Ready, Set, Present Make Your PowerPoint Presentation Go with the Flow Helen Bradley
Thu 3/14/02 -- Before you begin your PowerPoint presentation, take a minute to think about how you'll present it. Whether it's on the Web, face to face, or kiosk style, the way your audience will see your pitch affects the choices you'll make as you work with Office's presentation package.
If you won't be there to present in person, you'll need to provide clear navigation tools for your users. If you're creating a kiosk-style demo, make sure your presentation is fully self-contained and able to run continuously, because no one will be there to explain what's going on. Here are some tools and touches to consider for your next presentation.
Lights, camera, Action. Use PowerPoint's Action buttons to manage the flow of your show from one slide to the next and access other documents from within the presentation. You'll find the built-in, navigation-style buttons work well on the Web and for presentations viewed by users at their own pace (training materials, for example).
You can add Next and Previous action buttons to a slide by choosing Slide Show/Action Buttons and clicking the Action Button: Forward or Next button. Draw the button on the slide; then, when the Actions Settings dialog opens, click OK to accept the default setting. Repeat the process to place a Back or Previous button on the slide, too. To add these buttons to all the slides in a presentation, simply follow these steps in the Slide Master.
You'll also find Beginning and End buttons to move to the start or finish of the presentation, as well as Action buttons that open documents, Web pages, and even other PowerPoint presentations. You can also use the Action Settings dialog (Slide Show/Action Settings) to add actions to any clip art image or other picture on a slide.
Don't forget to say "The End." If you add Forward and Next buttons to all your slides, you'll want to make the last slide slightly different -- there won't be a "next" slide. To ring down the curtain, add an Action Button: End to this slide (if necessary, on top of the Next button you put in the Slide Master). In the Action Settings dialog, choose Hyperlink To/End Show.
Adding a help page. You can use another Action button to take a visitor to a hidden slide containing help information or more detailed explanations. Create the slide, then hide it using Slide Show/Hide Slide. Then add Action Button: Help to any another slide; from the Action Settings dialog, select Hyperlink To and from the drop-down list choose Slide..., picking the hidden slide from the list. To return to your regularly scheduled programming, add an Action Button: Return to the help-screen slide and accept the default settings; audience members can click the button to return to the slide they were viewing previously.
Free tickets to the show. Microsoft's PowerPoint Viewer is a freely downloadable program that lets anyone view a PowerPoint presentation, even if he or she doesn't have PowerPoint installed. Unfortunately, the utility hasn't been updated to support all the newer features in PowerPoint 2000 or 2002 (such as picture bullets, automatic numbering, and animated GIFs), though it is compatible with the basics as of PowerPoint 95 and 97. Download the ppview32.exe file from here.
From AutoPlay to AutoPowerPoint. Using a shareware tool called Shellrun (you can try a freeware version here, with more powerful retail versions and development kits available), you can burn an auto-run CD that launches a PowerPoint presentation saved for the Web -- though you must be sure to save the presentation with a one-word filename).
Using WordPad, open the Shellrun file autorun.inf, edit the reference to index.htm to the name of your PowerPoint Web file, and save the file to your CD. Copy shellrun.exe, the PowerPoint .HTM file, and the associated folder of PowerPoint files to the root directory of your CD, then close the disc and test it. PowerPoint's "Save as Web page" option is also an excellent choice when you want your presentation to run on any PC, regardless of its operating system.
Pack and Go. Speaking of other PCs, PowerPoint's Pack and Go Wizard automatically assembles your presentation for transport to another computer. It offers the option of including the PowerPoint viewer, as well as packing a slide show to forward to someone via e-mail. Enable the "Include Linked Files" and "Embed TrueType fonts" checkboxes so all fonts and files used in the presentation are included (otherwise, if they're not installed on the target PC, they won't appear in the presentation). When you reach your destination, run pngsetup.exe from the first disk to install the presentation.
