You’re probably already thinking about how Thor could have saved you hours. ![]() You might find the interface a bit too slick and minimal, so it could take a little getting used to (Figure 5).įigure 9. Think-cell has long offered an alternative that not only gives you additional chart types such as Mekkos, Gantts, and waterfalls, but also finer control over labeling and formatting standard charts. PowerPoint’s charting often feels stuck in the past because it hasn’t been significantly updated in years. For a more complete overview of the tool, see my post “ Brightslide: The Essential Add-in for PowerPoint” at. It supports Windows and macOS, is always being updated, and has quickly become a must-have for professional slide designers. Initially created by the design firm BrightCarbon for their internal designers, this large suite of tools is now available to the public for absolutely free. If you can choose only one add-in, BrightSlide should be it. They range in price from free to expensive, and they offer a wide range of features. ![]() PowerPoint add-ins are built and distributed by third-party developers and usually come with their own standalone installers. Now we move to the other universe of add-ins: ones that generally serve to add a tool to an existing Ribbon tab or provide you with a completely new tab and a whole set of tools. Office add-ins work on both Windows and macOS and even in online and mobile versions of PowerPoint-something we’re not going to see a lot of when we move to our next category. Web Viewer (insert live web pages), and QR4Office (inserts custom QR codes). You can explore a lot more Office add-ins, such as Power BI Tiles (insert visualizations from Microsoft Power BI), The Adobe Creative Cloud add-in lets you open your CC Libraries and insert such assets as graphics and logos without ever leaving PowerPoint. Note that Icons by Noun Project recently changed from inserting PNGs to using the much-more-flexible SVG format, so I almost never have to actually go to the website anymore.įIgure 4. Pickit provides stock imagery, but also a very user-friendly digital asset management system so your employees can easily insert owned assets from multiple vendors.Īnd if you’re looking for icons, then The Noun Project has you covered with Icons by Noun Project, which gives you access to its huge collection (Figure 3). Pexels, on the other hand, provides completely free imagery. The Adobe Stock and Shutterstock add-ins allow you to insert watermarked test images, but you need a paid subscription to remove the information. You need to be connected to the web for these add-ins to work, and while all are free to install, some may require further purchases or paid subscriptions. The Office Add-ins Store is not well organized, but you can search it by keyword.Īll Office add-ins will install a panel on the right side of the PowerPoint screen and add a button to bring up this panel on your Insert or Home tab. From here, you will arrive at an Office Add-ins store, where you can search and browse for all sorts of tools from Microsoft and other vendors alike-tools meant to add some type of functionality to PowerPoint, Word, or Excel.įIgure 2. ![]() If you don’t see the button with the red icon, you may need to first click the My Add-ins button with the hexagons icon. You can find Office add-ins and easily install them from within the program by going to the Get Add-ins button on the Insert tab (Figure 1). In this article, I’ll show where you can find them, how they can work for you, and which ones might you help you the most. Technically, there are a few types of PowerPoint add-ins, but we can sort them into two main buckets: Office add-ins and PowerPoint add-ins. Fortunately, PowerPoint has long allowed third parties to step up to the plate and create plug-ins and tools that solve these frustrations in some cases and dramatically extend the software’s functionality in others. Usually, it’s small stuff, but sometimes these features-such as Morph or Designer-make significant leaps forward.Īfter all these years, however, there are still some glaring feature omissions and faults with the program that never fail to frustrate users. Nearly every few weeks, they push out new tweaks and additions to Microsoft 365 subscribers. Microsoft’s PowerPoint development team is not one to sit on its heels. This article appeared in Issue 8 of CreativePro Magazine.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |