Month: April 2006

In the previous tutorial, we talk about how to make a text glow and fade off from left to right. Today, we will move on to flashing a text from left to right. By flashing, it means that lets say if you were to animate a text named “Masking”, it will flash from left to right. “M” will appear first, then “a” will appear when “M” disappear, so on and so forth.Is this hard? The answer is no. In fact, only the “Flash Once” effect is required in this scenario. The tricky part is the settings that has to be adjusted. First of all, create a … Continue reading Mask with PowerPoint: Part III

Hi folks. Today, we shall continue with Part II of Mask with PowerPoint. If you are familiar with the glow masking animation in Flash, this tutorial should be interesting to you. For first timer, glow masking animation is an effect that can be created in Flash. A simple example to explain how this works would be: Allowing a text to glow from the left direction to right, and is normally done in a slow manner. Here’s a preview of the glow masking animation.Figure 1: Glow mask a text in PowerPoint.While you probably need to create this effect in Flash using masking, this can be … Continue reading Mask with PowerPoint: Part II

If you have seen how Macromedia Flash masks objects and animating them using layers, you will know that it is not possible with PowerPoint. But are these masking effects really impossible with PowerPoint? The answer is no. There are several methods and workarounds that you can use to create the masking effects. Up till this point, if you are still unclear with what masking is, below shows some pictures of how masking works.Figure 1: Masking a text in PowerPoint.Figure 2: Glow mask a text in PowerPoint.Figure 3: Masking a picture in PowerPoint.This tutorial will be separated into several parts. Today, … Continue reading Mask with PowerPoint: Part I

A simple bar chart may look dull. You can change the colors, fill it with gradients, textures and even patterns of the bars. But how about replacing the bars with the image you have created? The procedure is relatively simple.First, you will need to create an image. This image will be used to replace the bars on the bar chart. In this article, we will use apple as an example. The image below shows an apple that has been created. Take note that you will probably need to leave some spaces around the apple so that the apple can stack and appear nicely … Continue reading Bar Chart with Custom Image

If you have seen the article on “Creating a snowfall effect” I have made for Indezine (Click here to enter link), here’s another sample you can take a look at. Following through the article, you can also make use of the snow fall to create lens flare effect on a ball to make it looks realistic. To achieve this, you will need 2 instances of “snow”, where the first one will be bigger and has the transparency set to 20%. The second one will be smaller, which will overlaps the first one. To download the sample, simply click on the bottom … Continue reading 3D Ball – Lens Flare effect

Keyboard shortcuts in PowerPoint are extremely useful, just like playing computer games. If you have ever seen gaming experts playing computer games, you will probably see them manipulating with the keyboard more than the mouse. Getting familiar with the shortcut keys is another way of achieving efficiency. Most importantly, you do not need to spend time with frustrating steps such as right clicking on a textbox and select copy, then right clicking on the slide and select paste to make a duplicate of the textbox. If you are good with shortcut keys such as Ctrl-D, you just need one step to duplicate the … Continue reading PowerPoint Shortcut Keys

So you have numerous animations on your slide. Aren’t you interested to know the total number of animations you have added onto the slide? Here’s a quick way you can use to check it out. For PowerPoint 2000 and below, the animation order will show you the total. But how about PowerPoint 2002/XP and 2003? First, open up the Custom Animation task pane. To do so, click Slide Show > Custom Animation. You will probably see animations with “On click”, “With previous”, “After previous”, and triggered animations. Now, click on the first animation that you have added. Hold down the … Continue reading Total Animations Count

Dissolve Effect in the Custom Animation does not look good in presentation. It simply doesn’t look like a real dissolve. Since it does not work well alone, you can always experiment it out with other effects. One good example you can try is to have Dissolve and Spin effects together.  The result is good if you have a circle-based logo. Here is a sample which you can take a look at. I named it “Spin the Dissolve”. Take a look and you will understand why. 😉 http://pptheaven.mvps.org/blog/SpinTheDissolve.zip

Often, you need to use PowerPoint to create presentations. Preparing slides and handling them are cumbersome, especially if your presentation contains 100+ slides. Commands in the toolbars are there to solve your problems. They speed up your work and improve efficiency.  So what are commands and toolbars? Commands are orders given to PowerPoint to perform some tasks. Command buttons are stored in different toolbars. With these toolbars, you do not need to go through the menu bar searching for the commands you want. For instance, if you want to insert picture from file, you can click on the “Insert Picture” button in the Drawing toolbar … Continue reading Customizing PowerPoint Toolbars

Previously, I did a PowerPoint Game in PowerPoint, called Birthday Room which has been published in PowerPoint Heaven ( http://pptheaven.mvps.org ). Last year, I decided to make a sequel to the game naming it Christmas Room. The sequel in mind will be much harder than Birthday Room. Unfortunately, I haven’t done much on it. Thus, this sequel has been halted. Whether the graphics will be improved or will the game be completed are still undecided. Anyway, I will just post up a demo of how the game looks like. No triggers have been added yet. Click on below link to … Continue reading Christmas Room Demo