PowerPoint Tips and Templates

Customizing multimedia icons in PowerPoint 97/2000/2001/2002

When you insert multimedia elements into your presentation, often what's initially visible on the slide is simply an icon, such as the speaker icon for music files. Then when you click on the icon, your multimedia elements launch, whether its audio, visual or a combination of the two.

However, you aren't stuck with the look of the icon with its default format settings. Besides resizing the icon by dragging the editing handles, or hiding the icon off to the side of your slide or behind another slide element, you can also edit it using the Picture toolbar. Although you can't recolor most icons, you can adjust the contrast and brightness to create a silhouette effect and crop the edges to remove part of the original icon.

You can also click on Image Control and change the icon to Grayscale, Black & White, or Watermark. If you're using PowerPoint 2001, you have a plethora of additional options, such as Color Adjustment and Picture Effects. Using these formatting options to alter your multimedia icons help make each icon look like it belongs on your slide.