Monday, March 16, 2009

How to Share your PowerPoint Presentations in Multiple Ways

Many of us make PowerPoint presentations, no matter it is for family use, business use or education use. But not lots of us know that there are multiple ways to share PowerPoint presentations. The most common way to send presentations to others may through email or put it on a server somewhere for access. You may also package your presentation to CD for the members using PowerPoint viewer only.
But what if you want to
-> Run a looping presentation on a kiosk or at a tradeshow where PC is not available
-> Send the presentation to people who may not have PCs
-> Burn the presentation onto a DVD disc for distribution
-> Et cetera…?

Then it becomes a harder work. So how can you exactly share your information in the PowerPoint presentation? Here are some solutions for you.
1. Turn the presentation into a video to view on portable devices or website
Video is a media which could be broadcasted through many players. It can display your presentations in a more vivid way. With PowerPoint in video format, it is easy for uploading to your own blog and websites. Even there is no PowerPoint installed computers, you can also view your presentations through iPhone, iPod and all kinds of media player.

If take full advantages of PowerPoint, product advertisement can also made with it. Then with the PowerPoint product advertisement in video format, you can upload it to websites for more people to get familiar with your products.
As to the tools that can help convert a PowerPoint presentation to video, there are many programs out there. Unfortunately, I haven’t tried all of these. But here is one that looks promising. Although it is not free, if it does what you want it is worth looking into: PPT2Video Converter. For more ways about how to convert PowerPoint to video, you can click here.

2. Save and store PowerPoint presentation in CDs for distribution or broadcasting
If you have made precious photo albums with PowerPoint, saving them onto a CD would be meaningful. Family genealogy and other interesting events can all be widely shared with other family members who have no PCs and stored for long term preserve.
Useful courseware made with PowerPoint can also be distributed to fellows and students after being burned to CD/DVD.
Besides, PowerPoint product advertisement if saved in CD, it is possible to be viewed on a kiosk or at a tradeshow when there is no PC.

For programs to burn PowerPoint to CD, there is always Camtasia that will turn a PPT into a video/audio presentation, then with another program to make the video/audio presentation into a DVD. But if just for the function of burning PowerPoint to DVD, there are some better choices such as these ones: http://ppt-to-dvd.com/ppt2dvd/overview.html ; http://ppt-to-video.com/powerpoint-to-dvd-overview.html .
If you want to learn more ways about how to burn PowerPoint to DVD, you can click here.

3. Convert PowerPoint presentations to web-accessible presentations
There are a lot of ways to do this. One of them is converting PowerPoint presentations to HTML version. Open your PowerPoint first, and then click Save As in the Office Button. In the drop-down menu of Other Formats, choose Webpage.

Another effective way to do this is to upload your PowerPoint to video sharing websites such as YouTube. For more notes about how to share PowerPoint on YouTube, you can click here.

The next time you want to share your PowerPoint with others, don’t bother too much then. Just take the above suggestions into consideration. And use PowerPoint to boom your sales if necessary.

Free PowerPoint Templates for Easter

Easter is observed on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25. It is a religious holiday that commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after his death by crucifixion some 2000 years ago. For Christians, Easter is a day of religious services and the gathering of family.
For the year 2009, Easter Sunday celebrations fall on 12th April.
If you need to make some presentations for Easter day or make photo albums with PowerPoint for your family reunion, these free PowerPoint templates for Easter’s day hope would help you do better.






For more free PowerPoint templates for Easter’s day, you can click here.

After making your presentations, if you need to further convert your PowerPoint to video for viewing presentations on portable devices or website and burn PowerPoint to DVD for distribution or broadcasting, you can click here.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

How to Convert PowerPoint to PDF for Free

For converting PowerPoint to PDF for free, the only way I could figure out is to use this tool: CutePDF Writer. CutePDF Writer allows users to create PDFs for anything that you can print.
You will find two links on the left side, one for free download, and one for free converter, you need to download both and install them.
Then go to PowerPoint, open your presentation, choose Print, and then choose CutePDF Writer from the drop down menu.


That’s it. For more guides about how to burn PowerPoint to DVD and PowerPoint to video, you can click here.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

How to Add Music to your PowerPoint Presentation

Article from http://www.presentationhelper.co.uk/
Article source: http://www.presentationhelper.co.uk/powerpoint_music.htm

One of the most common PowerPoint questions that we get asked is how to add music to a presentation and how to get it to play across multiple slides.

Step 1. Download your music in MP3 or WAV format.
The best format to download songs in is in the MP3 format. This has the smallest file size. However there is one big problem with mp3 files - you can only link but not embed mp3 files into PowerPoint.
(This will not be possible if you are downloading music from the Apple iTunes service. If you have downloaded music from Apple iStore you will first need to convert them to mp3 format http://www.bpurcell.org/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=1036 ) You will also need to make sure that you have all of the copyright permissions and performing rights clearances to be able to store the music in your presentation.

Step 2. Insert the music in your PowerPoint presentation.
From the main menu Insert > Movies and Sounds > Sound from file


Then from the Files of Type drop down box select mp3 format.


You will then get a message about how you want the music to start


Step3 - Setting the music to play across multiple slides
A lot of people have asked if it is possible to keep the music playing across multiple slides- for example if you wanted to make a slide show of someone's life with music playing in the background - or it could be a useful feature at a trade show.
You do this using a feature called Custom Animation. Select your music file then Right click (not the usual left click) and select Custom Animation. You can do this by selecting Slide Show > Custom Animation


How you do this depends upon which version of PowerPoint you are using.
For older versions of PowerPoint
Then select Multimedia Settings afterwards and make sure that you have selected While Playing >Continue Slide show You will then need to set the Stop Playing button and enter in the Stop Playing > After number slides the number of slides that you would like the music to play for.


If you are using PowerPoint XP the procedure is slightly different
Custom Animation > Right Click on Media and select Effect Options


You will then need to set the Stop Playing button and enter in the Stop Playing > After number slides the number of slides that you would like the music to play for.


Step 4. (Almost there). How to embed music in your presentation
The last gotcha in the process is that the music may not be embedded in your PowerPoint presentation. This means that is you save your presentation onto a CD or you are to email it, then the music may not automatically go across. It all depends upon the file size of the music.
If you want the music to be embedded in the presentation you will need to follow a couple of steps.
1. Make sure your music is in WAV format (mp3 files can only be linked and not embedded)
2. Increase the value in the Link sounds with file size greater than box to a value greater than the file size of the MP3 file. For example if the file size is 4.5MB then you will need to include a value higher than 4500. A good general purpose size that should incorporate most song files is 6000 as most mp3 files are less than 6MB. Be careful as some classical music tracks could be longer than this.

The only downside is that the file size of the final file could be quite large.
There is a 50 Mb limit for embedding WAV files. For example if you had two WAV files of 34 MB the you will be able to embed them, but it would make your file size over 68MB.

For methods to convert PowerPoint to video, you can click here.