It’s that time of year when everyone is trying to think of the best possible gift to give. One of the gifts I am giving this year is a series of family picture presentations. Each presentation is going to a family member or friend and shares the pictures, memories, and fun we have had over the years. Some people even go so far as to make these presentations an entire family history. If you are looking at doing this, take a peek at these five ideas for making the presentations great without needing to worry about what goes where.

All of the ideas in this article are based on the assumption that you are using either PPT 2002 (XP) or 2003, not an earlier version. If you are using the older versions, you won’t be able to use Ideas 3 or 4, but you can use the rest of them.

Idea 1: Get the person watching involved

Instead of setting up the content so that it plays on its own, set it up so that the person going through the presentation makes the decisions where to go next. Make the presentation a kiosk, put navigation elements on the master slides, and set up interactive menus and triggered animations. By doing this, you relieve yourself of the need to figure out what everyone will want to see when. Instead, you provide the content and they decide what they want to see.

Idea 2: Nest the content

Make a series of menus that allow the family members to move through the content to what they want to see. Have a main menu with the viewing options. Have submenus for:

1. Family Members – each entry is one person’s name, linked to a custom show with that person’s pictures
2. Chronological – each entry is a generation or a decade linked to the custom show for that chronological segment
3. Special Occasions – weddings, birthdays, trips, etc.

By offering the different paths through, you don’t have to determine what people need to see; you just determine which slides go together in which custom shows. Many of the slides will be in more than one show, thereby allowing you to solve some of the logistics problem.

Idea 3: Use triggers to bring in extra information

Set up the slides with the picture as the basic content. Place buttons on the photo slides that bring up text boxes showing dates, people in the pictures, the event, funny stories, etc. Each button will need two triggers: one to bring the box in and one to make it disappear. This solves the problem of too many words, because only some of them are on the slide at any given time.

Idea 4: Use the Grow/Shrink animation combined with motion paths to emphasize sections of photos

By putting triggered animation spots on your photos, you can make certain areas grow and move to the middle of the screen so that the picture’s details are seen better. (An example of this is if you have a picture of your brother making bunny ears behind Dad’s head – you definitely want to bring that into focus for a moment or two ) Set a second trigger to shrink the graphic back in and move back to the center.

Idea 5: Personalize the content

This is your chance to make a record that shows who you and your family are. Use that. Put in family jokes and stories. Add your own touches, especially if there is something you know that not everyone else does. If you have pictures that are older, let people know how you found them. Have fun with the project and the family will enjoy the results better.