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 […]
Sketchy or wriggly lines in Icons and SVG graphics
Microsoft Office Icons and other SVG graphics can be improved a lot simply with Sketchy or Sketched lines. They turn an icon or graphic from something formal into a hand-drawn and casual look. Sketchy lines is the ‘hand-drawn’ line option available in Microsoft 365 for Windows or Mac plus Office 2021. It lets you change […]
Better Icon, illustration or SVG editing trick in Office
Get more from Microsoft Office Icons, Illustrations, Cartoon People and other SVG graphics by turning them into Office Shapes which opens up many more options for editing and recoloring the graphic. That includes ‘splitting’ a single graphic into parts that can be changed separately. Microsoft 365, Office 2021, 2019 and 2016 for Windows/Mac have an […]
How hackers trick you to open infected documents
Here’s how to avoid the tricks hackers use to infect your computer via Office documents. Microsoft has added features to Office that should make it harder to infect your computer via a Word, Excel or PowerPoint document. Hackers have found ways to trick people into bypassing those warnings and enable the viruses in the document. […]
Office Application Guard is on the way out
Microsoft Application Guard for Office is being ‘deprecated’ (phased out) in Windows 11 and Windows 10 after only a few years. No official reason has been given and the excuses don’t make sense. Back in 2019 Microsoft announced Application Guard as a new way to isolate macro enabled documents from unknown sources. Suspect documents are […]
Telephone location ✆ emoji in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Insert the Telephone location ✆ symbol into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. Telephone location ✆ symbol is supposed to be used as a sign for a phone box or booth but can be used for any ‘phone’ purpose. See also: Telephone Receiver 📞 Emoji In Word, Excel, […]
Tricks to using YouTube videos into PowerPoint
Online videos from YouTube and other sources can be played within a PowerPoint slide and there are tricks to make the presentation better and work around some limitations. The ability to insert online videos from YouTube and other sources has been in PowerPoint for some time. Insert | Media | Video | Online Video But […]
Essential keyboard shortcuts for the Office Selection Pane
Use these essential keyboard shortcuts to make best use of the Selection pane in Microsoft Office. Alt + F10 Open Selection Pane F6 Move the keyboard focus through the major regions until reaches the Selection Pane Tab Navigate by keyboard through the buttons in the pane and then into the list Up arrow, down arrow […]
See more with Selection Pane in Excel, PowerPoint and Word
Selection Pane is essential in Word, Powerpoint and Excel to hide or display the objects or to change the order, rename objects, group / ungroup, and delete objects. If you’re using images, graphics, Text Boxes, charts, SmartArt or other objects, the Selection Pane is a must. So, let’s start with some basic details of how […]
2001 movie design: using in Office, Word or PowerPoint
Make your own Word or PowerPoint designs inspired by the movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey‘. See 2001 A Space Odyssey – in Word and PowerPoint and 2001: A Space Odyssey and font kerning for details on the fonts, colors and styles used in Kubrick’s famous movie. PowerPoint slides Moving from film stills to PowerPoint slides […]
Eiffel Tower 🗼 emoji in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook
Insert the Tower 🗼 (Eiffel Tower, Tokyo Tower) emoji, symbol or stock photo into Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook. Both in Office for Windows and Office for Mac. The emoji is commonly called ‘Eiffel Tower’ in the west but it was originally intended to show the Tokyo Tower. That’s why some emoji are colored […]
Add comments/help to your Office VBA code
ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can enhance your Office VBA code with comments and help. It or Copilot can analyze your code and generate explanations, tips, and examples to make it easier to read and debug One of the modern AI tricks is to help write and understand programming code. We’ve already looked at […]
