Example slide effects for PowerPoint

Looking for some really nice templates in PowerPoint that will allow you to just insert your own text and have some cool designs and animation pre-programmed? Check out these downloads on the Office.Microsoft.com website.

ARTICLE: How To Become A Google Power User

I know this isn't Microsoft, but it's just such a great article with tips for everyone on the computer.

"Searching the Internet for relevant information can be frustrating at times. More advanced researchers know tons of little tricks of the trade, getting them the desired results fast. But for the rest of the population, it isn't always easy to nail down information they are looking for.

If you find yourself amongst the second group, you might like the following tips and hints on how to find information fast." [Read the entire article for tips and hints]

Written on 12/01/2008 by Monika Mundell. Monika Mundell is a passionate freelance writer and pro-blogger. Her blog Freelance Writing helps new freelance writers to get started in this exciting industry. If you like to work with Monika, feel free to visit her Portfolio site.

Photo Credit: Google

PowerPoint 2007: Reduce File Sizes by Changing Image Formats

The Compress Pictures button in Microsoft Office PowerPoint can often reduce your .ppt files by up to 50 percent. But that can still leave you with large files, especially if your images have been created from .png files. You can save even more space by changing them to .gif or .jpg formats. (Note: The .png format is more flexible than the other file formats. Flattening to .jpg or .gif reduces flexibility.) Here’s how to reduce file sizes:

1. Save your PowerPoint file as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), which creates an .htm file and a folder of the same name. This folder will contain all the images from the presentation.
2. Open the folder, and sort it by size to reveal which files are the largest.
3. Locate the largest images in your presentation. They may have been scaled, so they might look smaller than the saved image.
4. In PowerPoint, make sure that the image isn't grouped.
5. Select the image.
6. On the Picture Tools menu, in the Adjust section, click Compress Pictures.
7. Right-click the image, and then click Save as Picture.
8. From the Save as type menu, select .jpg or .gif (if you need to use transparency effects), and then save the image.
9. Delete the original image from your presentation, and reload the saved image at its original place.
10. Regroup the images if necessary.

Another way to compress the images is to use an image editing tool like Microsoft Digital Image Suite. This tool gives you more image compression options and can save you yet more space.

Excel 2007: Change the Case of Text

Converts text to uppercase.

=UPPER(text or cell reference of text)

Converts all uppercase letters in a text string to lowercase.

=LOWER(text or cell reference of text)

Capitalizes the first letter in a text string and any other letters in text that follow any character other than a letter. Converts all other letters to lowercase letters.

=PROPER(text or cell reference of text)

ARTICLE: Add a popup window to a PowerPoint slide

Date: October 12th, 2008
Author: Susan Harkin, TechRepublic.com

"Sometimes you want to display additional information that’s not a permanent element on a slide — similar to a popup window. In other words, the information is hidden until you want to display it. For instance, you might want to display quarterly bonuses to build excitement. Or you might want to share a contact phone number or e-mail address if asked. There’s no built-in feature that does this, but you can still get PowerPoint to display a pseudo popup window by adding a trigger that displays a callout." Read the full article...

Microsoft Access 2007: Use charts to display data on Access 2007 forms

Access 2007 makes it easy to build a graph control for your form that will display calculated data — and often better than with a text form control. For example, say your employee database includes two tables: one with employee data and one with data about hours worked during 2007. The database also contains a November Hours Worked query that includes the Last Name, First Name, and Employee ID fields from the Employee Data table, and the Week Ending and Hours Worked fields for November from the 2007 Hours Worked table. You create a form based on the query that includes all of the fields. To add a chart to the form that graphs the total hours worked for each employee for the month of November, follow these steps:

1. Open the form in Design view.
2. In the Forms Design Tools, Design ribbon, in the Controls group, click the Insert Chart tool.
3. Click and drag in a blank area of the form to create the chart.
4. Select Queries under the View section and then select the November Hours Worked query and then click Next >.
5. Double-click the Last Name and Hours Worked fields.
6. Click Next > four times.
7. Enter Total Hours Worked In November for the chart title.
8. Select No, Don’t Display Legend and then click Finish.

As you click through each employee’s record, the Graph control will display a bar chart for the employee, showing the total hours they worked in November 2007.

Copy the Quick Access Toolbar to Another Computer

One of the users on campus asked me a very good question that I'm sure other people would love to know. Her question was that after she spent a good amount of time customizing her Quick Access Toolbar in Word, is there a way to share it with her co-workers so they don't have to take the time to do so? I thought this was a great question. I was thinking the same thing earlier this week as I was working on a PowerPoint presentation at work, but didn't finish by 5:00, so I took it home with me. My home computer still had the default Quick Access Toolbar as I hadn't taken the time to customize it. I wished I could just copy it from work to take home.

Well, after a bit of research, I found the answer. I've included both the Windows XP and Vista versions for reference.

1. Find the Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) file associated with the application you want from your source computer.
• XP, C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Office\*.qat
• Vista, C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Office\*.qat
2. Copy the QAT file from your source computer to a USB drive or CD.
3. Take the file to the destination computer and copy the QAT file into the same location on the destination computer.
4. DONE!