Tweet Top 9 features of PowerPoint 2016 you should give a try

Microsoft PowerPoint 2016 is rich in features and will make presentation creation a fun. It requires at least 1 GB RAM (32 bit) or 2 GB RAM for 64 bit machine. PowerPoint 2016 works only on Windows7 and above and requires at least 1280 x 800 resolution.

Here are few features worth mentioning.

1. Better video output

Now you can create presentation videos (MP4) having resolution as high as 1920 x 1080, which plays great on larger screens.

2. Share presentations
In PowerPoint 2016 you can share your presentation with others using OneDrive or Office 365 SharePoint. You would see share option on ribbon but before you share, presentation has to be shared on OneDrive or Office365.

3. Screen capture

The much awaited feature now lets you capture specific area of the screen and insert it directly into your presentation.

4. Advance equation editor

Now in addition to inserting pre-formatted equations, you can also write equations and PowerPoint will convert them into text. On a mobile or tablet device, you can use your finger or a touch stylus to write math equations by hand, and PowerPoint will convert that into text.

5. Smart lookup

While creating presentations you can look for more details on word or phrase. You can select a word or phrase, right-click it, and choose Smart Lookup, which will return definitions, Wiki articles, and top related searches from the web.

6. Charts

PowerPoint 2016 has six new charts—Box and Whisker, Treemap, Sunburst, Histogram, and Waterfall.

7. Quick access with tell me

Tell ME helps get quick access to different tools and features of PowerPoint. It is a text field where you'll enter words and phrases associated with what you want to achieve and you’ll quickly get to options you want to use or actions you wish to perform. For example if you type remove it will prompt you action like “Delete Slide”.

It might come handy when you are not able to locate a command on ribbon.

Features that come with 365 subs
There are certain features like Designer, Morph in PowerPoint 2016 which are only available if you have an Office 365 subscription.

8. Morph Transition

Microsoft has introduced a new transition type, Morph in PowerPoint 2016, which might assist you build smooth animations, transitions, and object movements across the slides in your presentation. You will need to create at least 2 slides with a minimum of one object in common—the easiest method to do so is to duplicate the slide and move the object on the second slide, or you can also copy the object from one slide and paste it on other.

9. PowerPoint Designer

If you are familiar with Visual Bee add-in, you would certainly know what designer do.

PowerPoint Designer is a new service that analyzes your content and automatically generate a different ideas that you can select from to make your slides look awesome.

Here is a video that talks more about Morph and Designer

You can head here for free training on PowerPoint 2016.

Tweet Create rich interactive lessons with Microsoft Office-MIX

Microsoft is quickly changing and adapting to rapidly changing user behavior and requirements. Last year saw two products from Mircosoft, Sway (competes with Prezi) and Office-Mix (competes with Adobe Presenter, Articulate) launched possibly to save people from death by PowerPoint.

Microsoft Office-Mix is a free PowerPoint Add-in that lets you tell your story with audio, video, annotations, screen recording and interactive element. It helps educators create interactive lessons with slides, media, quizzes and polls. In addition to all these cool features which are otherwise paid in other such Add-ins, Office-Mix provides rich analytics and online sharing.


Though Sway and Office-Mix both are not a new idea, yet it is surely going to be a bliss for educators who will not have to rely on paid software for creation of interactive synchronized lessons. Here is a Mix explaining open number lines-

Tweet Free PowerPoint add-in to record lectures for flipped classroom and courses

WizIQ, an education platform that connects teachers and students online has released a free PowerPoint add-in called WizIQ Recordor. WizIQ Recordor lets teachers create video lectures (MP4) for offline consumption by students. Teachers can record their live audio along with PowerPoint slides and can either share video link with their students or add the video to their online course.

Recordor is an easy-to-use authoring tool that creates synchronized video lectures. The only disadvantage it has is that teachers can only record their audio and not their video(from webcam) or any pre-recorded audio or video file. Adding a functionality to let teachers sync any audio or video file with slides to create a synchronized video lecture would be a great thing to do since this functionality is missing in PowerPoint as well.