PowerPoint Essentials for E-Learning Designers
No matter how good a PowerPointer you are and no matter how often you work in PowerPoint, you're bound to miss a feature that other users consider essential.
Last week we asked you to share your favorite PowerPoint features – and you did! From picture styles, shape effects and animations to customizing and production efficiencies – you definitely covered the "must know" features!
Below is a summary of your favorite features along with links to their screencasts. If you have additional features or know of screencasts that support this list, please add them to the comments and we'll update the list.
Click to view Essential PowerPoint Features
Design Effects
Photo Effects:
Drop Shadows:
Remove Backgrounds:
- Try this tool for removing image backgrounds in #PowerPoint 2010 (good for #Articulate projects)
- PowerPoint Tip: How to remove the background of an image
- Learn to remove the background from images in #PowerPoint 2007
- Removing backgrounds from images using shapes and clipboard fills in PowerPoint
Combining shapes:
Animations
Transitions:
Animation Painter
- PowerPoint 2010: Use the animation painter to apply animations from one object to another
- Here's how to save time using the animation painter in PowerPoint 2010
Video and multimedia
Saving Presentations as movies:
PowerPoint 2010 Video:
- Utilizing PowerPoint to create video/flash Articulate sidebar effects inspired by David Fair
- Replace the sidebar in Articulate Presenter with video content,such as a talking person
Production Efficiencies
Screenshots:
Change Pictures:
Selection Pane:
- Use the selection pane in PowerPoint 2007 to manage the layered objects on your slide.
- Use selection pane to manage object layers and names for improved efficiency when building elearning courses
Mathematical Equations:
Customizing
Slide Masters:
- The difference between #PowerPoint slide masters & slide layouts in PPT 2007/2010
- Using Slide Masters to automate picture effects and styles
Customize menu bar:
Image and Text Placeholders:
Resources
Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest e-learning inspiration and insights directly in your inbox. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Twitter. And if you have questions, please share them in the comments.
21 Comments
That really is a great resource! Sorry i missed the input stage. For what it's worth, my current favourite is cut, right click paste special, image. When we convert slides with tonnes of text (public companies with safe harbor / disclaimer statements of 30 lines of 6pt text) it [rightly] takes ages for Articulate to render through each of the characters. So converting the slide to an image greatly accelerated the conversion process. Before being taught the above tip at [plug] http://www.betterpresenting.com/summit/ we would shift f5, alt print screen, escape, paste, format pic, crop, resize..... With the above tip it is now just ctrl-a(ll), ctl-x, right click paste image. This might not sound like such a big deal, but when you are processing a 50 presentations a day at a con... Expand