15 February 2010

PowerPoint Animation -- Selection Window Time Saver

As a "PowerPoint" engineer (aka UVa Systems grad), I am ashamed to not have known about the "Selection and Visibility" feature in PP2007.

Basically, this shows you a list of all the objects on your slide, for which you can proceed to give meaningful names. This is helpful in keeping things straight when making a slide with a lot of graphics and animations. Instead of working with a bunch of objects (some of which are hidden by others) with names like "Picture 9" and "Picture 13", you can use meaningful names like"PHL in 2007" and "PHL in 2012".

To do this click on "Home", then "Select->Selection Window..." (button in the Editing window on the far right-hand side of the screen). This produces a pane which lists all the objects on the screen. You can even hide some object so that it is easier to select and manipulate the underlying ones.

I know this is my lamest post ever, but this feature made me happy for a few minutes.