Windows XP Power Hound

PowerPoint

Looking to put more power into your PowerPoint presentations? Here are a few pointers.

Tip

For a hilarious spoof of what the Gettysburg Address would look like if President Lincoln had used PowerPoint, head to http://www.norvig.com/Gettysburg.

Saving Fonts with Your Presentation

When you distribute a PowerPoint presentation electronically, you can run into a serious problem: The fonts you used in your slides might not be available on the computers used by your readers. The result? PowerPoint substitutes different fonts for those that you carefully selected, and your presentation can appear out of whack.

To overcome this potential glitch, simply save the fonts with your presentation, making them accessible to anyone who opens the file.

Note

This technique only works with TrueType fonts, which are a family of fonts that ship with Windows. So if you went a little wild and dipped into your own esoteric font collection, you won't be able to save them with your presentation.

To save the fonts you used in a PowerPoint presentation, choose File → Save As, and then click the Tools button in the upper-right corner of the dialog box. Then choose Save Options → Embed TrueType fonts, as shown in Figure 5-13. Click OK, and then Save.

Figure 5-13. When you save your fonts along with your presentation, choose the "Embed all characters" option if you need others to work on the presentation, too. ...