NWIITT.org.uk » Tips for Trainers

Pages Shortcut Keys

Elaine Giles — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 19:54:57 +0000

Shortcut keys provide a great way to speed up your work and boost your productivity. However, no matter how familiar you are with Pages, it’s not easy to remember them all. Luckily there’s a comprehensive list of shortcut keys for Pages available on the Apple website.

Word Shortcut Keys

Elaine Giles — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 19:49:46 +0000

Shortcut keys provide a great way to speed up your work and boost your productivity. However, no matter how familiar you are with Word, it’s not easy to remember them all. Luckily there’s a comprehensive list of shortcut keys for many versions of Word available on the Microsoft website.

Numbers Shortcut Keys

Elaine Giles — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 22:36:30 +0000

Shortcut keys provide a great way to speed up your work and boost your productivity. However, no matter how familiar you are with Numbers, it’s not easy to remember them all. Luckily there’s a comprehensive list of shortcut keys for Numbers available on the Apple website.

Excel Shortcut Keys

Mike Thomas — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 22:33:18 +0000

Shortcut keys provide a great way to speed up your work and boost your productivity. However, no matter how familiar you are with Excel, it’s not easy to remember them all. Luckily there’s a comprehensive list of Excel shortcut keys available on the Microsoft website.

Keynote Shortcut Keys

Elaine Giles — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:52:03 +0000

Using shortcut keys is a great way to speed up your work and become more productive, but no matter how familiar you are with Keynote, it’s not easy to remember them all. Luckily there’s a comprehensive list of Keynote shortcut keys on the Apple Knowledgebase

PowerPoint Shortcut Keys

Mike Thomas — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 19:45:17 +0000

Using shortcut keys is a great way to speed up your work and become more productive, but no matter how familiar you are with PowerPoint, it’s not easy to remember them all. Luckily there’s a comprehensive list of PowerPoint shortcut keys on the Microsoft Website.

Presenter View in Keynote

Elaine Giles — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 20:04:33 +0000

Since I spend a large part of my professional life creating and delivering presentations I need be to intimately familiar with the slideware application I use. My software of choice is Apple’s Keynote which is part of the iWork suite.

My presentations are self contained in terms of any notes I make require being stored within my presentation in the Presenter Notes section of the file. To take full advantage of this I use the Presenter Display options to show a specific range of presenter tools on my secondary monitor in the precise configuration I prefer.

Keynote provides an amazingly detailed level of control over the Presenter Display options, as follows:

Accessing the Presenter Display Preferences

Select Preferences… from the Keynote menu (1) to display the Keynote Preferences

The Presenter Display Preferences

Click the Presenter Display icon (1) to reveal the Presenter Display Preferences options (2)

Enabling the Alternate Display

In order to enable the Alternate Display place a tick in the ‘Alternate Display’ check box (1)

Configuring the Presenter Display Options

Once enabled, the Alternate Display options can be configured via the check boxes in the ‘Show’ section of the Presenter Display Preferences (1).

The check boxes act as toggles for each element enabling and disabling the option as required.

While this gives a certain level of control over what is displayed the options do not allow the elements of the Alternate Display to be more finely controlled. Fine control is achieved via the Customize Presenter Display… option (2).

Customize Layout

Clicking the Customize Presenter Display displays the Customize Layout screen on the alternate display. This view provides complete control over the layout of your Presenter Display.

The Heads Up Display (HUD) (1) allows elements to be enabled and disabled. The enabled elements (2), (3), (4) and (5) can be moved to any position on the screen and resized as required.

My Preferred Configuration

My preferred configuration is very different from the default.

For example, I choose not to display the current slide in Presenter View as it’s displayed on the main screen anyway and since I don’t use bullet points I have no need to read the content of the slide to the audience!

Excel 2010 New Features

Mike Thomas — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 20:02:43 +0000

What’s new in Microsoft Excel 2010? This short tutorial covers two new features: Sparklines and Slicers. Sparklines enable you to create high level overview charts, whilst Slicers allow you to analyse data from Pivot Tables in new and exciting ways.

Introductory Video

Presenter View in PowerPoint

Mike Thomas — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:32:50 +0000

Almost all of the training courses that I deliver involve PowerPoint. Let me be clear, I don’t mean that I solely deliver PointPoint training, rather, most of the courses require the use of PowerPoint. I have a few introductory slides (with not a single bullet point in sight!), I have a slide with contact details on that I display at the end and, for some courses, I have slides that are used to explain concepts.

When I deliver a live training course I don’t like to use cue cards or have a printout of the running order. So how do I remember which slide is up next and what about Speakers Notes?

I use PowerPoint’s Presenter View. It enables me to view my Speakers Notes along with thumbnail previews (which are quite large) of the up-coming slides on one screen (usually my laptop), whilst my audience sees the "real" presentation (running on the same laptop) on a large screen via a projector.

Over the past year, due to the nature of my role and the team that I work for, I have delivered more online courses than face-to-face courses. Outside the 9-5, in my role as Co-Manager of the Institute of IT Training’s North West Group (NWIITT), I deliver presentations, both face-to-face and online and the great thing about Presenter View is that it works for online presentations too.

When delivering online, instead of connecting my laptop to a projector, I have it connected to a 17 inch monitor (this is not a special configuration for online delivery – this is my normal work setup – I can’t live without a dual monitor setup but that’s another story). The Speakers Notes and slide thumbnails will be displayed on the external monitor whilst the presentation is run in full-screen mode on the laptop (or I can switch this around to display the Speakers Notes on the laptop and the presentation on the external monitor).

The conferencing software (Webex at work and Acrobat Connect for NWIITT) is configured to share a single screen so that the audience sees the presentation and not the Speakers Notes.

I have had instances where PowerPoint has insisted that it cannot find a second monitor and I believe that the cause of this to be the projector (some of our projectors at work are quite old) so I do have a backup plan – I have my running order and notes on my iPad. As a relatively new device, for live courses it’s a talking point and for online courses there’s no distracting "paper rustling" in the background.

So. how do you set up PowerPoint to use Presenter View In PowerPoint 2007 and 2010?

Enable Presenter View

On the Ribbon, click the Slide Show tab (1) and in the Monitors group, ensure that there is a tick in the Use Presenter View box (2)

If Windows has not been configured to use dual monitors, the Display Settings dialog box from the Windows Control Panel will appear.

The Windows Display Settings Dialog Box – 1

Click the monitor icon to be used to display the Speaker Notes (1) and then select the This is my main monitor check box (2).

If the This is my main monitor check box is selected and unavailable, the monitor is already designated as the primary monitor – in my configuration, my Thinkpad laptop is been identified as the primary monitor.

Only one monitor can be the primary monitor at any one time. To change which monitor is the primary one, click a different monitor icon and the This is my main monitor check box will be cleared and made available again.

The Windows Display Settings Dialog Box – 2

Click the monitor icon for the monitor that will be used to display the full-screen presentation (1) and ensure that there is a tick in the Extend the desktop onto this monitor check box (2)

Click OK (3)

Choosing the Correct Monitor – PowerPoint

Although Windows has been configured, it is still necessary to ensure that PowerPoint is set up to output the presentation to the correct monitor.

On Ribbon, click the Slide Show tab (1) and in the Monitors group, ensure that the monitor on which you want the audience to see your presentation, appears in the Show Presentation On list (2).

Screen Capture Shortcut Keys in Mac OS X

Elaine Giles — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:15:23 +0000

While there are many applications that provide a wide range of fantastic screen capturing features OS X also has built in shortcut keys for making many different types of screen captures.

Capturing a Region

Command & shift & 4 turns the mouse pointer into a cross-hair cursor allowing any region of the screen to be drawn around.

The selected area is by default saved to the Desktop as a PNG file. On Snow Leopard the file name will be indicative of the date and time the screen capture was made.

Capturing a Window

Command & shift & 4 turns the mouse pointer into a cross-hair cursor, subsequently pressing the spacebar turns the mouse pointer into a camera icon which when passed over a window shades the window a pale blue colour.

Clicking the highlighted window saves an image of it to the Desktop as a PNG file. On Snow Leopard the file name will be indicative of the date and time the screen capture was made.

Copying a Region to the Clipboard

Control, command & shift & 4 turns the mouse pointer into a cross-hair cursor allowing any region of the screen to be drawn around.

The selected area is copied to the clipboard. The screen capture is not saved as a file.

Copying a Window to the Clipboard

Control & command & shift & 4 turns the mouse pointer into a cross-hair cursor, subsequently pressing the spacebar turns the mouse pointer into a camera icon which when passed over a window shades the window a pale blue colour.

Clicking the highlighted window copies it to the clipboard. The screen capture is not saved as a file.

Capturing the Entire Desktop

Command & shift & 3 saves an image of the entire Desktop, by default, to the Desktop as a PNG file. On Snow Leopard the file name will be indicative of the date and time the screen capture was made.

If there are multiple monitors attached to the Mac a separate file will be saved for each monitor.

Copying the Entire Desktop to the Clipboard

Control & command & shift & 3 copies an image of the entire Desktop to the clipboard.

Only the screen from the primary monitor will be copied to the clipboard even if there are multiple monitors attached to the Mac.