Tweet Triggers in PowerPoint

PowerPoint offers wide range of features like motion path animations, action buttons, inter slide hyperlinks to create interactive and engaging presentations.

PowerPoint executes all the animations as sequence of events. Any object (text/image/shape) can be made appear, fly in as a result of click or after effect of some action. Any action for example a click results in next animation or slide.

You can't just jump on to a particular event of your choice or repeat an action again and again. For example what if you want to stay on same slide and display an image again and again on click on a text say "Who is founder of Microsoft". In such scenarios where you have to bypass sequencing or repeat actions while staying on the same slide, PowerPoint triggers is the best option available. Triggers can only be set on some animation effect.

• Select any text/object, apply some custom animation effect.
• Either double click or right click the animation effect applied(on custom animation sidebar).
• Click on 'timings' tab, click Triggers button and select the radio button "Start effect on click of".
  
• Select the event on whose click you want selected animation to execute.

Either visit Microsoft 's website or watch video below to understand use of triggers in PowerPoint.

Video triggers in PowerPoint 2010

PowerPoint 2010 offers Video Triggers; a feature with which one can mark locations in a video (i.e. set bookmarks), and then trigger animation sequences upon reaching those bookmarks on playback of the video. In simple terms you can set some specific animation to run when a particular scene appears in video inserted in PowerPoint.

Image via Microsoft PowerPoint Blog

Tweet Now conduct presentation web meetings from your mobile

MightyMeeting, a new entrant in online PowerPoint meeting domain, unlike other presentation meeting tools like Present Live from authorSTREAM , SlideLive, Zoho Show or Google presentations,  lets you conduct PowerPoint presentations on the go even from your smart-phone. Using MightyMeeting  you can conduct presentations remotely via its web interface or  iPhone and Android applications. Despite the fact that animation effects seems missing on MightyMeeting, running a synchronized slide show from mobile phone has its added advantages.

The only presentation meeting tool which retains animation effects is Present Live from authorSTREAM though they don't have any app for mobile yet. MightyMeeting could come in handy when you have to start a presentation meeting at a moment’s notice.

Tweet Create PowerPoint presentations which keep audience attentive and awake

An effective PowerPoint presentation can leave long lasting impact on audience. A PowerPoint can do more than what a blog post or document can.

Don't just fill your presentation with tons of text, bullets, images and annoying animations. Your PowerPoint should be a balanced combination of text, images and animation effects. PowerPoint presentation can also have narrations or background music if you intend to put it on some online presentation sharing website. A little planning, great script, cool design and sincere hard work will certainly pay you. There is such a abundance of bad presentation that PowerPoint expert and author Ellen Finkelstein has to start a campaign named " death by PowerPoint".

Image by kurafire via Flickr

Here are few resources which you should refer to if you really want your audience to pay attention to what you want to convey:

Microsoft

Guy Kawasaki's 10-20-30 rule

wikiHow

Concordia University