AT: Author Tools Series
Writing walkthrough guides is easy. It’s the formatting of the content that will take you forever to do, especially of you are wanting to repurpose the content into other formats like scripts, blog posts, summaries and even books. And if you want to make a change to a guide, or correct mistakes then that can take just as much time because you might break some of the formatting, or pagination, or you may miss one of the formats. And if you wanted to have specific page breaks, formatting requirements or different page sizes for different versions then it just doubles or triples the work.
Some people may have lackeys or interns that they can give this job to, but your probably are not one of them, and don't want to have to spent weekends formatting books and transferring images one by one into Word so that you can publish document or create detailed blog post series. That's what the Author Tools for PowerPoint are for.
These tools automate a lot of the leg work that you would have to do manually by using PowerPoint as a repository for all of the walkthrough details and then uses pre-defined word templates as a basis which it then transfers all of the images and text automatically and also formats all of the walkthroughs in a number of different ways based on how you are wanting the information to be consumed. This reduces the time to format a 400+ page book from 8+ hours and tens of thousands of repetitive keystrokes to probably about half an hour and a single click.
Release Notes
Author Tools 1.1.0.28 8/24/17
- Added a config file
- Added image watermark
- Added image watermark size option
- Exit from slide search on build presentation when reach end of slide range
- Added a step # placeholder on presentation to show step
- When step number placeholder used step did not show the subtitle
- Added exercise number placeholder
- Added Quiz number placeholder
- Removed multiple copy from master and slide protect on rebuild master
- Added Justification and font options to watermark
- Added Position option for captions
- Resized image and caption left and right
- Added caption column size
- Added watermark to script and thumbnail formats
- Fixed Script error when hidden slides were causing picture overwrite
- Added a watermark option for pictures on Doc and PowerPoint
- Added Option to suppress subtitles from showing
- Created an Advanced Template
- Added a Compose Ribbon
- Added new Compose Formats
- Added Compose Templates
- Compose Test from Advanced Text Blocks
- Fixed Copy Text where NULL Font was causing text to be skipped
- Added a Compose All Function
- Added a Decompose Slide option to create blocks from text
- Added a Decompose All option
- When creating PowerPoints we pushed the picture to the back so that if there were
- overlays they would still show
- Added text Compose option for Recipes
- Fixed style naming to build style from the format and design
- Added an option to build the styles based on the document content
- Removed BSP from the style sheet
- Added step numbers to PPT Recipe placeholder
- Copied Steps to Recipe with formatting
- Fixed step numbering in PowerPoint not to over count the steps
- Fixed the parent placeholder from always showing article
- Added Parents Parent Placeholder and Parents Parents Parents Placeholder
- Removed step type subheadings from PowerPoint Recipe
- Added a Compose type of Presentation
- Added an option to save tables as images
- Search subfolders in templates
- Added a Design Type to the Section Labels
- Added defaults for the Retry pause
- Fixed the section refresh to only update the slide names if the update flag is set
- Added the option to add a frame around images when there is a caption to make sure caption lines up with image when smaller
- Fixed index so that it shows Section + . + Article - . missing
- Fixed error where heading printed when there is no heading
- Fixed example data heading printing to repeat on walkthrough
- Fixed error where text was showing as heading when heading was blank.
Author Tools 1.1.0.22 1/21/17
- Added a new "Proof" style for reviewing text and proofreading.
- Fixed the Article number to show the Article and not the section number.
- Added an option to include the Slide number in the document for proofing.
- Added a Refresh button on the Publish and Present ribbon bars to allow the defaults to reload.
- Added an option to update the language Article prefix
- Fixed the counter numbering to count the skipped slides
- Added an index document option to add index markers to underlined text.
- Added a replace underline function for when indexes are not created.
- Added a button to add index marks on selected text
- Added a picture glow option to put a subtle border around the images.
- Fixed the data headings in the walkthrough
- Fixed the script/thumbnail options where sub steps were causing the step count not calculate
- Fixed the step counting process - was not resetting the slide counter and over counting.
- Created a new Portrait and Letter theme.
Author Tools 1.1.0.21 12/16/16
- Fixed the subheading and Subtitle to show no pictures
- Seperated out the data and exercises to use seperate builds for walkthroughs and recipe options
- Table Rows Autofit
- Create presentation hidden images swapped to color before copy and then switched back to gs
- Stopped tables form breaking over pages
- When adding pictures on Presentation, it retries until the picture is added.
- When adding text to a presentation, it retries if the text is not added
- Table Paste into data placeholder in PPT fixed to paste into placeholder.
- Fixed the step count issue where it was over counting the steps and creating doublesized tables on script and thumbnails
- Added parameter to allow you to choose the number of columns for thumbnails
- Added a parameter that allows you to specify the width of the first column on a script
- Updated the script to append text from slides with no image to the end of the prior text
- Removed the extra Lf at the end of the script text paste
- Updated the thumbnails so that they add text from slides with hidden pictures to the end of the prior text
- Added an option to specify the number of columns for a recipe
- Removed the extra section break on the recipe that was causing the heading spacing to be too large
- Fixed the show hidden image to show hidden pictures on build
Added script and thumbnail summary options - Updated standard templates to include the Articles style
Author Tools 1.1.0.20 11/1/16
- Added Progress and Logging into Presentation Build
- Removed windows error messages and moved them into the log pane to speed up the build
- Fixed the presentation build to delete the first blank slide
- Restricted copy names from the master to just the slide range
- Walkthroughs skip headings when pictures are hidden
Author Tools 1.1.0.19 10/7/16
- Added a Recipe Placeholder for Presentations to summarize steps with text
- Inserted Continuous breaks before Walkthroughs and Scripts to allow for column updates within the step groups
- Added step text to Presentation recipe placeholders
- Added a log panel to show the process of the Document and Presentation build
- Added option to turn on or off the Progress Pane
- Added an option to show the time elapsed by build step
- Added a Progress Bar for all Content levels
- Fixed misc error where there were no shapes on the storyboard slide