PowerPoint Tips and Help

Technology Trish's Powerpoint guru John is a well established Silver level contributor to Microsoft's PowerPoint help forum. This page answers some of the most common questions as well as giving tutorials on some of the more devious workarounds to "impossible" PowerPoint techniques. Note that the techniques are designed for PowerPoint XP or 2003 though some can be adapted for earlier versions. If you cannot solve your problem either here or by using the help forum here then one of our advisors may be able to help - support prices start at only £5 /$10! Check it out here.

Have a look at our new Tutorials page here

Buttons

If you're fed up of the boring action buttons in Powerpoint here are some nice "glass" buttons.

Clever Slide Numbering

if you want to number from eg slide 3 but still start from 1 or not number section slides and still retain consequtive numbers (and more) >>

Sound

Many of the questions asked on the Microsoft site involve PowerPoint's handling of sound files.

Why does my song stop playing after one slide? I want it to play for the whole presentation.

Why won't my song play when I send it to my friend?

How can I embed mp3 files?

I want to fade my song In (or Out)

I want my song to keep playing while my presentation loops

Video

I want to add text in front of my video in Powerpoint

I want to video to keep playing while slides change

Navigation and Animation

When I hyperlink to a slide for the second time the animations don't play!

I want to hyperlink and then return to the slide AFTER the one that I linked from

File Size

How can I make my file size smaller?

Editing

When I drag or "nudge" objects they jump around, why won't they move accurately?

I've used a complex graduated fill, how can I use exactly the same fill again for another shape?

Presenter View

Fed up of not being able to read the notes in Presenter View because they're so small?

Tutorials etc

Jigsaw pieces - Proper straight edge pieces for 9 piece puzzle slide

Portrait / Landscape Slides in a Presentation

Using vba to pause a self running show

Hyperlinking No-where (screen tips)

Super hidden pivots

Cloze Tests

How to pause and start animated Gifs

A simple page turn transition

Dice throw simulation

Quick Tips

Quick tips to change your life!