* To delete a comment, select the comment by clicking on it and click on the 5th icon from left ("Delete comment") in the Reviewing toolbar
* Ensure you have the second icon from left on the Reviewing toolbar selected to "Show comments" and not to "Hide comments"
*If this option is set on "Show comments", the comment will appear also when you run your show in Slide Show view, so you want to either delete all the comments or hide them before showing your presentation to the audience!
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B. See how you can use Microsoft Word to track your changes in the PowerPoint Outline
There's another trick you can use to let others review and comment your presentation draft. You can export the presentation as an outline, and use Word instead to track the changes other people make to your document.
Let's see what you have to do:
1) Open your presentation
2) Go to "File" >> "Send to..." and choose "Microsoft Word..."
3) You will get a "Write-up" window where you can select what format you want to convert the presentation in:
Notes next to slides
Blank lines next to slides
Notes below slides
Blank lines below slides
Outline only
4) Choose the last one, "Outline only" (but also the other options will do the job; by using those others the graphics will be included in the Word document - thus increasing its size)
5) As soon as you select the "Outline only" option and click "OK", Word will open up displaying the outline of your presentation
6) You only need to save it on your hard drive (by default Office saves it into the Temp folder, but you have to find a proper folder location, like My Documents) and make it available through the network or by email to your colleagues and peers.
The presentation outline will have a "RTF - Rich Format Text" extension).
Re-import the final version of your presentation content into PowerPoint. You can choose any of the following solutions:
a) Copy and paste the text you have changed from the Word document to the PowerPoint one, slide by slide
b) In Word, go to "File" >> "Send to..." and choose "Microsoft PowerPoint". This will open a new presentation file with the same name as your Word file. It will be a presentation without any graphic, to which you will be able to apply any ready-made template you had selected. You will also need to copy and paste graphics and visuals you had used in your original file.
c) Open your old presentation, select the first slide and click on "Insert" >> "Slides form outline..." You will be asked to browse for the file you want to insert, and you will choose your Word document.
Once you insert this new outline, it will be formatted as the old presentation, but it will double the number of the slides, since the old ones will still be there. So you also have to delete them (it's faster if you use the Slide Sorter view).
Best advice is then not to do this after you have placed visuals and graphics!
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C. Become familiar with saving your files using progressive numbering
I would like here to share with you a simple trick I always recommend to my friends and colleagues.
Any time you work on any document (we are dealing with presentations, but you can apply this rule for any other type of electronic document), get used to save your job at intervals of one or more hours by using this method:
1) Go to "File" >> "Save As..."
2) Assign a progressive number (01, 02, 03 and so on) in front of the name of the file (e.g. 02-presentation.ppt, 03- presentation.ppt and so on).
3) Save it in the same location as the others.
What are the advantages?
A) After a few days working on the same document, you will have collected dozens of versions. In case something goes wrong (power problem, virus, accidental deleting of something) you still have a lot of versions that you can use, and you can easily find the most up-to-date back-up copy.
B) If you decide that you did not like the changes you made yesterday, you will easily find the day-before-yesterday's version, and use it.
C) You can compare two versions and see the changes made.
D) In case of a PowerPoint file, the file size will be also reduced a bit any time the file will be saved under a different name. See my previous issue # 2, article #4 -
masterview.ikonosnewmedia.com/ masterview2.htm
And the disadvantages?
You will end up having maybe 20 versions of the same file, and this can create a space problem if you have a small hard-disk and the file you are working on is very big. But, in this case, you can gradually delete distant old initial versions if needed, then erase all the other versions at the end, leaving only the final version once you know you are no longer going to work on it.
You can read this article in the original issue of MasterView.
