How to PowerPoint

I get a lot of questions about PowerPoint 2010.  Personally, I think it’s pretty slick.  There are a lot of new features.  In fact, I’m starting to put together some simple tutorials on PowerPoint 2010.  I’ll have them listed soon.

You can always check out this blog post where I discuss a recent free PowerPoint 2010 webinar: Become a PowerPoint 2010 Rock Star!

Some of the things I cover in the screencast tour below:

• sleeker interface
• access recent files quickly
• customize the PowerPoint ribbon
• insert slide sections
• paste as image option
• capture and insert screenshots
• insert math equations
• sophisticated audio and video features
• new design themes
• improved slide transitions
• smoother animations
• animation painter
• animation interface has changed
• share a link and broadcast your PowerPoint slide shows
• translation feature
• links to OneNote pages
• reading view for quick preview
• able to open multiple PowerPoint files
• alignment guides for objects on the slide

Watch tour of PowerPoint 2010’s new features:

Click here to view the PowerPoint 2010 tour.

I’ll be adding some free tutorials soon.  If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. 

Doing a presentation tomorrow on some PowerPoint 2010 features.  You can access the webinar via the Training Magazine network.  They’ll have an archive of the presentation.  You can also see the previous presentation on PowerPoint.

Here’s a link to the free PowerPoint 2010 resources I share with a bunch of tutorials and helpful links.

There are a lot of times when I need some quick placeholder text.  I used to go to this site to get the “lorem ipsum” text that I could copy and paste in my slide.  The problem is that you have to be online and the extra steps it takes to generate, then copy and paste the text.

Now you can generate your own placeholder text in PowerPoint.

Here are the steps to generate random text:

• Create a text box.
• Type in =rand() and hit enter.  That will generate some random text.
• For more paragraphs or sentences, just add numbers in between the parenthesis.  For example =rand(3,10) will generate 3 paragraphs with each containing 10 sentences.

In PowerPoint 2010, you can type in =lorem() and it will generate the random lorem ipsum text instead of the “quick brown fox.”

Click here to view the tutorial.