When it comes to creating PowerPoint presentations, there are two skills you need. One is the skill to create the contents for an informative presentation and the second is the skill to make it look good. If you’re good at creating the presentation content, but struggle with making it all look good in a reasonable timeframe, then VisualBee can help. We’ll show you how to add some pizzazz to your presentations with this PowerPoint add-in.
VisualBee (www.visualbee.com) is an add-in that’s compatible with PowerPoint 2007 and 2010, but not with earlier versions. You’ll need to register by typing your name and email address, and you’ll then receive an unlock code via email. The basic version is free, but there’s a premium version with more templates, images and the ability to add your own logo to slides (whereas slides are unfortunately branded with VisualBee logo when using the free version). The premium version costs US$9 a month or US$75 a year, although there are specials from time to time which you can access by clicking ‘My Account’ on the VisualBee tab from inside PowerPoint.
For this exercise we used the free version. Start by creating a presentation or opening an existing one. It doesn’t matter what design template you’re using, but you’ll want to get the content in place, as VisualBee can understand the context of the slide and it uses this to find suitable images to illustrate your slideshow. The step-by-step guide below shows how to choose a template and change the images and layout of an individual slide. All this is done inside the VisualBee dialog and only when you choose to save the presentation are the changes written to a file. In most cases, you can filter the results you’re given; for example, you show only those templates that are available with the free version.
In addition to accessing images via the VisualBee interface, you can also select an image using Image —> ‘Select from Disk’. This allows you to use your own images and have them formatted neatly by VisualBee. You can also remove an image from the slide entirely if you like. The file created by VisualBee is a standard PowerPoint file, so it behaves like any regular presentation. That means you can edit it as normal in PowerPoint once you’ve finished in VisualBee.
Jazz up your presentations with VisualBee
