5 Technical Tips

6. Have your presentations start in Screen Show view automatically. If you double-click a PowerPoint presentation's icon, PowerPoint opens the presentation for editing. Usually, this is exactly what you want, but if you're giving a presentation from your computer in front of your IT employees, you don't want to make them sit through launch of the application. To simply launch your presentation right into Slide Show mode:

1. Open your presentation, and then choose File, Save As from the menu bar. 2. Choose PowerPoint Show (*.pps) from the Save as type drop-down list box at the bottom of the Save As dialog box. 3. Click Save. PowerPoint saves your presentation as a PowerPoint Show (PPS) file. Now when you double-click a PowerPoint Show file, it launches it directly into Screen Show mode without even a hint that you're running PowerPoint at all.

7. E-mail links in your presentations. Nowadays it seems like everything you see-websites, e-mail, Word documents-has an e-mail link you can click to send comments directly to the person who created the document. You can do that in your PowerPoint presentations. You can also add hyperlinks to just about anything on a slide in PowerPoint. To do this:

1. Select the object you want to turn into a hyperlink. 2. Right-click the object and choose Action Settings from the pop-up menu. 3. In the Action Settings dialog box that appears, click Hyperlink to: and pick the type of hyperlink you want from the drop-down list box. 4. Choose URL from the drop-down list box and you'll see the Hyperlink To URL dialog box. Type your email address into the text box using this format: mailto: your_email_address@someplace.com. 5. Substitute your real e-mail address, of course. For example, if your e-mail address is me@here.com, you'd type this into the Hyperlink to URL dialog box:mailto:me@here.com. When someone views your presentation in Slide Show mode and clicks on this e-mail hyperlink, PowerPoint automatically starts the user's e-mail program and fills in your address. All the user has to do is type in the e-mail message and click the Send button.