Presentations records narration, plays video and puts your camera on a slide

On 26 September we wrote that Presentation kept motion paths, media and triggers in a file but could not write them. Between 6 and 8 October all of them arrived, along with recording, video and a good deal more of PowerPoint’s Slide Show tab. The app also became Presentations in 1.29.0, to match the others.

Video, audio and a recorded talk

• Insert → Video and Audio (1.29.3). A video from your computer goes on at its own shape, with a poster frame taken from it. A sound goes on as a speaker. In the show a click plays it without moving the show on, and Show Media Controls gives it a play bar.
• Record. The show recorded with your microphone, from the beginning or from the current slide, with Pause and Stop. Each slide keeps its own narration and its own timing, as PowerPoint keeps them, so the deck can play itself afterwards.
• Screen Recording. Pick a window or a screen, record it, and it lands on the slide as a video.
• Export to Video plays the deck into a file in Full HD, HD or Standard. It writes MP4 where the computer can make one, and WebM where it cannot.
• Transitions → Sound: one of the suite’s own sounds, heard as you pick it, or a WAV of yours.

Cameo: your camera, live on the slide

Insert → Cameo (1.29.9) puts a cameo at the slide’s lower right. In the show it fills with your camera, live, mirrored the way a camera pointed at yourself should be, and cropped to its shape. Camera Styles makes it a rectangle, an oval or a rounded rectangle, and Preview shows it on the stage while you edit.

The camera is opened only while a cameo is on screen, and closed with the last one. Anybody who opens the deck in another program sees a grey shape with a camera drawn in it.

Motion paths, triggers and effects by paragraph

• Motion paths (1.29.9) move a shape down, up, left or right, along an arc or a turn, round a circle or a square, or through a loop. Each is written as PowerPoint writes a path drawn by hand, so PowerPoint plays it as its own. On the stage the path is drawn from the shape’s centre, green where it starts and red where it ends.
• Effects by paragraph (1.29.9). A text box can come in all at once or one paragraph per click, and the Animation Pane lists each paragraph’s effect by its words.
• Triggers (1.29.2). An effect starts when somebody clicks a particular shape, which is how a quiz reveals its answer. A trigger PowerPoint wrote is read and played too.
• Actions (1.29.2). A click on a shape goes to the next, previous, first or last slide, any slide of the deck, the end of the show or a web address. A link to a slide follows it when slides move.
• Zoom (1.29.3). Summary, section and slide zooms, each a picture of a slide linked to it. Click one in the show and it goes there, and the next step comes back. PowerPoint follows the link too, but its own zoom effect is not written.

A show that does what you set

Slide Show → Set Up Slide Show (1.29.1) says who the show is for (a speaker, a window or a kiosk), whether it loops, which slides it shows and how it advances. It writes those settings where PowerPoint keeps them and obeys them. A kiosk ignores every click and key except Escape, and a show advanced by hand ignores its timings.

• Monitor picks the screen the show plays on and remembers it for this computer. Left on Automatic with Presenter View on, the show takes a different screen from the presenter’s.
• Rehearse Timings runs the show with a clock in the corner and offers to keep each slide’s time.
• Custom Slide Show plays a named subset of the deck, and makes, edits, copies and removes them in PowerPoint’s own dialog.
• Save as Show writes a .ppsx, which PowerPoint opens straight into the show.

3D models, bevels and shapes you can bend

Insert → 3D Models (1.29.9) reads a glTF model, a .glb or a .gltf with its files beside it, and puts it on the slide as a picture drawn by the suite’s own renderer, so it looks the same on every computer. The 3D Model tab turns it to any of ten views or fifteen degrees at a time, and a handle in the middle turns it as you drag. The model is kept beside its picture in the file, so PowerPoint and every other reader show the picture.

1.29.4 added Edit Points, so a shape’s outline can be dragged point by point with the curves either side bending to follow, and the Format pane gained pattern fills and 3-D bevels, depth and rotation. In 1.29.5 tables began to be drawn in their table style, and preset shapes such as hearts, callouts and the flowchart shapes in their real outlines rather than as boxes.

Design Ideas, and a deck that shows what changed

Design Ideas (1.29.8) offers layouts that suit the slide’s own title, words and pictures, each drawn as the slide would look. Click one and it applies as a single step of undo. It is worked out on your computer, so the slide is not sent anywhere to be designed. Worked out on your own computer has more on that.

Show Changes (1.29.10) is for a deck that comes back from somebody else. Open it again and a toast says how many slides differ since you last had it open on this computer, and who saved it last. The Changes pane lists each slide added, removed, moved or changed, down to the shapes and words, and a click goes to the slide.

And more

• Photo Album builds a new deck from your pictures, one, two or four to a slide.
• The Draw tab, with pens, a highlighter, an eraser, Ink to Shape and Ink Replay.
• Notes Master and Handout Master, and a second slide master.
• WordArt, SmartArt with Convert to SmartArt, Icons, Screenshot and embedded objects.
• A picture PowerPoint had cropped is drawn cropped (1.29.8), where it used to be squeezed whole into its frame.
• Review → Language keeps each run’s language when its words are edited. An edit used to write every run back as US English.