In this day and age, when digital cameras are making picture taking easier than ever before and using pictures in many electronic applications is becoming commonplace, the only challenge seems to be organizing all the photos you take. In fact, it can be a bit tedious to keep track of the photos you need. This is especially true when trying to add photos to PowerPoint presentations. For example, let's say you are creating a presentation detailing your department's progress on several products. You know you want to include photos of the latest prototypes in your presentation, but several product managers have used digital cameras to take the pictures and the photos are spread out all over the network. How can you navigate around the network, make a list of the photos you want to use, make changes on the fly, and keep everything organized? Hopefully, the new Photo Album add-in for PowerPoint can help you do just that.

How Does the Photo Album Add-in Work?

The Photo Album program for PowerPoint 2000 makes it easy to get digital pictures from a hard drive, network, digital camera, or scanner into your PowerPoint presentations. The Photo Album is an add-in available from Microsoft. Like all of the other Office add-in's, it is available online. You just download the add-in and begin working with photos. For more information about this exciting new download, see PowerPoint 2000 Add-in: Photo Album Add-in Program.

Creating Photo Albums

After you've downloaded the add-in program, PowerPoint contains new menu options. Specifically, the new PhotoAlbum Wizard appears directly in PowerPoint. You just open PowerPoint and select File > New. The new option, PhotoAlbum, appears as a choice.

The Photo Album Wizard is packed with features that make inserting digital pictures easy. You just specify the location of the pictures you want to use. Then, you select details regarding display.

1. You can select pictures from your hard drive or a network.



2. You can even add pictures to the photo album directly from a scanner or digital camera.



3. Once you have listed the pictures you want to use, you can change their order and rotate them if necessary.



4. You can also add text boxes to the list along with pictures.



5. Then, you can choose a variety of layout and style options for the photo album. You can choose the number of pictures per slide and pick from a variety of frame styles and design templates. (Design templates for photo albums are just like design templates for PowerPoint presentations.)



6. You can also choose to have a caption for each picture. By default, the file name of the picture is entered into the caption. Once you create the photo album by clicking Create, you return to PowerPoint, where you can change the caption text.

Note If the Photo Album add-in has one fault, it is this. Once you create the photo album, you cannot return to the Photo Album dialog to make changes. Instead, you make any changes directly on the slides in PowerPoint. Of course, you can also create a new photo album with the same pictures.

When you have finished with the Photo Album Wizard, you return to PowerPoint. The photos appear in the presentation slides — just like any other graphics would.

To create a photo album using pictures from a local machine or a network

1. Open PowerPoint 2000 and select File > New.



2. On the General tab, click PhotoAlbum, and then click OK. The Photo Album dialog box appears.



3. Click File/Disk, and then locate the folder that contains the pictures you want.



4. Select the desired pictures, and then click Insert.



5. Choose the other options you want for your photo album.



6. Click Create to create the photo album. The photo album is created and you return to PowerPoint.

To create a photo album using pictures from a scanner or digital camera

1. Open PowerPoint 2000 and select File > New.



2. On the General tab, click PhotoAlbum, and then click OK. The Photo Album dialog box appears.



3. Click Scanner/Camera. If you have more than one scanner or digital camera connected to your computer, under Device, select the device you want to use.



4. Do one of the following:



• If the selected device is a scanner and you want to use default settings for scanning the image, click Insert to scan the picture.



• If the selected device is a digital camera or you want to customize any settings before you scan the picture, click Custom Insert.


5. Choose the other options you want for your photo album.



6. Click Create to create the photo album. The photo album is created and you return to PowerPoint.

For more information about this exciting new download, see PowerPoint 2000 Add-in: Photo Album Add-in Program.