Presentation WorkBench Blog

Access a webpage within Outlook 2010

admin — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:16:41 +0000

Ever get sick of switching between Outlook 2010 (or 2007, or 3ven 2003) and your web browser? Try this (at our own risk, of course):

Add a new folder to your Personal Folders:

: Webpage in Outlook_2010

Right click on the folder and select “Properties” and the “Home Page” tab.

Type your web url into the box- mine is for google dot com.

Select the check mark labelled “Show home page by default for this folder”.

Click OK.

Webpage in Outlook 2010 dialog box

Now the cool part! When you click on your folder, your web page loads directly within Outlook!

The only caveat is that the page actually works and doesn’t throw script errors. I’ve only found that happen with complex web pages.

Webpage in Outlook 2010 displays

Extract images from a PowerPoint 2010 file

admin — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:03:02 +0000

You may have been told that it is impossible to extract images at the PowerPoint 2010 file through saving it as a webpage. That is true, because the save as webpage option has been removed. However, the there is an alternative.

Customise the Quick Access Toolbar and add the Web Page Preview button.
Click the button to view the current presentation as webpage.
Copy the link location from the link box. An example is: C:\Users\your name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.MSO.
Notice that I have copied from the C:\ all the way through to Content.MSO.
Open that link in Internet Explorer and you will see all of your image is located in the temporary folder.

How cool!

PowerPoint 2012

admin — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 06:50:12 +0000

I’m a bit cheeky, but here is what I think we should see when PowerPoint 2012 (or what ever it will be called) comes out!

PowerPoint 2010 Title slide

For those who complain about text on slides

Powerpoint 2012? Already possible!

PowerPoint animation demo 2

admin — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 03:43:30 +0000

A demonstration of animations and graphics in PowerPoint 2010 saved as a movie- performed in Atlanta 2009.

PowerPoint animation demo 1

admin — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 03:42:50 +0000

A demonstration of animations and graphics in PowerPoint 2010 saved as a movie.

PowerPoint 2010 video pipeline

admin — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 03:08:29 +0000

I imagine you know of an incident where someone opened a PowerPoint file and the video did not work. There were a lot of reasons, even ones that Microsoft admit to:

Your video file was linked and lost via email…
The video was linked through a path length > 128 characters
You played the video and it popped into the top-most layer…
The file format was not supported…
A specific codec not installed…
There was a conflict with incompatible hardware and hardware acceleration

PowerPoint didn’t do video

Quite frankly, while it seems PowerPoint did not do video, that is true! Versions from 2007 and earlier handed video tot he operating system; either the Media Control Interface (MCI) player or Windows Media Player. If that didn’t work, well you know the result!

Previously supported PowerPoint file types

On top of that, PowerPoint only supported a small number of file types:

Windows media file (*.asf)
Windows video file (*.avi)
Movie file (*.mpg or *. mpeg)
Windows media video (*.wmv)

Any other type of file was thrown to something PowerPoint could (hopefully) find to play it.

PowerPoint version 2010

PowerPoint 2010 supports a new range of file types:

Windows streaming media: *. asf and others
Windows video: *.avi and others
Windows media video: *.wmv and others
MP4: *.mp4 and others
MPRG: *.mpeg adn others
MPET-2 TS video: *.m2ts and others
Quick Time: *. mov adn others (provided Quick Time Player is installed on your system)
Adobe flash media: *.swf (provided Adobe Flash Player -32 bit- is installed on your system)
Animated gif: which I do not consider video, and
Vorbis Ogg: *.ogg

As with any software- please check thoroughly on your won and target machines. For example, I cannot insert the Windows Streaming Media format of * dvr-ms (Windows Television)- simply makes PowerPoint 2010 unstable.

PowerPoint 2010 Sections

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:14:00 +0000

Sections are a new and powerful way to organise your slide content into logical groups within PowerPoint 2010. These logical groups may be by topic, author or product, as examples.

Sections can be added in the Slides Pane view either from the Ribbon (Add Sections button) or by right clicking below an existing slide. Sections can be renamed (by menu item or by the keyboard shortcut), deleted or moved within the order of the slides.

PowerPoint 2010 sections

Let’s look at some examples.

A presentation author wants to group slides by:
- Topic, allowing different authors to work on that content individually (Image 1).
- Author of that part of the presentation (image 2),
- The product being promoted (image 3)

1, 2 and 3

Importantly, Sections can be both printed and organised in the Slide Sorter. Unfortunately, Sections cannot be set up as a Custom Slideshow. However, Sections of slides can be quickly selected and Hidden (Right click on selected slides click Hide Slides).

To print a Section as a Slideshow, Select the File button, Print and chose the appropriate Section option.

Powerpoint 2010 sections

Sections can be part of distributed corporate templates and will help keep people on topic and on track! It’s a new feature of PowerPoint 2010 I love already!