PowerPoint Cameo gets an important upgrade with Placeholders
PowerPoint’s ‘camera in slide’ feature ‘Cameo’ is getting a welcome boost, if not an essential piece of Cameo. Cameo placeholders can be added to Slide Masters. Cameo is Microsoft’s name for putting a live camera image into a PowerPoint slide presentation. It’s ideal for online presentations. That was fine but the cameo video had to […]
Emoji Panel is part of Windows that totally sucks
Windows 11 and 10 has the Emoji Panel. What a pity that it totally sucks and is incredibly dumb. Emoji Panel is better than what we had before (nothing) but not by a lot. We’re talking about the Emoji Panel or ‘keyboard’ which appears in Windows 11/10 when you press Win + . (Windows key […]
All about the Windows 10 Emoji Panel
All about the Windows 10 Emoji Panel, a fast way to type emoji 😁, symbols §⁜✓, emoticons 🙂 and kaomoji (❁´◡`❁) into any Windows app, document, slide, email or message. This is how it appears in Windows 10. If you have Windows 11, the Emoji Panel works differently, see Get the most from Windows 11 […]
Get the most from Windows 11 Emoji Panel
The Windows 11 Emoji Panel is a quick way to type emoji 😁, symbols §⁜✓, emoticons :), kaomoji (❁´◡`❁) and even animated GIF’s into any Windows app, document, slide, email or message. We’re talking about the Emoji Panel or ‘keyboard’ which appears in Windows 11 when you press Win + . (Windows key plus period/fullstop) […]
Five snowflake ❄ symbols in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Five ways to add a Snowflake ❄ symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. There are three snowflake symbols plus two Office icons. Snowflake ❄ symbols are normally used to show, well, a snowflake or generally to indicate cold or snow. Maybe also as a […]
Fix the kerning settings in Microsoft Word and Office
How to use the font kerning settings in Microsoft Office, Word and PowerPoint and fix the default setting for Heading styles in Word. Kerning letters makes a difference as the letters get larger so the setting is more important for headings and titles in Word and PowerPoint. Here’s common Arial font without and with kerning […]
Try out the Meta image maker – Imagine
Meta has joined the ‘text to image’ AI race with Imagine. Here’s how to use it to make interesting pictures quickly and bypass its current limits. There are so many AI tools out there, in particular ‘text to image’ makers, Microsoft has ‘Generate Image’ in Designer and a separate Image Creator as well as the […]
Pantone’s 2024 color ‘Peach Fuzz’ in Word, Excel and PowerPoint
Pantone’s color of the year for 2024 is “Peach Fuzz”. You can use that exact color in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Designer using the Hex/RGB color code. And we’ll look at the flowery prose that’s become a hallmark of this annual promotion. The color of 2024 is … Peach Fuzz As usual what’s more […]
Ten ways to select text fast in Microsoft Word
In Microsoft Word, you can use keyboard or mouse shortcuts to select characters, words, lines, paragraphs, and blocks of text faster. Here are ten different selection tricks that Word experts know to speed up their work. Select a Sentence Highlight an entire sentence in Word by simply holding down the Ctrl key, or the Command […]
Stop Designer in PowerPoint
Designer in PowerPoint 365 is great, but it can be too pushy and intrusive with the Design Ideas pane popping up too much. Designer risks becoming the new ‘Clippy’! Here’s how to stop Designer appearing until you want it. PowerPoint Designer suggests slide designs based on the content. It’s a cloud service which means there […]
Tricks to get more from PowerPoint Designer
PowerPoint Designer and Design Ideas is the start, not the end, of making a great looking presentation. Some simple changes will make something unique and not obviously copied from Microsoft’s template supply. We’ll show how to dig into the Design Ideas to change individual slide elements a little, or a lot. Not familar with PowerPoint Designer … get the […]
Getting More from PowerPoint Designer
PowerPoint Designer should just be the start of making a great looking presentation. A few manual adjustments will transform Microsoft’s automated suggestions into something awesome and unique. All the design helpers in PowerPoint and Office have the same problem. Everyone uses them and so a lot of slides or docs end up looking the same. Instead of […]
Make PowerPoint Designer better, add some words
PowerPoint’s Designer suggestions work better if you add some words to the slide first. If you add some broad keywords or title, it gives Designer clues for the most appropriate look. Designer uses the text to choose from the many templates available. The words don’t have to appear in the final presentation, just while selecting […]
Using Designer for more eye-catching PowerPoint slides
PowerPoint Designer is perhaps the most interesting and useful feature in PowerPoint 365. It turns a basic slide into something eye-catching. Here’s how to use Design Ideas effectively and wisely. It’s a very quick and easy way to take a couple of Design Elements and create a full-blooded Custom Style for your Slide Show with a […]
Get over 3,000 more great Office icons from Google
Google has more than 3,000 Icons available to add into Microsoft Office documents from either SVG files or a font. Material Symbols are a collection of small icons, much like the Icons available in modern Office. As SVG files they can be recolored and changed from their standard black line look. Use them in Word […]
Sketchy line option in Office for Windows and Mac
Office for Windows and Mac has three special outline styles for the borders of shapes and text boxes. Called ‘Sketched’ or ‘Sketchy‘ because they have a hand-drawn line look. It’s a nice little addition to Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook. Let’s see how it works plus some details and limitations that Microsoft hasn’t mentioned. All […]