PowerPoint Tips and Tricks Pt. 2
This is a continuation of a post that I made a few months ago.
In this, I talk about some more PowerPoint tips and tricks for creating better slide designs and presentations.
Here are the tips at a glance.
- Morph transition
Morph transition is a new feature introduced in PowerPoint. This feature is available with Office 365 subscription, and PowerPoint versions 2016 and 2019. Morph is a slide wide transition so it can affect all elements of the slide. Morph provides a smooth animation as one slide transitions into next slide.
To use the morph transition, you need at least two slides with one object common between them. The simplest use of the morph transition is to change the position of the object of the second slide and see how the that object morphs.
Morph can be applied to shapes, images, icons, WordArt and SmartArt. The morph can change an object’s size, position, color and even gradients.
As of this writing, morph cannot be used for charts.
Applying morph transition is easy. Here’s how:
0. Insert any shape in the slide then duplicate the slide (Click on the slide you want to duplicate and then press Ctrl / Cmd + D)
- In the duplicated slide, change the position of the object
- Select Transitions option from the Ribbon
- Click on the Morph option.
The result of the above transition looks like this
A demo of the morph is in the gif below. Here I have simply changed the positions and colors of the object from one slide to the next
In the morph demo above, I have demonstrated the use of morph by changing the position as well as the color of the objects. Changing these simple attributes allows for a smooth and attractive transition.
Here is another demo of a simple position morph that can be used in a presentation
Morph is a tool with almost limitless creative possibility. I encourage you to play around with it and try to incorporate it in the slide decks you design. I will provide a more detailed explanation of Morph transition in my next blog post.
2. Group and ungroup
Grouping items in PowerPoint is a nifty trick with quite a few uses. The group feature can be used to move, resize and format objects as if they were a single object. This allows us to apply an effect to multiple objects at a same time. The ungroup feature is used to undo the grouping action
Here’s how to group shapes:
a. Make multiple selection of the objects by pressing Ctrl (Cmd for Macs) and clicking the objects you want to group
b. Click on Format on the Ribbon.
c. Click on Group option and press Group
An easy tip is to select the objects using Ctrl + click (Cmd + click for macs) and use the shortcut key Ctrl + G (Cmd + G for macs) to group them.
Yet another way to group objects is to use the same Ctrl + click method and right click your selection and then click on the Group option.
3. Crop images
The crop tool as the name suggests is used to crop images and objects. Aside from the usual cropping, this tool gives the option to crop to some specific aspect ratio or even to crop to a shape. The crop option can be found in the Format menu The format menu appears after selecting the object or the image.
Cropping image to shape.
This is a useful tool if you want to crop an image to a specified shape. This is especially useful if you want to make circular images.
Bonus tip:
When using images in your presentation always try to use the highest quality possible and try not to use PowerPoint’s built in clip art or images directly downloaded from google images.
Instead use free stock images provided by a number of great sites. Sites like unsplash, pexel and pixabay, provide extremely high quality images which are free to use. These images will give a professional feel to your presentation.
Openly licensed and public domain images can be searched through the CC search tool.
4. PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts
You can use the PowerPoint shortcuts to improve your productivity and efficiency. Using shortcuts can make our lives a whole bunch easier. Here are some commonly used shortcuts
I would like to thank you for reading this post and if you want to read my previous post, here is the link to it
