Action to Add PDFs to PowerPoint Files

If you need to import all of the pages from multiple PDFs into a PowerPoint presentation, Lori Kassuba has created an action that will do it. See the post named, 'Convert PDF to PowerPoint' on the Adobe Actions Exchange. Download the .sequ file named 'temp_file_Convert_PDFs_to_PowerPoint1.sequ' and simply double-click on it to import it into Adobe Acrobat. It will appear in the Tools menu

Click on the action and you will given the option to process one or more PDFs.

A PowerPoint file will be automatically saved to the same folder as the source files with each page of the PDF saved to a separate slide.

Avoiding Death by PowerPoint

David JP Phillips is the author of How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint, and the owner of a Swedish business specializing in professional presentations. His TED Talk provides some basics on to prepare an effective PowerPoint presentation.

Phillips begins his talk by showing some examples of bad PowerPoint slides. A New York Times article We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint included a copy of a slide used at a briefing for General McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The article notes that H.R. McMaster banned the use of PowerPoint and quotes General Mattis as saying that, "PowerPoint makes us stupid".

Another notorious slide has hard to follow arrows zigzagging between obscure objects.

Phillips' key points are:

1. One message should be the focus of each slide. Don't try to cram information on a single slide - just make more slides!

2. Don't speak at the same time the slide is shown. Let the audience focus on the image or points on the slide.

3. Titles are usually not the most important thing on a slide - don't make them big:

. . . keep them small. The most important part of a slide should be the biggest.

4. Use a dark background.

5. Contrast different points on a slide for emphasis. A particularly effective method is to gray out each bullet point after you move to the next one.

5. There should never be more than six elements on a slide. The viewer should just see the total - they shouldn't have to count.

Attack Your Presentation with Thor's Hammer!

PPTools has a very simple (but great) add-in for PowerPoint that will save you a lot of trouble when you're designing PowerPoint presentations. On this web page you can download the Thor add-in. It will open as a separate tab on the PowerPoint ribbon.

It has a very simple purpose. Thor's Hammer lets you position any shape added to a slide to a fixed position and size. So if you're repeatedly adding shapes on multiple slides and want them to be the same size and in the same location on all slides, Thor will hammer them down for you.

After adding your first shape with a particular size at a particular location, with the shape selected, on the PPTools tab click Memorize.

When you add a new shape, you can simply select it, and click on the hammer:

. . . and it will be pounded into position.