Presentations Glossary

Themes – XML Editing: Theme XML Files

THMX actually stands for an Office Theme Document file. However, what it hides is more important in this case than what it stands for. A THMX file and any of the new file formats that Office 2007 and later use are actually XML based file formats. Also they are more like a wrapper that contain many disparate and related elements.

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Tagged as: 04-02, PowerPoint Tutorials, Themes - XML Editing, Themes Templates Masters and Layouts

Themes – XML Editing: XML Editing in Visual Studio Express with 7-Zip

A PPTX file or any of the new file formats that Office 2007 and later use such as POTX or THMX are different than the older binary file formats such as PPT. That’s because these new file formats that end with an “X” are essentially XML based file formats.

Even more interesting is the fact that the actual file is not an XML based file but only a wrapper that contain many disparate and related XML based elements. The wrapper technology used is just simple ZIP technology. If you want to edit Office XML files, you will therefore need to unzip, edit, and finally zip the file. Alternatively, you can perform XML Editing within Visual Studio 2010.

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Tagged as: 04-02, PowerPoint Tutorials, Theme Basics, Themes Templates Masters and Layouts

Themes Basics: Super Themes in PowerPoint

Create a presentation in PowerPoint, using some of the built-in Themes, and you will have more options to change the look of your presentation slides slightly. By “slightly,” we mean that you don’t have to change to another Theme altogether, and yet you can make small changes in colors or design elements that still look very similar to your existing Theme. These small changes are “variants,” and a Theme that includes such variants is called a “SuperTheme”.

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Tagged as: 04-01, PowerPoint Tutorials, Theme Basics, Themes Templates Masters and Layouts

Themes – XML Editing: XML Editing in Visual Studio

All the new Office file formats (post Office 2007) are XML based, and can easily be opened and edited in an XML editing program. All these files are a bunch of XML files contained in a ZIP file container.

Although it is easy to unzip the files and edit some code in a basic program like Notepad, you will need a better program that does not require you to unzip and edit all the time, and then zip it up again! Thankfully there are plenty of programs that allow you to edit these Office XML files. Our favorite is Microsoft’s own Visual Studio. On its own, Visual Studio cannot open and edit Office XML files, but Microsoft provides a free add-in that plugs into Visual Studio and lets you edit the Office XML files.

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Tagged as: 04-02, PowerPoint Tutorials, Themes - XML Editing, Themes Templates Masters and Layouts

Themes Basics: Change the Default Template or Theme in PowerPoint

When PowerPoint is launched, do you see an empty presentation with just one slide? This template influences the default look that PowerPoint provides. However, the first slide typically has placeholders for the slide’s title and subtitle. The text typed within these placeholders shows up in black over a white slide background. Although this default look works most of the time, you don’t have to stick with these defaults. You can easily change the default look to something else. For example, use your custom PowerPoint template or Theme as the default? Or even any of the other Templates/Themes built within PowerPoint.

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Tagged as: 04-01, PowerPoint Tutorials, Theme Basics, Themes Templates Masters and Layouts