The trick to adding highlighting to pages pasted into PowerPoint

When creating PowerPoint slide decks for openings, closings, or witness examinations, you almost certainly will be called upon to create some slides which contain highlighted document text. If you use the highlighter tool that you find on the Draw ribbon, you'll find it difficult to highlight multiple lines of text evenly:

To get the neat rectangular box that the highlighter tool in Trial Director or OnCue will add to text, first paste the document image as a picture on a PowerPoint slide:

. . . with the picture selected, in the 'Picture Format' ribbon that appears on the right select the drop-down menu for Color, and then select 'Set Transparent Color'.

. . . the cursor will change to include a little syringe next to the arrow:

Click on the white part of the page, and the white of the page will then be made transparent in the slideshow.

Create a rectangular box (Insert . . . Shapes), with the fill color set to yellow, and no line set for the edges.

Right-click on the box and set it as the default shape. Then right-click again, and send the yellow box to the back. The text in the document image will appear highlighted.

When adding highlighting it will be easier to make changes if you use the hot key CTRL + SHIFT + [ to send images to the back, and CTRL + SHIFT + ] to send images to the front.

Can you Remove Properties and Personal information in Windows Explorer?

In Windows 11, in Windows Explorer when you right click on a file and select 'Properties', you'll see that you have the option to 'Remove Properties and Personal information'.

This function can be a quick and easy way to remove some, if not all, metadata from a file. Click on the underlined, blue link and you will be given the option to create a copy with 'all possible properties' removed, or only certain properties that you select from the current file:

. . . . the function will remove the Author and reset the date created, modified, and accessed in the 'File' section, but leaves in the original dates and times in the origin section.

It may be better than nothing but it will not remove comments and track changes from a Word document even if they are hidden.

To remove the metadata from any individual MS Office file you would go to File . . . Info . . . Inspect for Issues . . . Inspect Document, and you'll get the option to run Document Inspector.

The document inspector will flag what kinds of metadata are present.

The Protect function in Adobe Acrobat includes an option to remove hidden information.

download YouTube videos with Media Mister

If you search around, you'll find many suggestions online of how to download video from YouTube without purchasing a premium account for YouTube. Some of these work, and some don't. Some are some sketchy sites you should probably avoid. Media Mister is listed as a safe site in Norton Safe Search, and I've tested and confirmed it can be used to successfully download a complete video with audio.

Media Mister's primary function is to generate likes for social media content generators, but it also makes tools available to review social media data. Use the YouTube download tool here: https://www.mediamister.com/free-youtube-video-downloader

The site will give you the ability to download the video at different resolutions, or just the audio. For YouTube videos select the 360p option which includes the audio with the video. The video will open on new tab, and you just need to right click and download it. A video of an hour long can be downloaded in just a few moments.

What does in the p in '360p' mean? It does not stand for pixels - it indicates that progressive scanning has been used for the video - although a 360p video is 360 x 640 pixels.

360p videos are used on YouTube and other sites with streaming videos. A 240p video might appear on a mobile device.

Standard definition videos are 480p. High definition videos are those at 720p. 1080p is full high definition - the standard for Blu-ray.

You may also see a reference to 480i or 1080i. The 'i' refers to interlaced video - which was used for broadcast televisions. A video posted here on YouTube by Dans Tech describes the difference between the two types of video very well. An interlaced video shows video at a lower bandwidth by showing the even lines for a given frame in the first 1/60 of second and then the odd lines in the next 1/60 of a second. The image appears to be complete to the human eye.

In progressive scan, all of the lines are together. Progressive scan videos were used more widely after the emergence of modern computing because of the need for seamless motion on monitors.