Archive for PowerPoint
PowerPoint 2010 Tips–Remove Picture Background & Make Graphics
Posted by: | CommentsBefore I begin, I want to say how appreciative I am that just this week, we surpassed 900 followers of this blog from Facebook. I appreciate all of you and I read and respond to all questions you might have.
Have you used PowerPoint 2010 much yet? I wish I had more occasions to use it as it has so many cool features and the user interface is sleek and just fun to use! Today, I want to pass along just two features that are useful in a graphic arts sort of way. Instead of taking your pictures and uploading to a cloud service to edit, try keeping it on your desktop and using PowerPoint 2010.
Remove Picture Backgrounds
People joke about photoshopping someone out of a picture, now you can do it with Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 instead of an add-on program. It’s an intermediate task and I have great instructions plus here’s a link to the Microsoft PowerPoint blog for even more detail. Below are examples of how I removed everything but the person in one photo and then another example of how I removed greenery and just kept the flowers in the other.
Step-By-Step
Insert an image>click on the image to activate the picture tools>click on 
(upper left on toolbar)then you’ll see the tool. Figure out what you want to remove. You’ll see in my illustration that I’ve adjusted the tool to surround the person in the image. You can move the tool around as much as you need to. When you think you have your object set apart, click somewhere else on the slide and the background will disappear and you’ll be left with just the person. (I put a colored background around the boy since it wouldn’t have shown up as well on my white blog background). If you see that some element is in the picture you don’t want, there’s another set of tools you can use to refine your project (see graphic).
Use these tools to refine and get your image just the way you want. If you don’t like the result click on the discard all changes and your image will be back as when you started!
Here’s one more example just for fun…
Build Your Own Graphics – Right in PowerPoint 2010
Ever need a quick graphic, but it seems you spend more time looking for what you need than it should take? If you know what you want/need, use these ‘hidden’ tools in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 to make what you want – complete with customized color, size and pizzazz.
First, you’ll need to reveal these ‘hidden’ tools. They’re called hidden because there are actually hundreds of these types of tools that you can choose to add to PowerPoint and they will then show up in your Quick Access Tool bar. (See this link for a short video of what this tool bar can do for you. It’s worth your time.)
Here are the steps to get the tools you’ll need for this project: File >PowerPoint Options > Quick Access Toolbar > Commands Not in the Ribbon > Combine Shapes. After this step, then you’ll see this new icon in the upper left (where your other quick access tools are by default). 
Now you’re ready to build your graphic element. Now, I’m not as clever or creative as the Microsoft folks, so below is what I came up with, you’ll have to forgive my simplicity and lack of creativity! I made a simple stick figure and used the ‘combine’ feature to combine the body, legs and 
arms shape into one element. The head and balloon words did not work with these tools. After the body part was finished I simply selected all the elements and went to the ‘arrange’ button to group them all together. This is a very handy button!
You can visit the Microsoft PowerPoint blog here and see the cool key project they made – it’s much fancier than mine and has great instructions. So try out Microsoft PowerPoint to make your own graphics. I’ve used it in the past as I find it easier to work with tools I already have on my local drive rather than having to log into a web tool, upload and then start creating and revising my graphic. I’d love to hear about the tools you use.
Microsoft Ribbon Hero – Practical and Fun Hands- On Training
Posted by: | CommentsHave you been using Office 2007, or the new Office 2010 Beta (which you can download and use for free until late this year)? Perhaps you’ve
found the ribbon interface to be confusing and have been frustrated (as I’ve been), trying to figure out formerly simple formatting commands. Microsoft provides tips and training for getting up to speed with the ribbon, but Microsoft Labs has recently come out with something new – Ribbon Hero.
Ribbon Hero works with Excel, PowerPoint and Word 2007 and 2010 only. During the install process, you may be prompted to download and install Microsoft VSTO, so for most of us, there will be two downloads. After the install, pull up one of the office programs and you’ll notice a ribbon hero button over to the right on your ribbon. Simply click to open and get started. After you’ve achieved some points, you’ll be asked if you want to connect with Facebook in a friendly competition with other RH users. There’s also a Facebook fan page if you’d like to join. It was nice to see that Ribbon Hero scores will be shared with your friends only if they are Ribbon Hero players as well.
Ribbon Hero is an interactive game where points can be achieved by simply doing your usual work, or you can ‘take the challenge’ and choose from a wide variety of tasks to perform. Below you’ll see the interface for working in Excel. There are three ‘Challenge’ categories and then specific challenges/tasks to accomplish within these categories. Simply click on one of the challenge tasks, complete it and you’ll hear a congratulatory tone, a couple balloons will rise and you’ll be awarded points.
If you choose a task that you’re not familiar with, there are hints and articles right there to refer to. I did the conditional formatting challenge – something I’d never heard of – and learned something new.
Most people will learn faster and retain longer using this hand-on, practical interface. The examples are down-to-earth and the student can easily apply these examples to real-world work and accomplish tasks faster.
I’m using RH on two computers – one with the beta Office 2010 and one with Office 2007. I wondered if the software would be smart enough to know I was using it on two computers and combine my score. When I did the Facebook connect, I was pleasantly surprised that it did recognize that and it asked if it would be OK to combine the two scores – very nice.
I know Ribbon Hero’s only been out a couple of weeks at this writing, (2-5-10), but here are a couple questions:
1. I’m wondering if they will develop the game for other Office apps.
2. Will the ‘challenge tasks’, be changed and refreshed? Right now, I’m seeing about 8 or so tasks to complete under each category. Realistically, that won’t take too long for someone to complete and then what? I’ll ask these questions on the Facebook page and see what I get.
Interactive training with immediate feedback and having the social aspects (with Facebook), is very progressive for Microsoft. I haven’t seen anything as innovative as this with Google, Open Office or Zimbra. If you or your company is thinking about upgrading to Office 2007, take advantage of this free and innovative training.
Microsoft Small Business Live – Open, Share & Save Documents From Your Computer
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Microsoft has been refining and upgrading their ‘Live’ series of offerings the last few months. This article will focus on recently revamped ‘Microsoft Office Live – Small Business’. Just visit the Office Live site and you’ll be introduced to a cornucopia of options. You can set up a website, set up an e-commerce store, purchase a domain name and then set up various e-mail accounts using the new domain name. There is a contact manager, an e-mail marketing feature and newsletter creation and mailing (paid subscription for these).
We will focus on a free and very useful function I found while exploring this site—the ‘Share Documents’ feature. Looks like Microsoft is competing with Google here as they are offering a place to store, share and collaborate on Microsoft Office documents. From the above menu of items, click on the ‘Share Documents’ and you’ll be taken to your Workspace site where you can upload documents for sharing, collaboration or storage. Check this out for full details on everything you can do with your workspace.
I liked the fact that I can upload multiple documents at once by clicking one file, holding the shift and selecting consecutive files. It does not upload folders, however. Once I’ve gotten my documents uploaded, I can create different workspaces to share with different groups (or just a single person). It’s easy to move my documents to new workspaces and flag documents for sharing. As you’re setting up to share, you decide if the recipient will be an owner, editor or viewer. I really like the choice I have to send my invitation to someone and they don’t have to sign in or create an account to view the documents. Don’t you just hate getting something from someone and in order to see it, you have to get your own account!
I like this interface much better than Google Docs. It seems to be more intuitive and just makes more sense, at least to me. Over on the right side of the document screen, you can check out the activity in your space. You can see who has made changes or uploaded any more documents – very handy. Click on the ‘Comment’ box and leave a note for a co-worker.
Microsoft has a collaboration feature they call ‘Shared View’. You can read more about this application, which you can download and use without using the Live Small Business site. Click on the ‘Share’ button and select the option to share your screen with someone. You’ll have to have the app installed on your computer—you’ll be prompted for what to do. After it’s installed, you can initiate a sharing session with anyone right from Word, Excel or PowerPoint – nice.
I’m saving the best for last! The coolest feature and a huge timesaver is that you can save a document directly to your on-line live workspace right from your local Microsoft Office application. This means when you’re working on a document in Word, Excel or PowerPoint, click the save button and you’ll have the option to save either to your local drive or your small business live workspace in the clouds. You do have to install this add-in to be able to do this. It works with Office 2003 & 2007. It’s really great – can’t do that with Google Docs!
I first set up a Windows Live Account before I set up the Small Business portion and I was pleased to discover that I can access either of these areas by going to http://home.live.com/ and signing in. I did notice once I get into the Small Business section and I’m in the documents section, I don’t find a way to navigate myself back to my top level, or home page. This is annoying. I wish they would have some menu items at the top to get me where I want to be!
Next week, we’ll look at the ‘Outlook Connector’ and what that can do.
