November 3, 2008

Joy E. Miller

Each year, the week following Thanksgiving, our extended family gathers together at a ski resort in British Columbia, Canada. We enjoy some great times and I snap a lot of photographs. Upon returning home, I create a photo album in PowerPoint using the photographs from our trip. And then I give a copy (in the form of a CD) to each family member as a gift.

I create PowerPoint photo albums quite often — I like to get creative with a new theme each year — and then I share them with my family and friends. I can e-mail the slide show to them, copy it to a CD for distribution, and when I get my Web site up and running, I can publish my photos there, and then point my family to the site. This year I'll create the photo album, copy it to a CD, wrap the CDs in festive paper, and then give them to each family member as a winter holiday gift! So you see, creating my photo album in PowerPoint gives me control over the creation, the look, and the distribution possibilities.

You can create a PowerPoint photo album by using photographs from any memorable event or vacation.

I created a demo that shows how I download and re-use a free, pre-built photo album template from Office Online. Click the image below to view the demo.

Watch This! Duration: 1:15

How'd she do that?

For more information about the ideas in this article and demo, see the following resources:

• Create your own photo album slide show.
• Photo album templates.
• Download the Winter Holiday Photo Album that I use in the demo.
• To download a pre-built template from Office Online, see Create new or reuse existing PowerPoint 2007 templates.
• Learn how to Distribute a PowerPoint presentation on CD. (This is a demo.)
• To publish a photo album to your Web site, see Publish your photo album to the Web.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Colin Wilcox, Cynthia Wargin, Tina Outzen, and Brooke Outzen for supplying the photographs that I used in the demo.

About the author

Joy Miller has worked as technical writer for Microsoft for about 11 years. In her earlier years at Microsoft, Joy wrote technical content for IT Professionals in Windows on topics such as Active Directory, Software Distribution, and Group Policy. She decided 8 years ago that it would be much more fun to connect with the people who use Office products. She has worked on products such as Word, FrontPage, Windows SharePoint Services, and PowerPoint.