I loved the Drawing Toolbar, bringing it back!

One of the best features of Word 2003 and it's older siblings was the Drawing toolbar. One click and you could draw until your hearts content.  However in 2007 the Ribbon bar effectively killed it! Here's how to bring it back in 2010 and 2013.  You might also want to consider using Google Draw. 

I draw a lot of shapes and wanted all commands related to shapes in one tab. So I created a Shapes group with my frequently used shapes (rectangle, oval, triangle, and straight connectors), and an Edit Shapes groups filled with all kinds of editing options including hidden features such as the combine shapes tools. I also created a Format Shapes group, a Move Shapes group, and a Customize section with the Customize the Ribbon button added to it so when using my custom ribbon I realize I forgot to add a command, I can quickly jump to the PowerPoint options window to make my customizations.

But perhaps the best part of PowerPoint 2010 is the ability to Import and Export any Quick Access Toolbar or Ribbon customizations so that you can transfer your custom tabs and commands to other computers.

Click to read more information about how to customize the ribbon in Office 2010.

Extracted from: http://www.trainsignal.com/blog/powerpoint-2010-features

Photoshop's Most Dangerous Competitor - MS Office!

That's right, forget all these new fangled competitors. Good old Microsoft Office is probably Photoshop's most dangerous competitor. Here's why, it's already installed on your machine, there's a fair chance you have some idea how to use it and it has some functions that take a lot of effort in Photoshop.

It's not dangerous, because it's as good as Photoshop. There are a lot of limitations, but for sheer speed and efficiency it's hard to beat.  You can remove a background in seconds, correct most colour imperfections equally quickly and apply a large range of Artistic effects.

Once you have your photo in decent shape then you can add a frame very simply indeed, there's a decent range of presets, but choosing your own is only a couple of extra steps.

Then finally there are the cropping tools. Click crop and a rectangular crop comes straight up, but you can crop to any shape you like. You want a love heart it's yours.

The one thing that seem less than keen to flaunt is how quickly you can save them back to an image. Just right click and save.
Sometimes this doesn't get you the effect you want as it just throws out the original image.
To get the final effect, use:Then right click and save image. If you want the mask to stay in tact, I recommend Save As Type PNG.

Once you are an expert,  it takes me less than 2 minutes an image to create worksheets for my students.


I challenge anybody to create  an image like this in under 1 minute in anything, but MS Office. I can't even load a Photoshop image in that time, on my beat up old laptop.

Infographics, a posh word for a PowerPoint Slide!

Seriously, people say that they no longer want slides and that it's all about Infographics. Then they find a new way to bore people with images that go on forever.  If you want a quality Infographic look no further than PowerPoint and if you'd like those statistics to be a good deal less bogus, use Excel to calculate them.   In this video, I show you how to make an infographic in PowePoint.  

For those of you who are teaching here is a Scheme of Work that I made:

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Creating-Infographics-Handling-data-Powerpoint-6257357/