If you haven’t visited PowerPoint’s recording options for a while, you are missing out. The Record Slide Show feature is typically utilized when your end goal is to export your presentation to a video format; either to be posted online somewhere or in a kiosk setting. Previously Record Slide Show would allow you to record audio to go along with your presentation. Then you could export a complete video showing your slides with your voiceover.  This was already a great tool, but the feature received a fantastic facelift in 365, enabling even more abilities. Let’s take a look.

Record Slide Show

Record Slide Show lives on the Slide Show tab, Set Up group.

You have the choice to start from the selected slide, or from the beginning of the show.

Control Center

The new control center for recording a slide show is phenomenal. Within this screen are the following tools:

1. Start or Stop Recording

In the upper left part of the screen is the ability to start or stop recording. Once you create a recording, there will also be the ability here to replay what you have created.

2. Notes

In the center of the screen is a way to access any notes that are tied to a slide. Click on the dropdown to view them.

To the right of the Notes dropdown is the ability to make the text of the notes larger or smaller, signified by a large and small “A”.

If you would like to learn how to create Notes, please attend a PowerPoint Essentials session!

3. Incorporate Front Facing Camera to Record Yourself

The exciting aspect of the improved feature is that it will incorporate your computer’s camera to allow you to record audio and video of yourself within the recording. Your video will appear in the lower right of the PowerPoint presentation.

There is the ability to turn off audio or video below the image.

Note: if you do not have a camera or microphone, the options will be greyed out. You will still be able to record a slide show, however, and can incorporate things like markup (below).

4. Markup

In the bottom center of the screen are some markup tools. As with all markup tools, this will work best with a stylus, if possible.

The recording will incorporate your markup as you create it.

5. Slide Number and Timer

Lastly, in the lower left you will see slide number and a timer.

A Couple Notes

Shortcuts

Most of the shortcuts in the Record Slide Show view will be similar to those you have been using in Slide Show view:

• To advance to the next slide, you can use your usual method: the space bar, an arrow key, a clicker, etc.
• To escape from this view, click your Esc key.
• Caution: some shortcuts, like W for whiteboard, or B for a black screen, do not work in this view.

Export Options

Don’t forget, you can export your final document via your usual method,

1. File –> Export

2. Select a method. In the case below, I selected Create a Video.

3. Be sure you have selected Use Recorded Timings and Narrations to incorporate your recording.

**Important: if you receive an error when you try to open the video, give it a little time. Often the icon for the exported video appears before the video has finished exporting. Give it a few minutes and you should be good to go.

Thoughts?

Did you know about this improved feature? What do you think?

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Michelle Dehaven

Did you know that you can create custom slide shows in PowerPoint? Let’s say you have a PowerPoint document that you would like to use for two different presentations, but you have a few different slides that you would like to show for each presentation. You can easily create several custom slide shows from the same document. Let’s check it out.

Exercises

If you would like to follow along, you may download today’s exercise here:

This is a PowerPoint document about Wichita State University. The data is all fictional, of course!

The idea is that you would like to create two possible presentations from this one document: one presentation for parents and one for students.

Set Up Custom Slide Shows

1. Go to the Slide Show tab in the ribbon.

2. In the Start Slide Show group, select the dropdown for Custom Slide Show and select Custom Shows.

3. In the popup that appears, press New.

4. Give the slide show a name in the box provided. Perhaps our first one will be the student presentation, so we can title it Student Show.

5. Select the slides you would like to appear in the slide show: perhaps everything except Finances and Statistics.

6. Press the Add button, and make sure the slides appear on the right pane. Notice you have the ability to rearrange the slide order with the arrows on the right.

7. Press OK.

8. Repeat the steps above, but this time create a Parent Show, consisting of all the slides except Recreation.

9. Now when you visit the Custom Slide Show dropdown, Custom Shows, you can see both the shows you created.

Access Custom Slide Shows

Are you ready to show one of your presentations? Revisit the Custom Slide Show dropdown, and select either the Student Show or the Parent Show to start one of these presentations.

Thoughts?

What do you think? How will you use Custom Slide Shows?

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Carody Bryan

Linda Steinacher

Why would someone want to alter a Master Slide in PowerPoint? Several reasons… Sometimes you are making a simple alteration to the overall formatting or appearance of your slides – we do this in PowerPoint Essentials training. Other times you might want to do what we are about to do today, which is to make a larger layout change for your presentation. Altering the Master Slide might sound intimidating, but it can be a huge time saving step… and can make uniformity of your presentation so much simpler. Let’s check it out.

Exercise Files

No exercise file today! You can open PowerPoint to your favorite theme (or even no theme at all). For reference, my screen shots are showing the Gallery theme.

Master Slides

You have seen Master Slides before, even if you didn’t know where they lived. Whenever you select New Slide on the Home tab, you were picking from preset Master Slides. You probably noticed these options change when you select a different theme… that is because each theme comes with its own unique set of Master Slides.

Let’s find where these Master Slides live. In the View tab of the ribbon, Master Views group, select Slide Master.

This can be a bit disorienting at first. Your presentation seems to disappear (but don’t worry, it is still there!), and you are thrown onto a new tab called Slide Master with a plethora of options.

At any time, you can leave Master View by selecting Close Master View in the Slide Master tab.

Master Slide View and Creating Layouts

Let’s make some adjustments to the Master Slides.

1. Go to View tab, Slide Master (instructions above).

2. On the left side of the screen, notice a list of all the existing layouts. Hover your mouse over one of them to see the name appear.

• Notice there is a plethora of options on a right click menu… more on this later. But for now, notice that if you like a layout, and want an additional slightly altered version of it, you have the ability to duplicate and alter.

3. In the Slide Master tab, go to the Edit Master group an select Insert Layout.

4. In your new layout, find the Master Layout group, and select the dropdown for Insert Placeholder.

5. Notice you have the option to limit content to a specific type, or insert generic content (what you are most used to seeing in layouts). We are going to insert Content.

6. Your cursor will change to a cross hair. Draw out a box the size you would like your content box to be on your slides.

7. Let’s do another one. Go back to Insert Placeholder (above), and this time select SmartArt. Draw out this box next to the Content box you created. Notice you can use the PowerPoint guides (red dashed lines) to see if the boxes have lined up properly.

• You should be left with a layout similar to this:

8. Remember how we explored the right click options earlier? Find your new layout in the slide list on the left. Right click on top of it, and select Rename Layout.

9. Give it a new name that you will easily be able to identify.

Test Out Your New Slide

Let’s test it out! Remember to leave the Master View, go to the Slide Master Tab, and select Close Master View on the right.

You will be taken back to your presentation. Select the New Slide dropdown. Do you see your new layout?

More About Master Slide View

While you were in Master Slide View, You might have noticed a couple of other things about the Master Slide tab…

Themes, Colors and Fonts

In PowerPoint Essentials training, we talk about manipulating themes, colors and fonts on the Design tab… the Master Slide tab contains another way to access these same features.

Title

To the left of where we selected Insert Placeholder, you might notice a checked box for Title. This is a very important little box.

Luckily this box is checked by default, but be sure not to uncheck it. All of your slides should have a title: this is usually found at the top of your slide. If you were to remove this title box and replace it with a text box for instance, your PowerPoint will not be as easy to work with, nor will it be accessible to people using screen readers. Long story short, leave it checked!

Thoughts?

Will this help you customize your presentations? I would love to hear from you!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

• Tonya Bronleewe
• Donna Hughes

You have probably password protected documents in Word or Excel. In Excel Advanced Formulas, we even talk about how you can protect individual cells from being altered, while leaving the rest open to changes. Microsoft does not make it as obvious in PowerPoint that password protection is a possibility is it does in its other programs… but you actually have several options, including the ability to restrict editing while still allowing users to view your presentation. Let’s take a look.

Exercise File

No Exercise File today! You can open up PowerPoint into any random template if you would like to follow along.

Be Cautious with Microsoft Passwords

The usual password disclaimer applies…

• Be very careful applying passwords in any Microsoft program.
• If you lose the password, neither Microsoft nor ITS can reset it for you (trust me, I have been there).
• You may want to save an copy of your original file without a password for your personal use.

Password Protecting Documents in Word and Excel

Password protection in Word and Excel is fairly obvious; you even have a special button in the Review tab to guide you through Restrict Editing features or Protect Sheet/Workbook in the case of Excel.

With both Word and Excel, there are also a variety of Protect Workbook features in backstage (File) view.

On the other hand… in PowerPoint, the protection features are absent in the Review tab, though there are a lot of the same options for encryption in backstage view as Word or Excel…

Encrypt with Password would require someone to have a password to open your document, but maybe you only want to restrict editing. This is where people become frustrated.

For many people, Restrict Access looks like the right place to go, but for many it directs them to Connect to Rights Management Servers, which errors out when selected. There is a better way to do this…

“Save As” Password Options

1. With your presentation open, go to File, Save As (or remember my favorite shortcut, F12).

2. In the lower right, click on Tools dropdown and select General Options.

3. A screen will appear prompting you to either:

• Require a password to Open, or
• Require a password to Modify. Let’s stick with Modify for now.

4. Enter a password for Modify, and click OK. You may be prompted to reenter the password.

5. Save and close your PowerPoint file. Open the file again, and you should be prompted to either enter a password, or open a read only version.

Your users will still be able to view and print the document, but they will not be able to make changes.

Remove the Password

Later, if you would like to remove the password:

1. Open the file, entering the password when prompted.

2. Revisit the Save As screen to find the Tools, General Options where you first set the password.

3. Here you can remove the password you originally created and press OK

Thoughts?

What do you think? Did you know about this feature in PowerPoint?

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

• Rosemary Hedrick

Hold on to your hats! I am so excited to show you this amazing new PowerPoint feature in a new group called Captions and Subtitles. This life changing tool will caption your words during your presentation as you are speaking… and that is just the beginning. This tool really needed a video to showcase what it can do, so keep scrolling to check out a short video.

Live Subtitles in PowerPoint

Take a look at the video below, where I demonstrate the feature. Then there are a couple notes for you after…

How do I obtain access to this amazing wizardry?

This feature is only available for the Office 365 versions of the PC desktop application. If you are running 2016, you would need to request an upgrade (see below). Even with the 365 version, many people don’t have this feature yet, but don’t worry, it is coming soon! Here is what you can do:

1. If you are not using Office 365, contact the Help Desk (4357) to put in a ticket to have Desktop Support update your computer.
2. Even so, you likely will not see this feature yet, but hang tight, because you will see it soon with coming updates.
3. When it does appear, it will live on the Slide Show tab of the ribbon.

Thoughts?

What do you think? Is your mind buzzing with ideas? I would love to hear from you!

Congratulations, Power Users!

Congratulations to our newest Power Users! For the full gallery, and more information about the WSU Microsoft Office Power User Program, please visit: wichita.edu/poweruser

Meghan Simpson