PowerPoint in the Background on Zoom

During the hopefully soon to end COVID pandemic, folks have done an awful lot of tinkering around with Zoom backgrounds for the sake of humor, or to hide messy living rooms. Don’t miss that an advanced share screen setting will allow you to have an active Powerpoint presentation displayed in the background, while your webcam image is still shown to an audience.

Click on the Share Screen button at the bottom of the screen in a Zoom session. Then click on the Advanced tab in the dialog box which opens, and select, 'PowerPoint as Virtual Background'.

Your Zoom image will appear in front of the slides at the lower right. This feature will work even if you don't have PowerPoint installed on your PC. Your webcam image can be moved and resized simply by clicking on it, and dragging at the corners. Zoom will capture your hand gestures in this mode, but it's very difficult to get them right.

A small box with controls to move slides forward and backward should appear when your cursor is moved across the screen.

Click 'Stop Share' at the top of the screen to exit this background mode.

Rotating the Ruler in PowerPoint

Here's another simple tip for PowerPoint that you may not be aware of, which can save you a good deal of time when doing graphics editing.

It's fairly well-known that the Ruler tool on the Draw ribbon can be used to freehand draw a straight line on a slide with your mouse.

It may not be immediately apparent how the ruler can be rotated, so a line can be drawn at a different angle.

- There's no option to do this on the Draw ribbon;

- The angle degree listed in the middle can't be edited;

- Right clicking on the ruler doesn't give you the option to turn it;

- If you try to find the ends of the ruler, it will simply extend endlessly off the slide;

- There are no handles to rotate it as there would be for a shape in PowerPoint.

The trick is to use the scroll wheel on your mouse. This will let you turn the ruler in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction.

Keeping Objects Centered in PowerPoint

Don't miss a simple little trick in PowerPoint that you can use when re-sizing objects. Normally when you click and drag the corners of an object to enlarge or decrease it, its center will shift. If you hold down the CTRL key, the center of the shape will remain at a fixed point on the slide.