Learning Microsoft Office 2013

Product Review: Microsoft Office Mix add-in for PowerPoint 2013

Open up any authoring tool (okay, most of them) and one item that you will see is the ability to add PowerPoint. Some products including Articulate Studio and Storyline use the Microsoft SDK PowerPoint ribbon as their main ribbon.

Use products such as Adobe Presenter or iSpring Presenter and in just a few short seconds you will be in PowerPoint and you can start building courses.

If I was Microsoft, I would say to myself, “Why let these products be the only ones who can do this, when it is our product”. And lo and behold, Microsoft jumped into the fray.

The product? Office Mix. The cost? ZERO as in FREE..but

What you need

• Office 2013 with PowerPoint 2013 OR
• PowerPoint 2013

If you do not have PowerPoint 2013, sorry you are out of luck. On the plus side if you have it, it will work with both 32 bit and PPT 2013 and 64 bit and PPT 2013.

What is it?

An add-in, which only takes 30 seconds or so (depending on your cpu) to install.

Where do you find in PowerPoint?

It appears as part of your ribbon, under the tab “Mix”

Break it down

Excellent

• Easy to use, layout on ribbon easy to understand
• Getting Started – opens up a “How to” right in PowerPoint with screen shots
• Uploading to Mix – simple to do, especially with the options to log into Mix (more in a bit)
• Selecting apps – quizzes and video apps and other apps – simple and easy
• Export to video – again easy to do
• You can still add transitions and everything else that exists in PPT while creating your mix

Average

• Preview – nothing out of the wow factor
• Screenshot – Loved that the screen windows that are open appear in PowerPoint enabling you to quickly select one
• Under getting started, it says templates – but that is a misnomer, because it doesn’t come with templates
• Screen Recording – generally speaking solid but not spectacular, plus I ran into issues

Poor

• You cannot move around the screen record window per se, but you can expand or decrease the size
• To end the recording you have to use a hot-keys of CTRL+Shift+F12. Here is an idea how about putting a button the recorder that is a stop button.
• If you use one of the OfficeMix apps it shows that “This OfficeMix app has been developed by Microsoft. Microsoft Terms. Privacy and Cookies”. Not a fan of that. I mean who wants to see that in their presentation? On other slides you see “terms and privacy/cookies”.
• Right now you have apps for LiveApps under supposedly video, that is mostly targeting education.
• Cannot create a TOC or really a true course at this point with the TOC approach

Starting

After loading the add-in into PowerPoint 2013 and opening up to either a new slide or existing, you will see your usual ribbon along with a tab called “Mix”. Clicking on the “Mix tab” you will see the following options