Tips and Tricks for Office XP - Part 4

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Create a Photo Album Presentation in PowerPoint 2002

Did you know you could use PowerPoint version 2002 to create a photo album? Here's how:
1. On the Insert menu, point to Picture, and then click New Photo Album.
2. In the Photo Album dialog box, you can choose to add pictures from your hard disk or a peripheral device, such as a scanner or digital camera. To add a picture from a file or disk, do the following: (i) Under Insert picture from, click File/Disk. (ii) Locate the folder or disk that contains the picture you want to add to your photo album, click the picture file, and then click Insert.
3. Repeat Step 2 for as many pictures as you want to add to your photo album. Or to capture them all at once, hold down the CTRL key, click each picture file you need, and then click Insert.
4. Next, specify the look of the album under Album Layout.
5. Then click Create.

Protecting presentations

Earlier versions of PowerPoint had one major drawback: you could not protect the slides. Now PowerPoint XP gives you the additional option of protecting your slides with a password. Choose the Options submenu from Tools and click on the Security Tab in the window that pops up. You can select either the Password to Open or the Password to Modify option, or both. Clicking on the Advanced button lets you choose the encryption type, length, and so on. This way you can secure your presentations from others.

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Disabling features

The term 'disable features' sounds strange, doesn't it? Why would anyone want to disable features? But there are times when it is imperative to disable certain new features in PowerPoint XP, for example to reduce problems when you share presentations with users who use earlier versions of PowerPoint. To do this, choose Options from the Tools menu. Select the Edit tab if it's not highlighted and click the section called 'Disable new features'. From here you have a choice of disabling new animation effects, multiple masters, and even the password protection option.

More Design Options for Your PowerPoint Presentations

A new feature of PowerPoint version 2002 is that you can use multiple slide masters in a single presentation. The slide master is an element of the design template that stores information, including styles, placeholders, and colour schemes. With it, you can make global changes-such as replacing a font style-across all the slides in your presentation.

When using multiple slide masters, remember that if you want to make a global change to your presentation, you need to change each slide master.

To insert a slide master:

1. On the View menu, point to Master, and then click Slide Master.
2. Do one of the following:
To insert a slide master that uses the default styles in PowerPoint, on the Slide Master View toolbar, click Insert New Slide Master.
To insert a slide master by adding a new design template, on the Formatting toolbar, click Design, point to the design you want, click the arrow, and select one of the options on the shortcut menu.

To replace or add slide masters:
1. On the View menu, point to Master, and then click Slide Master.
2. On the toolbar, click Design.
3. If you want to replace selected, rather than all, masters in the presentation, select the masters in the thumbnails on the left.

4. In the Slide Design task pane, point to the design template you want, click the arrow, and then do one of the following:
To replace selected masters with masters for the new design template, click Replace Selected Designs.
To replace all the current masters with masters for the new design template, click Replace All Designs.
To add a new design template and its masters to the presentation, click Add Design

Keep personal info under wraps

Your presentation may have some personal information, which you might not want to divulge. PowerPoint XP allows you to restrict this information from being propagated to other users. Choose the Security tab from the Options submenu in the Tools menu. Check the 'Remove personal information from this file on save' check box. This does not save personal information such as author, the company, or names associated with tracked changes or comments, thus saving you from unwanted exposure.

Access sample databases

Access XP has made life simpler for opening and learning from the database databases. Unlike the previous version, one need not open sample databases from their default paths with Access XP. Simply choose Sample Databases from the Help menu and the list shows up all the sample databases. Click the one you wish to open.

<img src="http://www.hashdot.com/access2_tmb.jpg" width="417" height="215" border="0" alt="" />

Undo and do again

One more problem with the earlier versions of Access was that one did not have the facility to do multiple undoes and redoes in the design view. Access XP allows you to do so. Certain views, however, do not support multiple undoes and redoes. These are database diagram design, view design, stored function design, function design and trigger design. Database container view allows you to undo only and not redo.