A little click & drag makes PowerPoint sit-up and do tricks
Written: Oct 16 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Very powerful, colorful and feature packed.
Cons: Too exepnsive.
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| Schinjay's Full Review: Microsoft PowerPoint |
Every Microsoft PowerPoint power user knows what a wonderful selection of pre-designed templates this program comes with. But sometimes you need to make up a design of your own like a diagram or a flow chart of how the stuff hits the fan when things go wrong. Right?
Well I have some tips for you that might help things go faster and smoother when you find yourself stuck out on your own putting together that collection of frilly stars, shapes and banners for your hand-made PowerPoint masterpiece.
Easily copy the same shape
Once you have drawn your shape and resized and colored and molded it just the way you want it, hold the CTRL key down and click and drag your shape anywhere else you want it to appear on your slide. Do this as often as you want. OK! That’s enough. You can stop now!
If you press CTRL+SHIFT and then click and drag an object you will be able to drag it in a straight line on your slide to a new location. Sit, girl, sit!
Selecting your PowerPoint slide objects
When you need to select several random objects on your slide, hold down the SHIFT key and click on any objects you need to select.
To select a number of objects in a particular area of your slide just click your mouse at one corner of that area and drag a mouse box around the objects you want to select.
Remember, in most Windows programs if you want to select all objects on your slide or document press CTRL +A. Heel, boy!
Adding text to your shapes
I know a lot of people that draw their fancy shapes and then spend the next hour drawing text boxes inside their new shapes to add the text they need to tell their sad story. Whew, what a lot of wasted time!
Instead, just use PowerPoint’s AutoShapes feature to add your stars and banners and such, and with the shape still selected just start typing your text. It automatically goes into the shape. Then format the text any way you wish. How easy is that? That’s a Good girl!
Grouping objects in your slide
If you need to move some objects together or would like to resize them all proportionally, try this. Select all of the objects then open the “Draw” toolbar. Click on the “Draw” Button and select “Group”. This will tie all the items together and let you move them and resize them as a single object. Cool, huh? OK, boy, go get the paper!
PowerPoint has hidden gridlines
If you’ve ever wondered why objects you move around your slide seem to have minds of their own, well, they do. PowerPoint has a hidden gridline system that all objects want to snap to when they are moved on the slide. You can go, once again, to the “Draw” button on the “Draw” toolbar and select “snap” and choose to either have objects snap to the grid or to the closest object on your slide.
You can also over-ride the grid system by pressing the ALT key when you drag an object to a new location. Stay, girl! Stay!
Create your own guidelines
Sometimes you may want some guidelines on your slide to help you line objects up just the way you want. Go to the “View” menu and click on “Guides” and a horizontal and vertical guideline will appear on your slide. Objects will snap to these guidelines. You can drag these anywhere on your slide you want. Hold down CTRL when you drag them to create additional guidelines for your slide.
So, now that you have complete control of your PowerPoint slides get out there and make me proud. Make PowerPoint sit-up, beg and rollover. Glitz them with text and shapes that seem to defy gravity, common sense, and any decency you may have once had. Go wild! And have fun.
That's my epinion. Mahalo for the visit!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Schinjay
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Member: Steve Schindler
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Reviews written: 37
Trusted by: 57 members
About Me:
Steve Schindler writes his informative and humorous "Schindler's Cyber List" for epinions.com.
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