colour of your choice). With the stars still selected, choose Tools, Animation Settings. When the Animation Settings dialog box opens, click the arrow at the right side of the Build Options list box and then select Build. Select the check box labelled Start When Previous Build Ends. Next, click the arrow at the right side of the Effects list box and choose Dissolve. Click OK to close the dialog box and record your selections.
It's time to add some scrolling WordArt. Choose Insert, Object and then select Microsoft WordArt. Type in your message and click Update. Now, click the Shading button in the WordArt toolbar (the icon is a crosshatch pattern). When the Shading dialog box opens, select a red foreground and a black background. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes. Double-click the slide to close WordArt.
Now, use the mouse to drag your WordArt text to the top of the slide. With WordArt selected, choose Tools, Animation Settings. When the dialog box opens, select Build. Next, select the check box labelled Start When Previous Build Finishes and then choose Fly From Bottom from the Effects list box.
With everything in place and ready to go, you can run the show. However, you can add more stars at this point and then apply the Dissolve effect to them. With more stars added, the stars continue blinking after the text scrolls upward. This leaves the audience with the impression that the stars blink continually, even as the text is scrolling up.
To view the slide in action, choose View, Slide Show. When the Slide Show dialog box opens, select the check box labelled Loop Continuously Until Esc and then click Show.

TITLE SLIDE - THE SUN
To produce a slide that shows the sun coming up over a clip art picture of a city, choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt and choose a picture of the sun. Right-click the sun and choose Custom Animation. When the dialog box opens, click the Effects tab and choose Crawl From Bottom. Click the Timing tab and select the Automatically radio button. Enter 0 in the spin box and click OK to close the dialog box and save your selections.
What you do next is insert the city picture and size it (choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt). Then make a copy (click the picture to select it, then press Ctrl-C to copy it). Next select the picture and use the Brightness and Contrast controls in the Floating Picture toolbar to make the picture look dim and washed out (as it would in the dark).
Now press Ctrl-V to paste the original picture onto the slide. Move the picture (if necessary) to make it fit exactly over the dimmed picture. Right-click the picture and choose Custom Animation. When the Custom Animation dialog box opens, click the Effects tab and choose Dissolve. Click the Timings tab and select the Automatically radio button. Enter 0 in the spin box and click OK to close the dialog box.
Finally, we need to have the sun in the background so the buildings hide it. Click the sun to select it and choose Draw, Order, Send To Back. Now place the sun just above the tallest building.
To see how your show looks, choose View, Slide Show. The slide should open with the picture of the city dimmed. After a few seconds, the sun appears above the skyline and the original picture dissolves in, displaying a daytime picture.

TITLE SLIDE - NEON SIGN.
To make a pair of opening slides to simulate a flashing neon sign do the following
First, let's quickly run through the animation. Let's say you place a dark red WordArt object on a slide. Copy that object and press Ctrl-M to create a new slide. Press Ctrl-V to paste the object. Now, set the newly pasted WordArt object to bright red. These two slides will handle the animation.
OK, so you have slides 1 and 2 that you will use for the animation, and you intend to use slides 3 through 10 for the remainder of the show. Choose View, Slide Sorter. Right-click Slide 1 and choose Slide Transition. When the Slide Transition dialog box opens, select the radio button labelled Automatically After and enter 1 second. Click OK to close the dialog box and record your selection.
Now, click Slide 2 and repeat the procedure. Next, choose View, Slide Show. When the Slide Show dialog box opens, select the >From radio button and enter slides 1 to 2. Select the Loop Continuously Until Esc check box and then click Show to start the slide show.
The show will begin cycling constantly between slides 1 and 2 to create the blinking effect. When you're ready to begin the rest of the show, right-click the screen and choose Go To, Slide Navigator. In Slide Navigator, double-click Slide 3, and the rest of the show will begin. Note that we set the show to run until someone presses Esc. So, when you finish the last slide of the show, you'll go back to Slide 1, and the animated sign will start all over again.

EFFECTS
It isn't a bad idea to have something on the screen before a show begins and again during an intermission. You can use the Swivel effect on some WordArt text during an intermission. What you do is put the title of the show on slide using WordArt. Then set the Custom Animation to Swivel and the slide timing to five seconds and run the slide show continuously using just the one slide. The title swivels and then remains still for a few seconds. The whole thing then starts over.
It's important to allow the title to remain static for a few seconds to allow people a chance to read it. The animation grabs the attention, but without the static portion of the show, the title would be difficult to read.
If you'd like to test this effect for possible use in one of your slide shows, open a blank slide and choose Insert, Picture, WordArt. When the WordArt Gallery opens, select a style and click OK. Now, in the Edit WordArt Text dialog box, type your title and click OK.
With the WordArt in place, right-click it and choose Custom Animation. When the Custom Animation dialog box opens, click the Effects tab. Next, click the arrow at the right side of the top list box under Entry Animation and Sound. Locate Swivel in the list and select it. Now click the Timing tab, select the Automatically radio button, and enter zero seconds. Click OK to close the dialog box and record your settings.
Now choose Slide Show, Slide Transition. When the Slide Transition dialog box opens, select the check box labelled Automatically After and enter five seconds. Click Apply to apply your settings to the current slide and close the dialog box.
Next choose Slide Show, Set Up Show. When the Set Up Show dialog box opens, click the Loop Continuously Until Esc check box. Under Slides, select the All radio button. Finally, under Advance Slides, select the radio button labelled Using Timings, If Present. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your entries.
To view your new slide show, choose Slide Show, View Show. The animation runs continuously until you press Esc (or move to another slide).

FORMATTING POWERPOINT - Version 4.x, 95.
Let's say you have a slide show that uses a number of text bullets. On slide 1, you run across a font that you want to use for all the text in the show. Using Format Painter, you can change the font on every slide quite easily.
Click the font that you like so well, then double-click Format Painter in the toolbar (the icon resembles a paintbrush). Now, move to the next slide and click in a text box--your new format should now be applied to the text. If this doesn't get all the text, swipe the Format Painter cursor over the text to convert it. Move to the next slide and repeat the process. Repeat for all the slides in the show. When you're finished converting all the fonts, press Esc to turn off Format Painter.

RIPE FOR SALE - Version 4.x, 95.
Let's take a look at the techniques to make fruit ripen right before your eyes.
For our example, let's use the bunch of bananas that you'll find in the ClipArt Gallery (if you don't have the bananas, choose another appropriate ClipArt picture. What you need is a picture with few shades of colour--the banana colours are made up of three shades of yellow).
Open a blank slide in PowerPoint and choose Insert, ClipArt. Locate the picture you want to use and click Insert. Size the picture and place it as you wish on the slide. If the picture isn't selected, click once to do so. Press Ctrl-C to copy the picture. Press Ctrl-M to create a new blank slide and then press Ctrl-V to paste the copied picture into the new slide.
We need to keep the original slide with the yellow ClipArt bananas. So, on the second slide, right-click the ClipArt object and choose Recolor. When the Recolor Picture dialog box opens, set the three shades of yellow to three shades of green. After you make all the colour changes, click OK.
Select the picture and press Ctrl-C to copy it. Next, press Ctrl-M to open a new blank slide. Press Ctrl-V to paste the copied green bananas to the new slide. Right-click the picture and choose Recolor. Now, change the three shades slightly toward yellow. When you're happy with the colours, use Ctrl-C to copy the slide. Create a new slide (Ctrl-M) and paste the picture (Ctrl-V). Make the bananas slightly more yellow this time. Repeat the entire procedure until you're almost back to the original yellow.
Now, choose View, Slide Sorter and move the original ClipArt picture to the last slide position. Now, you can run the show. In each successive slide, the bananas will become a bit more yellow until they finally reach the original yellow colour of the ClipArt picture.

A ROLLING DOUGHNUT.
Place a doughnut chart on a slide and then reduce the data so there's only one doughnut with four colours. Then set the colours to red, blue, green, and violet. Copy the doughnut and paste it onto a new slide. Then I change the colours so that red moves to where blue was, blue moves to where green was, and so forth. Copy the new doughnut and paste it to a new slide, then repeat this for four slides. When you run the slides continuously, the doughnut appears to rotate because of the changing colour position."
Let's run through an example of an animated doughnut. Open a blank slide and choose Insert, Chart. Click the chart to select it (if necessary). Right-click the selected chart and choose Chart Type. Select Doughnut and click OK. Click one of the doughnuts to select it, then press Delete. Repeat this process with a second doughnut.
At this point, you should have only one doughnut remaining. Double-click the doughnut to select it. Now, click once on one of the doughnut segments to select it. Double-click the segment to open the Format Data Point dialog box. In this dialog box, select red and click OK. Move to each of the segments in succession and set the colours to blue, green, and violet. When you've coloured all segments, click on the slide away from the chart to deselect it. Next, press Ctrl-A to select the chart. Press Ctrl-C to copy the chart. Now, press Ctrl-M to create a new slide. On the new slide, press Ctrl-V to paste your coloured chart.
Now, you need to change the colours again. Use the procedure already described to recolor the segments so that red goes where blue is now, blue goes where green is now, and so on. After you recolor the segments, click away from the chart and then press Ctrl-A followed by Ctrl-C to copy the slide.
Repeat this process for two more slides. When all four slides are finished, choose View, Slide Sorter. Right-click the first slide and choose Slide Transition. When the Slide Transition dialog box opens, select the check box labelled Automatically After and enter 1 second. Click Apply to All to close the dialog box and apply your selection to all four slides.
Now, choose Slide Show, Set Up Show. When the Set Up Show dialog box opens, select the check box labelled Loop Continuously Until Esc. Click OK to continue.
To view the slide show, choose Slide Show, View Show.

BALLOONING SLIDES.
We recently published a tip that featured a macro designed to call upon the Office Assistant. Using the Office Assistant in macros isn't limited to Word--you can also use them to good advantage in PowerPoint macros.
Here's a PowerPoint macro that makes the Office Assistant display some text in a balloon when you move the mouse over a specific object. To enter the macro, press Alt-F11 and choose Insert, Module. Enter the code as shown here.

ANIMATION.
You can make an object disappear off the right side of the slide. This animation causes the object to appear on the left side of the slide and then move across to the right, where it will disappear.
If you'd like to try this, open a blank slide and choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt. Choose a picture and click Insert. Now use the mouse to drag the picture to a position just off the right side of the slide. Right-click the picture and choose Custom Animation. When the Custom Animation dialog box opens, click the Effects tab and then click the arrow at the right side of the top list box under Entry Animation And Sound. When the list expands, select Crawl From Left. Next click the Timing tab and then select the Automatically radio button. Set the time to whatever you want and click OK to record your selections and close the dialog box.
When you run the slide show (choose Slide Show, View Show), the object appears on the left side of the slide and slowly moves to the right. It then disappears off the right side of the slide.

INSERT SLIDE - Version 95, 4.x.
If you want to insert a new slide that's the same layout as the current slide, all you have to do is press Ctrl-Shift-M. This will bypass the New Slide dialog box that you get when you press Ctrl-M to insert a new slide.

STRAIGHT LINES.
You can draw straight vertical and horizontal lines in PowerPoint by holding down Shift while you draw the line. The same technique works for lines at a 45-degree angle. Give this a quick try: Click the Line button in the PowerPoint Drawing toolbar and press Shift. Now, draw a line at approximately a 45-degree angle. You'll find that PowerPoint will draw a perfectly straight line at exactly 45 degrees.
This can be a very effective way to display some activity on the screen while waiting for a show to begin. The only problem is that you'll have to do some detail work to get the slide to look just right.

CUSTOM SHOWS.
There are times when you need to use the same basic presentation for different audiences. All you have to do is select the Custom Show when you start your slide show and proceed as usual. The great part is that you never have to worry about forgetting to hide or unhide slides.
Run PowerPoint and open an existing slide show, or create a new show with three or four slides. You can choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt and place a ClipArt picture on each of the new slides so you can see what is happening.
In slide view, choose Slide Show, Custom Shows. When the Custom Shows dialog box opens, click New. Now type in an appropriate name for your new custom show (Show 1 is OK for now).
You'll see the slides in your new show listed under Slides In Presentation. Let's say you're creating a new show using only three of your four original slides. Click Slide 1 and then hold down Shift while you click Slides 2 and 3. After you have selected the slides you want in your custom show, click Add. Now click OK to close the dialog box and apply your selections. Back in Custom Shows, click Close to close the dialog box.
Finally, let's suppose you're ready to start your custom presentation. Choose Slide Show, Custom Shows. When the Custom Shows dialog box opens, select the custom show you just created and click Show. PowerPoint runs the slide show using only the slides you added to the custom show. When you choose Slide Show, View Show, PowerPoint displays all the slides in your original show.

ZOOM WITH A KEYSTROKE.
If you use the Organization Chart in your PowerPoint slide shows, you might like to know about the shortcut keys you can use to zoom in and out in the chart. Here is a list of the keys and what they do. These shortcuts are very helpful when you work on a complex Org Chart.
Keystroke/Function
F9      Size to the window
F10    50 percent of actual size
F11    Actual size
F12    200 percent of actual size

CHANGING THE WIDTH OF TOOLBAR CONTROLS.
As you try to squeeze another button on your toolbar, you might wish for a wider toolbar. Well, you can't expand the toolbar beyond the PowerPoint window, but you CAN reduce the amount of space taken up by text boxes and drop-down lists such as the Font, Font Size, and Zoom controls.
To narrow (or widen) these text-based toolbar buttons, start by right-clicking any toolbar and choosing Customize. With the Customize dialog box displayed, select the text box on the toolbar by clicking it. Move the pointer over the box's right border to change the pointer to a vertical bar with left- and right-pointing arrows. At this point, click and drag the border in or out. Finally, click the Close button.

CREATING A CORRUGATED BACKGROUND EFFECT.
In the previous tip, we showed you how to create the basic object for the corrugated background effect. The next step is to duplicate and position the object. Do this by pressing Ctrl-D, and then drag the copy so it's immediately beside the original and stretches from the top to the bottom of the slide. Now, without deselecting the duplicate copy, press Ctrl-D eight more times to cover the entire slide background with the shaded objects. Finally, combine the objects into a single object by selecting them all, clicking the Drawing toolbar's Draw button, and choosing Group.
Remember, since you're working with a drawing object, you can make the image narrower by dragging its side handle inward, and you can duplicate the new object and group the duplicates. You can even change colours by double-clicking the grouped object and making your alterations in the Format AutoShape dialog box.

KEEP 24-BIT GRAPHICS LOOKING SHARP.
You can use the Advanced tab in the Options dialog box to control the way PowerPoint 7.0 handles 24-bit graphics when it saves slides in the .WMF format. Begin by choosing Tools, Options. Click the Advanced tab and make sure the check box labelled Render 24-bit Bitmaps At Highest Quality is selected. If you select the radio button Best For Printing, the slide will be saved as a 24-bit image. If you select Best For On-Screen Viewing, the image will be saved with a depth of 8 bits.

PRINT PREVIEWING.
As you've probably noticed, PowerPoint doesn't offer a Print Preview feature. However, it does offer a Greyscale Preview feature that shows what your colour slide will look like when it's printed on a monochrome printer using the greyscale setting. In fact, because of the default way PowerPoint converts colour to black and white for greyscale printing, this feature isn't just convenient--it's vital. For example, PowerPoint prints text in black by default. If your text object includes white text on a black background, PowerPoint will still print the text in black--rendering it invisible (and useless). Fortunately, PowerPoint also lets you change the way individual objects will print in greyscale.
To display your slides in greyscale, just click the Grayscale Preview button on the Standard toolbar, or choose Black And White from the View menu. By default, a miniature of your colour slide appears in a window in the top-right corner of the window. If the miniature doesn't appear, you can display it by choosing Slide Miniature from the View menu. To alter any object's appearance, right-click it, choose Black And White from the shortcut menu, and select any of the resulting options.
Any changes you make to the greyscale appearance of your slides are stored with the file's print options. The changes have no effect on the colour version of your slides.

As with the greyscale preview, you can right-click and alter the appearance settings of any object on the slide. However, if you plan to print using the pure black and white setting, you should avoid the greyscale settings on the shortcut menu--they can give unexpected results in the printouts, and they defeat the purpose of black-and-white printing.

RUNNING A SLIDE SHOW FROM YOUR DESKTOP.
To run a slide show in the normal manner, you have to open the presentation file in PowerPoint and click the Slide Show button on the View bar. When the slide show finishes, you're returned to the PowerPoint editing window. This might be okay for internal presentations, but in a professional setting, it seems like a pretty tacky way to run a slide show.
Fortunately, it's easy to overcome this limitation; you simply save the presentation to your desktop and save it with a PPS file extension. When you double-click a file with a PPS extension--which stands for PowerPoint Show--the file opens in Slide Show view. When the slide show finishes, you're returned to the desktop. You can open a PPS file for editing by launching PowerPoint, choosing the File menu's Open command, and selecting the PPS file.
To save a file with a PPS extension, first select File, Save As. Click the Save As Type drop-down arrow and select PowerPoint Show (*.pps) from the list. Click the Desktop icon in the Save In panel, type a name for your presentation, and click Save.

SHORTCUTS FOR STARTING AND ENDING A SLIDE SHOW.
It's good to know that even if the cat runs off with your mouse, you can still run slide shows in PowerPoint. Just use these handy keyboard shortcuts:
Press F5 to start a slide show from the current slide.
Press Esc to end the slide show.
You can use the first shortcut while you're working in any view in PowerPoint's editing window. The shortcut for ending a slide show will return you to the editing window or the desktop, depending on where you ran the show from.

EASY ZOOMING FOR INTELLIMOUSE USERS.
If you own a Microsoft Intellimouse--a mouse with a wheel between the left and right mouse buttons--you can use it for zooming in and out on your slides in Normal or Slide view: Just hold down the Ctrl key as you roll the wheel. To zoom in on a slide (make the objects larger), roll the wheel away from you; to zoom out on a slide (make the objects smaller), roll the wheel toward you.

FUN WITH ANIMATION.
Have a graphic or other object (how about text, a racecar, or a turtle) run or crawl onto the screen, go across the screen, and move off the other side.
Here's how you do it: First, insert the object, then drag it off the slide. Right-click the object and choose Custom Animation from the shortcut menu. In the Custom Animation dialog box, click the Effects tab and choose Fly or Crawl in the first drop-down list in the Entry Animation And Sound section. In the drop-down list at the right, choose the side opposite where you placed the object. (For example, if you put the object just beyond the right edge of the slide, choose the From Left option; if you put the object underneath the slide, choose From Top.)
Include a sound effect if you wish, and be sure to preview the effect by clicking Preview. Finally, click OK to exit the Custom Animation dialog box.

You can place other objects onscreen in such a way that the flying or crawling object weaves behind some objects and in front of others. The secret to doing this is to insert objects onscreen in a particular order. Let's use aeroplanes and clouds to describe the technique. Specifically, to make an aeroplane move in front of a cloud, place the cloud on the slide BEFORE you insert the aeroplane. To make the aeroplane move behind a second cloud, place the second cloud on the slide AFTER you insert the aeroplane.
First, click the AutoShapes button, point at Callouts, and choose the Cloud Callout. Draw a large cloud in the upper-left corner of the slide and drag it partially off the screen. If you wish, you can drag the reshape handle (the small yellow box) so the cloud looks less like a tornado.
Now, place a second cloud in the upper-right corner of the slide by holding down the Ctrl key and dragging the first cloud. Again, drag this cloud partially off the screen. Then, insert an aeroplane by clicking the Insert Clip Art button, selecting the Transportation category, clicking the aeroplane picture, and choosing the first option, Insert Clip. Drag the airplane off the right edge of the upper third of the slide. Right-click the picture, choose Custom Animation, and select Crawl and From Left on the Effects tab. On the Order & Timing tab, choose Automatically. Click OK. Now, place a third cloud in the centre of the slide by Ctrl-dragging one of the existing clouds.
Finally, preview the effect by clicking the Slide View button on the views bar. The plane will travel in front of the leftmost cloud, behind the centred cloud, and in front of the rightmost cloud.

REMOVING THE BACKGROUND FROM A SCANNED IMAGE.
Need to paste a scanned signature on a PowerPoint slide? Say a signature--black writing on a white background, saved as a TIF file.
The secret is the Picture toolbar's Set Transparent Color tool, which lets you specify one colour as transparent. In our case, that's the white background. You can open the Picture toolbar to check this tool by right-clicking any toolbar and choosing Picture. With some TIF and BMP images, the tool appears greyed out. In that case, you must convert the image to a GIF, JPEG, or PNG, as we show you next. If the Set Transparent Color tool is NOT greyed out, you can skip the next step and go directly to the payoff (the last paragraph).
First, press Ctrl-C to copy the image to the Clipboard. Next, select Edit, Paste Special. At this point, choose one of these options, depending on the original picture, and click OK:

• Picture (GIF) if the image has simple lines, few colours, and not much detail. * Picture (JPEG) if the image has lots of detail or colours that blend through lots of different shades.
  Picture (PNG) if you want the best of both worlds or if you can't decide which of the other two formats to choose. (PNG is a fairly new graphics format, but it shows a lot of promise and potential. We chose this option for the signature, although any of them would have worked just fine.)

CLIP ART ANIMATION.
You can very easily create a PowerPoint slide so that your clip art will appear to put itself together when you open the slide. To see how this works, run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Choose Insert, Picture, Clip Art; select a picture; and click Insert to place it on your slide.
Size the picture to suit your needs and, while the picture is still selected, choose Draw, Ungroup. When the dialog box opens asking if you are sure, click Yes. Now, don't click anywhere because you'll deselect all the individual pieces if you do. Choose Slide Show, Custom Animation. When the Custom Animation dialog box opens, select Appear from the Entry Animation drop-down list. Now, click the Timing tab and select the Animate and Automatically options. Set the spin box to zero seconds (the default) and click OK.
You can run the slide show now to see how your new animation looks. Simply choose Slide Show, View Show.
Note: If your object's animation is too slow, go back to the Custom Animation dialog box and select another type of animation.
Peek From Bottom is a good one for small pictures with few pieces. Appear is best for large pictures with many pieces. Try some other types of animation to see which offer the best effect for your slide.

CREATING A "NEON" OBJECT.
You can never have too many special effects in your bag of PowerPoint tricks. Here's another one: neon. You simulate a neon effect by stacking several progressively narrower and lighter objects on top of each other. You can apply this effect with lines, autoshapes, and even WordArt text. Let's look at the basic technique.
First, insert an autoshape--let's say the five-pointed star from the AutoShapes menu's Stars And Banners palette. Double-click the star to open the Format AutoShape dialog box and choose No Fill from the Fill Color drop-down list. In the Line Color drop-down palette, choose one of the 48 default colours or click More Colors and select a dark color from the Standard tab. In the Line Weight text box, enter a large value, such as 13. (Each subsequent line should be 2 or 3 points lighter, so the starting number should be high enough to allow for 5 or so total lines.) Click OK.
Next, duplicate the first shape by pressing Ctrl-D. Double-click it and this time choose a lighter shade of the same colour and specify a narrower line width. Continue in this manner, using a bright shade for the 5-point line. For the final, 2- or 3-point line, choose the lightest, brightest contrasting colour you can find (yellow and white usually work well).
At this point, you have several separate shapes of different colours and sizes. You combine them into a single object by selecting all the shapes and aligning them along their middles and centres. Do this by issuing the appropriate commands on the Draw menu's Align Or Distribute submenu. (Remember, the Draw menu is on the Drawing toolbar.) When you're satisfied with the effect, issue the Draw menu's Group command.

SUPERSCRIPTING & SUBSCRIPTING.
At some point, you may need to enter a chemical formula, an exponential number, or a footnote number. In these cases, it will pay to know how to create subscripted and superscripted text. The conventional method for doing this is to highlight the text in question, pull down the Format menu, choose Font, and select the appropriate option in the Font dialog box. This will work fine in most cases, but it gets tedious pretty quickly if you have to use lots of superscript or subscript.Here's a much easier way to superscript and subscript text:
To create superscripted text (smaller than and slightly above the normal text), press Ctrl-Plus Sign (also known as Ctrl-Shift-Equal Sign) before you type the character(s) you want to superscript. Press Ctrl-Plus Sign after you type the superscripted text to return to normal text.
To create subscripted text (shrunken and placed slightly below the normal text), press Ctrl-Equal Sign before you type your subscripted text, and press Ctrl-Equal Sign again to return to normal text.
By the way, a superscripted lowercase "o" makes a nice substitute for the degree symbol when you're expressing temperatures or latitudes and longitudes.

KEYBOARD SHORTCUT CHEAT SHEET.
Do you have difficulty remembering all of the Photoshop shortcut keys? If so, you can download a free Photoshop shortcut cheat sheet to help you keep track of the multitude of quick keys. In addition to the shortcuts, the cheat sheet lists Photoshop tips and techniques. To download the Photoshop shortcut cheat sheet, visit http://www.asap.net/cheat.html

SELECTIVELY BLURRING AND SHARPENING AN IMAGE.
In most cases, images can use a discretionary blurring or sharpening. However, the effects of the Blur and Sharpen tools are so subtle that they are difficult to use. In this tip, we'll describe a quick way of selectively blurring and sharpening an image without resorting to the Blur or Sharpen tool.
To begin, create two duplicate layers of your image. Select the first duplicate layer and choose Filter, Blur, Blur. Then, select the second duplicate layer and choose Filter, Sharpen, Sharpen. Now, double-click the Eraser tool to select it and open the Tool Options palette. Set the Tool Options to Airbrush and 50% Opacity. Then, begin to erase areas of the sharpened image layer and the blurred image layer. In addition to erasing areas that do not require blurring or sharpening, you may also want to adjust the opacity of the sharpened layer and the blurred layer to further control the effect the layers have on the original image. Once you're satisfied with the image, choose Layer, Flatten Image.

PHOTOSHOP HELP.
Many beginning (and even advanced) Photoshop users often forget that one of the best Photoshop resources is right at their fingertips - the Photoshop Online Help system. If you have ever caught yourself wondering "What is this tool?" or "How does this feature work?" simply press F1 for Photoshop Help.
Photoshop Help allows you to look through a table of contents, browse an index of topics, or search for a particular word or phrase. Furthermore, Photoshop Help has diagrams and illustrations of all the tools, palettes, and filters.

ELIMINATE IMAGE ICONS.
Graphic file size is always important, but it is critical in Web design. Every extra byte in the file size of an image can lengthen a Web page's download time. Therefore, you want to set Photoshop to save as small of an image as possible
One feature many Photoshop users forget to turn off is Image Preview. For those unfamiliar with Image Preview, it creates a low-resolution thumbnail of the saved image. That thumbnail is displayed in the Open dialog box when the file is selected. The thumbnail also consumes from 1K to 2K. To ensure your files are as small in file size as possible, turn off the Image Preview option.
To do so, choose File, Preferences, Saving Files. Then, in the resulting dialog box, select Never Save from the Image Preview menu.

SLIDE SHOWS IN A MINI-WINDOW.
How many times have you started your slide show for a run-through, only to notice some little problem that needs fixing? You have to stop the slide show, go back to edit mode, make the fix, start the slide show again, and... darn! You find something ELSE that needs a little touch-up.
To save yourself some time and energy, hold down the Ctrl key while you click the Slide Show button in the lower-left corner of the screen. PowerPoint displays your slide show in a small window rather than full screen, which is neat, but here's the good part - when you find something you'd like to change, click back in the main PowerPoint window. The screen show window minimises itself onto the Windows taskbar. Navigate to the slide that needs editing, make your changes, then click the PowerPoint Slide Show button on the taskbar to resume your mini-show right where you left off - with your most recent changes in place.

GET HELP BY E-MAIL OR FAX DIRECTLY FROM MICROSOFT.
Microsoft has a wealth of technical advice, problem-solving tips, and other information available on its Web site: http://www.microsoft.com However, there's SO much information about SO many products that it can be a problem to find the specific information you're after. Instead, try out Microsoft's help by e-mail. To get started, send an e-mail to mshelp@microsoft.com Within a few minutes, you'll receive a return e-mail message. It will explain how you can get lists of available help documents about PowerPoint or other programs, again by e-mail, in a matter of minutes. The help documents are listed by Q number. Once you know the Q number of the article you want, send another e-mail to mshelp@microsoft.com, but this time enter the Q number of the article as the subject of the e-mail.
For example, to get article Q190103, which explains how to convert Pantone colours to the RGB colour system that PowerPoint uses, send an e-mail to mshelp@microsoft.com with Q190103 in the Subject field. The body of the message can be blank.
For more detailed instructions on using Microsoft's e-mail help and on getting help articles by fax, plus a list of representative articles by Q number and title, visit http://www.rdpslides.com From there, follow the link to the PowerPoint FAX page.

E-MAIL LINKS IN YOUR PRESENTATIONS.
In the Action Settings dialog box, click Hyperlink To and pick the type of hyperlink you want from the drop-down list box. Choose URL from the drop-down list box and you'll see the Hyperlink To URL dialog box. Type your e-mail address in the text box using this format: mailto:[your e-mail address here] substituting your real e-mail address for [your e-mail address here]. For example, if your e-mail address is me@here.com, you'd type this in the Hyperlink To URL dialog box: mailto:me@here.com
When people view your presentation in Slide Show mode and click on this e-mail hyperlink, PowerPoint automatically starts their e-mail program and fills in your address for them. All they have to do is type in their message and click the Send button.

STUPID GRID TRICKS.
PowerPoint's built-in grid makes it simple to align objects to one another. There are a few other tricks you can use it for as well. For example, did you know that each press of the arrow keys moves a selected object one grid increment?
When you choose an object, then pick Edit, Duplicate (or press Ctrl-D), PowerPoint always puts the duplicate two grid increments to the right and two down. That makes it simple to align the duplicate exactly with the original: Press Ctrl-D to make a duplicate, press the Up Arrow key twice, press the Left Arrow key twice, and the original and duplicate objects are perfectly aligned.
If you want to take an object temporarily "off the grid" so you can move it in smaller, more precise increments, hold down the Alt key while you drag the object or hold down the Ctrl key while you nudge the object around with the arrow keys.
Incidentally, if you're moving objects "off the grid," the closer you zoom in, the more control you have, since the "nudge factor" gets smaller.
And finally, suppose you hate the way PowerPoint snaps everything to the grid. What then? Here's what: Turn it off. Click Draw, point to Snap, then click To Grid. No more grid.

ERROR: PART OF FILE IS MISSING.
If you ever get a Part Of File Is Missing error message when opening a PowerPoint presentation, here's what may have caused it, what you can do to prevent it, and what you can do to try to correct the problem.
This error message can result from several causes, including improperly handled disks, network problems, power problems, hardware problems, and a few others. We'll discuss each cause and suggest ways of curing the problem and preventing it in the future.
First, the bad news. According to Microsoft, "In most cases, this error message indicates that the file you are attempting to open is damaged and you will not be able to recover the file." In other words, it's best to avoid the problem in the first place. Always handle your disks carefully. If you need to ship disks by mail or courier, use packaging that protects them adequately. Marking the package "Fragile" is not enough; be sure to use adequate packaging for more severe handling. Above all, keep disks away from anything that produces a magnetic field (motors, telephones, magnetised tools, and, of course, magnets!).
Never save your presentations directly to diskette or other removable media. Instead, save first to your hard drive, then use Windows Explorer to COPY the PPT file to the diskette. If you must save directly to a diskette or other removable media, make absolutely certain that the file has been completely saved before removing the diskette or cartridge from the drive. Likewise, avoid opening files directly from diskettes; if you must do so, NEVER remove the diskette while the file is open in PowerPoint.

If you write your PowerPoint outlines in Word, here's a tip you can use: Open Windows Explorer and locate the PowerPoint.exe file (its location depends on where you put it during installation). Next, open the Windows folder in Explorer's left pane and scroll down so you can see the SendTo folder. Now use the right mouse button to drag the PowerPoint.exe icon to the SendTo folder. When the icon is over the folder, release the button and then choose Create Shortcut(s) Here.
Now, to quickly get your Word outline into PowerPoint, just right-click the file in Explorer and then choose Send To, PowerPoint.

CONTROLLING YOUR SLIDE SHOWS.
Most of us just click our way through presentations one slide at a time, mouse-click - new slide. Most of the time, that's just fine, it's simple and it gets the job done, but once in a while you'd like to do a little more (or maybe you have to work with a little less. Ever have your mouse go bad right before an important presentation?) Whatever the case, PowerPoint lets you use the keyboard to do anything you could do with the mouse--and a lot more. For starters, choose Tools, Options and go to the View tab. In the Slide Show options area:
Clear the Popup Menu On Right Mouse Click check box. This disables the usual right-click pop-up menu and enables you to better control your presentation. You'll be able to back up a slide by right-clicking the mouse in addition to advancing by left-clicking.
Clear the Show Popup Menu Button check box. This removes the menu button that PowerPoint otherwise adds to your shows. One more distraction gone.
If you want your slide show to end with a black slide, leave the last check box selected. If you'd rather the show simply quit after the last slide, deselect this option also. These are all settings that apply to PowerPoint itself, not each individual presentation.
For now, try out the new settings you've just selected. Open a presentation and choose View, Slide Show (or press F5). Use the left and right mouse buttons to navigate forward and backward through your presentation to get a feel for how it works.
Here's one more nifty trick, type a number on either the regular number keys or the numeric keypad, then press Enter. PowerPoint goes directly to that slide. For example, to go directly to slide 15 from the first slide in your presentation (or any other), type 15, press Enter, and you're there.

ANIMATING SLIDE SHOWS.
Most often the best way to handle a fast motion is to use only two slides - one with the object in its original position, and another with the object in its new position. The eye interprets this as a very fast motion.
To try this, run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Now choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt and select a picture. Move the picture to the bottom centre of the slide and press Ctrl-A to select the picture. Press Ctrl-C to copy your picture, then press Ctrl-M-Enter to insert a new slide. Press Ctrl-V to copy the picture to the new slide. Use the mouse to move the picture to the right side of the slide.
Now run the slide show and see how your animation looks. You may need to adjust the transition times to get it just right. To adjust the transition for the current slide, choose Slide Show, Slide Transition and set your timing. Click Apply to close the dialog box and save your settings.

PLAY SOUNDS THROUGH SEVERAL SLIDES.
Normally a sound inserted on a given slide will play only until you move onto the next slide. That's not an unreasonable thing for PowerPoint to do, but it can be frustrating when you want to start a sound on the first slide in your presentation and have it run as background music for the remainder of your show. Fortunately, you can get PowerPoint to cooperate with you.
Start by inserting the sound you want to play. Choose Insert, Movies And Sounds, then click Sound From Gallery, Sound From File, Play CD Audio Track Or Record Sound. Insert the sound you want to include. With the sound's icon selected, choose Slide Show, Custom Animation (or pick Custom Animation from the context menu that appears when you right-click the sound's icon).
Click the Multimedia Settings tab and make certain that the object is selected. Select the option Play Using Animation Order, then select Continue Slide Show. This tells PowerPoint NOT to stop playing the sound when you move to the next slide. Then under Stop Playing, click After and dial in the number of subsequent slides through which you'd like the sound to play. If you want the sound to continue through the end of the presentation, simply dial in a number that's higher than the number of slides in your presentation--999 works well for nearly ANY presentation! Your sound will now continue after you leave the slide you placed it on.
NOTE: This works only with sounds you've brought in via Insert, Movies And Sounds. If you use the media player, it may not work as expected.

A CLOCK.
Want a way to put an animated clock on the screen to do a countdown until show time?
Use the clock in one of the Screen Bean pictures and inserted it into the slide. Ungroup the picture and delete the Screen Bean picture, leaving only the clock. Then ungroup the clock and deleted one of the hands. Place the numbers 0 to 10 evenly around the clock with the 0 at the top. Press Ctrl-A to select all the clock elements and press Ctrl-C to copy the clock to the Clipboard. Next, I paste 9 copies of the clock, for a total of 10 (press Ctrl-V).
The first clock appears when the slide starts; set it’s hand to 10, using the Rotate tool. Then group the clock again. Next move to another clock and set it to 9. Then group this clock and drag it over the first clock. Right-click this clock and choose Custom Animation. Choose to have the clock appear. Click the Timing tab and set the clock to appear after 60 seconds.
Go through the same procedure with each clock, dragging its hand into position pointing at the next number. Set each clock to appear after 60 seconds.

ANIMATED GIFS IN POWERPOINT.
Earlier versions of PowerPoint allowed you to import animated GIF's but showed only the first image in the GIF; they wouldn't display the animation. PowerPoint 2000 will let you display animated GIF's in all their hyperactive glory. There are a few caveats to be aware of, however.
Like PowerPoint's other animation features, animated GIFs come to life only when you view your presentation as a slide show. You won't see any animation in Slide, Normal, Slide Sorter, or any of PowerPoint's other views.
Animated GIF's animate only in PowerPoint 2000 itself, not the PowerPoint Viewer. The Viewer supports most if not all of the features of PowerPoint 97, but not features that are specific to PowerPoint 2000. So, until Microsoft releases a real PowerPoint 2000-compatible viewer, your animated GIF's won't be very lively when you display them in the Viewer.

EMBOSSING POWERPOINT PICTURES.
Open a blank slide and choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt. Select a picture and double-click to insert it. Now make sure the picture is selected and click the Shadow button at the bottom of the window (the second button from the right). Choose Shadow Style 17 (bottom left in the dialog box). Your ClipArt picture turns into a gray silhouette that resembles embossing.

HYPERLINKS ON EVERY PAGE.
When you're setting up hyperlink buttons for a presentation, you often need to put the same button on every page--for example, you might want a forward and back button to go to the next or previous slides.
You can create the needed buttons on each page, or you can create one set of buttons, then select and copy them from page to page, or you can create your buttons once and have them appear on every slide in your presentation automatically. AND they'll appear on every new slide you add to the same presentation.
First, choose View, Master, Slide Master to get to the master slide. Create your buttons there and assign actions. Close the Master view or choose View, Slides.
That's all there is to it. Since your buttons are on the slide master, they'll appear on every slide in the presentation automatically (except any slides that are based on the Title Master, but you can easily copy the same buttons to the Title Master to fix that little problem if it arises).

MACROS IN TEMPLATES.
In a previous tip, we mentioned that to use a macro, it has to be available in the current presentation or at least accessible to PowerPoint on your machine. But what if you have a few macros that your colleagues could use? Think templates. A macro stored in a template (.POT) file becomes part of any new presentation based on that template.
Create your macro in a new presentation, format it, then choose File, Save As and select Design Template (*.POT) from the Save As Type drop-down box. Give the new template a name and save it. PowerPoint will put it in its \Templates folder by default, which is exactly what you want it to do.
Now you can choose File, New and pick the template you just created. Your new presentation will automatically include any macros saved with the template when you created it. And you can hand this template out to others who might want to use your macros as well.
The only hitch: NEW presentations based on this template will "inherit" any macros that are stored in the template. However, when you APPLY the template to an existing presentation, that won't happen. You can get around this, though.
Create a new presentation (we'll call it NEW) based on your template that includes macros. Open another presentation (we'll call it OLD) that you'd like this new template applied to, macros and all. Put both presentations in Slide Sorter view, select all the slides in OLD, then choose Edit, Copy. Switch to NEW and choose Edit, Paste to add copies of all the slides in OLD to NEW. You now have a new presentation with all the contents of OLD, but also with all the macros from your template.

NUMBERED TEXT IN POWERPOINT.
How many times have you wished you could use a numbered list rather than using bullets in PowerPoint slides? There is a way to create numbered lists. Just go to http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloadDetails/bullets.htm and download bullets.exe. After the file downloads, double-click its icon to install it in your \Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office folder. Now run PowerPoint and choose Tools, Add-Ins. When the Add-Ins dialog box opens, click Add New. Locate your Office folder and double-click the file named Numblts.ppa. This will install the Numbered Bullets toolbar. Numbered Bullets will open as a floating toolbar when you run PowerPoint.

GET THE FAQS.
We've mentioned this in previous tips, but it bears repeating: If you're looking for a quick solution to a PowerPoint problem, need to learn how to perform some particular task, or just want to see what the Web has to offer in the way of templates, clip art, sounds, and other files, visit the PowerPoint FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page at http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq
There's always something new being added there, so it's worth making the site a regular stop on your browser tours. On the same site, you'll also find a new, incomplete but growing FAQ devoted to PostScript, PDF, and related topics at http://www.rdpslides.com/psfaq and even a FAQ devoted to a program called Friday that you can use to create and maintain a FAQ site of your own, just like the others on this site: http://www.rdpslides.com/friday 

INDENT SETTINGS AND THE RULER.
Having trouble getting the left edges of your text lined up the way you'd like on your bulleted text slides? You're not alone. PowerPoint gives you quite a bit of flexibility, but it's not immediately obvious how to access it.
The text ruler is the key to getting your indents perfectly aligned to taste. If you don't see the ruler, choose View, Ruler. Now click on a block of bulleted text to see the ruler settings for that block. Notice that several little pointers (arrowhead-shaped grey buttons) appear when the text is selected. There will be one set of pointers for each outline (or indent level) in the text block. If you don't already have two or three levels, add them now.
The pointers at the top of the ruler (and pointing downward) control where the left side of your bullets line up or, if you've formatted the text to No Bullet, where the left edge of the text itself appears. The pointers at the bottom of the ruler (and pointing upward) control the distance from the bullet to the beginning of the text. They also control how far the second line of text in each paragraph is indented.
In addition, the bottom pointers have small square buttons beneath them. When you drag one of these buttons left or right, it moves both the upper and lower pointers together as a unit. Hold down the Ctrl key while you move the bullets if you don't want them to jump in fixed increments. Stay tuned--in upcoming tips, we'll show you how to use these pointers to align your text and bullets efficiently. 

SOFT SHADOWS FOR POWERPOINT OBJECTS.
Run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Click the Oval tool in the Drawing toolbar and draw a circle. Hold down Ctrl and use the mouse to drag away a copy of the circle. Right-click the circle copy and choose Format AutoShape. When the Format AutoShape dialog box opens, click the Colors and Lines tab (if necessary). Under Line, click the arrow at the right side of the colour list box and choose No Line. Next, under Fill, click the arrow at the right side of the colour list box and choose Fill Effects. Click the Gradient tab, then select the Two Colors radio button. Click the arrow at the right side of the colour 1 list box to expand the list. Choose the colour that matches your original circle (the default green unless you changed it).
Now expand the Color 2 list box and choose white (the default slide background colour). Select the radio button labelled From Centre and then click OK to close the dialog box. Back in Format AutoShape, click OK to close the dialog box and save your settings.
Click the original circle and choose Draw, Order, Bring to Front. Size the new circle and move it over the original circle until you get the correct shadow effect.

ACCURATELY PREDICT HOW YOUR COLOURS WILL PRINT.
It can be tricky to predict exactly what PowerPoint's colours will look like on any colour printer, but Microsoft has a handy file that will help solve the problem. It's a PowerPoint file that contains a replica of PowerPoint's colour picker. All you need to do is open it and print to your printer to get a sample of how each of PowerPoint's standard colours will reproduce on that printer.
Point your browser to http://support.microsoft.com/download/support/mslfiles/Printme.exe When prompted, have your browser save the file to your hard drive. It should take only a short while, since it's only a 25K file. Once you've downloaded the file, locate it in Explorer, or whatever browser you use, and double-click it. It will extract PrintMe.ppt, which you can open and print from PowerPoint to get your sample printout of all PowerPoint colours.
When you make the printout, take an extra moment to choose Start, Settings, Printers. Right-click your printer and choose Properties from the context menu. Jot down (on the printout itself, ideally) all of the current colour and resolution settings for the printer driver. If you change these, it can affect the colours you get from the printer, so your sample printout may no longer be valid. You might actually want to run a test printout for each of the printer settings you commonly use. 

WATERMARKS IN POWERPOINT SLIDES.
Run PowerPoint and choose Insert, Picture, ClipArt, then double-click a picture to insert it. At this point, the floating Picture toolbar should appear. If it doesn't, choose View, Toolbars, Picture to enable it. Now click the Image Control button in the Picture toolbar (second from the left) and choose Watermark.

ALIGNING OBJECTS.
Version 4.x, 95
When you have a group of objects on a PowerPoint slide, you may want to align all of them so that they fall into the general categories of left, centre, or right.
Let's say you have three pictures on a slide. You'd like to have them all appear to be standing on the same floor. Click one of the figures and then press and hold the Shift key while you click the other two figures to select them. Choose Draw, Align and then select Bottoms. Now all the figures will be aligned across the bottom. 

PROBLEMS WITH THE CUSTOM SOUNDTRACK ADD-IN.
Problem: You start PowerPoint and see the error message PowerPoint couldn't open the Visual Basic for Application project in ppmusic.ppa.
This happens when you previously had PowerPoint 97 installed on your computer and downloaded and installed the Custom Soundtrack Add-In. When you upgraded to PowerPoint 2000, the installer retained any add-ins from your PowerPoint 97 set-up. Although most PowerPoint 97 add-ins work well with PowerPoint 2000, not all of them do and when they don't, you'll see this error message (or a similar one referencing a different .ppa/add-in file.)
To avoid seeing this message in the future, you'll have to manually remove the problem add-in.
Choose Tools, Add-Ins. On the add-ins list, click the name of the add-in the error message referred to. Then click Remove. This removes the add-in from the list and from the Windows registry file so it doesn't automatically load in the future. Click Close, then restart PowerPoint.

EXTRA IMPORT FILTERS FOR POWERPOINT.
Looking for additional graphics filters for PowerPoint? Microsoft offers extra graphics filters as part of the Microsoft Office Converter Pack available at http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/
Click Toolbox at the left side of the screen. The Converter Pack is the first item listed on the Toolbox page. The Converter Pack includes import filters for AutoCAD, Targa, and Micrographx Designer & Draw graphics files, along with automated tools for converting from one version of PowerPoint to another. It also includes converters that enable users of older versions of PowerPoint to open PowerPoint 2000's PPT and HTML files.

SURVIVING A MAC ATTACK.
How do you get your presentation to work on a Macintosh? or how do you get that Macintosh presentation to work on your PC?
There are several problems you're likely to run into when moving PowerPoint presentations (or any other type of files, for that matter) back and forth between PCs and Macs. PCs and Macs use different disk formats for diskettes, removable media like Zip disks, and hard drives.
PCs use the file extension (for example, the .PPT at the end of every PowerPoint filename) to distinguish between different kinds of files and to know what program to launch when you double-click a file or icon. Macs show the user the same filenames and often the same icons as we're used to seeing on PCs, but they use a very different method of associating files with the programs that created them.

To a computer, the letters, numbers, and punctuation that we see as text are just a series of numbers. The problem is that a particular number might be associated with different characters on different computer systems. There are quite a few special characters that are encoded differently between Mac and PC, so what appears as 1/2 on a PC turns into a Greek Omega on the Mac. For more detailed information, see ftp://rdpslides.com/ENCODING.PDF
In some cases, the actual data saved by the PC version of a program will be different from the data saved by the Mac version of the same program. PCs and Macs also handle graphics quite differently in some cases. Both can also use platform-independent graphics formats like EPS, TIF, and several other types. However, if the graphics are stored in platform-specific formats like WMF on the PC or PICT on the Mac, you can run into problems when moving files from one platform to the other. Similarly, different multimedia types (such as sounds and movies) don't always survive the jump across the cross-platform gulf.

The different disk formats used by PCs and Macs used to be a real show-stopper. Different file types, graphics, fonts, none of the rest of the differences between the two mattered much if you couldn't even move files from one platform to the other.
Things are different nowadays. For starters, just about any Mac out there can read and write to PC-formatted disks. Most Macs can handle PC Zip disks and other types of media as well. That pretty much solves the problem of moving files to and fro, stick with PC-formatted media for the transfer and it will generally work out.
If the folks at the Mac end can't give you files on PC-formatted media for some reason, you can install software like DataVIZ's MacOpener, which lets you read nearly any Mac-formatted disk on your PC. You can find MacOpener at http://www.dataviz.com
Pierre Duhem also has some excellent PC/Mac disk utilities and cross-platform information at http://www.macdisk.com 

On PCs, it's pretty simple to guess what application to which a given file belongs. If it has a .PPT extension, it's a PowerPoint file. Once Windows sees the .PPT extension and works out the association to PowerPoint, it displays a PowerPoint icon for the file. On the Mac, it's also simple. If a file has a PowerPoint icon, it belongs to PowerPoint.
So far, so good. But watch what happens when we move a PC PowerPoint file to the Mac and move a Mac version of the same file to the PC.
When the PC file hits the Mac, it might appear as a generic document icon rather than as a PowerPoint presentation. The information the Mac needs to distinguish one file type from another wasn't supplied by the PC. The Mac user won't be able to double-click the file's icon to work with the file, but the user CAN start PowerPoint, then choose File, Open to open the file. If the user then saves the file again, the Mac will supply the needed file type information, and the file will have a PowerPoint icon from then on.
When a Mac file moves to a PC, it loses the Mac file type information that distinguishes it from other Mac file types, but that doesn't really matter, the PC can't use that information anyway. But since Macs don't use file extensions to distinguish one file type from another, Mac users aren't in the habit of using PC-style extensions, and PowerPoint/Mac doesn't automatically supply them the way the PC version does. In short, if you get an extension less file from a Mac PowerPoint user, rename the file with a .PPT extension so Windows and PowerPoint will know what to make of it.

Not too long ago, moving presentations from PC to Mac could have been the makings of a pretty good plot for the likes of a Stephen King. For the most part, there were Mac programs and there were PC programs, but very few had more than token cross-platform compatibility. Even if you could get the files from one platform to the other--and even if you had the same program on both, it wasn't likely that you'd be able to do much with the files once they arrived.
Fortunately, that's all changed. PowerPoint 98 for the Macintosh stores information in virtually the same way as PowerPoint 97 for Windows, and each version understands the few differences and conducts any needed translation automatically. They even do a nice job of translating between the different character encoding used on Macs and PCs. So other than the few PC characters that have no Mac equivalent or vice versa, you don't have to worry too much about this problem.
What can still get you into trouble are fonts. They often have similar, but slightly different, names on the PC versus Mac, and in any case, you can't use PC fonts on Macs, nor the vice of that versa. While you can usually embed fonts in your PC PowerPoint files to ensure that the recipient has them available when they open your presentation, font embedding isn't supported on the Mac version of PowerPoint.
If you want to avoid font problems altogether, stick with the standard fonts that come with Windows, Arial, Times New Roman, and Courier New, all of which have equivalents on the Mac side. You're fairly safe and a lot less restricted if you stick with the fonts that came with PowerPoint.
For more information on font usage, check out http://www.microsoft.com/office/ork/2000/four/67ct_6.htm#dex60 

The remaining problem you're likely to run into arises because Macs and PCs have different "favoured" graphics formats, and these are not always compatible with one another.
When you need to move a presentation from PC to Mac (or the other way around), have PowerPoint ungroup each graphic, then immediately regroup it. This converts the PICT or WMF objects into native PowerPoint objects, which DO translate nicely across platforms.
When adding bitmap graphics to a presentation on the Mac, don't use PICT graphics files and avoid cut and paste to get graphics into presentations. Use TIFF files instead.

When you receive a PowerPoint/Mac file that contains movies, you may find when you display the presentation that the movies are missing. Instead, you may see a message like "QuickTime and a video decompressor are needed to see this picture."
This can happen because PCs and Macs use different methods to specify file folders. PowerPoint can't find the movie file on the PC because it can't understand the Mac method of specifying folders. Another possible cause: PCs and Macs use different platform-specific methods for playing movies.
To solve this problem, you'll need to get the original movie files from the Mac user who created the presentation. Copy these to the folder where you've stored the PowerPoint presentation. Open the presentation and delete the existing movies from it, then reinsert them from the original files.

GETTING PICTURES INTO POWERPOINT SLIDES
Have a CD-ROM of JPG pictures and would like to make into a slide show in PowerPoint?
You can do this with a macro. The following is a simple macro that will import all the JPGs in a folder. You will have to modify it, since it doesn't have any code to set the photo's aspect ratio properly. If all your photos are the same size you can simply set the height and width to match them and you'll have no problems with distortion.
To enter the code, run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Press Alt-F11 to open the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) editor. Choose Insert, Module and enter the following code. Make sure you substitute the correct paths for your system. 

Sub GetPictures()
Dim myPhotos, myPath As String 

myPath = "d:\photos\"
myPhotos = Dir(myPath + "*.jpg")
Call PlacePicture(myPath, myPhotos) 

Do Until myPhotos = ""
myPhotos = Dir
If myPhotos <> "" Then
ActiveWindow.View.GotoSlide Index:=ActivePresentation.Slides.Add(Index:=1,
Layout:=ppLayoutBlank).SlideIndex
Call PlacePicture(myPath, myPhotos)
End If
Loop
End Sub 

Sub PlacePicture(myPath, myPhotos)
ActiveWindow.Selection.SlideRange.Shapes.AddPicture(FileName:=myPath + myPhotos, LinkToFile:=msoFalse,
SaveWithDocument:=msoTrue, Left:=72, Top:=78, Width:=640, Height:=480).Select
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.Align msoAlignCenters, True
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.Align msoAlignMiddles, True
End Sub 

After you enter the code, press Ctrl-S to save your presentation. Next, press Ctrl-Q to get back to your slide, then press Alt-8 to open the Macro dialog box. Double-click your new macro to run it.

97 USERS CAN'T VIEW MACROS.
PowerPoint 97 users may not always be able to view and edit macros created in PowerPoint 2000. One of the new security features in PowerPoint 2000 is called digital signatures. These signatures help you verify that the macro code inside a PowerPoint or other Office file came from a known, trusted source (and because of that, is probably safe to run).
PowerPoint 97 doesn't support digital signatures. PowerPoint 97 can't update the signature when the macro code is edited, so it doesn't allow you to modify the macro.
If you need to convert a digitally signed macro so that it can be edited in PowerPoint 97, copy it from PowerPoint 2000's Visual Basic Editor, paste it into Notepad, and save it as a text file. You can then copy the macro code from the text file into a new VBA macro in PowerPoint 97.

ROTATING CLIP ART.
If you can rotate shapes and graphics that you drew in PowerPoint yourself but are unable to rotate clip art that you inserted via the Clip Gallery the following may solve the problem. The suggestion may not work with all of PowerPoint's clip art, since some of it is bitmap rather than vector graphics, but here's a simple way to solve this problem:
Once you've inserted the clip art, right-click the clip and choose Grouping, Ungroup from the context menu. You'll see a message box asking you to confirm that you really want to ungroup the picture. Click Yes.
If the clip art is vector rather than bitmap graphics, PowerPoint will convert it to several different objects; they'll all be selected, so you'll see lots of sets of selection handles. Immediately right-click any of the new objects, choose Grouping from the context menu, then click Group to convert the objects into a single group.
Since the objects that made up the clip art originally have been converted to PowerPoint drawing objects, you can now rotate them just as you can with other objects drawn in PowerPoint originally.

STUPID TOOLBAR TRICKS--PART 1 OF 2.
Double-click the blue title bar area of a floating toolbar to send it back to wherever it came from, that is, to wherever it was docked before you dragged it away to make it float. Look carefully at PowerPoint's pop-up menus, such as the Draw, AutoShapes, Fill, Line, and Text Colour menus. Notice that these, and a few others--including some of the individual AutoShapes types and Drawing options that pop up from the main pop-up menu--have a thin blue or grey bar across the top of the pop-up menu. This indicates that it's a "tear-off" menu. When you see one of these bars, you can position your mouse pointer over it, at which point it will turn blue. You can then drag the pop-up menu into your working area, turning it into a floating toolbar that sticks around rather than disappearing after every use.

 MACROS THAT RUN AUTOMATICALLY.
There's a complete set of instructions for this at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/ARTICLES/Q163/4/61.asp
If the instructions in this article are a little beyond you, yet you still want to have your macros load automatically in PowerPoint, or you need to distribute your macros to other people, visit http://www.rdpslides.com/pptools/ and read the information about the user-customisable toolbar you'll find there.

A POWERPOINT MOVIE TROUBLESHOOTER.
If you've ever run into trouble getting movies to play in your PowerPoint presentations, or especially getting them to play correctly on other computers, you'll want to head straight for the Microsoft PowerPoint Movie Troubleshooter at http://support.microsoft.com/support/PowerPoint/ppt2000

BATCH CONVERTING OLDER POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS.
If you have older PowerPoint presentations in PowerPoint 95 format and still need to use them in PowerPoint 2000, you can always open them one at a time, wait while PowerPoint converts them to the latest format, then resave them. But that could be quite a burden if you have more than just a few presentations to convert.
If you have lots of them to upgrade, it would be worth trying out the PowerPoint 97 Batch Converter found here: http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/downloadCatalog/dldPowerPoint.asp
Although it converts presentations to PowerPoint 97 rather than PowerPoint 2000, these versions of PowerPoint share pretty much the same file format. The only differences are in features that are new to PowerPoint 2000, and that certainly shouldn't be a problem with files from even earlier versions of PowerPoint.

COMPARING TWO PRESENTATIONS.
Have you ever run into this one: You give a copy of a presentation to an associate or client, and he or she returns it to you with edits to be incorporated into the main presentation but provides no clue as to where or what the changes might be. You need a way of comparing the two presentations quickly to make sure you don't miss any important changes.
In Word, the document revision tracking features solve this problem nicely, but there's no similar feature in PowerPoint. Fear not... here are a few tricks that will help you out:
Print out copies of each presentation in B/W mode so that the backgrounds disappear and you're left with just the text and graphics. For each slide in the presentation, line up the printout of the original version and the one with the edits and hold them up to a strong light source. If you have a light box for viewing slides, it works perfectly for this, but if not, there's always the nearest window or even your computer screen set to display an all-white document. With the two printouts lined up, you can easily spot any differences between them.
Better yet, save time, save trees: Open both presentations in PowerPoint, go to the first slide in each, then hold down the Ctrl key while you press Tab to switch quickly back and forth from one presentation to the other. Any differences between the two slides will appear to jump around on the screen, while everything else stays put. Repeat for each slide in the presentations.

POWERPOINT TO HTML.
PowerPoint has built-in support for converting presentations to HTML for use on the Web, but it doesn't give you much control over the results and tends to make HTML that's not especially friendly to non-Microsoft browsers or older browsers. If you're comfortable doing a little HTML editing and need a more flexible way to convert your presentations to HTML pages, have a look at http://www.rdpslides.com/ppt2html/
This site offers a demo version of a new template-based PowerPoint-to-HTML converter, along with complete instructions for its use.

STARTING PRESENTATIONS AUTOMATICALLY.
It's fairly simple if you use Windows 98 or later. Windows 98 includes the Task Scheduler, which can start programs at prescheduled times. You can use it to start a PowerPoint presentation every XX minutes or hours. There's one hitch: You must first set up your presentation so that it runs once and then quits, and time the presentation to see how long it takes to run completely. This means you can't use Kiosk mode in Slide Show, Set Up Slide Show, since Kiosk mode automatically sets your presentation to loop repeatedly.
To schedule a task, choose Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Scheduled Tasks. In the Task Scheduler window, double-click Add Scheduled Task to start the Scheduled Task Wizard. Click Next when the first screen of the wizard appears. On the next screen, choose Microsoft PowerPoint from the list of applications, and then click Next.
On the next screen, type a new name for the task if you like, then choose how often you want the task to be launched. For this example, choose Daily, then click Next. Select the starting time for the task. For now, pick a time a few minutes from the current time. Click Next. Click Finish to add the task to the scheduler. Now, right-click the newly added task and choose Properties from the context menu.
On the Task tab, you'll notice that the wizard has supplied the complete path to POWERPNT.EXE. If you left it as is, it would simply start PowerPoint on schedule. Since you want it to run a screen show instead, you'll need to edit the Run text box. After POWERPNT.EXE, add the following: /S
That's a space, /S, and then the full path to your presentation file. That tells PowerPoint to load your presentation and go directly into Slide Show view.
On the Schedule tab, click Advanced. Put a checkmark next to Repeat Task and set the time next to Every to a little longer than the amount of time it takes to display your entire presentation. Be sure NOT to put a checkmark next to any of the Stop options on this or the following tab. The Task Scheduler isn't able to stop a running presentation automatically; any attempt to do so causes PowerPoint or the Viewer to lock up.
Click OK when you've finished entering your settings. The Task Scheduler will automatically launch your presentation at the time you've set, the presentation will run once, then quit, returning you to the Windows desktop. After the Every interval has elapsed, the presentation will start again and continue accordingly. Whew! Did you get all that?

MAKE SURE PEOPLE WITH COLOR BLINDNESS CAN READ YOUR PRESENTATIONS.
A surprising number of people have one of several forms of colour blindness. As many as 5 percent to 10 percent of the men in your audience may not be able to distinguish between some of the colours in your presentation, which could mean that they can't read it at all, if you're not careful.
There's an excellent article by Robert Hess on the various forms of colour blindness and their effects at http://msdn.microsoft.com/voices/hess10092000.asp
Hess focuses on how you can use the knowledge presented in his article to make Web sites more accessible to users with colour blindness. All of his suggestions apply equally well to PowerPoint presentations.
If you'd like even more detailed information about how we perceive colour and other visual information, there's a more academically oriented site here: http://psych.hanover.edu/Krantz/sen_tut.html

INTEGRATE POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS INTO YOUR WEB SITE.
If you create Web sites with Microsoft FrontPage and are looking for a way to incorporate PowerPoint presentations into your site without having to re-create them from scratch, look no further than the following site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/languages/fp/dev/fpandppt.asp You'll find a detailed article that outlines several useful approaches you can try.

IF YOUR GRAPHIC ISN'T IMPORTING PROPERLY.
PowerPoint uses graphics import filters of various sorts to import graphics when you choose Insert, Picture, From File. Many of these graphics formats have a wide variety of capabilities and options, and not all of these options are completely supported by PowerPoint or the graphics filter.
If you're having trouble importing a particular type of graphic, send email to mshelp@microsoft.com and put this number in the subject line of the email: Q210396
You'll receive an informative article about the limitations of PowerPoint's graphics filters by return email.

ANIMATED FADING IN POWERPOINT.
Want to have a ClipArt picture of a city background fade slowly as the sun sets. To help with this, and with other similar animations, here is a very simple macro. Please note that the macro is not in a very finished form right now. It requires that you first insert the picture onto the slide and make sure you have it centred in the slide.
To centre the inserted picture, click the picture and choose Draw, Align or Distribute, Relative To Slide. Now, with the slide still selected, choose Draw, Align Or Distribute, Align Center. Next, choose Draw, Align Or Distribute, Align Middle.
Now select the picture and press Alt-F8. When the Macro dialog box opens, double-click your new macro. It will create all the objects in varying contrast levels to simulate fading. Then the macro will centre all the objects in the correct order (I hope). The macro will also automate the appearance of each object for you. The time between the appearance of objects is one second.
To create the macro, run PowerPoint and press Alt-F8. When the Macro dialog box opens, type in Fadeout and click Create. Enter the macro as shown below:

Sub Fadeout()
Dim i As Integer 

For i = 0 To 11
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.PictureFormat.IncrementContrast -0.03
ActiveWindow.Selection.Copy
ActiveWindow.View.Paste
Next 

ActiveWindow.Selection.SlideRange.Shapes.SelectAll
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.Align msoAlignCenters, True
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.Align msoAlignMiddles, True
With ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.AnimationSettings
.Animate = msoTrue
.TextLevelEffect = ppAnimateByAllLevels
.AnimateBackground = msoTrue
End With
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.AnimationSettings.AdvanceMode = ppAdvanceOnTime
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.AnimationSettings.AdvanceTime = 1
End Sub

When you've finished, press Alt-Q to return to PowerPoint. Choose File, Save As and name your new slide show. Click Save to close the dialog box and save the file.

EASTER EGG.
It's too early for Easter, but here's a hidden treat in PowerPoint for you, anyway:
Click Help on the menu bar, then click About Microsoft PowerPoint. Click the PowerPoint logo in the upper-left corner of the About Microsoft PowerPoint screen.

FREE POWERPOINT KNOWLEDGEBASE.
There's a wealth of information in the Microsoft Knowledgebase, but it can be difficult to track down. If you're just interested in technical info about PowerPoint 2000, check out this download: http://download.microsoft.com/download/powerpoint2000/Utility/2.0/W9X/EN-US/ppt2kkb.exe
Simply type the URL in your browser, save the file to disk when prompted, and once the download is complete, run it to start the installation.

POWERPOINT: TAKING NOTES DURING A PRESENTATION.
When you rehearse a slide show before an audience, it's a good idea to make notes of the audience's comments. An easy way to do this is to use Meeting Minder. To use this utility during a slide show, right-click the current slide and choose Meeting Minder. Click the Notes Pages tab and enter your notes. Click OK to close the dialog box.
After the slide show, go to the slide for which you want to view notes and choose Tools, Meeting Minder. Click the Notes Pages tab and read your notes for that slide.
When you've finished entering the text for this slide, press Enter once more, then press Shift-Tab until you've "unindented" the new line as far as it will go. Notice that a slide icon now appears next to it. When you begin typing on this line, it will add a new slide to your presentation, and the text you type will become its title.
You're on a roll now! Keep on typing until you've entered all the titles and bulleted text for your entire presentation. You'll notice that you never had to remove your fingers from the keyboard to mouse around on the screen. Don't worry if some of your slides aren't formatted quite correctly. It's much easier to fix the formatting in one pass through the presentation after you've entered all the text than it is to tweak the formatting on each slide as you enter it.

LINKS PRODUCE MACRO VIRUS WARNINGS.
When you add an action button to your presentation and link it to Other File, it may work perfectly on your own machine. But when you distribute the presentation to other people, they may get a message box like this when they click the link:
Opening <The file's name appears here>
Some files can contain viruses or otherwise be harmful to your computer. It is important to be certain that this file is from a trustworthy source. Would you like to open this file?
After an introduction like THAT, how many people WOULD go ahead and open it? Not us. So we click Cancel, get an error message, and never see the great info in the file to which you hyper linked.
If you know the path to the file you want to link to and the path to the app that it will open in, you can create a Run Program link instead. For example, you might create a Run Program link to C:\Program Files\Office\EXCEL.EXE C:\My Documents\My Info.XLS
When the user views your presentation and clicks that link, Excel will launch with your My Info worksheet loaded--so long as the user has Excel and a copy of My Info.XLS in the paths pointed to by your link. And there won't be any virus warning backchat from PowerPoint.
Obviously, this trick is most useful for presentations you'll play back on your own computer, since you have control over the links and the paths of files to which they point.
Sometimes you can't avoid using hyperlinks to Other File, though. In that case, your best bet is to supply a text file or other instructions along with your presentation so that users know what to expect when they click the links. That's often enough to allay their "startle factor" fears and convince them that it's OK to click OK.

WHAT'S SAVED IN TEMPLATES.
When you create a new template (*.POT) file, what actually gets saved? Or more important, what defaults will the template set in any new presentations based on it? Here's a list of the major items a POT can save and set:

• Slide size and orientation
  Colour scheme, including colours for default fill, line, shadow, text, etc.
  Text styles (i.e., Title and Body text placeholder formatting)
  Defaults for text and AutoShape objects (fill and line colour and styles, shadowed, etc.)
  Printer settings for slides, notes, and handouts
  Initial view (Slides, Notes Page, Slide Sorter, etc.)

Any slide you include in the presentation when you save it as a template will become part of any new presentation you base on the template (but won't automatically be added when you apply the template to an existing presentation).

PLACING TEXT OVER PICTURES.
All you have to do is choose the Text tool (the button's icon is a large "A") and draw your text outline. Type in the text and then click away from the text. Now click on the text. When the outline appears, grab the edge with the mouse and move the text over your picture.
If the picture is dark, you may want to change the text colour so it will show up over the picture. To do this, select the text and choose Format, Font. When the Font dialog box appears, click the arrow at the right side of the Color list box and choose a new colour. Click OK to close the dialog box and save your changes.

CONVERT YOUR PRESENTATION TO VIDEOTAPE.
Not everyone with a computer has PowerPoint, and believe it or not, there are still people who don't have a computer handy 24 hours a day. But nearly everyone has a VCR. Sometimes a videocassette of your presentation is the best way to make it accessible to the widest possible audience. AND it lets you add a synchronized sound track, something that you can't really even do in PowerPoint itself.
PowerPoint MVP Austin Myers has written a thorough tutorial on transferring PowerPoint presentations to VHS. You can find it by visiting  http://www.soniacoleman.com/Tutorials/Tutorials.htm
Once you arrive there, scroll down to the link called Recording Your PowerPoint Presentation To VHS. Click. Roll tape!

BETTER WEB PAGES FROM POWERPOINT.
If you convert PowerPoint presentations to HTML for use on the Web and don't like the appearance and behavior of PowerPoint's own HTML features, check out the RnR PPTools PPT2HTML converter at http://www.rdpslides.com/ppt2html/
This add-in allows to you create your own HTML templates, which are basically just HTML pages with a few special commands added. It models all of your PowerPoint-to-HTML conversions on the template you choose for the conversion.

LET THE BACKGROUND SHINE THROUGH.
Sometimes, your custom background is so colourful that you can't pick a contrasting colour to use for text. This usually happens when you use a picture for your background--fireworks, a garden scene, widgets and gadgets, or coffee beans (to name a few).
We have a great alternative to spending half a day trying to find just the right shade for your text. Here's what you do: Type your text in the text box, then double-click the text box's border to open the Format Text Box dialog box. For the Fill Color option, choose white or a pastel shade of the predominant colour in the section of picture behind the text box, then click the Semitransparent option. Choose Preview to verify your colour choice, and click OK when you're satisfied with it. The Semitransparent setting uses the chosen colour in every other pixel of the text box; the background shows through the remaining pixels. The result is that your background picture appears as a watermark behind the text box.
Now all you need to do is choose a complementary text colour that contrasts with the semitransparent colour. Not only is your text legible, but the text box is a design element as well.

PRESENTATIONS START IN SCREEN SHOW VIEW AUTOMATICALLY.
If you double-click a PowerPoint presentation's icon, PowerPoint opens the presentation for editing. Usually this is exactly what you want. However, if you're giving a presentation from your computer in front of an audience, it's a little tacky to make them sit there while PowerPoint launches, shows its splash screen, then opens your presentation in Slide view so you can finally start the real show.
It would be SO much more professional looking if PowerPoint simply launched your presentation right into Slide Show mode, and in fact it will do just that if you ask it to. First, open your presentation, then choose File, Save As. Select PowerPoint Show (* .pps) from the Save As Type drop-down list box at the bottom of the Save As dialog box, then click Save. PowerPoint saves your presentation as a PowerPoint Show (PPS) file.
When you double-click a PowerPoint Show file, PowerPoint launches it directly into Screen Show mode without even a hint that you're running PowerPoint at all.
If you prefer, you can accomplish the same thing by simply renaming your PowerPoint presentation file to give it a .PPS extension instead of the usual .PPT extension. The only difference is that if you rename instead of using Save As, you won't have an extra copy of the file on your hard drive (that is, one .PPT file and one .PPS). PPS and PPT files are identical. You can still open your PPS file in PowerPoint when you need to edit it.

SLIDE SHOWS IN A MINI-WINDOW.
How many times have you started your slide show for a run-through, only to notice some little problem that needs fixing? You have to stop the slide show, go back to edit mode, make the fix, start the slide show again, and ... darn! You find something ELSE that needs a little touchup.
To save yourself some time and energy, hold down the Ctrl key while you click the Slide Show button in the lower-left corner of the screen. PowerPoint displays your slide show in a small window rather than full screen, which is neat, but here's the good part--when you find something you'd like to change, click back in the main PowerPoint window. The screen show window minimizes itself onto the Windows taskbar. Navigate to the slide that needs editing, make your changes, then click the PowerPoint Slide Show button on the taskbar to resume your mini-show right where you left off--with your most recent changes in place.

A POWERPOINT COLOUR EFFECT.
Have you seen The Wizard of Oz lately? The film starts out in black and white. Then when Dorothy opens the door in Oz, the movie suddenly switches to full colour. Why not try the same effect in a presentation?
To see how this would work, run PowerPoint and open a blank slide. Choose Insert/Picture/ClipArt and insert any picture. Now, choose Insert/Duplicate Slide to copy the slide. Go back to the first slide now, and select the picture by clicking it. When the Picture toolbar opens, click the Image Control button (second from the left) and choose Greyscale.
Now, choose Slide Show/View Show. When the first slide appears, click the mouse to move to the second slide. The ClipArt picture remains in place, but suddenly appears in colour.

A POWERPOINT DRAWING TIP.
If you click one of the PowerPoint Drawing tools (rectangle, ellipse), you can insert the object and open the Format AutoShape dialog box at the same time. Just click the tool you want to use and then double-click the slide. The object appears in the slide and PowerPoint automatically opens the Format AutoShape dialog box. After you make your formatting selections, click OK to close the dialog box and save your settings.

ANIMATING CLIPART.
How would you like to have a ClipArt picture put itself together right before the audience's eyes? To see how to create this kind of animation, run PowerPoint and choose Insert/Picture/ClipArt. Right-click the picture you want to use and choose Insert to place it on your slide. We suggest you use the knife, fork, and spoon set found under Signs.
Now select the picture, then choose Draw/Ungroup. Next, choose Slide Show, Custom Animation. When the dialog box opens, click the Effects tab. In the "Check to animate slide objects" list, click the first object. Then hold down the Shift key and scroll down to select the last object. With all objects selected, click the arrow at the right side of the "Entry animation and sound" list box and select an effect.
Now click the Order & Timing tab and then select the radio button labelled Automatically. Click OK to close the dialog box and then press F5 to run the slide show. Each part of the ClipArt picture will appear as you instructed when you chose an effect.

IMPORTING.
Many people like to work in Word as much as possible and then import the Word document into PowerPoint. To do this, run Word and open the document you want to use in PowerPoint. Now choose File/Send To/Microsoft PowerPoint. This will open PowerPoint and load the current Word document into a new slide show.

AN OBJECT DRAWING MACRO.
Here's a PowerPoint macro that automatically draws circles of random colors in random positions on a slide. The parameters are set to place the circles approximately in the center portion of a 10" X 7.5" (On-screen Show).
To enter the macro, run PowerPoint and open a new blank slide show. Choose File/Save As and name your slide show and save it. Next press Alt + F8 and click in the "Macro name" entry box and type in DrawCircles. Click Create and then enter the macro as shown here. Note that PowerPoint will add the Sub DrawCircles and End Sub lines for you.
Sub DrawCircles
Dim Index As Integer
Randomize
For Index = 1 To 50
ActiveWindow.Selection.SlideRange.Shapes.AddShape(msoShapeOval, 72#, 72#, 18#, 18#). Select
With ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange
.Fill.ForeColor.RGB = RGB(Int((255 * Rnd) + 1), Int((255 * Rnd) + 1), Int((255 * Rnd) + 1))
.Fill.Visible = msoTrue
.Fill.Solid
End With
ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange.Duplicate.Select
With ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange
.IncrementLeft Int((600 * Rnd) + 1)
.IncrementTop Int((350 * Rnd) + 1)
End With
Next
ActiveWindow.Selection.Unselect
End Sub
Press Alt + Q to return to your slide and press Alt + F8. Double-click DrawCircles and the macro will create 50 circles of a variety of colours.

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