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Pity Poor Palantino
PowerPoint pages that include the Palatino font do not print properly on PostScript printers. You may want to use the Book Antiqua TrueType font instead which is very similar. You can replace all instances of Palantino with Book Antiqua by selecting Format > Replace Fonts.
Guidelines
PowerPoint provides two guidelines to help you position items onscreen. From the View menu, select Guides. Drag the guides to reposition them. To create duplicate guides hold down the Ctrl key when dragging. To remove guidelines you don't want, simply drag them off the page (guide copies can be removed; but the original guides can only be hidden by turning off View > Guides).
Controlling Rotations
When you rotate objects in PowerPoint, they automatically rotate around their center. To rotate objects around their corners, hold down the Ctrl key while rotating.
On with the Show
If you always want your presentations to open in slide-show view, use File/Save As to save the presentation as a PowerPoint Show. Double-clicking on this file in Windows will automatically launch a slide show. Another solution is to simply change the extension on the original file to PPS.
See-Through Options
PowerPoint supports the transparent effect in GIF and PNG files, but you'll have to set transparent options manually for T1F images. Here's how: Once you've imported the graphic, right-click on it and select Show Picture Toolbar. Click on the Set Transparent button, and click on the colour you want to make transparent.
Expanding Slides
Slides overloaded with too much text can automatically be divided into multiple slides using the Expand Slide option under the Tools menu.
Linked Text
You can attach text to most AutoShapes. just click on the AutoShape and start typing. The text will now stay attached regardless of whether you move, resize or rotate the AutoShape. This does not work with line and connector AutoShapes.
Mini-Preview
You don't have to switch back and forth between working with text in the Outline view and previewing in Slide view. Instead, use the View/Slide Miniature option to see what the slide will look like while continuing to work in Outline mode.
Light Your Way
The Scroll Lock light indicates when your next slide is ready in a slide show. By the way, you don't have to use the mouse to navigate your slide show. The arrow keys, Page Up, Page Down, N (for next) and P (for previous) work just as well.
"Push" Presentation
If you have access to both PowerPoint and the Internet on the same computer, check out PowerPoint Central (available under the Tools menu). It's a slide show presentation that includes tips for using PowerPoint and links to free PowerPoint goodies on Microsoft's web site. PowerPoint Central will even automatically update itself when new versions are available.
Pack It Up
The Pack and Co utility, included on the Office 97 CD or available online, lets you distribute PowerPoint presentations to people who may not have PowerPoint. However, you may notice that the "unpacked" presentations can end up being much larger than the original file. The reason is that Pack and Co stores the presentation in a format readable by both PowerPoint 97 and PowerPoint 7.0.
Keep right
Dragging slides between presentations actually moves them. You could remember to hold down the Control key when dragging to copy instead of moving, but here's an even easier tip to remember: Drag with the right, not left, mouse button held down. When you release the slide, a dialog box will appear asking whether you want to move, copy or cancel.
