PowerPoint Motion Paths

Most MS Office are users are probably familiar with the PowerPoint's basic animation features which allow objects to fly in from the left, grow and expand from the center of the slide, and so forth. It's also possible to set specific motion paths for objects.

If you right click on an object, select the Animation tab, Add Animation, More Motion Paths . . ., you will see that you have the option to set several different types of paths for the object.

You can select the motion path that you add to the object and expand or contract it on the slide.

If you select an object, you'll see that it appears in a list of animated objects to the right. Right click on an item in that list and you'll see you have the ability to modify Effect Options.

It's possible to set the duration of the animation and also on the Timing tab how many times you want the animation to repeat.

You can also set custom animation for an object while you have it selected from the Animation Pane list. You can simply draw the path you want the object to follow on the slide.

Scrolling Text Boxes on PowerPoint Slides

Tonight's tip shows how to insert a scrolling text box on a PowerPoint slide.

Go to File . . . Options . . . Customize Ribbon, and on the right check off Developer. A new tab will appear. On the developer tab, in the Controls section, click on Active X text box - the one with ab| in a white box.

Use your cursor to draw a box on the slide and then with it selected, go back to the ribbon and select 'Properties'. Set ScrollBars to 2-fmScrollBarsVertical

Multiline to TRUE

. . . and enter the text you want in the Text field in the Data section.

If you want to add more text to the Active X text box, right click on it and select TextBox Object . . . Edit . Enter presentation mode and you'll see you can scroll up and down in the box.

Office Presentation Service

You can use PowerPoint's Office Presentation Service to share your slide shows in real time online.

Go to the Slide Show tab and select Present Online . . . Office Presentation Service.

. . . you will be prompted with this message and can share your PowerPoint if you have a Hotmail account:

A web link will be created that you can share with others

Other people can even view your presentation in real time on their smart phone. My test PowerPoint worked fine when I put the link in the Chrome App on my iPhone 6. There was about a 5 second delay between slides advancing on my laptop and appearing on the phone.

You leave the current slide up for your audience, perform edits and then resume.