Highlighting Photo Areas with the Fragment Tool

In PowerPoint, you can use an easy trick to add emphasis to a specific area of a photo.

1. On the photo, circle the area that you want to emphasis with the circle or oval shape.

2. Then select both the shape and the photo itself. Be sure to select the photo first and then press CTRL and select the circle.

3. Under the Drawing Tools . . . Format menu, and on the far left select Merge Shapes . . . Fragment.

4. Then select the background photo and go to the Picture Tools . . . Format menu, and on the far left select Artistic Effects and choose a blurred version of the photo.

PowerPoint Slides Lock Up

PowerPoint 2016 and later versions, include a presenter view which will be activated when your PC or laptop is connected to two monitors or a projector. Presenter view allows you to edit and preview the presentation while the slides are shown to an audience.

The trouble is PowerPoint can lock up in this mode and prevent you from advancing the slides in main presentation, and limit you to working in presenter view. If this problem occurs, make sure that under Slide Show . . . Set up Slide Show, the "Browsed at a kiosk" radial button is not selected. If it is slides will not advance. It's also possible that you may experience the same problem if 'Presented by a speaker' is selected. In this case, simply check off the option at the bottom right of the dialog box: 'Use Presenter View'.

Slide Aspect Ratios - 4:3 to 16:9

Don't miss that you can easily improve the appearance of a PowerPoint presentation on a wide screen computer monitor, or plasma, LCD, or OLED flat panel monitor by changing the aspect ratio of the slides.

The 16:9 aspect ratio common to HDTV monitors is twice as wide and 1.5 times the height of the standard 4:3 video graphics array (VGA) display. You can switch between the two in PowerPoint by going to Design . . . Slide Size

Making the switch can change the appearance of a slide from this in 4:3:

. . . to this in 16:9