Animate Your Slide Show
Add animations to your presentation for that extra pep and dazzle. Switch to the slide you wish to animate. Click Slide Show > Custom Animation > Timing. Check the checkboxes for the objects you wish to animate from the list of objects. Choose the animation from the Effects tab for each object. Click OK to save the animation.

Import Outlines From Word
Instead of creating presentation outlines in PowerPoint, they can also be conveniently imported straight away from Word. First, open the file in Word and click on the File > Send To. Select Microsoft PowerPoint to export the outline to PowerPoint. It will help to have the outline properly formatted with Word heading styles.

Maintain Proportions While Resizing Elements
Resizing your images while retaining proportions in their positions relative to one another can be done easily in PowerPoint. Select the objects one at a time, keeping the Shift key pressed. Drag the object to the desired size and PowerPoint will automatically scale them all.

Use Portions of Images
You can keep a just portion of a Metafile in a slide instead of the complete picture. Insert the image into your slide and select it. Click on Draw > Ungroup from the Draw toolbar to ungroup the image components. You can now select the portions you don’t want and delete them. Regroup the image once you are finished.

Create Semi-transparent Objects
To create a semitransparent object, say, for a watermark, select the object you want and then ungroup it by clicking on Draw > Ungroup from the Draw toolbar. Once the object is ungrouped, regroup it by selecting the Group option again from the Draw menu. This will convert the picture to a Microsoft Office Drawing Object. Click on Format > Object. Under the Colors and Lines tab check the Semitransparent box. Click the OK button to get your see through object.