Webinar: Using animation in PowerPoint (without being dorky)

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Animations can help drive a point home in PowerPoint, but if you're not careful, they also can seem so silly your audience will feel like 6-year-olds. In this week's webinar, learn how to use animations and do it smartly.

What you will learn at Tuesday's webinar

Three steps for creating animationsBest times to use animation (Hint: not on every slide)The Animation Pane takes pain awaySome favorite effects

References for this webinar

Go to http://aka.ms/offweb for more information on how to join the series live every Tuesday. You can add the webinar series to your calendar.

--Doug Thomas

View the original article here

The McKinstry Tool Tracker App: Using Access 2013 and Office 365 to manage critical assets

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

It's a common scenario: There is a collection of things that people borrow and return. And any collection has common problems: How do you track the items? Are they available? If not, who has them? Where are they? When will they be returned? What is their condition?

For McKinstry, a builder and manager of energy-efficient commercial buildings, the problem centered on a collection of tools, from meters and sensors to hammers. McKinstry employees and subcontractors use the tools to complete energy audits and small-scale construction projects. Their solution for tracking the tools was simple: a clipboard hung in the tool room. If someone needed a tool, they would go find it in the tool room and, hopefully, mark the tool as checked-out on the clipboard. 

The drawbacks are obvious: People who needed a tool had to go to the tool room to see if one was available, and sometimes they'd forget to mark the tools when they checked one out. Tools were not where they were supposed to be, often getting left on job sites or forgotten about and not returned. Over time, the problem got worse and ended up costing the company thousands of dollars to replace lost and damaged tools.

Enter Access 2013 and Office 365. Microsoft worked with McKinstry to create a tool tracker app using Access 2013 (and hosted on Office 365) for the company to try in their Colorado office. The app features a table for tools, with views that show which are available or checked out, displayed by their storage location. There are also tables for people, jobs, and storage locations, which make it easy to associate this data with each tool. A checkout history shows the usage history of each tool displayed within the new Related Items control. The checkout history displays the last time the tool was checked out and who checked out the tool.

The Access web app UI provides a clear, easy-to-use layout for navigating the data in an Access app, a built-in Related Items control that shows the items associated with the record being viewed (think customers and orders), and a fast text-based search for data. Initial feedback was very positive, but some tweaks were requested, such as a home page with basic directions and buttons for the most common tasks (like checking out a tool).

With the early feedback addressed, daily use began at McKinstry. People could now find out whether a tool was available online from their office before going down to the tool room. They could see where the tool was stored, the condition of the tool, and its usage history. They could see who had the tools and when they were expected back.

While the UI and ease-of-use was appreciated, searching for a tool by typing in the tool name proved to be too much overhead for the people in a hurry to get out the door to their job site. They asked if a faster solution was available, such as a barcode scanner like those used for checkout in retail stores. The feature appears complicated but was actually quite simple to implement in Access. The scanner simply sends keystrokes through a USB connection, so Access uses built-in search to instantly identify the tool based on the code in the record for that tool. A data macro launched from a custom Action Bar button checks out the tool and adds a record to the checkout history with a simple button click.

McKinstry uses the Access app in their Colorado office using an Office 365 account, and plans wider adoption into other offices using either Office 365 or an on-premise app once they deploy SharePoint 2013. They know where their tools are and their current condition--improving productivity and providing a significant cost savings. Watch the video to see the tool tracking Access app in action.

View the original article here

Review: Easily edit images and create collages using Fotor in Windows 8's Modern interface

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Fotor Fotor is no Photoshop, but it's simple, fun, and works well for basic image editing.

Download Now

If Picasa has taught us anything, it's that not every image editor has to be Photoshop. Sometimes you just want a quick, fun way to enhance your photos, add some neat effects, and maybe create a collage or two. If that sounds like fun and you happen to be rocking a Windows 8 device, you should check out Fotor, a free photo editor that uses the Modern interface. It's fast, visual, and has virtually no learning curve.

Fotor makes it easy to add text overlays to images, but you can control the font size independently.

When you launch Fotor, it lets you open an existing photo to edit, or start working on a collage. It also comes with six sample photos arranged in an attractive grid, to get you started. The simplest way to get a feel for what Fotor is like is to click a sample photo. Do that, and you'll find yourself in the editing interface.

In editing mode, the image dominates most of the screen, and an editing toolbar lines the right side of the screen—opposite where you'd normally expect it, but in keeping with the Modern interface convention. The toolbar is subdivided into eight sections, six of which contain editing tools: Basic editing (color corrections), cropping, effects, borders, focus effects, and text tools. The other two sections let you open new files for editing, and save your work.

Fotor offers numerous effects, including crowd-pleasing Lomo looks

The color correction interface uses sliders, with live image updates: Just move the slider and see the change instantly. Cropping is similarly intuitive, with 11 preset aspect ratios, and a free-crop mode (to set your own aspect ratio). Just drag a frame across the image to set out your crop area, and click Confirm when you're happy with the composition.

Fotor's selective focus tool is the most nuanced one in the app, allowing for fine adjustments.

Image effects are divided into five categories, ranging from Classic to "Dark Corners" (i.e., vignette effects). While each category contains many different effects, individual effects cannot be adjusted in any way. Many of the image modifications are heavy-handed, and Fotor offers no way to tone down the amount of influence a given effect has. Also, you can't layer effects one on top of the other. You need to pick one effect for your image and stick with it. The Borders category is similar: There's a rich selection of borders, but you can't tweak anything, like the size of the margin or the color of a given border.

Fotor's collage mode makes it easy to pick a number of images for your collage.

One category that does offer fine-grained adjustments is the Tilt-Shift Mode, whereby you can apply selective focus effects to your image. Tilt-shift (a "miniature look") isn't the only option: You can also apply a center focus effect, where the subject appears sharp and surrounding detail is blurred out. Both center focus and tilt-shift effects offer many adjustments: You can change the tilt shift's angle, and change either mode's blur radius and virtual aperture size. Of all the tools Fotor offers, selective focus is the most nuanced.

Finally, you can also overlay your image with some text. The text tool offers a limited number of fonts (you can't pick from any font installed on your computer), and lets you pick one of several overlay templates, such as speech or thought bubbles. There is no way to control the font size independently of the template: You can only resize the text along with the speech bubble it's in.

In collage mode, it's easy to move images around, resize the different parts of the collage, or pick one several premade layouts.

All in all, Fotor does what it does quite well. It excels in being quick, and quick to master. Few features are cryptic, and none appear to rely on hidden toolbars you need to slide into view. If you want to edit images in the Modern user interface, Fotor is a great option.

Note: The Download button takes you to the Windows Store, where you can download the software to your system.

View the original article here

Mark using conditional formatting for dates in Excel

This tutorial about using conditional formatting, to dates highlight of MVP Frédéric Le Guen, pulse for help with the translation from French into English associated with special recognition and thanks to Ken to us.

Date functions in Excel make it is possible, date calculations, such as addition or subtraction, which carry automatic or semi-automatic worksheets. The NOW function, the values based on the current date and time is calculated, is a good example of this.

This functionality make a step further if you mix date functions with conditional formatting, you can create tables automatically displayed the date alerts if a period close to is or distinguishes between types of days, such as weekends and weekdays.

Find conditional formatting for dates, go to

Home > conditional formatting > highlight cell rules > a date come forward.

You can select the following date options, from yesterday to next month:

These 10 date options generate rules based on the current date. When you create rules for other data like (such as greater than a month from the current date), you can create your own new rule.

Below you will find step-by-step instructions for a few of my favorite formats for dates.

When designing an automated calendar you need even colour not weekends. With the conditional formatting tool you can automatically change the colors of the weekends by the format are based on the WEEKDAY function.  Suppose you the date table-have a calendar without conditional formatting:

To change the color of the weekends, open the menu conditional formatting > revision

Select the menu in the next dialog box, the use a formula to determine which cell format.

In the text box values format, this formula is true, enter the following formula day of the week to determine whether the cell is a Saturday (6) or Sunday (7):

=WEEKDAY(B$5,2) > 5

Parameter 2 = means Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 =. This parameter is very useful to test for a weekend.

Note: In this case, you must lock the reference of the line, so the conditional formatting to the other cells in the table properly.

Then fit the format of your state by clicking on the format button and select a fill color (orange in this example).

To do this, click OK, and then open conditional formatting > manage rules

Choose to see this worksheet worksheet rules rather than the default selection. Change in the is valid forarea that corresponds to the first selection when creating rules to expand the entire column.

Now, you see a different color for the weekends. Note: This example displays the results in the Excel Web app.

Enrich to the previous workbook could identify even holidays colours. To do this, you need a column with the holiday, the highlight you want in your workbook (but not necessarily in a sheet of paper). In our example we have U.S. holidays in column AH (in reference to the year in the cell B2).

The menu again conditional formatting > new rule. In this case, we use the COUNTIF formula to calculate the number of holidays in the current month is greater than 1.

 =COUNTIF($AH$4:$AH$16,B$5) > 1

Then choose in the dialog box to manage rules, area B4: AF11. If you want to emphasize the holiday over the weekend, at the top of the list to move the holiday rule.

In the Excel Web app below shows the result in this example. Change the value of the month and year to see, such as the calendar has a different format.

For the case that we want to again change the color of the cells, which is based on our approach on a date, we will work to make for us by using conditional formatting.

We will show in the following example:

Yellow dates between 1 and 2 Monthsorange data between 2 and 3 Monthspurple dates more than 3 months

We create three rules then conditional formatting formula DATEDIF . Each of the three cases the following formulas:

=DATEDIF($B2,$E$2,"m") > 0

=DATEDIF($B2,$E$2,"m") > 1

=DATEDIF($B2,$E$2,"m") > 2

In the Excel Web app, try below are some dates to experiment, to change the result.

Rather than a different color for each period within our time frame set selected, work we with color scales possibility is that our cells color.

First, go in a new column (column E), calculated the difference in the number of days formula and the parameters "yd" in a year again with the DATEDIF.

=DATEDIF($D2,today(),"YD")

Then select "the" conditional formatting > new option format all cells according to their value depending on and select the following options:

Scale = 3 ColorsMinimum = 0 RedMidpoint = 10 YellowMaximum = 30 white

The result is a gradient color gamut with shades of white to red to yellow.  The more closer to 0, red, that it will have closer closer knows more of 10 more yellow and on 30.  In the Excel Web app, try below are some dates to experiment, to change the result.

--Frédéric Le Guen

View the original article here

Embedding presentations into your website using the PowerPoint web app

We have to do better than ever updated the embed experience in PowerPoint web app. The new design is fully interactive and all your content plays back right in the embedded object. That is, all the animations, transitions — even audio and video files! Even better, all the presentations you embedded automatically upgraded according to the old version to the new experience - have needed no work you!

In this post, we will embed a presentation in your blog or your website in three easy steps foot through:

Generate the CodePreview to embed, select the embed code to your OptionsCopy and paste into your blog or Web site

So you have completed work on a great presentation and would now in your blog to show how impressive it is embedded. The first thing you want to do that, what is click "Embed" from the "File" menu. Sure to click on "Generate", if you are prompted to do so.

Figure 1 - start by viewing the presentation

Figure 2 - PDA menu "File", "Share", "Embed"->

Figure 3 - you click on "Generate", when you are prompted

Next, you will see an interactive preview which the presentation will look like and a box with the code copy. You'll also notice a number of customization options: four different sizes and an option to enable the autoadvance.

Figure 4 - choose the size and options for your presentation

For the embedded presentation in this post, I've turned '610 x 480' size and autoadvance. Note, that autoadvance switch only works if your presentation autoadvance contains settings (if you don't want that your presentation automatically begin playing a blog or a site that you when someone loads autoadvance can omit).

Right click Copy the embed code for your presentation check box. From there, you can insert in your blog or Web site.

Figure 5 - embed code copy and paste in your blog or Web site

The embedded presentation is linked to the original, so also all made will appear on the embedded presentation (also note that if you delete the original presentation embedded one no longer works).

Dan Swett
Program Manager, PowerPoint

View the original article here

Interacting with Your Website’s Data Using Web Excel Mashups

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

This post is brought to you by Harrison Gordon, a Program Manager on the Excel Services team.

What exactly is an Excel Mashup? With Web Excel, you can embed workbooks into your website or blog. This alone is really powerful and lets you show a workbook directly in your website (it also lets you easily sort, filter, and interact with the workbook as if you were in Web Excel). For more info on embedding a workbook, check out our previous blog post here. If you embed the workbook as a mashup, you can add JavaScript to your website to set or grab data and “mash” it up with other services or functionality. There are a ton of things you can do, but here are a few to give you just a taste of what’s possible:

Grab data from Facebook, Twitter, or any other source and add it to a table in an Excel workbook for easy sorting, filtering, and pivoting.Take data from an Excel workbook and visualize it in ways you can’t in Excel.

Use the Excel Button to quickly add sorting, filtering, and charts to HTML table data in your website or blog.

ExcelMashup.com has all of the resources you need to get coding with Web Excel right away. Want to add the Excel Button? Try it out and then create the Excel Button code using our Excel Button generator. Want to see what’s possible with our JavaScript API? Walk through examples, tutorials, and use the JavaScript code explorer to get started writing code.

To show the power of Excel Mashups and how quickly you can build one, here’s a Magic 8 Ball example (let’s call it the “Excel 8 Ball”). I created a workbook in Excel that randomly chooses between the original 8 Ball’s 20 iconic responses:

I could just embed this workbook onto my webpage, but then how would my visitors be able to “shake” the 8 ball? It’s no fun until you get the answer you want, after all.

This is where the magic of Excel Mashups come in – I can add a button to my website called “Shake!” and use that to tell my workbook to recalc – that will change the value on my Excel 8 ball.

Upload the workbook to SkyDrive – you can download this workbook here.

Open the workbook in the Excel Web App. In the Home ribbon, press “Share” -> “Embed”. Your configurator should look like this (note that “Ball” is selected and the Embed code is “JavaScript”):

Copy the Embed Code on the bottom.

This is the tricky part, so I’ll walk you through some tips to make this easier. Let’s take a look at the copied code and break it down:

This is the DIV that we will place the workbook in – you should copy/paste it into the appropriate spot in your website.

This is the JavaScript that is necessary to load the workbook – you should place this after your BODY tag (this way, the rest of your page will load before the workbook does, it will keep your page running quickly).

I created a JavaScript file that makes working with the JavaScript API a bit easier. Add these Script tags between the two Excel script tags. It should look like this: