How to create Explainer Videos: in PowerPoint 365 and 2021

By Ina Koys

To explain complex context and relations, there is a tool already on each office workplace: PowerPoint. But many users are not aware of what it can really achieve: not only record anything of what one does on the screen - it also can do videos with intricate animations. Elements can be displayed or hidden, created step by step or morph one

• Language: English
• Publisher: Computertrainerin.de
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9783910233140

Ina Koys

Ina Koys is an experienced instructor for Microsoft Office. Many questions are frequently asked in trainings, but seldom covered in books. Now she answers some of them in her originally German "short & spicy" series. A little accent will add to the fun :-)

Book preview

Normally, PowerPoint is used for business presentations, meant to look uniform and business-like. To get this done, certain standard techniques are used which we will IGNORE here.

We’ll be looking at a sub-area that sometimes is regarded as a secret science and charged accordingly: the creation of videos. To get this done, we don’t need any extra equipment or software, only a computer with PowerPoint installed. One can use microphone or webcam but often doesn’t need to.

All screenshots are done using PowerPoint 365. In PowerPoint 2021 they look almost exactly the same.

To a large extent, the techniques will explain themselves while actively checking them out. But if you like, you’ll get the files used in this booklet clicking

www.ShortAndSpicy.online

Have fun creating your new explainer videos!

In this booklet, we are going to work with initially empty slides. In companies, they are welcome to contain a logo or a footer. But the otherwise really useful content placeholders would only interfere with our examples. That’s why we’re going to work without them.

Once PowerPoint has opened, you’ll normally presented with an empty title slide. Click it and select from the Layout choice the Blank layout or an empty custom one.

After that, the placeholders are gone, and we have room to work with. To get new slides, click New Slide or press STRG + M. From now on and in this presentation, you’ll always get at first empty slides. To change that, you can change it as you did with the first slide.

Sometimes, you my only want to explain certain steps on the screen to new users. Where to press which buttons or how to find and how to use certain pages in your intranet. In such cases a little video on how it’s done will most of the times be much quicker than to write, read and follow step-by-step instructions. This process can be done on your machine and simultaneously recorded by PowerPoint. Then, you can store the video in an appropriate place so users can view it again and again as required.

The button is on the right in the Insert tab.

Clicking it, PowerPoint seems to collapse, and you’ll see the window just below or your desktop, if there is no other window. On the top of the screen, you now see the recorder bar.

Here we see that the mouse pointer is recorded by default and likewise the sound. You can switch that off if you like. But to start the recording, we first have to specify the respective area of the screen. The recording of the whole screen is possible, but