Useful PowerPoint Add-ins

While PowerPoint is a relatively powerful piece of presentation software, it has it’s limits.  Many times, presenters want to visit a web site in the middle of their presentation.  In order to do so, they must exit presentation mode and open up a web browser.  The same thing must be done to play YouTube videos (unless the user downloads them using 3rd party websites/software).  I recently came across two free PowerPoint Add-ins (PC only) that will allow the presenter to do both of these things from within their presentation.

The first one is called LiveWeb.  Upon installation, it allows the user to add live web pages to their slides.  Simply go to the “LiveWeb” tool, click “Web Page”, and a wizard guides them through the process.  Once the page has been added, it can be resized and moved to fit within the slide.

Print Friendly

Print Friendly is a tool that enables you to have more control over printing web pages.  Sometimes when you go to print an article, the advertisements, footer, etc. get in the way of the information you wanted to print in the first place.  This service gets rid of all the unwanted clutter and makes the printed page easier to read.

To use it, you just copy the URL you want to print and paste it into the box on the Print Friendly site.  It will automatically enhance the page for printing, but also allows you to delete other sections you may not need/want.  There is a toggle to turn images off/on and also an undo button.  When everything is the way you want it, simply click the print button or save it as a PDF.

A useful tip is to save the bookmarklet to your bookmarks toolbar.  This way, you can just click the button to use the current page and don’t have to worry about copy/pasting.