20. Presentation tools

This chapter explains various small tools of think-cell that can make life a lot easier.

20.1 Rounded Rectangle

Icon in Elements menu:

If a rounded rectangle is selected, e.g., immediately after insertion, you can start typing and the text will be displayed inside the element with automatic line breaks.

The appearance of the rounded rectangle is controlled by the fill color, outline color and outline style controls in the floating toolbar. See 3.8 Formatting and styling for details on these controls.

20.2 Checkbox and Harvey ball

Icon in Elements menu:

In both responsibility and remark columns of a Gantt chart, you can choose to display a checkbox or a Harvey ball instead of a text label, using a row label’s context menu (see 13.2.3 Row labels). You can also use these elements outside of a Gantt chart, however. In that case, use the Elements menu in the think-cell toolbar.

Select the feature to configure its appearance using the floating toolbar. Use the font size control (see 6.5.1 Font) to adjust the size of the feature, and use the color control to change its primary or outline color (see 3.8.1 Color and fill). For checkboxes, you can also change the style of the outline (see 3.8.6 Line style).

When you select a checkbox, an additional control becomes available in the toolbar, which you can use to change the checkmark symbol. You can also quickly change the symbol by double-clicking the checkbox, or by pressing the associated key on your keyboard: v, o or 1 for “check”; x or 2 for “cross”; Space or 0 for an unchecked box.

When you select a Harvey ball, an additional control becomes available in the toolbar, which you can use to change the Harvey ball’s completion state. You can also quickly increase the Harvey ball’s state by double-clicking it or pressing + on your keyboard and decrease the Harvey ball’s state by pressing - on your keyboard. Additionally, you can directly set the number of completed Harvey ball sectors by entering it with the keyboard. If the number of sectors is larger than 9, use the keys 1 to 8 to fill one eighth of all sectors or two eighths, three eighths and so forth.

Next to the control you will find another control with numbers. These numbers indicate the number of sectors of the Harvey ball. You can manually add your own values by entering them in the box.

20.3 Special characters

Experienced PowerPoint users find the built-in Insert > Symbol tool inconvenient for frequent use. With think-cell installed, there is a simpler way to insert special characters.

Open the Insert Symbol dialog from the Tools menu in the think-cell toolbar.

You will find all the symbols you need on a single page, grouped by usage context. Now, with a click of the mouse, you select the desired character or symbol and the character is inserted at the cursor location.

Note: If no shape or text label is selected, the think-cell special character dialog has no effect. If you have one shape or text label selected, it will be switched to text editing mode.

20.4 Clean up

Often slides or presentation files can contain additional information you may not want to share with everyone, for example in the form of annotations, presentation notes, or content embedded in unused slide masters and layouts. think-cell can help you to quickly get rid of these with its Clean Up… dialog, accessible through the Tools menu. You can also use the tool to quickly remove all animations and slide transitions.

Hover over each of the checkboxes to gain more detailed information about each option.

In the Apply to: section of the dialog you can select whether the selected clean up operations should be applied only to the currently selected slides or to the whole presentation.

The Sanitize Contents > Numbers option additionally allows you to replace all numbers in the selected range with random ones, in order to remove sensitive data from the presentation.

20.5 Sending and saving slides

Send or save a selection of slides or a whole presentation. Combine your selected slides into a new PowerPoint presentation to easily share.

Send slides

1. In Tools, select Send Slides.
2. The new presentation contains your current slide. To add slides, hold Shift or Ctrl while selecting more slide thumbnails.
3. Select Compose Email.

In your default email app, think-cell creates an email with the new presentation attached.

Save slides

1. Select one or more slide thumbnails. Unlike with Send Slides, you need to select your slides first.
2. In Tools, select Save Slides.
3. Select Save.

After you save the slides, the new presentation opens for editing.

Choose slide options

When saving or sending slides, choose from the following options:

• Include Date and Time adds an ISO 8601 time stamp to the file name.
• Refer to 20.4 Clean up for an explanation of the following options:
  • Before sending, remove
  • Sanitize Contents
  • Make invisible objects visible

When sending slides, choose from additional options:

• Add PDF attaches a PDF of the presentation to your email, in addition to a .pptx.
• Zip Attachment attaches the files in a compressed (zipped) folder.
• Add think-cell Download Link adds a link in the email to download think-cell. If your recipient edits the presentation with think-cell, you don't need to reimport think-cell elements when you open the edited file (see B.2 Reimporting think-cell elements from PowerPoint).

Send slides with Gmail

To send slides with Gmail by default, set up think-cell Send With Gmail. This option is only available if think-cell has been installed with administrator rights (see 2.2.1 Installing think-cell).

20.6 Changing the language

Setting the language correctly is crucial if you wish to use PowerPoint’s spell checker. think-cell adds extra options to let you change the language of the text in a slide or in a complete presentation. These options can be found in the Language menu item in the Review tab.

Simply select the desired language in the dialog and click either on Text on Slide to change the language of all text on the current slide or on All Text to change the language of all text in the presentation.

20.7 Changing fonts

Changing the font of text within a large presentation can be a lot of work. think-cell’s Replace Fonts... tool can be used to greatly simplify the task. The tool can be accessed in the Format menu of PowerPoint or the Editing group on the Home tab of the PowerPoint ribbon. It replaces PowerPoint’s Replace Fonts dialog. The drop down boxes in the dialog can be used to select the font to replace and the new font, and the font size can also be optionally adjusted. Select the scope for the changes (either Entire presentation, Current slide or Selection) and then click Apply to replace the fonts or click OK to close the dialog as well.

20.8 Switch decimal symbol

When using existing material in a new context you may need to switch the decimal symbol. To do this quickly, invoke the option Switch Decimal Symbol from the Tools menu.

In the dialog, first select the scope for the switch (either Selected slides or Entire presentation ) and then click Point (123.4) or Comma (123,4) to switch to that symbol.

Note: Switch Decimal Symbol only affects text fields controlled by think-cell that have a 6.5.3 Number format control, such as automatically generated chart labels, or text linked to an Excel cell that is formatted as a number (see 21.5 Creating Text Linked to Excel).

20.9 Automatic case code

You can add a textbox to the slide master that always shows the file name or, alternatively, file path of the presentation. If the file name is the same as the case code used to identify a project in your organization, you can use this textbox to show the case code on each slide. The content of the textbox is updated whenever the file is saved under a different name.

To add a textbox that shows the case code, follow these steps:

1. Switch to the slide master view (menu View > Master > Slide Master).
2. Insert a new textbox and place it on the slide master. You may need to insert dummy text to keep it from being removed immediately again. The dummy text will be replaced by the case code when the file is saved.
3. Right-click the textbox and open the Size and Position dialog.
4. Go to the Alt Text tab and find the input area for the Description.
5. In the input area, type in the following:
   • casecode to have the filename including its file extension (e.g. .pptx) automatically displayed in the textbox;
   • CASECODE to have the capitalized filename including its file extension automatically displayed in the textbox;
   • casename to have the filename not including its file extension automatically displayed in the textbox;
   • CASENAME to have the capitalized filename not including its file extension automatically displayed in the textbox;
   • casepath to have the full file path including the file extension automatically displayed in the textbox;
   • CASEPATH to have the capitalized full file path including the file extension automatically displayed in the textbox.

As soon as you save the file, the case code shows up on the slides.

Note: The case code textbox only works on the slide master, not on individual slides.