Microsoft Office Tips, Tricks, and How-to's to help you use MS Office like a pro!

Carol's Corner Office

Category Archives: PowerPoint 2010

How to Convert a PowerPoint Presentation from A Previous Version to PowerPoint 2010

Posted on by Posted in PowerPoint 2010

Although you can view and work with presentations that have been created in previous versions of PowerPoint, you may get improved performance and additional perks if you convert your older presentations to the PowerPoint 2010 (.pptx) file format.

When not converted, some features in your presentations, such as some Ribbon commands, may be disabled because some or all of your presentation content was created in a previous version that did not support those features.

If you would like to use all of PowerPoint 2010 features in your presentation, convert it!  Follow the steps below to learn how:

  1. Click the File tab on your Ribbon.
  2. On the Info tab, click Convert.

Info

Caveats:

  • The Convert command will only appear if at least of of the conditions below is met:
  • The presentation was created or saved in an earlier PowerPoint (.ppt) file format.
  • The presentation contains one or more diagrams or charts created in PowerPoint 2007 or earlier.
  • The presentation contains media objects. such as audio or video clips, created or inserted using PowerPoint 2007.
  • If the Convert command does not appear, the presentation is up to date in PowerPoint 2010.
  • After converting, you are prompted to save the converted presentation. The original presentation is not deleted. If the original is a PowerPoint 2007 presentation (.pptx), it is overwritten if you give the converted presentation the same file name and extension.

Add Animation to an Object in PowerPoint 2010

Posted on by Posted in PowerPoint 2010

Animation definitely has its place in some PowerPoint presentations. When you would like to animate an object you will find that it is not terribly difficult to do.

Follow the steps below to learn how:

  1. Select the object you would like to animate.
  2. On the Animations tab of your Ribbon, in the Animation group, click the drop-down arrow and select the animation effect you would like to use.
  3. If you do not see the entrance, exit, emphasis, or motion path animation effect that you want, click More Entrance Effects, More Emphasis Effects, More Exit Effects, or More Motion Paths.
  4. After you have applied an animation to an object or text, the animated items are labeled on the side with a non-printing numbered tag, displayed near the text or object. The tag will only appear in Normal view when the Animations tab is selected or the Animation task pane is visible.

More on this subject to follow…

How to Change a Slide’s Orientation in PowerPoint 2010

Posted on by Posted in PowerPoint 2010

I think you all know that you can use portrait or landscape orientation in Word and Excel documents. What you may not know however, is that you can apply the exact same orientation setting to your PowerPoint 2010 slides. You can change this orientation from slide to slide, as you would do with pages in an MS Word document or Excel report.

In PowerPoint, slides are set to landscape as a default. As a part of your design process when creating your presentation, you can choose to change that default. If you wait until you are finished and then start changing slide orientation, it seldom produces the results you had in mind.

Follow the steps below to learn how to change your slide orientation:

  1. Click on the Design tab of the Ribbon.
  2. In the Page Setup group, click the Slide Orientation drop-down and select an option.

If you change the orientation of a slide, be sure to test it in as many scenarios as possible as it may look good on your system but look terrible on another.

How to Add Slide Numbers in PowerPoint 2010

Posted on by Posted in PowerPoint 2010

A reader recently wrote to me inquiring how to have her PowerPoint slides show the slide numbers in an x of y format

Of course, this is absolutely doable and without a lot of fuss and muss either.

For those of you who do not already know how to insert slide numbers, follow the steps below:

  1. In PowerPoint 2010 click on the first slide in your presentation and on the Insert tab, click Slide Number to open the Header and Footer dialog box on the Slide tab.
  2. Select the slide number and click Apply to All.

The steps above will insert a basic slide number at the bottom of each of your slides. Should you want to have your slide numbers display as x of y, as the person who inquired, you will need to do it a little differently.

Follow the steps below to learn how:

  1. In PowerPoint 2010 select Slide Master on the View tab.
  2. In the lower right-hand corner you will see a placeholder with <#> in it. following that, key in of x with the x being the total number of slides in your presentation. If your presentation had 15 slides, it would look like this: <#> of 15.

Now, in Normal view, you will see the slide number and the total number of slides in your footer.

Be aware that should you add or delete slides in your presentation, you will have to change the number of pages in the Slide Master so that they view correctly.