Learn how to find only photos or only illustrations when searching Office 2013 online images
In Office 2013 the old Clip Art feature was removed and now you can insert an image by searching for it online at a number of places. One of these is the Microsoft clip art collection which is now stored totally online and not partly on your computer.
So far, so good.
The problem is that the old task pane feature which let you determine the types of images you want to search for is now gone. So, on the face of it, when you search for something like coffee you get illustrations and photos. In many cases much more than you want or need.
Often, I know ahead of time I want a photo or an illustration so I want my search to return only one type of image. There’s no information at all as to how to do this but you can! Instead of searching for coffee, type coffee photo to find photos relating to coffee or coffee wmf to find just illustrations as these are generally wmf format images.
It isn’t a perfect solution and you will miss out on some images as well as get the occasional illustration with your photos or vice versa.
However, if you’re not too fussy about missing out on some imagery then using this search format will weed out a lot of the stuff you don’t want and serve up mostly the type of content that you do want.
This tip works in any of the Office 2013 applications – PowerPoint 2013, Excel 2013, Publisher 2013. Word 2013 and more.
Learn how to create a simple animation in PowerPoint. You will add a shape which, when clicked will trigger an image to be displayed. It is a smart animation with lots of potential uses which, once you see how it is done, will be simple to adapt to your own needs.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley.
Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can create an animation where you click a button to show an image. Before we get started with this tutorial let’s have a look and see what it is that we’re going to achieve.
I have an image here and a shape and when we play the presentation this is what we’re going to see. We’re going to see a slide without the picture and when I click on this shape I’ll see the image displayed. And we’re going to create this animation where we click on a shape and an image appears.
So back in PowerPoint let’s go to a new slide and I’ve already inserted my image. I just chose Insert and then Online Pictures. I searched for an elephant and I’ve just inserted it on the slide. So there’s nothing special about what I’ve done to date. Now I’m going to choose Insert and then Shapes and I’m going to choose my rounded rectangle shape.
And I’m going to add it to my slide and I’m going to add some text to it. And I’m just going to click away from the shape. Now that we have our shape and our image we’re ready to create the animation. To do this I’m going to click the Animations tab on the Ribbon. And I want to animate the elephant so I’m going to click on the elephant image and I’m going to choose an animation for it.
So I could choose an animation such as fade so it will fade in. And then I’m going to open the Animation task pane over here by clicking on Animation Pane because I want the elephant to be animated but I don’t want him to appear on a click and I don’t want him to appear after the slide is opened. I want him to appear when you click this particular shape.
And that’s a different animation. This is the elephant animation so I’m going to right click it and choose Effect Options because that allows me to control how this effect is going to play. And I’m going to click the Timing tab.
And I want this to be triggered by the clicking of this shape so I’m selecting to Start Effect on Click of and I’m going to select Rounded Rectangle and just click Ok. And now this image is going to animate when we click this shape. Let’s close down the task pane and let’s go and test it.
I’ll click the Slide Show. You have to do that because you have to test this slide as it would appear inside a working slide show. And you can see here we have our slide on the screen and just our filled rectangle. I’m gray. I have a trunk. Click to see what I am. The elephant image is not visible yet. However when I click the shape the elephant appears and we would then progress through the slide show.
So this is a simple animation effect that you can create so that you can click a shape and something happens. The animation is all added. All the effects are added to the image itself. You’re going to animate it with some sort of an entrance effect and then adjust its timing so that it is triggered by a click on this shape here.
I’m Helen Bradley.
Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out for more PowerPoint tutorials on this YouTube channel as well as additional tutorials on other Office applications and Photoshop, Lightroom and Illustrator.
Visit my website at helenbradley.com for tips, tricks and tutorials on all these applications.
Learn to recolor clip art using theme colors so it is not only the color that you want it to be but it also matches the theme and it changes color when the theme changes.
This works with pretty much all versions of Office and all apps including Word 2013, PowerPoint 2013, Excel 2013, Publisher 2013 and older versions of Office including 2010, 2007, 2003 and earlier.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley.
Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how you can easily recolor clipart in Microsoft Office and how you can use theme colors so that your clipart changes when your theme changes.
Before we get started with this tutorial let’s have a look and see what it is that we are trying to achieve. This is the same piece of clipart and I just made a duplicate of that clipart image and I recolored it in the way that I’m going to show you how you can recolor your clipart. But let’s have a look and see the impact of the recoloring.
I’m going to choose the Colors tool here and watch as I arrow over all of these colors in turn. And you’ll see that the clipart image that I have recolored I have recolored this time with theme colors. And the beauty of this is that the clipart image is going to change colors in accordance with the theme that is in use.
The only thing that hasn’t been recolored is the black and the little yellow light in the candle. Everything else is a theme color and it’s going to change color using the new theme colors whenever the theme or the design of this PowerPoint presentation changes. So this is the concept that we’re going for here.
Now I have a slightly simpler image here. All I did to find these images was I chose Insert and then Online Pictures and I went looking for cake. And I particularly wanted wmf files as that’s Windows metafile and that is an illustrative file most of which can be recolored inside of PowerPoint or Word or Excel or any of the Microsoft applications.
And you don’t have to be using Microsoft Office 2013. You can choose any version of Microsoft Office. I’ve been doing this for years in Microsoft Office. It’s just that the way that you add images is a little bit different in this new version. Now before I start let’s just take a copy of this image and let’s paste it so that we’re working on a duplicate.
We can see then how far we’ve come later on. I’m just going to get rid of these images. Now with the image that I’m working on selected I’m going to choose Picture Tools, Format tab and I’m going to choose Group and then Ungroup.
Now you’ll see that the group option sometimes is not available from this dropdown menu but it will always be available from the Picture Tools, Format tab if the image is able to be ungrouped. You’ll get a message showing that this is an imported picture and not a group and asking you if you want to convert it to a Microsoft Office drawing object.
The answer to that is yes. And then you’ll go and repeat the process. You’ll right click and choose Group, Ungroup or from the Drawing Tools, Format tab you’ll choose the Group button here and choose Ungroup.
That ungroups the object so it’s now a whole lot of smaller objects. I’m just going to click outside it and then we’re going to start selecting individual pieces of this object. And I suggest that you start with a nice color scheme. So I’m just going to go to the color schemes and let’s choose something relatively colorful.
I found slip stream was a good option to use but any of these such as red violet that is fairly colorful is a good choice. Drawing Tools, Format tab and now from the shape filled dropdown list we’re going to make sure that we recolor all of the shapes using the fill colors that are theme colors.
So, again, I’m going to select here, this is on this sort of turquoise bit, and I’m going to color it a darker version of that same blue. I’m going to click on the candle light and see if I’ve got something I can use for candle light. I think I’m going to choose one of these colors because I would really like my candle light this time to be a theme color.
To select multiple colors or multiple shapes at a time I’m just selecting the first and then Ctrl clicking on the last. And again, I want these to be colored the same color as the candle light. Now I’m going to click here. There’s a shape here.
If you ever want to see what the shape is that you’re working on just press the Delete key and it will disappear and then you can undo it to be able to work on it. Or of course you can just fill it and see what it is that you are actually filling.
So I’m going to select that color. And now we’re going for this shape over here and I want a slightly darker or lighter version here. I think I’m going for a darker version. And here we have the shadows. Again, I’ll want a darker color for the shadow. I think I’ll go back for these blues. I’m going to stick to the turquoises and this sort of purple color.
So I’m going to now select these smaller items here and when I’ve got them selected I’m going to fill them as well. And when I’m pretty happy with my shape that has been recolored I’m going to select over the entire shape because now what I want to do is to stick it all back together again because I don’t want lots of little pieces.
Drawing Tools, Format tab, Group and this time I want to Regroup. And I’ll just test this by moving the object and it should all move as one. And now let’s look and see that this object is going to recolor unlike the original object if we change the color of this particular design that we’re using in PowerPoint.
So I’m going to choose the colors dropdown list here and as I choose a different color scheme you can see that my clipart shape is changing color. And as I said this works exactly the same way in any of the Office applications and in pretty near any version of these. You can do this in Word 2003.
You can do it in PowerPoint, Excel, Publisher, any of the applications and you can create clipart so that it not only matches the current theme but also looks the colors that you want it to look but which will change colors as the theme colors change.
I’m Helen Bradley.
Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out for more of my PowerPoint and Microsoft Office tutorials on this YouTube channel.
And visit my website at projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials on a range of Microsoft Office applications as well as Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator and a whole lot more.
See the new transitions in PowerPoint 2013 including airplane and origami. There are some great new transitions and this video shows you what they are, what they look like and some of the settings for them.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Helen Bradley.
Welcome to this video tutorial. In this tutorial I’m going to show you the new transitions in PowerPoint 2013. In this video I’m going to show you the transitions that are new in PowerPoint 2013 and we’re just going to run through them seeing them on this particular presentation. Now all of these have been in PowerPoint for some considerable time. The first of the new ones is fall over and it looks as if the slide is falling over to reveal the next slide. This is drape. Again, it’s a new transition. And curtains. This is wind.
Now with any of these transitions you can speed them up. You can see that the curtains transition takes quite a while to run but if I set it to 3 seconds then it’s going to occur a lot more quickly. Here are some more of the newer transitions, prestige. Then there’s fracture and crush and then peel off. Now like some of the other transitions this has different effect options so you can peel off from the left or the right. Then there’s page curl. And, again page curl has some different options. And airplane. The effect options for this allow you to change the direction in which the airplane flies out. And origami.
This also has effect options for the direction in which the bird flies. And finally there’s one additional transition and it’s called comb. So these are the new transitions in PowerPoint 2013.
I’m Helen Bradley.
Thank you for joining me for this video tutorial. Look out for more tutorials on this YouTube channel.
And visit my website at projectwoman.com for more tips, tricks and tutorials on various Office applications as well as for Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator and a whole lot more.
You need to set up PowerPoint 2013 so it can find and save your templates.
I encountered a problem recently with PowerPoint 2013 not being able to save templates to the correct location much less find my new templates once I had created them.
The problem appears to be with the PowerPoint 2013 setup so first go to PowerPoint and choose File > Options > Save and make sure that you have your Default Personal Templates location set up in this box. For me it is c:\Users\Helen\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\. You will replace Helen with your own <user name>.
Once you set up this location, in future when you go to save a file as a template you will choose File > Save As, click Computer and then click Browse. From the Save As Type drop down list, select PowerPoint Template (*.potx) as the type of file to save and type a name for your template.
PowerPoint will automatically go to the folder that set as your Default Personal Templates location so all you need to do now is to click Save and save your template.
In future when you choose File > New you will see that both FEATURED and PERSONAL options appear below the Search box. Click PERSONAL as that is where you will find the templates that you created and saved. If you had personal templates stored for use in PowerPoint 2010 these will be in this same location.
Unfortunately Office 2013 doesn’t make it clear where templates are stored or how you can get to your own templates so hopefully this will help you in PowerPoint.
I haven’t had the same difficulties with Microsoft Word 2013 but then my Default Personal Templates location was already set up in Word 2013. If you have trouble finding your Word templates then I suggest you try the same process as shown here for PowerPoint but do it in Word 2013. Set up your Default Personal Templates location in Word – in this case my folder is c:\Users\Helen\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates\Custom Word Templates\.
