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Educational Technologies Center for Life Sciences

Powerpoint FAQ...answers to questions from Life Sciences

Can I add placeholders to a slide?

Unfortunately, no. Powerpoint doesn't allow the creation of new placeholders, so you have to work with whatever the slide template provides. You can add text box, and duplicate it as necessary, but it will not appear on the outline.

I want to print handouts of my slides without the colored background. Is that possible?

Yes, simply by choosing black and white or grayscale in the print dialog box, under Powerpoint Options. The exact wording and location will vary with each printer driver. Both options will convert all backgrounds to white and text to black. Selecting Grayscale will preserve gradient fills in objects. One caveat - if you have labeled pictures with Powerpoint text and arrows, those will be converted to black and might not be readable on a dark image. Solutions are to label the picture in Photoshop or Illustrator, or simply to edit the individual slides to the labels lie on the slide background, rather than the image.

How can I get exact color matches in Powerpoint?

Some of the color menus have tools that let you choose a color from your computer screen, or enter the numerical RGB values. For a slide show on how to accomplish this, see "Color in Powerpoint" (note - this presentation will only work with Internet Explorer and Netscape.)

© 2003 - E. Barbara Meyer - EdTech Center - Life Sciences - University of Illinois - Urbana, IL USA