PowerPoint Tutorial Archives

Save Your Deck: Methods to Recover an Unsaved PowerPoint File

Posted on September 11, 2014December 20, 2019 by Rick E

Sheer panic—that’s probably your first reaction when you realize that you weren’t able to save the PowerPoint file you were working on. Maybe the power went out or your computer unexpectedly crashed. Maybe you were too preoccupied that you didn’t think to hit “Save.” Whatever the reason, you’ve suddenly lost hours of hard work and you have no clue how to get it all back.

Luckily, there’s no reason to stress over losing an unsaved PowerPoint file. If you’re using the latest versions of PowerPoint, you can easily retrieve and recover all your hard work. Follow these steps to recover a PowerPoint file you accidentally lost:

Method One: Recover Unsaved Presentations

If you were interrupted before you ever got the chance to save your PowerPoint file, you can simply look for it in the Microsoft Unsaved Files folder. Go to the File tab, make sure you’re on Recent and click on Recover Unsaved Presentations. The icon is right below the list of folders under Recent Places.

Everything in the Unsaved folder are temporary files. Make sure you recover and save everything you need, because you might lose it after a few days.

Method Two: AutoRecover

If you’ve been periodically saving your work but was interrupted before you could save specific changes, you can retrieve your PowerPoint file using the AutoRecover function. First, check if you have it enabled. Go to the File tab, click on Options and go to Save. Make sure your options are similar to those in this picture:

If you don’t have AutoRecover enabled, there’s no other way to retrieve the changes you made to your PowerPoint file. You will have to redo your work from the last save. But if everything looks good, you can then follow these steps:

1.) In the same dialogue box, copy the file destination path.

2.) Open Windows Explorer, paste the path on the address bar, and hit Enter.

To avoid losing any crucial information, make sure AutoRecover is enabled every time you start creating a PowerPoint deck.

Conclusion

Retrieving an unsaved PowerPoint file is a no-brainer as long as you know these basic recovery methods.

You can either open the “Recover Unsaved Presentations” found in the “Recent Places” or use the AutoRecover function to check where that unsaved document must be hiding.

Learn these tricks by heart so you don’t have to worry about getting your presentation back!

Ready to take your presentation to the next level? Schedule a free presentation consultation now.

How to Create Doodles with PowerPoint Shapes

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Rick E

Hand-drawn illustrations can add a unique quality to your PowerPoint design. Even simple doodles can make things interesting, especially if the rest of your deck sticks to a more formal aesthetic.

The stark contrast is especially useful for emphasizing key points in your slides. If you want to give it a try, there’s a simple way to create cute doodles using PowerPoint Shapes.

To make one yourself, follow these 4 easy steps:

Step One: Draw a PowerPoint Shape

Head to the Insert tab and choose any of the PowerPoint shapes available. For this tutorial, I decided to go with the heart shape under Basic Shapes.

Before moving on, right-click on the shape you just drew, choose and click No Fill. You can also change the outline color to whatever you want by clicking on .

Step Two: Edit Points

The problem with PowerPoint shapes is that they look too perfect. To make them look hand-drawn, we need to make a little less precise. Right-click on your shape again and choose Edit Points. You’ll end up with something that looks like this:

Step Three: Open Path

To get the look we’re after, right-click on a specific point on your shape and choose Open Path.The point you’ll “open” will depend on the shape you chose. Just keep in mind that you can’t select Open Path for two different points. For this tutorial, I decided to open the point on top.

Step Four: Make adjustments

This is where you let your creativity run loose. Simply click and drag on the path you opened and adjust the shape to your liking. The best way to get the results you’re after is by trial and error. If you end up with something that you don’t think looks right, simply click Undo or hit CTRL + Z on your keyboard.

There you have it!

Here’s how my shape turned out:

If I decided to use the point at the bottom of the heart shape, it would end up looking like this:

The Takeaway

Don’t hesitate to give this a try and create interesting doodles using PowerPoint shapes. Just remember that since everything on your slides should correspond to your main message, you should only add these designs when needed.

Make sure that they correspond and point towards your main objective, rather than distract the viewers from it. Need help with your PowerPoint? Our design experts can lend you a hand, or give you a free quote. You can also check out our previous PowerPoint tutorials to sharpen your presentation design skills.

Featured Image: Matt via Flickr

PowerPoint Action Buttons: One-Click Wonders

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Rick E

PowerPoint action buttons work like hyperlinks but require fewer steps. Using this function allows you to automatically define where you want your button to lead.

You can set it to jump to any specific slide. It can also prompt a video or sound clip to play on your browser, or on a different program. While the more recent versions of PowerPoint – 2010 onwards – have multimedia options that don’t require you to go outside the slide, hyperlinking still proves beneficial for those who prefer an easier PowerPoint design experience.

This tutorial offers you a quick guide on how to use this convenient PowerPoint tool.

Different types of PowerPoint action buttons

Start by clicking on the Insert tab and click on the Shapes button. You’ll see a selection of different shape types. At the bottom of the drop-down box, you will see the different action buttons that you can use:

Back or Previous
Forward or Next
Beginning
End
Home
Information
Return
Movie
Document
Sound
Help
Custom

Creating a command with action buttons

Choose the kind of button you want to use and draw it on the slide. This will automatically prompt a dialogue box to appear:

Here, you can create commands for your action button. You can link to a specific slide, a different PowerPoint presentation, a URL, or any file saved in your computer. You can also prompt a sound file to play. You can choose from sound files available on PowerPoint or use your own.

For this tutorial, I’m going to create a button that will link to the SlideGenius contact form. To do that, I selected Hyperlink to and chose URL from the list of options. After that, I pasted the URL into the dialogue box that appeared and clicked OK.

Since you’re essentially working with a shape, you can also customize these action buttons any way you want. I chose to change its background and outline color to match the rest of my presentation.

The Final Word

There you have it! In just a few steps, you can make action buttons and have a PowerPoint presentation that’s easier to manage. It can help you give a more streamlined presentation. If you’re building an interactive deck, it can also add a more enriching experience.

If you’re building an interactive deck, it can also add a more enriching experience.

Need more help with your PowerPoint designs? Read our previous tutorials, or contact us to work with professional presentation designers.

Reference

“Multimedia – PowerPoint, Presentations.” Indezine. Accessed September 4, 2014.

Featured Image: Eric Kilby via Flickr

How to Use the PowerPoint Presenter View

Posted on September 1, 2014January 25, 2022 by Rick E

Time is an important factor to the success of any presentation. As we’ve discussed in the past, audiences tend to lose interest after 10 minutes and they constantly need to be re-engaged. For this reason, you want to keep your presentation concise and straight to the point. The longer you go on about a certain point, the more likely you’ll lose everyone’s attention.

You can constantly check the time using your watch or smartphone, but that would look awkward and unprofessional. So how will you know if you’re spending too much time on one part of your presentation? You can try making use of PowerPoint’s Presenter View.

What is Presenter View?

Presenter View allows you to facilitate presentations by giving you access to some useful tools and functions. By enabling it, PowerPoint gives you a “secret” look at your notes and upcoming slides. It has a clock and timer to see how long your presentation has been running. Without your audience seeing, you can easily jump to any slide you wish. You can also use the Pen or Highlighter tools to write on the current slide.

What you see via Presenter View:

What your audience sees:

How can I use Presenter View?

Presenter View will only run on computers or laptops that have dual screen capabilities. It’s specifically designed for use when your device is connected to a projector or an external screen. To set up for your presentation, simply hold the Windows key together with the letter P. When a window pops up, choose Extend.

After configuring dual display for your device, open your PowerPoint deck and head to the Slide Show tab. Tick the check box for Use Presenter View. Make sure your slides are set to appear on the secondary screen or projector by checking the Show On dropbox.

When you’re ready to start your presentation, simply hit the F5 key.

PowerPoint’s Presenter View doesn’t just help you keep track of time. It also gives you access to some useful tools as you give your presentation. Be a presentation expert by utilizing one of PowerPoint’s most helpful basic functions.

Featured Image: VFS Digital Design via Flickr

About SlideGenius

SlideGenius.com is your business PPT guru. Based in San Diego, California, SlideGenius has helped more than 500 international clients enhance their presentations, including those of J.P. Morgan, Harley-Davidson, Pfizer, Verizon, and Reebok. Call us at 1.858.217.5144 and let SlideGenius help you with your presentation today!

Simple Methods for a Smaller PowerPoint File Size

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Rick E

You’ve created a PowerPoint with plenty of interesting visuals. You also made use of some animations and transitions. It looks great! But when you tried to share it online, you got stuck in the loading time. Or maybe when you were launching the file to start your presentation, your laptop started lagging. In all these scenarios, your problem is a PowerPoint file size that’s too large.

Here are four simple methods to fix your PowerPoint file size issue:

Compress pictures

Using high-quality images will bloat your PowerPoint file size. While you should use high-quality pictures for your slides, always be cautious that they’re not too large. A hefty resolution might be great to look at, but it can cause your PowerPoint file to lag. Don’t worry, because there’s an easy fix.

Select on any image in your PowerPoint deck and head to the Pictures Tools Format tab. Click on Compress Pictures in the Adjust group. This will prompt a dialogue box where you can choose different options for shrinking all the pictures in your deck.

Convert to PDF

Another option you can consider is to convert the PowerPoint file to PDF. Simply launch your PowerPoint deck, go to the File tab and choose Save As. When the dialogue box appears, choose PDF under Save as type.

But just a quick reminder: If you convert your PowerPoint file to a PDF, you will lose all animations and transitions. Do this only if you’re planning to print out your PowerPoint deck or share it through email.

Avoid embedding fonts

Unique fonts can make for great PowerPoint design. But they can be another factor as to why your PowerPoint file size is too large.

When building your PowerPoint deck, use unique fonts minimally so you don’t have to embed too much data in your file. Unique fonts are best for headers and section breaks. If you’re using typical font types such as Arial or Times New Roman, check if PowerPoint is embedding fonts and disable it.

Simply head to the File tab and click on Options. When the dialogue box appears, go to Save. Make sure there’s no check mark in the box for Embed fonts in file.

Don’t save in Compatibility Mode

Lastly, if you’re going to use your own device to present your PowerPoint deck, you don’t have to save it as a PowerPoint 97-2003 file. To make sure your file is saved in the latest version of PowerPoint, check that the file extension is .PPTX. Simply go to the folder where your PowerPoint file is saved, right click on it and choose Properties. You should see something like this:

Your presentation can suffer if your deck is not optimized to perform in the best way possible. Don’t forget to take some measures to ensure that your PowerPoint file size isn’t too large.

Read More: 4 Ways to Shrink Your PowerPoint File [All About Presentations]

Featured Image: Chris Isherwood via Flickr

Linking Up: How to Create an Interactive PowerPoint Deck with Hyperlinks

Posted on August 25, 2014April 21, 2024 by Rick E

If you’re exhibiting at a trade show or convention, you need to set up a booth that can catch everyone’s attention. We talked about how to make video loops in the past. This will give people passing by your display a brief introduction to your brand. When that catches their interest, provide more information with an interactive presentation deck. You can easily create on through the use of PowerPoint hyperlinks.

PowerPoint hyperlinks allow you to jump to specific slides quickly. It can also serve as a command to switch to a second presentation or open a different document. Here’s a quick tutorial to go about it:

Step One

Start by creating your presentation as you normally would. Add an initial slide you’re planning to use at a trade show should start with a slide that will serve as a “homepage”. This is where you’re going to put all the hyperlinks that will lead to specific parts of your presentation. Forgo the usual title slide for a homepage slide instead.

Step Two

When you’ve finished building your deck, go back to the first slide. You can use any object as a PowerPoint hyperlink. It can be a picture, shape, or text. Whatever you decide to use, arrange them in any way you like. Just keep in mind that you should have an object to correspond for each part of the presentation you want to link to.

Here’s an example so you can visualize it:

Step Three

Now that you have your objects arranged, you can start making PowerPoint hyperlinks. All you have to do is to select the object you want to use, right-click, and choose Hyperlink.

If you want to link to a particular slide in your presentation, choose Place in This Document and select a slide from the list. If you want to open a different file or a web page, click on Existing File or Web Page. You can also link to your email address so visitors can easily send in their details.

Important note: If you’re using a different computer for the trade show, make sure you transfer your presentation and the files you want to link to. Keep everything in one place to make this step easier for you.

Step Four

When you’ve finished making each hyperlink, don’t forget to give it a test run. You don’t want broken links when people start viewing your presentation deck.

That’s it! It doesn’t take a lot to create an interesting experience for your prospects. All you have to do is think outside the box. Consider making an interactive presentation for your trade show booth. Practice using PowerPoint hyperlinks. Soon, you’ll be building even more complex and professional-looking slides.

Featured Image: Elco van Staveren via Flickr

Engage and Empower: Innovative PowerPoint Tools and Tutorials for Interactive Presentations

Posted on August 22, 2014April 21, 2024 by Rick E

Audience interaction is important to any presentation. Audiences like to feel involved in the discussion, especially in an age where technology allows everyone a platform to share their voice. Don’t be afraid to open the proverbial floor and let your audience speak their minds. You will find that their input can take your presentations to a new level. Here are just a few PowerPoint tools and tutorials to help you out.

Add audience insight to your slides

Your former teachers can serve as a great example for audience interaction. As you go along your presentation, ask your audience a few questions here and there. But don’t stop there. Listen carefully to what they have to say and try to integrate it to your discussion. A teacher would usually write her students’ answers on the blackboard. You can do the same thing with your slides.

Step One: Go to the slide where you want to be able to add text during the presentation and head to the Developer tab. If you don’t have it enabled yet, simply click File, head to Options, and choose Customize Ribbon.

Step Two: Add a Text Box to your slide by choosing from the Controls group. This text box isn’t like the regular one you’d add when building your slides. This specific function will allow you to type in text even as your presentation plays.

Using this trick will allow you to refer back to your audience’s response. The text you input on a slide won’t disappear even if you jump to the next one.

Get comments, questions, and measure differences in opinion

It’s also important to provide a platform for your audience to share their questions and opinions. While this is an easy task for smaller presentations, it gets difficult when you’re facing a room of 50 people. Luckily, technology now allows you to breach the so-called fourth wall. You can get comments and questions from the audience without picking out each person who raises their hand.

Another way to increase audience interaction is through the use of polls. Your audience is composed of unique individuals and they will have their own viewpoints about certain things. If you want to see how diverse your audience is, or how many of them agree with your discussion, you can ask them to vote in a poll.

There are plenty of third-party PowerPoint tools that will allow your audience to conveniently take part in a fruitful discussion. These are just a few of them:

IQPolls: This tool allows you to ask your audience questions that they can immediately answer using the web browser on their mobile devices. You can ask them to simply write down their thoughts or choose from a voting scale you created. Embedding your poll to Microsoft PowerPoint is easy and you will be able to see real-time results.

audience interaction tool 01 — IQPolls.com

EverySlide: This tool has similar features, but supports presentations made using Keynote and Prezi as well. All you have to do is upload your deck to the EverySlide.com and you will get a link that everyone in your audience can access.

audience interaction tool 03 — EverySlide.com

Presentain: Aside from allowing your audience to take a poll and send in their inquiries, Presentain also allows you to utilize your phone for a number of things. Most notably, you can use it to record your presentation. You can then share the recording online and increase your audience even more.

audience interaction tool 02 — Presentain.com

SlideKlowd: This program utilizes cloud technology to allow you to conduct polls, receive questions, and even check for attendance. More importantly, it also helps you gather data so you can measure audience interaction.

audience interaction tool 04 — SlideKlowd.com

Use related videos to enhance PowerPoint deck

Everyone loves a good show. You can keep people interested by showing a few video clips. Videos are a great way to add soft breaks in your presentation, so the people watching you won’t feel overwhelmed by the information you’re sharing. By building interest, you can guarantee that audience interaction is a sure outcome.

Here are a few more tutorials for your PowerPoint-related video needs:

Enhance Your PowerPoint Presentation Design with Video Clips
PowerPoint Tutorial: Adding YouTube Videos to Slides

What do you do to increase audience interaction in your presentations? You can utilize technology, or stick with more traditional methods. All that really matters is that you make your presentations as inclusive and discursive as possible.

Featured Image: Cydcor Offices via Flickr

PowerPoint Animation Trick: Photos from Colored to Black & White

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Rick E

PowerPoint animations can be a good way to enhance your slides, especially if you plan to share your deck online. You’ve probably read a lot about how you shouldn’t put animations on your slide. It’s true that if you use too much, your PowerPoint deck can look sloppy and unprofessional. However, if you know how to use it the right way, you can get interesting effects.

There’s a PowerPoint animation trick you can do to generate drama or nostalgia in your slides. If it suits the topic of your online presentation, try animating a picture to slowly turn into black and white. Here’s how it would look like:

This PowerPoint animation mimics some transition effects you’d see on TV. As Ellen Finkelstein points out, you see this in the TV show NCIS. In order to add some drama to a heightened scene, a still shot would turn into black and white before fading into the next frame.

If you want the same effect for your online presentation, follow these steps:

Step One

On a blank slide, add the picture you want to use. Place it and make a copy by either hitting CTRL + C or right clicking and choosing . Paste the duplicate image, select it, go to the Picture Tools Format tab and apply the gray scale effect under Color. If you don’t want to turn the picture into black and white, you can add a different effect. For this tutorial, I decided to give the second image a sepia tone.

Step Two

Place the duplicate image directly above the original one. PowerPoint can give you grids and guide lines to make this part easier for you. To do that, just right click on the slide and choose Grid and Guides. When a dialogue box appears, choose Snap objects to grid and Snap objects to other objects.

When you have the duplicate picture perfectly placed, select it, right click and choose Send to Back.

Step Three

Add the PowerPoint animation to the original colored image by selecting it and going to the Animations tab. To achieve the effect we want, you need to apply only the animations illustrated using red stars, particularly Fade, Split, Wipe, Shape, Wheel, and Random Bars.

For this tutorial, I chose the Shape effect.

When you add a PowerPoint animation, you’re given a preview of what it looks like. If it seems too fast or too slow for you, you can adjust the timing by adjusting the settings under Timing. Here, I slowed down the animation to 3 seconds.

Step Four

You can now add text to the slide if you need to. You can also add a PowerPoint animation to the text. Just be sure you’re aware of how you want each animation to progress. If you want to change anything, just go to Reorder Animation under Timing.

There you have it!

You can now work on the rest of your deck. You can use this PowerPoint animation trick in Section Headers or if you want to emphasize a point. When you’re done, don’t forget to turn your PowerPoint presentation into a video so you can share online. Go to the Slide Show tab and choose Record Slide Show. Learn the specifics by checking out a previous tutorial we made called “How to Make a Trade Show Video Loop Using PowerPoint“.

Here’s how the PowerPoint animation I made turned out:

Featured Image: Cristian Bortes via Flickr
Image used for tutorial via Death to the Stock Photo

How to Make Call to Action Buttons Using PowerPoint

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Rick E

The Call to Action (CTA) button is a crucial element to your website. More clicks mean more conversions, so you want to make sure that it can easily catch the attention of whoever’s viewing your website.

Like the call-to-action in an actual presentation, the CTA button at the end of your deck appeals your audience to take action, preferably to invest in your company.

This isn’t a new idea to most businesses, which is why people have developed a skepticism towards such things that directly advertise your brand. Also considering that most people only spend 10 to 20 seconds browsing a web page, you really need Call to Action buttons that pop.

Thankfully, they aren’t too hard to make. You don’t need to be an expert graphic designer. All you need is Microsoft PowerPoint. In the past, we’ve discussed how you can use PowerPoint as a photo editor. Following the same principles, we can also use the presentation software to bring more conversions to your website.

Follow these steps to make your own Call to Action buttons:

1.) On a blank slide, draw any shape using the Shape Tool. Most use rectangle CTA buttons, but you can choose anything that suits your web design well.

2.) On top of the shape, type in the text you want by adding a TextBox. Change the font type to what you already have on your web page.

3.) Change the color of the text and the shape to your liking.

4.) You can also choose to add an outline color. Right click on the shape and a mini toolbox will appear. Choose and you’ll find different ways to edit the outline color of your Call to Action button.

5.) Another thing you can do is add a 3D effect. Select the shape and go to the Format tab. Choose Shape Effects and choose Bevel. If you want to add more dimension to your CTA button, you can add a few other Shape Effects. For this tutorial, I made use of Bevel, Shadow, and Reflection.

This is what I came up with:

To save your work, just hold down the Shift Key, select both the shape and text box, then Group the two elements together. After that, click right on the CTA button and choose Save As Picture.

There you have it! Make Call to Action buttons in five easy steps. Don’t be afraid to experiment with the Shape Tool to come up with more interesting designs.

Reference

“How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?” Nielsen Norman Group. Accessed August 14, 2014.

Featured Image: Sarah Reid via Flickr

PowerPoint Tutorial: Adding Music to Your Slides

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Rick E

Here’s another PowerPoint tutorial to help enhance your slides. We often emphasize the important role of visuals in PowerPoint design. It’s true that adding interesting images and illustrations can help your PowerPoint slides stand out from the typical bullet-ridden slides. But we should also take note of what music and audio can do for your presentation deck, especially if you’re planning to share it online.

Follow this quick PowerPoint tutorial to add music and bring life to your slides:

Step One: Insert Audio

Click on the Insert tab, look for the Media group and choose Audio. From here, you can choose what type of audio you can insert. You can choose to add audio from your computer, from the Clip Art gallery, or record your own. In this PowerPoint tutorial, we’ll focus on music files you’ve already downloaded to your computer.

Once you’ve clicked the Audio icon, choose the Audio from File option. You can then locate the folder where your music file is saved on your computer.

The compatible file formats for PowerPoint are the following:

MP3 Audio file (.mp3)
Windows Audio file (.wav)
Windows Media Audio file (.wma)

Step Two: Preview Music File

Once you’ve selected the music file you want to use, a sound icon that looks like this will appear on your selected slide:

Select it and a small box will appear where you can press Play. Use this step to check if your music file is working how you’d like it.

Step Three: Assign Playback Options

PowerPoint allows you to choose several playback options for the music file. Select the sound icon and go to Audio Tools. From there, you can choose any of the following playback options:

Choose Automatically if you want your music file to start playing as soon as you reach the slide where it’s placed
Choose On Click if you’d rather start the audio by yourself
Choose Play Across Slides if you want your music file to keep playing throughout the presentation
Choose Loop Until Stopped if you want your music file to play continuously until you move on to another slide

Optional Step: Hide the Sound Icon

If you’re planning to share your presentation deck online, you can also choose to hide the sound icon. After you’ve set your music to playback automatically, select the sound icon again. Go back to Audio Tools and tick the Hide During Show check box grouped under Audio Options.

Conclusion

This PowerPoint tutorial allows you to explore a way to add a new dimension to your presentation deck.

At the same time, choose audio that will help enhance your pitch, rather than detract audiences from your pitch.

Like images, this sensory tool is there to aid your key points. Don’t let it distract people from what you’re trying to say. Taking your PowerPoint slides to the next level doesn’t have to be complicated.

Featured Image: kev-shine via Flickr

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