MasterView _____________________________________________________ MasterView by IKONOS New Media June 14th, 2001 Premiere Issue ..................................................... MasterView is a free monthly newsletter focusing on creating effective presentations with PowerPoint for international audiences. It is directed to Communicators, Managers, Trainers, Presenters and Public Speakers. MasterView provides selected solutions, how-to techniques and resources on effective presentation-making for international audiences. MasterView is designed for a target audience of research, education, training and development organizations, and all information and knowledge-based institutions. *********************************************** In this issue:
=============================================== New MasterView readers, Welcome! Today we have access to a lot of free, low-cost tools, online services and valuable information, and any presenter should be aware of the ones that can provide benefits to improve the quality of presentation-making and delivery. The very mission of this newsletter is to research and scout useful resources on the web and to share with you our professional discoveries and insights. MasterView is also an open discussion forum for many of you having specific questions about making presentations. These can be addressed to ask-masterview#yahoogroups.com. Me and everybody at IKONOS New Media will be happy to provide you with best advice, tools and resources. This first issue is dedicated to provide you with information when traveling around the world with your presentations to show. Have you ever experienced the feeling of not being sure if the file with the presentation you store in a floppy disk or CD-ROM will be compatible with the computer you will find at your destination? In this light, I am going to cover some of the most interesting aspects of new media technologies applied to the problems and needs we encounter daily in our efforts to communicate more effectively in front of international audiences. I will first guide you to discover which Microsoft PowerPoint features can be easily adopted in order to reliably travel around the world with your presentations. In this very issue I will also review the benefits of using popular software Adobe Acrobat, as it provides solutions for distrubuting electronic presentations to any type of computer. As a bonus for the ones of you looking for extra compatibility of your transitions and animation effects with more media and different output options, I will finally explain, in an easy step- by-step fashion, how to apply simple animation effects to any PowerPoint presentation even without having PowerPoint own animation controls. =============================================== Finally, as the Executive Editor of this electronic publication, let me just spend a few words to introduce myself: my name is Simone Luchini and I am a presentations specialist and trainer for IKONOS New Media (http://www.ikonosnewmedia.com). IKONOS New Media is an electronic publishing and distance learning company serving education, research and development organizations. We have over 15 years of experience in presentations, new media publishing and training. If you would like to know something more about me, read on directly at my personal Web page on IKONOS New Media web site: http://www.ikonosnewmedia.com/people/simone.htm Sincerely, Simone Luchini - Executive Editor Presentations Specialist, Trainer IKONOS New Media Rome | Washington (Simone.Luchini#ikonosnewmedia.com) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * =============================================== * TRAVELING AROUND THE WORLD: HOW TO MAKE SURE YOUR PRESENTATION WILL RUN ON EVERY COMPUTER * =============================================== One of the biggest worries presenters and public speakers have regarding their presentations is that they might encounter some difficulties when running a PowerPoint show in somebody else's computer. Besides, traveling in different countries with computers with different language settings or different operating systems, it can be possible to run into troubles when trying to open and run our PowerPoint presentation in another PC. There are indeed a number of solutions to work around this problem and each one fits a different need. After reviewing the pros and cons of each one, I will give you my personal advice on what I think should be your best approach. Let's make an example: I have created my presentation using PowerPoint 2000 in an English version Windows-based computer. I have to travel to Asia, I don't know what operating system I will find installed on the PCs, I don't know what version of PowerPoint (2000? 97? 4.0?) is installed and even whether PowerPoint is installed or not. How can I be sure I won't have troubles in opening and showing my file? We all know, from experience, that we should always take double precautions. And practice tells me that we might have some problems in opening that presentation around the world. When traveling and stressed by time and pressure, do we really want to have to worry also about this compatibility issues? Is there any solution that makes me feel safe so I can focus on my speech and other organizational aspects of my presentation, being sure that I will not have problems running my show? -------------------------------------------------------- HOW CAN I EASILY CONVERT MY PRESENTATION IN A FORMAT THAT CAN BE SAFELY EXPORTED AND VIEWED ALL OVER THE WORLD? * SAVING THE POWERPOINT FILE AS AN HTML DOCUMENT * --------------------------------------------------------- To resolve the issue of being sure to have a presentation that will not give you troubles when run on different computers from yours, the first easy solution I suggest is to save your presentation in HTML format, that is, as a set of Web pages. The purpose of doing this, is that your new presentation file will now be openable by any popular browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Netscape) all over the world, even though the computer where you'll run the presentation may not have PowerPoint installed. Let see how we can convert our PowerPoint presentation into HTML in a simple step-by-step sequence: 1) Open the presentation you want to convert to HTML 2) Go to the File menu, and choose "Save as a Web Page" 3) Assign a name to this new file and choose a location where to save it (I would suggest the desktop or directly a floppy disk, in case you want to bring it with you) 4) Click on the Save button. What you will obtain is a new folder that contains all the necessary files that will display your presentation on any browser. The file you will need to open to display the first slide is called slide0001.htm, and double- clicking on that one will start your presentation under Internet Explorer or Netscape. *TIP* In order to run your presentation from Internet Explorer in full screen mode, without displaying those crowded toolbars, press F11! PROS!!!: - You can publish the new presentation on the Web - You can bring this presentation with you all over the world, being sure that you will find anywhere a computer with a browser installed - You can easily send the presentation by mail to a colleague in almost any country in the world, and s/he will be able to open it with the browser CONS¡¡¡: - The html file won't keep some of your transitions and most of the animation effects, but you will find in this same newsletter a way to work around this - If you have used a lot of different images (especially in bitmap format), the new file will be bigger in size. Especially if you have been using pseudo-animation effects (see later) the html file will create as many different slides as your images are, thus increasing the overall file size requirements. This solution works best in situations where you want to create a backup presentation format readable anywhere. Since this approach may create a lot of files, it might not work best if you have limited storage space, like on floppy disk, and have a large image-rich presentation. --------------------------------------------------------- HOW TO PREPARE YOUR POWERPOINT PRESENTATION SO THAT IT CAN RUN ON A PC THAT HAS NO POWERPOINT INSTALLED? * UTILIZING THE MICROSOFT POWERPOINT "PACK AND GO WIZARD" * --------------------------------------------------------- I will introduce here a feature present in all versions of PowerPoint 4.0, 97 and 2000, called "Pack-and-Go- Wizard". This PowerPoint option will create for you a file that contains all the elements needed to run your presentation without having PowerPoint installed. If we want to make an analogy, we can imagine ourselves going to a meeting where we'll have to make a presentation: we can carry with us in our pocket just a floppy disk with the PowerPoint file, and rely on the computer and the projector we will find in the meeting room. If we are not sure we will find a computer over there, but just an old projector for 35 mm slides, along with our small floppy disk we will carry with us our laptop computer (thus increasing the weight we have to carry); maybe, if we want to be safe 100%, we can also bring with us a projector, therefore needing a taxi cab! PowerPoint "Pack-And-Go" does this for you, packs everything you might need for properly and reliably displaying your presentation and stores all the needed elements in a new file. So you will be safe, though the file may be be a bit bigger than your original presentation. Paradoxically, the files created with this feature do contain a "virtual" projector inside, the so- called "PowerPoint Viewer". To access this functionality Wizard, while you are in PowerPoint, go to the File menu, and click on "Pack And Go..." As this feature might have not be installed by default on your computer, you may be required to provide the installation CD-ROM where Microsoft Office can find the necessary files. Once you select the "Pack And Go" option, you will have to click on "Next" and select some options. 1) pack the presentation you have currently opened or any another one you have created before. Use the "Browse" button to locate previously created preentations 2) select the drive where you want to save the new file (floppy disk, hard disk, CD-ROM, network shared drive). If the presentation is very small, it will fit in a floppy that you can carry with you. Otherwise, you can use a Zip disk (the capacity is bigger than a normal floppy disk) or, if you are lucky and have a CD-recorder, you can save your presentation on a blank CD-ROM 3) choose whether to include or not in this file other linked files and whether to embed or not True-Type fonts. Linked files may be Excel charts, Word tables, images and pictures: your option should always be to include linked files and to embed True-Type fonts: This will guarantee you the greatest reliability and fidelity to the original design. Choose not to embed fonts only when you are using standard fonts available on any computer. These are Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, Symbol. This solution can save you some space in the final file size 4) when asked if to include the PowerPoint Viewer for Windows 95/NT, say yes if you are not sure about what operating system you will have in the computer you will use. If you are sure you are going to use Windows 98/ME or 2000 you can select not to include such viewer 5) Click on Finish and it's done You will find two files in the location where you have saved your Pack And Go project: one is called "pngsetup.exe" and the other one has a generic name, usually "pres0.ppz". Together, they can be bigger than the original presentation file. For instance, a PowerPoint presentation that is a bit more than 1 Mb, can increase its size to 3.75 Mb if you include the PowerPoint Viewer, and have decide to embed all the fonts and linked files. Once you are in the destination computer, just double- click on the pngsetup.exe file and select a folder where you would like to "unpack" your compressed files. You can also type in the name of a new folder (you can use the name of your original file, max 8 characters, no spaces) that will be created directly on the C drive. Otherwise, to simplify, select the desktop as a destination folder. *TIP*: Once the "unpacking" is successful (it takes a few seconds), you will be asked if you want to run the show. If you say Yes, the presentation will be shown right away in its original format. If you say No, you can access your presentation later by finding the folder where you stored this unpacked files. Right-click the .ppt file (your presentation) and choose "Show" from the context menu (the one that appears every time you right-click). This tool does a great job that can save your day and you feel safer rather than just copying your normal .ppt file in a diskette and bringing it with you. Using Pack And Go, you won't have to worry if PowerPoint is installed or not in the machine where you will run the show. If you include the PowerPoint Viewer, your presentation will positively run on any machine. Always test your presentation before the show starts, and where possible, before running your show, always close all the running programs and restart the computer, so that all the available memory will be allocated to your program. PROS:¡¡¡ Create a reliable presentation file that can be shown on a computer without the requirement to have PowerPoint installed on that machine. You will not have to worry about that problem and you will not be stressed for technical problems might arise during the show. The Viewer will show files created also with older PowerPoint versions as well as Macintosh-originated ones. CONS:¡¡¡ The new file that Pack And Go creates for you is bigger in size than the original PowerPoint presentation file, since it contains also system files used to display your presentation without PowerPoint installed. Another disadvantage of this tool, along with the increased file size, is that it will not support some features as picture bullets and automatic numbering. --------------------------------------------------------- HOW CAN I EASILY CONVERT MY PRESENTATION IN A FORMAT THAT CAN BE RELIABLY PLAYED ON ANY TYPE OF COMPUTER? * EXPORTING TO ADOBE ACROBAT PDF FILE FORMAT * ----------------------------------------------------------- To solve the problem we have just seen, the solution that I strongly suggest to you is: convert your PowerPoint file to a PDF file using Adobe Acrobat. Let's start with a brief introduction about this popular software from Adobe. Probably most of you already know it, or at least have it already installed in your computer at work. For the ones who have never heard about it, here are a few words to understand better what Acrobat is about. Adobe Acrobat is a software that exists in two versions: the free one, called Acrobat Reader (downloadable from the Internet at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html), and the production or "authoring" version called Acrobat (the latest release is version 5.0), which must be purchased as a commercial product. The free version allows you to open PDF files and display them, but not to create them. The retail version will give you the possibility to create your own PDF files that can then be opened with the free version (Acrobat Reader). Adobe Acrobat can be used to convert any file from any application into a PDF (Portable Document Format) file. This Acrobat PDF file format is a popular standard which works on Pc, Mac and Unix computers interchangeably (more than 200 million of copies of this software are installed in the world) and its unique benefits are that it preserves all of the fonts, formatting, colors and graphics of any source document, regardless of the platform used to create it. What is the purpose of using Acrobat? The PDF file you create will be readable and printable exactly as you see it on your screen from any operating system, any printer, any web browser as long as the free Acrobat Reader is installed on that machine; further, the PDF file is significantly smaller in size than the original PowerPoint file, since it is compressed. Let us make a practical example with a real problem I came across: Gloria Jensen asked me 2 days ago how she could send a PowerPoint presentation to be printed by an Egyptian colleague and how she could make sure that all her font choices (in her case Tahoma and Helvetica Narrow) would be kept and printed exactly as the original presentation. What I strongly suggested to her was to save the PowerPoint file in PDF format and to send that one instead of the original file. She followed my advice, and the presentation was successfully printed in Egypt with all the original fonts! Does it mean that my presentation will look like the same? Is there any formatting or feature that will be lost? Your slides will look exactly the same, you can send them full screen in Acrobat too. Is there any other disadvantage in using Acrobat to distribute and run our presentations? To be honest with you, I am an enthusiastic user of Acrobat technology, and I don't see any evident or serious disadvantage, besides its price: Adobe Acrobat is a costly software (from USD 249.00, see http://www.adobe.com for up-to-date pricing or check your software store) and can not be downloaded for free, or in a trial version. You can download for free the Adobe Acrobat Reader (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html) that will allow you to open, display and see all the PDF files that already exist but not to create them. The popularity of Acrobat technology is its global distribution: you pay to create a PDF file, but everyone can open for any free PDF file. What's the fastest way to create a PDF file from a PowerPoint presentation? In a few steps, all you have to do is to: 1) install Acrobat 2) open your presentation in PowerPoint 3) go to File, Print... 4) choose the Acrobat Distiller/PDF Writer printer from the printer drop-down list 5) be sure the page layout is the one you want (landscape or portrait) 6) click OK and print It's done. Easy as printing in normal white paper sheet. You will find the new PDF file in the default location of C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat\PDF Output. Depending on how you installed the Acrobat software, you may also find an icon for Acrobat in your PowerPoint standard toolbar: clicking on it will create the PDF file as well. PROS: !!! - Anyone, anywere can open a PDF file. All you need is the free Acrobat Reader - PDF files always display exactly as created, regardless of fonts, software and operating system - PDF files always print correctly on any printing device CONS: ¡¡¡ - Need to download and install the free Acrobat Reader to open a PDF file - Need to buy the Acrobat software in order to create PDF files - When using transitions you can only set one type of transition for the entire presentation without being able to select individual visual effects for the specific slides. As just analyzed, even though you can apply transitions between slides in Acrobat, you can not differentiate them. You choose a transition effect and can only apply it to all your slides. How can this limitation be solved? Is there any way I can add different transitions to my PDF file once I have converted it from PowerPoint into Acrobat? The answer is just below, a new software will do what Acrobat can't. -------------------------------------------------------- HOW I CAN HAVE TRANSITIONS RUNNING IN A PDF FILE EXACTLY AS THEY DO IN POWERPOINT? * USING ADOBE ACROBAT CONVERTER FOR PRESENTATIONS * -------------------------------------------------------- Actino Software - Presentations Tool 1.0 http://www.actino.com/home_int.htm This German software company, Actino Software Gmbh, is specialized in providing new solutions for Acrobat-based digital communications. It has created a very interesting tool that will allow you to save your presentations as a PDF file and set individual transitions and timing for each slide (as long as you have already Adobe Acrobat installed). In Acrobat you can only set once and for all one transition effect that will be applied to all your slides, and this setting is usually stored in the application itself and not in the file. What does this mean? It means that as soon as you move to a computer different from yours, the Acrobat software that you find installed in the machine where you will run the show might need to be reset again, since the transitions you have applied to your file were not stored in that file but in your machine. The transition effects that this Software from Actino will add to your presentation are instead stored in the original presentation file itself. Your presentation can now be enhanced by using some of the typical "show" features of Microsoft PowerPoint while still maintaining the benefits of a PDF file. For example, you can set different transitions for each slide (you can choose among 18 types of effects); in addition, these transitions are stored in the file itself, and will be displayed by any machine which has Acrobat Reader installed. Additionally, you can manually change and set also the timing for each transition, and set the show to display both to normal view and to full screen view. You can find all the basic PowerPoint transitions such as Wipe Right and Left, Box In and Box Out, Dissolve, Split Horizontal and Vertical, Blind, Cover, Cut, Strips and so on. The Actino software is available in two languages, German and English and it's available only for the Windows operating systtem. I is sold through the Internet at http://www.actino.com/home_int.htm (this is the International Home Page) and it is shipped via e-mail. There's a downloadable demo English version of 866 Kb (297 Kb zipped) for Windows 95/Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 at ftp://ftp.actino.de/demos/windows/present.zip. Using 18 different movie clips (.avi files) it shows the different transition effects you can obtain using this tool, and there's also an Acrobat file that shows these transitions applied to a sample document. The price of the full retail version is currently 75.00 USD. Check it accessing the international Home Page (http://www.actino.com/home_int.htm) and selecting Presentation-Tool under the category Presentations on the left side of the page. --------------------------------------------------------- HOW CAN I CREATE SIMPLE ANIMATION EFFECTS THAT WORK EVERYWHERE (ON THE WEB, IN A PDF FILE)? * USING THE PSEUDO-ANIMATIONS TRICK ("DISNEY EFFECT") * --------------------------------------------------------- Still talking about avoiding bad surprises when you run a presentation on a computer that is not the one you used to initially prepare or to rehearse the show, there's a nice design tecnique I would like to share with you. Some features like animation effects of different elements of your slide (objects, images, text) can be easily set up in PowerPoint, and are used especially when you have for instance a bulleted list and you want to display the items one at a time. If you use PowerPoint custom animations you might have compatibility problems when: 1) you run the show on a computer that has a previous version of PowerPoint installed; 2) you save the file as html for Web publishing (the browsers won't display those effects); 3) you save the file as PDF (see appropriate review), which won't keep the animations (unless you use the Actino software we introduced above in this issue); 4) you use a different PC from yours: hardware- related issues (example: graphic card and monitor refresh-rate settings, not enough RAM available, lower processor speed etc.) could avoid to properly display and show your custom animations for text or objects. In order to avoid all these risks, why not rely on an old trick that most professionals use in their real presentations? Here it is: Let's imagine we have a slide with a title and a bulleted list with 4 items that we want to show one at a time, so the audience will focus only on the displayed point not being distracted by reading the following topic. We have two options: either we use the custom animations in PowerPoint, but we have just seen what are the disadvantages, or we use the "Disney effect" trick following these easy steps. 1) Create the slide with your title and all your 4 bullets already completed 2) Go to Slide Sorter View 3) Select that slide by clicking on it 4) Press Ctrl+D (for Duplicate) as many times as your bullets in the list are: in this case 4. We'll end having 5 exact slides with our bulleted list 5) Go to Slide View mode, and display the first slide of this series of 5 6) Leave the title on, and delete all the remaining bulleted points 7) Move to the second slide, leave title and first bulleted point, and erase all the others 8) Third slide: leave title and two bullets, remove the other two bullets and so on You'll have at the end 5 slides with the same exact background, font style, colors etc. but with the difference of one bulleted point from one to the next. Try to rehearse your show in Slide Show View without applying any transition effect between the slides and tell me if the effect is not the same you can get using the custom animations. Your animation effects have now the advantage of being displayable by a web browser, a PDF file, or by an older version of PowerPoint. Pretty smart, isn't it? If you are persistent enough, by applying appropriate transitions between slides you'll obtain some of the same effects as the ones possible with the animations. Let's make an example: do you want a bulleted text line of your list appear from left to right? Apply between the two slides a transition called "Wipe Right". Do you want your bulleted text to be revealed from top to bottom? Apply to the slides a transition called "Wipe Down". *********************************************** In the next issue: "PRESENTATION SIZE" Problems A) LEARN HOW TO MANAGE PRESENTATION FILES LARGER THAN THE CAPACITY OF A STANDARD FLOPPY DISK B) KNOW HOW TO SEND, COPY, EMAIL PRESENTATION FILES LARGER THAN 1 MB C) DISCOVER HOW TO REDUCE FILE SIZE IN POWERPOINT: TIPS AND TRICKS TO QUICKLY OBTAIN A SMALLER FILE SIZE WHEN SAVING YOUR PRESENTATIONS Solutions: 1) Windows 95/98/ME "Compression Agent" and "Drive Space" 2) Microsoft Back Up 3) Compressing files using WinZip 4) Easy and automated file-splitting with "Chainsaw" 5) Native "Save As..." feature in PowerPoint and options in file's properties *********************************************** Feedback Direct feedback: Simone.Luchini#ikonosnewmedia.com IKONOS New Media Via P. Giannone 10 - 00195 Rome, Italy ........................................................ MasterView Editorial Staff Luigi Canali De Rossi - Editor-in-chief Simone Luchini - Executive Editor MasterView Expert Contributors Antonella Pastore ........................................................... MasterView Profile Visit MasterView Web site at http://masterview.ikonosnewmedia.com ......................................................... Subscription Information To subscribe to request your free copy, simply go to the following URL: http://masterview.ikonosnewmedia.com, type your email in the box and click the "Subscribe" button ........................................................ (C) 2001, Simone Luchini IKONOS New Media (c) 2001 http://www.ikonosnewmedia.com
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