One of my friends, Derek, who happens to utilize PowerPoint often for his daily tasks, threw me this question: "I would like to be able to have a normal presentation with a landscape portrait, but I also would like to insert a few slides with the portrait orientation. Is it possible, in PowerPoint, to have, in the same presentation, both the two slide layouts?"
"Dear Derek", I emailed him, "as far as I am concerned, there's no such feature in PowerPoint. However, what you can do is use the hyperlinks facilities of PowerPoint to link two different presentations".
In order to have different page layouts on the same presentation, I suggested Derek to do the following:
1) Create your normal presentation with landscape orientation (default option)
2) Open a new file (new presentation)
3) Go to File >> Page Setup
4) Select "Portrait" orientation for your slides
5) Create the slides you need with the portrait orientation
6) Save this new file
Now you have two presentations, one with a standard landscape slide orientation, the other with a portrait orientation. You only need to link them and the result will be what you are looking for.
Imagine you need to insert slide 1(portrait) between slide 5 and 6 (both landscape).
Here's what to do:
1) Display slide 5-landscape in Slide View mode.
2) Draw a big rectangle to fill the entire slide.
3) Select "No Fill" as a color of the rectangle.
4) Select "No Line" for its frame.
5) Right-click this transparent and invisible rectangle and choose "Action Settings"
6) Choose "Hyperlink to" and select "Other PowerPoint Presentation..."
7) Browse your folders and choose your second presentation, the one with "portrait" layout, and click "OK".
8) Select the specific slide you need to display (e.g. slide 1-portrait) and click "OK".
What you have just created now is a hyperlink from your main presentation (with landscape slide orientation) to a single slide of another presentation (with portrait orientation). As soon as you display slide 5-landscape, you can click anywhere on that slide and you will jump to slide 1-portrait without even noticing it.
And how can you go back to your main presentation once you are on the linked slide?
Well, using the same trick: draw an empty and invisible rectangle on the portrait slide and link it to slide 6 on the main presentation.
This way you will obtain the desired result (a presentation showing slides with different orientation) just by creating two hyperlinks.
And since you have just discovered the secrets of the "empty and invisible rectangle", I want to give you an additional tip about its use.
* TIP *
In the second article of this issue ("Find out the secret advanced keyboard commands that allow you to do near-magical tasks while running your show") we have seen that we can eventually use the right-click of the mouse to go to the previous slide. But that is an option that needs to be changed on the program itself, not in the file.
Instead, using our imagination and being aware of the utility of the invisible rectangles, you can do the following:
1) Display the Slide Master of our presentation (View >> Master >> Slide Master)
2) Draw an invisible rectangle (no fill and no line) that covers completely the right half part of the slide
3) Make a copy of this object (select it and press Ctrl+D)
4) Position the second rectangle on the left half part of the slide
5) Right-click on the rectangle on the right, and choose "Action Settings"
6) Choose "Hyperlink to" and select "Next Slide"
7) Click "OK"
8) Do the same for the other rectangle, the one on the left, but select "Previous Slide" as the "Action Settings" box.
9) Click "OK" and test your presentation right away, sending it full screen (View >> Slide Show, or "F5" with PowerPoint 2000)
You will see that any time you click on the right half of the screen, you advance one slide, when you click on the left side, you go back one slide.
This is a useful and handy navigation system that any PowerPoint presenter can use to be able to more easily control the playback of the presentation.
For instance, imagine a situation where you have a wireless mouse (quite common situation) and not a wireless keyboard. You would like to move around the projection room while speaking and presenting the slides, but you can't since you need to use the keyboard in case you need to go back to a certain slide. If you set up your presentation file this way, you can control your slide show from far just by using the mouse.
You can read this article in the original issue of MasterView.
