pptxppta

How To Stop Powerpoint 2007 From Always Opening A Blank Presentation On Startup

Wiley Davis — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:15:44 +0000

Finally, a friggin’ solution. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cursed PPT over a small but repetitve thing it makes me do many times a day. I launch PPT only to have it relentlessly open a blank presentation. And to add the old insult to injury, it doesn’t seem to recognize (like most apps, BTW) that I’ve made no changes to the unwanted presentation because it asks me (every time) whether or not I really want to close it without saving. I do. I never wanted it in the first place. And yet, nowhere in the myriad hidden preference panes does it give me the option to refuse its kind assistance. Well I’ve figured out how to nip the PPT hospitality curse in the bud, at least for blank presentations on startup.

Just create a new shortcut and put this in the target:

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE12\POWERPNT.EXE” /c

That’s it. Now just use this shortcut to launch PPT.

pptx Hack: Zooming Text

Wiley Davis — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:16:28 +0000

When animating typography, it can be useful to zoom text in order to change the screen color and act as a scene transition. In Powerpoint 2007, you can do this by using the “Grow/Shrink” animation under the “Emphasis” category. But there’s a trick to making this work. Powerpoint limits the percentage of zoom to 9999%. However, it will let you stack multiple grow/shrink animations, each with a max of 9999%. So to make text grow to fill the hole screen as seen in the video, you just use two grow/shrinks set to their maximum zoom level and set the second one to occur “After previous”.

Note: You may need to then add a motion path to the text so that it finishes its grow on screen, rather than in the gaps between the letters. Set the motion path to occur ” With Previous” and tweak its length and angle until you get full screen coverage.

Note Note: If you’re outputting this to an Articulate Presenter presentation, you will need to preview the slide to make sure the text ens up in the correct place, since Presenter and ppt display motion path animations differently.

What the @#$% is pptxppta?

Wiley Davis — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:31:30 +0000

It’s two file extensions, pptx and ppta. One is for powerpoint, the other for a tool called Articulate Presenter. Both of these tools together actually make for a pretty powerful e-learning and presentation production system. But you’d almost never know it because, well, it’s powerpoint and the interface kind of sucks.

But we’ve been working with it for a while now and the way we get through the workday is to find ways to trick powerpoint and presenter into doing cool things. This can be done. This blog will show you how. Here’s a shot of our office, so you can get an idea of the incubator these hacks are hatched in. Enjoy.

Photo of our office, where we slave away trying to make powerpoint do interesting things.

Hello world!

Wiley Davis — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:19:50 +0000

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!