We’ve had several questions about creating an animated PowerPoint on Mac computer and then playing it on a PC and vice-versa. There has been a long running compatibility problem with video formats playing consistently across both platforms. PowerPoint on the PC favored Windows Media Video (.WMV) and the Mac liked Quicktime (.MOV). This was always a big drawback to using video in PowerPoint.
Enter a cool free plug-in for Quicktime on the Mac. Flip4Mac enables WMV files to be played by Quicktime on a Mac.
Flip4Mac is free and distributed by Microsoft. Here is the link:
The Flip4Mac wmv plug-in will allow PowerPoint 2008 and 2011 users the ability to use our PowerPoint 2007 and 2010 templates. This is a great way to make cross-platform compatible presentations and retain the animations for both PC and Mac users.
We’ve had questions about the possibility of combining several of our templates into one presentation. Essentially, how do you mix and match slides from different animated templates?
It’s actually very easy to do if you are using PowerPoint 2007 or newer. I’ve put together a video tutorial about how to use the “Reuse Slides” function in PowerPoint 2010 and PowerPoint 2007 to combine slides from various templates.
Click Play to watch Video Tutorial
Note For Combining Several Animated Templates Together.
Remember that the more animated templates you combine the larger your presentation will become. A number of video files will make your presentation quite bulky. This could be a problem if you are distributing the completed presentation.
Please leave a comment if you find this tutorial helpful or have any questions.
In Mac PowerPoint, inserting slides from other presentations or templates work pretty much the same way but the command is labeled differently. The function is located under the “Insert” menu. Look for Insert/Slides From/Other Presentations. See screen shot below:
Insert Slides from other presentations in Mac PowerPoint 2008 and 2011
In the slide finder, be sure to check “Keep Design of Original Slide” to retain the formatting, animations and other graphic elements. Otherwise PowerPoint will only copy the text and not slides design.
Our animated templates for PowerPoint 2007 require that your Office 2007 install be updated with Microsoft’s Office 2007 Service Pack 2. This service pack also fixes several bugs and stability issues with PowerPoint 2007 and other Office applications like Outlook and Word. This is a free update from Microsoft and installs automatically if you are using Windows Update to keep your computer up to date.
Here is a quick way to check if you have the Office 2007 service Pack 2 installed in PowerPoint 2007.
Find PowerPoint Options at the bottom of the menu that appears when you click the Office Button in the upper right corner of your screen. See screen shot below.
Find PowerPoint 2007 Options by clicking on the Office Button
Under PowerPoint Options, Click on resources. The exact version number of PowerPoint 2007 you are using will be listed on at the bottom of the window that appears. See screen shot below.
Finding the exact version of PowerPoint you are using.
In the version number if you see SP2 indicated, then you are currently have Office 2007 Service Pack 2 installed. If SP2 does not appear, you should update your installation by clicking “Get Updates” at the top of this window.
I was recently asked the questions about how to remove elements from one of our animated PowerPoint templates. Specifically, our subscriber wanted to remove the globe and keep the rest of the animation from this template. But she also wanted to keep the globe animation in other slides.
This is a great question, and it gives me an opportunity to better explain how the slide master works.
This tutorial applies to PowerPoint 2010, 2008(mac) and 2007.
The Slide Master Explained
The heart of a PowerPoint template is the Slide Master. To view the slide master – choose View>Slide Master.
Slide Master View in PowerPoint
It controls all the default layouts and various pre-designed slides that are included in our templates. Each Slide Master can have any number of layout pages beneath it. Think of the Slide Master as the template for the template. You can have multiple Slide Masters, and each Master can have multiple layouts attached to it. It’s powerful but a bit confusing at first.
Take a look at this screen-shot, the slide at the top is the Master, everything beneath and indented is a layout attached to the Master.
The Slide Master and the attached Layouts
Adding and Subtracting Items from the Slide Master
An element or image placed on the Slide Master is copied to any layout page attached to the Master. (There is a way to hide Slide Master graphics on the attached layouts. This is explained at the end.) So in our example, if you remove the globe from the Slide Master, the top slide in the illustration above, it is also removed from all the layout pages of the template.
That’s great if you don’t want the globe to appear anywhere in the template, but the original problem was we wanted the globe animation to appear only on select slides, not get rid of it completely.
There are a couple of things you could do at this point.
1. Cut the animation from the Slide Master and then Paste it into the individual layouts where you want it to appear.
Any element you place on a layout slide, will only appear in your presentation when you choose that layout. This is a fine, but if you start adding elements to the layouts, it can quickly get confusing where the final resting place for that element is. Is that picture on a actual slide, on a layout, or is it on the Slide Master?
2. Duplicate the Slide Master
This is my favorite option. Because you can have multiple Slide Masters in your template, you can duplicate the Slide Master.
Choose ‘Duplicate Slide Master’ from the menu after you right click top of the Slide Master. Now with this new Slide Master, in our example, you can have a complete set of new layouts without the globe animation, and a complete set with the animation.
A second Slide Master is created with the globe animation removed.
Now after exiting the Slide Master view, you have a completely new set of layouts available to you in the normal PowerPoint view.
Your new Slide Master layouts now appear when you select Layouts
Hiding Graphics Used on the Slide Master
You may notice that by deleting the globe from the slide master that the globe still exists on the Title Slide Layout. This is because the Title Slide Layout has its own graphical elements and all the elements from the Slide Master are hidden.
The Title Slide Layout is hiding the graphics from the Slide Master.
If you right click on the layout you wish to edit, you can choose ‘Hide Background Graphics”. This effectively removes all the graphical elements from the Slide Master. In this example a different version of the globe animation has been added directly to the Title Page Layout so the template has another look.
Hide Background Graphics to remove Slide Master graphics from layout pages.
One note of warning, if you hide the background graphics you will need to copy and paste any images or videos you wish to continue to use directly into the layout you are modifying.
In Closing
It can be confusing, but once you have worked with the Slide Master and it’s layouts it gets pretty easy. Just remember when editing our templates, first start editing on the Slide Master. If you cannot remove or change what you want there, then move on to looking at the attached Layout slides. If your still have questions, feel free to contact our customer support.
If you use PowerPoint 2007 and experience a problem with our animated PowerPoint templates not playing, here are a few things do to get it working properly. Most likely the problem is due to Office 2007 not being up to date. Microsoft has released several updates to Office 2007 over the past few years.
PowerPoint 2007 Troubleshooting Guide
1. Be sure you are actually viewing the SlideShow (F5)
The animations in our templates will only play in SlideShow mode and not in the normal edit mode. Under the SlideShow tab, press ‘From Beginning’ or you can simply press F5. If the animations move in SlideShow mode, everything is working properly.
2. Run Windows Update.
Microsoft has come out with several updates and patches for PowerPoint 2007. These patches fix several issues with PowerPoint and its ability to play animated templates with embedded video files.
If a computer is not being automatically updated by Windows Update, Office 2007 probably did not get updated with several critical patches.
Our recommendation is to run Windows Update and install any updates related to Office 2007.
Restart your computer after you have installed these updates.
Check the template again, Press F5 to see the animations move.
Use Windows Update to Update PowerPoint 2007
Update PowerPoint 2007 to play PowerPoint 2010 video
3. Make sure you have the most recent version of Windows Media Player installed.
Open Windows Media Player, select under Help, “Check for Updates”. Update your player if necessary.
You may need to click in the lower right corner of Windows Media Player, to switch views, to make the Help menu option visible.
PowerPoint 2007 requires Windows Media Player version 11 on XP or Version 12 on Vista or Windows 7.
4. Re-download the PowerPoint Template you were having problems with.
If you had to update PowerPoint 2007 or your Media Player, it is possible that PowerPoint has flagged the video animation in the template as unplayable. Essentially, PowerPoint has modified the file (even if you didn’t save it), so that even though PowerPoint can now play the animation, it doesn’t think it can. The only way around this we’ve found is to download a fresh file from PresenterMedia.
Problems with Video Playback in PowerPoint 2007
It has also been brought to our attention that if you do not have the most recent version of Windows Media Player, you may experience poor video playback in PowerPoint 2007. This typically looks like green streaks running through the video animation in our templates.
Since our animated templates are created in PowerPoint 2010 and then made backward compatible with PowerPoint 2007, the newest version of Windows Media Player is required. This is Media Player 11 for Windows XP and Media Player 12 for Vista and Windows 7 users.
If you are experiencing this problem, simply run Windows Media Player and then check for updates from the help menu.
This blog is managed by the creative artists and owners of PresenterMedia. We'll show you how our templates work and give you reviews of new PowerPoint features and applications. We'll also share our PowerPoint knowledge through tutorials and examples.
