Creating Flash-like PPT Presentations

[Rhonda]

Hi there...

I work for a design firm and our sales/account service team uses
powerpoint for their new business and client presentations.

We (we meaning the creatives here) want to polish up and add
interest/excitement to our presentations. However, from my limited
research so far, a lot of the special effects that are being done by
"powerpoint presentation specialty companies" are using powerpoint
plug-ins, which only seem to be for the Windows version of PPT.

Does anyone have any samples/suggestions of how they have "pushed the
envelope" of powerpoint's capabilities on the Mac? We have to keep the
powerpoint editable (as far as text) and not have anything embedded
that has to "travel along" with the powerpoint if the account team
wants to send a presentation to the client (i.e. sound files). If it
were not for these limitations, we'd be opting for doing a flash
presentation.

We have considered doing a flash opening loop and then just creating
nice visuals for a standard presentation, but we'd really like to take
it to the next level as much as possible.

Any suggestions/advice/links that would point me in the right direction
would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Rhonda,

You can do a lot of stuff using PowerPoint's custom animation settings.
Keep in mind everything in PowerPoint is in layers, animations can play
simultaneously or in succession, and that you can use animated gifs if
you want cartoon effects.

-Jim

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi,

Please forgive me Rhonda, if this is a repeat of a posting I made
earlier. I did not see any reply to your posting today.

Is your client base and service team all on Macs or will you need to be
able to play the presentations on Windows as well?

Here's a link to tips and suggestions:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/powerpoint2004/using.aspx?pid=using
powerpoint2004

PowerPoint 2003 (Windows) and PowerPoint 2004 (Macintosh) are mostly
feature the same. There are some things the Mac version has that the PC
version lacks, and visa-versa. One big missing Mac feature is the
ability to control path animations (although if you make them in Windows
they Mac version will play them). The PC version is missing the Picture
special effects and soft shadows. There are a few other differences.

Nevertheless, both Mac and Windows PowerPoint can do a lot of neat
stuff. If you start thinking in layers you can do a lot.

Here's a site with some examples and tutorials
http://www.pptworkbench.com/html/communication.htm

If there's something in particular you want to accomplish and get stuck
trying, just post a message to this newsgroup and folks will gladly
offer some ideas.

And if you find postings you know how to answer, feel free to jump right
in! Everyone is welcome to help out here.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

 

[Mark]

One big missing Mac feature is the ability to control path animations

Sorry to jump in but does that mean I can't do the trick I saw today
where a piece of text moves from the bottom of the page to make a label
for a diagram further up?

B*gger; one less trick to feel smug about.
Never mind; Flash then!

 

[Jim Gordon]

Hi Mark,

No, that's not quite correct. You can use the Crawl-In or Fly-In
entrance animation (set to "from bottom") to accomplish this effect.

All of the built-in path animations are available on Mac PowerPoint.
What you can't do is to change the paths. Fly-In and Crawl-In go in
straight lines. If you wanted an object to follow a designated path
then you would not be able to set the path on the Mac. If you did set a
path in Windows PowerPoint 2003 then Mac PowerPoint will honor the setting.

-Jim Gordon
Mac MVP