Cool Powerpoint Countdowns

[muz4k]

For those of you that use countdowns prior to your service, read on.

The nice thing about using Powerpoint, is that it maintains image quality, unlike creating a video countdown, or using countdown creator software, which typically reduces clarity. If any of you are using countdown creator, or have trouble creating countdowns that are professional, here's a neat trick I learned with powerpoint. It may take you a while the first time, but after you understand it, it takes about 2 minutes.

1. Open powerpoint, and create a countdown.pptx or *.ppt file, and save it where you want it to be for your service.
2. Use a medium-high quality image for a background, and click apply to all.
3. Insert a text box where you want your countdown to appear, and make sure you have the font/size that is congruent with the rest of your service.
4. Here's where it gets cool. In the text box, type x:yz for any countdown under 10 minutes, or type wx:yz for any countdown 10 minutes and over. The following is for a 5 minute countdown.
5. Copy and paste the created slide until you have 10 slides in your presentation, with x:yz on each slide.
6. One by one, replace the z on each slide in order from top down; 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0
7. Ctrl+A (select all) then Ctrl+C to copy these ten slides to your clipboard. Don't paste them yet.
8. Now, use the find/replace or replace feature in powerpoint (depending on what version you have). Fill in the boxes to replace y with 5, then click replace all. It should say "10 replacements made."
9. Next, paste the ten slides from your clipboard below the first ten. You should now have 20 slides.
10. Use replace again, but now replace the y with 4. Click replace all, and repeat pasting the ten clipboard slides, and replacing y with 3, 2, 1 and 0 until you have 60 slides total.
11. Now, Ctrl+A (select all 60 slides) and Ctrl+C to copy these 60 slides to your clipboard, but again, don't paste yet.
12. Use the find/replace feature in powerpoint to replace x with 5. Replace all, and it should say 60 replacements were made.
13. Now paste the 60 slides in your clipboard, and use the replace feature, repeating for each minute of your countdown. Replace x with 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0 until you have 300 slides.
14. Next, go to the top and create a slide for 5:00 (I just copy the top slide, and retype it)
15. Finally, assign the presentation to automatically transition to the next slide after 1 second. Click apply to all, and then hit f5 to preview your presentation.

Other tips: If you're using a separate presentation software, try to keep your image file size small, so that it is easily loaded by your software. I try to keep the image under 150k, and use a .jpg. For most images, this is still really good quality.

If you want the presentation to stop on a slide without numbers, just create a new slide at the end of the presentation, give it the background you want, then while it's selected, click off the 1 second transition. Make sure that the other slides still have it.

Hope this helps you guys. I use this almost every week, and it's SO crisp compared to most countdowns I've found.

God bless your ministries,

Aaron

[kbob]

nice write up! way less work than many of the non-paid alternatives, too.

[dgerlitz]

Great work!! I use Countdown Creator...but it's waaay too noncreative. I've also used my movie production programs...they turn out nice. But, I can see where this could open a whole new world of Countdown possibilities. I've cut and pasted your idea and am eager to give it a whirl. Thanks, Denise

[andivan]

Thanks for the write-up. I am a huge fan of Countdown Creator and will continue to use it especially for motion countdowns but this is definitely a nice alternative as well.

Great job. Thanks for sharing.

Andi V.

[rdj561]

Should be nice for people that actually have a sermon series graphic, or individual message graphic that they want to use for the countdown...