PowerPoint articles

OneNote articles

Recommended Links, Newsgroups, and Newsletters

Get Help directly from Kathy

	Web www.onppt.com

7 Tips to Cleanly Creating Presentations to Share

Whether you use PowerPoint for fun, for family communication, or for business, it's the time of year when everyone is concentrating on reviewing what happened in the last 12 months. For many the best way to present this information is to create an automated presentation and send it to everyone who needs to know. As you create that presentation, keep the following tips in mind...

Use WAV files for your sounds

WAV files are understood by almost all systems, considerably more often than any other sound format. Since you don't know what the system set up of the receiving system is, this allows a larger percentage of your viewers to be able to hear your sounds. Using WAV files also eliminates problems with the various encode and decode software progams used by other types of sounds.

Embed your sounds

Distributing presentations is easier when all sounds are embedded into the presentation. It cuts down on the number of files you need to keep track of, as well as ensuring that the sounds are in a common format. Since PowerPoint only embeds WAV files, this means you must convert all your sounds to WAV format before inserting them. In addition, go to the Tools -> Options General tab. Above the first divider line, you will see the sentence: ?Link sounds with file sizes greater than 100 kb? Change the 100 to a larger number and you will embed all sounds up to that size. The maximum value allowed is 50,000 kb. (Beware: Each file you embed increases the size of your presentation file. Embedding many large files will make your presentation file huge.)

Don't link your graphics

Same idea as with your sounds. The more files you link, the fewer you need to send with the presentation. However, as with the sounds, there is a size trade off ? you will increase the size of your file with each graphic.

Optimize your file

Turn off Fast Saves. It will increase the size of your file every time you make a change. (Not to mention the fact that it is the number one cause of corrupted presentations.) Then, before adding your graphics, check out these hints on reducing the size of your graphics from the PowerPoint FAQ.

Build for the lowest common system

If your presentation requires synchronization between sounds and actions or slide changes, always add extra time for the changes to occur. If you are developing your presentation on a super powerful system, test it on a less powerful system to make sure that the slower processor, memory and disk accesses won't cause your presentation to go off in the weeds and drop sounds. If you are distributing your presentation by CD, keep in mind that the CD accesses will take much longer than disk drive accesses.

Build for the viewer

Keep in mind the limitations of the current viewer. Make sure that you don't use animations and effects that the viewer doesn't recognize. One way to do this most easily on PowerPoint 2002 is to disable new features on the Edit tab of the Tools -> Options window.

Distribute the easy way

Read Sharing Presentations Part 1 and Part 2. These articles go into detail on using the Autorun CD Project Creatorİ> to distribute your presentation. If you are looking for other ways to share your presentation, check out The do it yourself tips on Echo's Voice.