| ******************************************************************* Dave Paradi's PowerPoint Tip Issue #149 December 11, 2007 Published & Copyright by Dave Paradi of ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com Circulation 8,533 ******************************************************************* Please forward this newsletter to executives and professionals who want to create PowerPoint presentations that sell their ideas, products or services more effectively. If this newsletter has been sent to you by a friend, sign up to get your own copy at http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/newsletter.htm . ******************************************************************* In this issue: Tips on Cutting the Time You Spend Creating Presentations Next Newsletter in 2008 PowerPoint Tip - Animation Using Reveals Best of the Blog - Start small with visual slide transformations Dave's Travel Schedule ******************************************************************* Tips on Cutting the Time You Spend Creating Presentations Do you feel like you never have enough time to create your presentations? Ever finish a presentation knowing that it could have gone much better if you'd only taken the time to prepare it properly? A new article on the web site shares five tips for cutting the time it takes to create a presentation. Implement these ideas and you will create better presentations in less time. The bottom line: your presentations will sell your ideas, products, or services more effectively to professionals and executives. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Next Newsletter in 2008 This will be the last newsletter for 2007, since the next issue would be on Christmas Day. The next newsletter will come your way on January 8, 2008. Thank you for all the support this year and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. ------------------------------------------------------------------- PowerPoint Tip: Animation Using Reveals Recently I needed to animate parts of a graph. I tried the animation tools in PowerPoint, but they would not allow me to reveal the parts of the graph the way I wanted to. If this happens to you when wanting to reveal parts of a graph or a graphic, here is an option to consider. The technique involves thinking in a different way. Instead of the normal approach of animating each element to come on to a slide, this approach reveals the elements that are already on the slide, but are covered up by other elements. It is like we used to do with overhead transparencies when we would cover part of the transparency up with a piece of paper and reveal each point by moving the paper. There are two ways to implement this technique. The first is to begin by saving the background as an image. Then, add this image to the slide. Size it so that the image covers up the entire slide (it now looks like the slide has nothing on it). Use the cropping handles to crop the image to the desired size, covering up only the element you want to reveal later. In the animation task pane, apply an exit animation to this image so that when you advance, the image is removed from the slide, revealing what is underneath. The other way to implement this technique is to use the transparent background technique taught by Glen Millar, who I saw demonstrate it at the PowerPoint Live conference recently. This technique uses the ability to fill a shape with the background of the slide. First, draw a shape, for example a rectangle, on the slide, covering up the element you want to reveal. Format the shape so that it has no line and the fill effect is set to Background. Again, animate this shape so that it exits when you advance on this slide. Using either approach, you can achieve the building of the elements on the slide in the order that you want to discuss them in. The only downside to this technique is that when you print the slide, the shape or image covers up the other element and it appears that there is nothing there on the slide. To get around this, create a duplicate hidden slide that does not use this technique and print this hidden slide instead of the slide you use for presenting. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Best of the Blog - What does that say? We were driving to Michigan last week and as we were going along the highway, my wife was looking at this one billboard for a while as we approached it. Finally she asked me, "What does that say?" See, the company who created the billboard chose a fancy looking almost script-like font for their name. But while it probably looked really neat as a proof, when you are travelling on a highway and have 1.5 seconds to figure it out, you have no hope. It's the same with our slides. We want our audiences to glance at the slide and return their focus to the presenter, all within a couple of seconds. If we choose fonts that are hard to read or are too small, our audience is left confused or they spend so much time trying to figure out what's on our slide that they don't hear what we say. When selecting fonts for your slides, pick easy to read fonts like Arial, and make them big enough to see. Other recent blog posts at http://pptideas.blogspot.com : ------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave's Travel Schedule I work with business people who struggle with the effectiveness of the PowerPoint presentations they use to sell ideas, products and services to other business people. My research based PowerPoint Presentation Effectiveness System helps my clients achieve greater productivity and deliver presentations that close more sales. You can save money by booking me to speak to your organization or conference when I am close to your area for other clients. Here's where I will be in the next few months: December 12-14 - St. John's, NL December 18-19 - Mississauga, ON January 23-24 - Cincinnati, OH February 23 - Las Vegas, NV February 25 - Chicago, IL February 26 - Kansas City (tentative) March 1 - Sawgrass, FL March 3 - West Palm Beach, FL E-mail me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com to discuss how my Think Outside The Slide(tm) sessions can help your organization be more productive and improve communication throughout the organization. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Privacy Policy: I will never sell or distribute your e-mail or information to anyone. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Need articles for your newsletter? 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