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This is one every pastor needs to know about.  Placing text on top of a picture in PowerPoint is usually a pretty straightforward process.  Choose white text for a dark background and black text for a light background.  But what if you have a good reason to choose a specific color that’s not particularly light or dark, or your background picture had light parts and dark parts?  How can you add text, large enough to read at a distance (i.e. you can’t just squeeze it into the light part of the picture).  Furthermore, what if you want people to see what is behind the textRead More →

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We did Add-ins a few days ago and I didn’t take you t Pro Word Cloud, and I feel guilty, so you need to go back to PowerPoint, click “Insert”, then “Get Add-ins” and type “Word Cloud” in the search box.  Click “Add” next to Pro Word Cloud and it will add it to your “My Add-ins” and I will feel a whole lot better.  Welcome to Day 40 of 365 Ideas for Office 365. #OnlyInPowerPoint Adding the Pro Word Cloud Office Add-in As expected,  this makes word clouds within PowerPoint.  Whether you keep them there or paste them elsewhere is up to you. IRead More →

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Welcome back to Comic strips and Storyboards, featuring, the Pixton Add-in!  Day 38 of 365 Ideas for Office 365.  Yesterday we looked at how to find and add add-ins.  So grab the Pixton Add-in and let’s tell a story! #OnlyInPowerPoint At first glance, Pixton might remind you of Bitmoji because of the style of graphics.  While Bitmoji can be used in a lot more places, Pixton is far more customizable.  For example, I can easily find several Bitmojis that say “Thanks”, or “Thank you”, good luck finding one that says, “Thank you for bringing me coffee this morning!” or “Thank for doing the dishes.”  PixtonRead More →

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Add-ins are additional tools that you can add to a program to give it new superpowers.  Or at least new features.  Welcome to Day 37 of 365 Ideas for Office 365.  We’ve been looking at how to create comic strips and storyboards in PowerPoint.  We’ve gone over the basic process, but there is an add-in that really adds to the experience.  Since we’ve never looked at add-ins here, we’re taking a detour today. To find Add-ins for PowerPoint, click on Insert on the ribbon, where you will find an Add-ins section. Accessing Add-ins via the Insert tab There are two buttons here- Get Add-ins andRead More →

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Yesterday we created a background for comic strips and storyboards.  Now let’s add some life to them, like characters and speech bubbles.  Welcome to Day 36 of 365 Ideas for Office 365. On the slide with your background, click on the Insert tab and choose Pictures, Online Pictures, or Icons. Icons have some very simple (but modifiable) shapes that can stand in for characters.  For a review of modifying icons, see here. Icons for People and Occupations Just like when you chose a background, you would use Insert Pictures if you have already saved images for your characters on your device.  Otherwise, insert Online pictures. Read More →

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Have you been looking for a good tool to use for creating comic strips and storyboards?  You probably already have one.  Surprise! It’s PowerPoint!  Welcome to Day 35 of 365 Ideas for Office 365, where we will easily create background images. #OnlyInPowerPoint This is one of my favorite things to use PowerPoint for. Whether you are creating a short comic strip or a longer storyboard, the first task for each slide is to create a background.  Often this will be the same for all the slides, but it doesn’t have to be.  One way to add a background is to right-click in empty space onRead More →

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How do you find images that don’t have a background? Easy. This is going to be the shortest post ever.  Welcome to Day 34 of 365 Ideas for Office 365. This works in all Office products- Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, desktop or online. Click on Insert on the ribbon. Click on Online Pictures. Enter your search term.  (Try kittens.)  Press Enter.  Notice that most images have a background.  If you took my advice and searched for “kittens”, the first one has no background. Now add .png after kittens in the search box.  “kittens.png”  Press enter. Choose your kitten. P.S. If you MUST have that oneRead More →

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Shapes.  There are more than meets the eye.  Insert shape is one of the tools available when you click on Insert on the ribbon in PowerPoint.  Welcome to a long-delayed day 33 of 365 Ideas for Office 365.  This is a pretty straightforward topic, with one or two twists.   Click on the Shapes icon to see all the choices. Insert Shape Recently used shapes appears first.  Notice that even thought text boxes are not under the shapes menu,  they do appear as recently used shapes.  That’s because they’re used frequently enough to warrant their own spot on the ribbon, but PowerPoint does consider a textboxRead More →