Suppose you are preparing a PowerPoint presentation with pictures from prototype testing of a design or pictures from your vacation. When you insert pictures into the PowerPoint file, you may realize that the file’s size will balloon with addition of each picture. You may end-up with a large PowerPoint file that may perhaps be difficult to distribute or email.
The reason for larger PowerPoint files is twofold. Firstly, Microsoft PowerPoint may not store picture data in an optimum format. Secondly, while today’s digital cameras can capture pictures at high resolutions (between three to five megapixels per picture,) on-screen display requires pictures of just 96 DPI (dots per inch) resolutions. In addition, typical office-document printing requires pictures of no more than 200 to 300 DPI resolutions.
The more-recent versions of Microsoft PowerPoint facilitate compressing pictures easily to create smaller files.
If you desire to compress a single picture or a group of pictures, highlight the pictures. The Picture toolbar will appear, as illustrated in Figure 1. Now, choose “Compress Pictures” from the Picture toolbar. In the resulting dialogue box, make appropriate selections to execute the command.
If you desire to compress all the pictures in your PowerPoint file, an easier approach involves the “Save As” dialogue. From the menu bar, choose “File” – “Save As … .” In the resulting dialogue box, open the “Tools” dropdown and choose the “Compress Pictures” command, as illustrated in Figure 2.
The interpretation of a date written in the ’02-12-06′ format can differ. For instance, a reader in the United States may interpret the above date as the 12th of February 2006, where as another from India or the United Kingdom may interpret the date as the 2nd of December 2006. A computer programmer may interpret the date as the 6th of December 2002. Avoid using all-digit date formats.
Whatever format you choose to use, be consistent throughout a document: use an identical format all the dates in the document. Consistency in formats is important for both form and function of the dates.
Turn-off your telephone during your productive work-hours or when you are meeting somebody at your desk. Instead, use a voicemail system. The voicemail system allows you to pick the moments at which you pay attention to incoming telephone calls. Check voicemail once or twice a day and return telephone calls promptly. For example, at work, I unplug the telephone cable at my desk until 11:00am and check voicemails after lunch.
During a presentation, when you are running a slideshow in PowerPoint, you may want to divert the attention of your audience away from the contents of your PowerPoint slide. When you are answering a question on a topic unrelated to a current slide, you may not want the audience to focus on the illustrations or graphs on your slide. Instead, you may want to be the focus of their attention.
Last week, I attended a training seminar where the speaker stood by the side of a projection screen and behind a table where he had his laptop. He hardly moved from his position during the hour-long seminar. He was short and was barely visible from the back of the thirty-people room, as shown in the illustration. Despite his interesting content and compelling arguments, he was physically disconnected from his audience.
Below is a list (in order) of the twelve most persuasive words that have proven to be most influential on listeners’ or readers’ minds. Often, advertisements consist of crafty constructions of these words. Surprisingly, the word ‘free’ is absent. The Language Log website at the University of Pennsylvania has an