Presenter 360: Annotating Slide Content

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the consolidated narration window and the all-new timeline in Presenter 360 to add annotations and sync them with audio.

Watch this video demo, then follow the activities below to practice.

Practice Activities:

1. Record Narration
2. Add Spotlight Annotations
3. Delete Annotations
4. Add Arrow Annotations

Practice Activity: Record Narration

First, let's record narration for a slide so we can synchronize annotations with it later. (If you prefer to import audio rather than recording it, you can do that, too. We cover importing and exporting audio in another tutorial.)

1. Make sure you have a microphone for recording narration. You can use a built-in microphone or one that you plug into your computer.
2. Open the PowerPoint folder in your practice files, then open the Presenter_Practice1.pptx file in PowerPoint.
3. Select slide 2 in your presentation. This is the slide where we'll record narration and add annotations. We've already added a narration script to the notes panel for you.
4. Go to the Articulate tab on the PowerPoint ribbon and click Narration.
5. When the Narration window opens, click the Record button on the ribbon and record yourself reading the script from the Notes panel on the right side of the window.
6. Click Stop Recording when you're done. Your audio waveform will appear in the timeline.

Practice Activity: Add Spotlight Annotations

1. Use the play/pause button to preview the audio you just recorded. When you reach the sentence where you're speaking about "box one," pause the audio.
2. Now click the Spotlight annotation on the ribbon and draw a spotlight around the name and address section on the slide. Your annotation will start where the playhead is positioned on the timeline, but you can drag it left or right to adjust its timing.
3. Continue playing the audio where you left off, then pause it again when it refers to "box two."
4. Add another spotlight to the social security section on the slide.
5. Now select each spotlight annotation in the timeline and use the Spotlight, Outline, and Effects drop-down lists to change the colors and effects of your spotlights.
6. Move the playhead to the beginning of the timeline and play the audio again to see how your spotlights look.

Practice Activity: Delete Annotations

The new timeline in Presenter 360 makes it easy to delete individual annotations. Let's try it. Select each spotlight you added in the previous activity, then press the Delete key on your keyboard. That's it!

Practice Activity: Add Arrow Annotations

Now that we’ve deleted our spotlight annotations, let’s replace them with arrow annotations.

1. Use the Arrow drop-down list on the ribbon to choose an arrow style.
2. Use the Fill, Outline, and Effects drop-down lists to customize your arrow style.
3. Then click the slide in each of the areas described in your narration—“box one,” “box two,” etc.
4. Look at the timeline and notice that all your arrow annotations start at the same time. No problem. Just drag the arrow objects along the timeline till they’re synchronized with your audio.
5. If you need to adjust the duration for any of your arrow annotations, just drag either end of the annotation objects on the timeline to shorten or lengthen them.
6. Click the play button on the ribbon to preview your slide.
7. Click Save & Close on the ribbon to exit the Narration window.

Summary

In this tutorial, you learned how to add annotations and sync them with audio in Presenter 360.

To learn more about working with annotations, see this user guide.

In the next tutorial, we’ll explore adding quizzes and interactions.