In today’s market, standing out amongst the competition can be tricky. Employers are looking for candidates who not only have the appropriate educational background and experience but also possess skills that can produce immediate organizational impact. A Microsoft Office Specialist Certification is a simple opportunity to add globally recognized value to your resume. At SMU, students, staff, and faculty alike can gain a Microsoft Office Specialist Certification to endorse their proficiencies in all Microsoft Office applications, proving to employers they have what it takes to make an immediate impact in their career. Achieving certification is as easy as steps 1, 2, and 3.
Continue reading Microsoft Office Certification: It’s As Easy As 1,2,3
Category: PowerPoint
Enhancing Your Presentations with PowerPoint & Sway
Students,
Could your presentations use a little more pizazz? Join us for this special 1-hour webinar full of tips, tricks, and practical guidelines for any PowerPoint presentation. If you are thinking of using PowerPoint for any of your classes, this webinar will be worth your time.
During this hour, we will also introduce you to Sway, Microsoft’s storytelling application, designed for creating presentations, newsletters, and interactive reports. Learn how to access Sway and create quality presentations effortlessly. (1 hr)
Date: Tuesday, March 21, 1:00 p.m.
Cost: FREE
A-LEC and OIT Team Up for Student Workshops
Get your spring semester off to a great start! The Altshuler Learning Enhancement Center (A-LEC) has partnered with OIT to offer student workshops that can help you make the best of your spring. Located in the Loyd All-Sports Center, the A-LEC is a great place to support your studies through your time at SMU. Continue reading A-LEC and OIT Team Up for Student Workshops
Save Your Voice for the Presentation
By: Shayan Gaziani
Imagine this Scenario:
You walk into class prepared to deliver a paramount presentation. You’ve spent hours rehearsing every aspect from timing to delivery. You’ve spent days, if not weeks, preparing the file, compiling countless amounts of slides, graphics, links, and embedded objects.
Approaching the classroom computer, you plug in your thumb drive and open the presentation file. You steady yourself, take a gulp of air, start the presenter view and – notice that every single piece of image, audio, and video is gone. Blank. Nada.
Arguably one of the most venerated of presentation software, Microsoft’s PowerPoint provides a robust, feature-rich, and professional aid to presenters across a variety of disciplines and environments. From the boardroom to the classroom, PowerPoint has proven its usefulness and importance as a de facto method to revolutionizing the way we deliver speeches, presentations, assignments, etc.
But what if it doesn’t Work?
One common, yet egregious, issue with PowerPoint, especially in versions pre-dating 2013, is media and custom fonts not displaying correctly when a presentation file is transferred to another computer. The seemingly logical approach is to download images, sounds, and videos to your computer and simply insert them into a presentation. When you save and transfer the file, everything should clone and transfer as is, right?
Not exactly.
PowerPoint is big on trying to keep file sizes small and compressed, and one of the ways it does that is by linking media objects in a presentation. Remember that video you inserted into PowerPoint? It’s not really in the presentation file – rather a link to it is that PowerPoint then pulls when presenting.
Fortunately, there is an easy fix to this. Most PowerPoint versions include an option called Package for CD (On Mac, the issue can be circumvented by simply saving as a PowerPoint Show [.ppsx] format – you won’t get the viewer mentioned below, though). The feature allows the creator to compile all of the resources that PowerPoint has used to create the presentation (including your media), and create a packaged folder, including a mobile version of PowerPoint, called PowerPoint viewer, to ensure your presentation can run on a computer that does not have PowerPoint Installed. The Package for CD option allows you to create a presentation CD, or simply save the packaged files on a drive.
The Fix.
The steps to accomplish this are fairly simple, as provided by Microsoft. Go ahead and give it a try – it may just save your grade.
What to Do when PowerPoint’s Presenter View Won’t Play Nice
The Presenter View option allows PowerPoint users to show the audience the slide show while giving the presenter a view of upcoming slides, a timer, notes to yourself, and other handy tools. (If you haven’t yet, be sure to give it a try.)
The problem is that every now and then Presenter View doesn’t happen, and the laptop screen only shows the slides. Most people don’t memorize where these controls are, so in this situation, users are often forced to press on without the use of Presenter View. Since this little headache pops up from time to time, it pays to know how to set this option.
For Windows PC Users:
At the top of the PowerPoint screen are a series of tabs. Click on the one that says Slide Show. In the ribbon’s Monitors section, you will see a check box next to the words Use Presenter View. Check this box and Presenter View will start up when you begin the slideshow.
Mac Users: Click on the Slide Show tab and look for a section titled Setting for Two Displays. Click on the icon that says Presenter View, and then start your presentation again.
Mac users may also need to be sure that their laptop is not set to mirror the displays. To do this, click on the Apple icon in the top-left of the desktop, then click on System and choose Display. Click on the Arrangement tab at the top of that screen and be sure that the check box next to Mirror Displays is unchecked.
Lastly, if the Presenter View shows up on the wrong monitor simply click on the Display Settings button at the top of the Presenter Tools page and select Swap Presenter View and Slide Show.
Of course, Classroom Support is always available to help with this. Call us at 214-768-8888, and we’ll be glad to set it up for you.
