Tech Tip - Powerpoint Slide Numbers Aren't Showing!

Have you ever tried adding a slide number into PowerPoint slides, but you can’t get the slide numbers to show up? That happened to me today, and I found a useful blog post here which I’ve conveniently re-posted in this post. The trick works! But the trick for me was I had to select all of the master slides and check the “footnote” box.

When the Slide Number Doesn’t Show in PowerPoint

If you’re working in PowerPoint, and you want the slide number to display on the slide, the process is generally simple:

1. Go to the Insert tab.
2. Click the Slide Number button.
3. On the Slide tab, check the Slide Number box.
4. Click Apply to All to make the slide number show on all slides, or Apply to make the slide number show on just the current slide.

But what do you do if you follow the process above and the slide number still doesn’t appear on the slide?

Check to make sure your slide master has a slide number placeholder.

The slide master is the template for the entire presentation. If the slide number placeholder does not appear on your slide master, then it will not appear on your slide, even if you try to insert it through the process above.
1.  Check to see if the placeholder appears on your slide master.

1. Go to the View tab.
2. Click on the Slide Master button.
3. Click on the outdented slide in the panel on the left. It should have a 1. next to it.
4. Look at the slide in the enlarged view on the right and see if it has a box along the bottom (or anywhere, really), that has a # sign in it. This is the slide number placeholder (circled below).

2.  Add the slide number placeholder, if you do not see it.

1. Go to the Slide Master tab.
2. Click on the Master Layout button.
3. Check the box next to Slide Number. 
4. Click OK.

3.  Check the indented slide masters for each individual slide layout.
In the left pane of the Slide Master view, you’ll see a different slide representing each possible layout. See the screenshot to the right for examples. You’ll need to check each individual layout slide master to see that the slide number placeholder is visible in that layout (assuming you want to see a slide number when you use that layout).

1. Click on one of the individual slide layout masters. If the slide number placeholder appears, check the next individual slide layout master. If not, continue reading.
2. Go to the Slide Master tab on the ribbon.
3. Check the Footers box in the Master Layout section of the ribbon. The slide number placeholder should appear.
4. Repeat for each layout on which a slide number should show.

4.  Add slide numbers to your slides.
When you are finished working with the slide master, click the Close Master View button on the Slide Master tab of the ribbon so you can continue to edit your presentation. Then follow the instructions at the top of this post to insert slide numbers on your slides.

Is your slide number covered by a shape or other object?

If you’ve inserted slide numbers, you’ve checked that your slide master has a slide number placeholder, and you still cannot see slide numbers on your slides, check to make sure there is not an object on your slide covering up the slide number.
To see all objects on the slide click once on your slide and the press Ctrl + A on the keyboard. This will select all objects on the slide, even the ones you might not see because they are the same color as the background. See if there is something in the bottom right corner of the slide, where the slide number usually appears, that might be covering it. If so, deselect the objects by clicking once in the grey area outside your slide, then select the covering object by clicking where you saw it on the slide. Either delete it, by pressing the Backspace key on the keyboard, or move it by clicking and dragging the object.
Didn’t find anything? Check again on the slide master (View tab > Slide Master button). Be sure to click Close Master View when you’re finished working in the slide master.

Do you have more than one slide master?

It is possible that your slides use multiple slide masters. This happens when additional slide masters are created. It can also happen if you paste slides that use a different slide master from another presentation into your presentation.
To see if your presentation is using multiple slide masters, go back to the slide master (View tab > Slide Master button). In the left pane, scroll down and see if you have more than one set of slide masters (each set will be numbered). Either determine which slide master your presentation uses and add the slide number placeholder to that master and each layout, or add the slide number placeholder to every slide master and every layout. You can determine which presentation slides use which slide masters by hovering over the slide master.  A pop-up note appears telling you the name of the slide master and which presentation slides use it.  The screenshot below indicates that the Office Theme Slide Master is used by slide 1 of my presentation. Be sure to click Close Master View when you’re finished working in the slide master.

Enjoy!

Tech Tip Thanksgivukkah! Google search tips

Happy Thanksgivukkah, Tech Tip group! Before my tech tip today, I want to share a song I wrote to celebrate the coming together of Thanksgiving and the first day of Hanukkah, an event that only happens once every 70,000 years or so. Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zCBEv3KsC0  **CAUTION: This video contains photos of Turkeys, which may make you hungry!**

Thanksgiving Tech Tips

This week’s tech tip includes a few tips while searching the internet through Google. I have catered it to a Thanksgiving theme.

Google Search by Specific Site

Google has a really neat feature you can use to specify which site to search from. All you have to do is add “site:(insert URL here)” to your search. For example, if you want to search for “stuffing” on the vegan recipe site veganyumyum.com, you would type “stuffing site:veganyumyum.com” – here’s what the results look like: http://bit.ly/Ihcsa2

I find this very useful when I know which website in which I want to search, but when I know their internal search is nowhere near as good as Google’s.

Google Search by Timeframe

Another search tip is when you’re trying to find current events or news that is very recent. You can specify the time-frame of your search in Google based on how recent the results are. For example, if you search google for “Thanksgivukkah site:youtube.com” it will show you all results no matter when they were posted.

But if you want to specify the timeframe, you can click “Search tools”, and then click the “Any Time” dropdown, and select “Past 24 hours”, it will show you just the results that showed up over the past 24 hours. If you do this, you can find the Thanksgivukkah video I uploaded yesterday called “Thanks a Latke”!

Happy holidays, everyone!

Daniel

Selecting and Pasting Special in Excel

Time for some “special” excel tips on selecting and pasting! Excel has quite a few options for selecting data as well as pasting data. These can really come in handy depending on what you’re trying to select and paste. And if you’re lazy like me, you like working very hard to find the quickest and easiest way to do things!

Select Special!

To get to the select special options, hit CTRL + G to bring up the “Go To” box. Then click the “Special…” button.

The Excel super-user way to bring up this window is to hit ALT, H, F, D, S (note you do not have to hold ALT down while pressing the other keys). The Special window looks like this:

There are many useful things you can select with this window, but my favorites are Visible Cells, Formulas, and Blanks.

Select Visible Cells (shortcut: ALT, H, F, D, S, Y, Enter)

If you have filters on or rows hidden on purpose, and only want the visible cells to be selected for copying and pasting, use this selection method. Let’s say we have a table with some animal types and names:

If for some reason you decided to hide a few rows, and wanted to copy and paste just what was showing into another sheet, excel tries to include everything rather than just select what’s visible. (note this is different than when dealing with filtered items). In order to only select what is showing, you can use the Select Special - Visible Cells to select and then copy those cells.

Here’s how it looks when just the visible cells are selected:

And here’s what it looks like when it’s pasted:

Select Formulas (ALT, H, F, D, S, F, Enter)

This select special will select only the cells in a region that contain formulas. It will not select blank cells or cells with just words or numbers in them. To use this one, highlight all areas that you want to find formulas within, then use this to select just the cells that contain formulas. This is useful for figuring out which cells are from formulas versus which are hardcoded and do not rely on values from other cells. (Side tip: in order to view all formulas in a spreadsheet, use ALT+~ to reveal all the formulas. Hit that again to toggle back to regular view).

Select Blanks (ALT, H, F, D, S, K, Enter)

Use this selection method to only select blank cells in a range. This could be used if you want to paste a certain value or formula within only the blank cells in an area, You can copy one cell, use this to select all blanks, and then paste. You could also use this to highlight blank cells in a certain range (although conditional formatting also works for that).

Paste Special!

To get to the Paste Special menu, make sure you copy (CTRL+C) something first, then once it’s in the clipboard, you can pull up the special menu by

To paste regular, hit CTRL+V. However, to get to the paste special options, hit CTRL+ALT+V. Two other ways to get there are to hit ALT, H, V, S, or you could click the dropdown arrow underneath the Paste icon.

Here’s what the paste special popup looks like:

There are many useful things you can paste with this window, but my favorites are Values, Formulas, and Transpose.

Paste Values (ALT, H, V, V)

This is useful for turning formulas into the value from the formula. This can be used if you want to take the result of a formula and paste that result as a hard value in place of the formula, or somewhere else in the same workbook or another workbook. For example, if you have a spreadsheet that has lots of links or formulas that point to other locations, and you want to share your file with someone else and not have all the formulas break, use this to paste the values.

Paste Formulas (ALT, H, V, F)

This paste special is useful when you want to paste just formulas from one cell or range of cells, but not paste any of the formatting from the original formulas.

Paste Transposed (ALT, H, V, T – or – ALT, H, V, S to bring up Paste Special and combine with other paste modes)

If you are copying cells within a row and want to transpose them in a column, or vice versa, this is the way to do that. You can just paste transposed like a normal paste, or combine this with other paste specials.

Example – here I’ve used the Paste Transposed to transpose the table from Columns into Rows. Note how the formatting copied over (underlines below Animal and Name). If you want to paste the transposition but not include formatting, that’s where you would want to combine Transpose with Value.

Combining Paste Transposed with Paste Value – I’ve selected the Values radio button, and clicked the Transpose box (quick key stroke way is ALT, H, V, S, V, E, Enter)

The circled range below represents the results of pasting the original table transposed and as values.

There are many other fun Select and Paste specials, so play around with them and see which ones are your favorite!

Enjoy!