Question 1

How to Set Up Puzzles and Solutions for Easy Puzzle Books (plugin for Powerpoint)

Accepted Answer

This tutorial shows how to set up your puzzles and solutions to create a puzzle book with Easy Puzzle Books.

Puzzles and Solutions

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/HQSKL5ABpv/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20004%20Select%20Puzzles%20-%20Blank.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 004 Select Puzzles - Blank.jpg)

The screenshot shows the empty Puzzle Files window. This is what it will usually look like when you start, unless you have used a preset already.

You can click "Add Puzzles" to add puzzles, and "Add Solutions" to add solutions. Pretty easy, right?

The puzzles and solutions will be displayed in the list. Especially for the first few puzzle books, it makes sense to verify that the proper puzzles and solutions are matched.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/TozOU08WIX/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20005%20Select%20Puzzles%20-%20Details.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 005 Select Puzzles - Details.jpg)

In this screenshot you can see that a number of puzzles and solutions have been selected. Each line contains < P>: showing the puzzle file name, and < S>: showing the solution file name. When you click on each line, a message box will show you the full path for the puzzle and solution.

Note: When you use presets, you'll get a warning "File Not Found", if your list of puzzle files contains files that cannot be found. For example when you've deleted the files or moved them to a different location.

For Automatic book creation, you can skip the next two paragraphs.

Titles

Select the "Titles" tab to see more information:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/nA1gAdP70G/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20006%20Select%20Puzzles%20-%20Title%20Auto.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 006 Select Puzzles - Title Auto.jpg)

You can edit the Puzzle Title, Solution Title and Number Symbol here. For Automatic book creation, these settings will be identical to the settings in Step 4. For Manual book creation, this is where you should edit the settings.

In the screenshot, the lower part of the window is greyed out. This is what it looks like when you open this window from the "Auto" tab.

Placeholders for Manual Grid Creation

Please read the Manual Puzzle Books tutorial first, otherwise these settings will not make sense.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/uTw4dNJq3i/Easy%20Puzzle%20Books%20-%20007%20Select%20Puzzles%20-%20Titles%20Manual.jpg (Easy Puzzle Books - 007 Select Puzzles - Titles Manual.jpg)

For Manual Puzzle Books creation, you'll first create one or more Powerpoint slides with placeholders for the puzzles, puzzle titles, solutions and solution titles.

This will allow you to create a nice layout, changing positions, sizes, fonts, colors, etc. In the grid, you'll see (or use) names like {Puzzle Title 1}, {Solution 3}, and so on.

These codes - "Placeholders" - are needed to tell the plugin which titles and puzzles belong together. Once the copy and replace process begins, it will replace {Puzzle Title 1} with "Puzzle ##", and replace "##" with the current puzzle number.

For Easy Puzzle Books, it's not really important what these names are, as long as they not identical, and there's a number included. Therefore it's best not to change the settings.

For Mixed Puzzle Books Pro, these placeholders should be unique, to separate the different puzzle sets in your puzzle book.

Question 2

How to create Word Search puzzles

Accepted Answer

This video tutorial will show you how to create Word Search puzzles using Puzzle Maker Pro.

Question 3

Getting Started with Planner Links (Plugin for Powerpoint)

Accepted Answer

Getting Started with Planner Links (Plugin for Powerpoint)

This plugin for Powerpoint offers an easy way to add links to your Digital Planners.

Digital Planners, planners that are shared as PDF's, usually have a table of contents or another way to navigate inside the document, that relies on links. For each shape or text in Powerpoint, you can add a link (also known as hyperlink) to specific slides or pages.

This is usually done by adding a hidden shape on top of the visible shape, because of the side effects of adding links directly to shapes with text (only the text is clickable).

Planner Links offers a transparent (pun intended) way to manage the invisible links, in three steps:

Add one or more tags to the slides that need to be linked to (the link targets)
Select tags to add to the shapes that can be clicked,
Generate the links for the document (or for a single slide).

If you haven't yet installed the plugin, you need to do that first. You can find a tutorial here. (Planner Links is installed with the download called Easy Journals).

Open the plugin panel, then follow the steps below.

Add Link Targets

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/MgMaUqIOrU/Planner%20Links%2001%20-%20Link%20Targets.jpg (Planner Links 01 - Link Targets.jpg)

To add tags to a slide, select the slide in Powerpoint (1). This wil automatically display the active tags for that slide (2). There can be more than one tag for each slide: For example, the first slide for a calendar could have tags "Calendar" and "January", while the second slide only has the tag "February".

After typing the new or changed tags in box (2), click the "Set Slide Tags" button (3). Automatically they will be displayed as available tags in list (4).

These tags are not visible in Powerpoint, however they will be saved as meta-data inside your Powerpoint file. (Meaning: they will be available in a next working session with the Powerpoint file).

Add Tags to Shapes

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/Vw2orMxZiy/Planner%20Links%2002%20-%20Shape%20Link.jpg (Planner Links 02 - Shape Link.jpg)

Each shape (or text, or group) can have one tag (or none). It's not possible to add more than one tag, since that would mean you would want to link to more than one slide (page) at a time.

To add or change the tag for a shape, select the shape on your slide (1). After selecting it, you'll see the current tag for that shape (2). If you want to change it, you can select a tag in the list (3) and click "Add to Shape" (4), or remove the tag from the shape (5).

You can also select more than one shape and add the same tag to all selected shapes at once.

Create Links

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/CfJlCVL0MG/Planner%20Links%2003%20%20-%20Create%20Links.jpg (Planner Links 03 - Create Links.jpg)

To add (create) the actual links, select the "Create Links" tab.

You can choose to add links to the current slide or to all slides in the Powerpoint file (including Master Slides) (1). To Add Links, click "Add Links" (2). This will remove old links and add new ones. To only remove existing links, click "Remove Links" (3).

Note: These options will only remove links that were created with "Planner Links", it does not handle links and invisible shapes that were added manually.

Note: It is not possible to set a Master Slide as link target (for obvious reasons). However, you can add tags to shapes on Master Slides, these will be turned into links when you click "Add Links" (with the "All Slides" option enabled).

Question 4

Getting started with Puzzle Maker Pro - Connect the Dots

Accepted Answer

This video tutorial demonstrates the first steps to learn Puzzle Maker Pro - Connect the Dots

Question 5

How to use Shortcut Keys with Connect the Dots

Accepted Answer

This video tutorial demonstrates the use of Shortcut Keys for Puzzle Maker Pro - Connect the Dots

Question 6

How to use different Tag types in Connect the Dots

Accepted Answer

This video tutorial demonstrates the use of different Tag types in Puzzle Maker Pro - Connect the Dots

Question 7

Getting Started with Sticker Factory (Plugin for Powerpoint)

Accepted Answer

Getting Started with Sticker Factory (Plugin for Powerpoint)

With Sticker Factory you can save your the shapes (or groups) on your slide(s) as separate PNG images in 96DPI or 300DPI. With Sticker Factory Pro you can also automatically add the sticker borders and even create additional slides with sticker shapes.

If you haven't installed the plugin yet, please do that first. You can find a tutorial on how to install our Powerpoint Add-ins here. Sticker Factory and Sticker Factory Pro are included in the Easy Journals download.

Sticker Factory - Saving shapes as stickers.

The standard version of Sticker Factory can save your shapes as separate PNG files. By default it uses 96DPI, but you can add 300DPI as well.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/l0ZcaiFTc2/Sticker%20Factory%2001%20Save%20Stickers.jpg (Sticker Factory 01 Save Stickers.jpg)

The screenshot shows a number of different shapes, just to illustrate how the plugin works. A regular square (top middle), a merged shape (top right), a frame (top left), a grouped shape (bottom left), Word Art text (bottom middle) and a regular text field (bottom right).

After setting the Target Folder and selecting 300DPI, the exported files will look like this:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/x48VfhGLj8/Sticker%20Factory%2002%20-%20Exported%20Stickers.jpg (Sticker Factory 02 - Exported Stickers.jpg)

This screenshot was taken from File Explorer, you can see the very light blue color where the PNG's are transparent, and a white border around the shapes.

Note: The basic version of the plugin will not add these white borders for you.

For convenience there's also a button to open the folder that contains the images.

Sticker Factory Pro

The Pro version of Sticker Factory can add sticker borders to your images, and generate new slides filled with stickers.

Sticker Factory Pro - Sticker Border

To add Sticker Borders, you can select the color and the border width (in Powerpoint dot size). Normally the color should be white. However, if you want to select the right border width for your stickers, you'll probably want to use a different color (if you have a white background), and change it to white once you're satisfied with the border width. For that reason we've selected purple in this example:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/8kTJIWqDjO/Sticker%20Factory%2003%20-%20Add%20Border.jpg (Sticker Factory 03 - Add Border.jpg)

The purple color (1) is added to all the shapes on this slide. When you look carefully, you should see that the original shape borders (green in shape (2), dark blue in shape (3) and dark orange in shape (4)) are still there, just as you would expect.

If you want to have different border sizes for different shapes (e.g. the border for the Regular Text Field may be a bit much), you can move them to different slides and use different settings.

With "Remove Borders" you can remove the borders you just added. If you create borders again with different settings, the existing borders will also be removed.

Sticker Factory Pro - Generate Stickers

The other feature of Sticker Factory Pro is the ability to generate stickers. For example if you have some nice shapes that you want to use for stickers with different words.

This option will duplicate the current or selected slide(s) and replace replace each (dummy) text with a word from the list. Shapes that have no dummy (or placeholder) text, will not be affected.

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/Hz54ezrYqQ/Sticker%20Factory%2004%20-%20Template%20Setup.jpg (Sticker Factory 04 - Template Setup.jpg)

In the screenshot you can see the list of words (phrases) and the sticker templates. After clicking "Go", it will generate additional slides as can be seen in the next screenshot:

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/pZTnDWdLUr/Sticker%20Factory%2004%20-%20Generated%20Result.jpg (Sticker Factory 04 - Generated Result.jpg)

As you can see here, the shapes without text are not affected. Text settings such as font size or alignment are also not changed.

To get the best results:

Add borders before generating multiple slides
Check if your longest words or phrases fit inside the shapes. Sticker Factory does not change the font settings. (e.g. the star inside the frame will not work with longer words or phrases)
Check alignment - e.g. the word art shape would look better when centered instead of left aligned.
Remove empty shapes from the template. They may not be in the way here (on the slide), but they'll result in duplicate exports (because they're the same on each slide).

Question 8

How to create your own SVG files with Adobe Illustrator (for use in Connect the Dots)

Accepted Answer

This video tutorial will show you the general workflow and some tricks to use Adobe Illustrator's tracing function. This will create SVG files from bitmap files (JPG, PNG). The SVG files can be imported into Puzzle Maker Pro - Connect the Dots.

Question 9

How do I use the different Maze Generator options for Puzzle Maker Pro - Geometric Mazes?

Accepted Answer

This overview will explain the different Maze Generator options. These options are available in every module of Puzzle Maker Pro - Mazes.

Mazes are always constructed completely random. However, there two ways to control the randomness:

Controlling the algorithm
Controlling the type of path

##Controlling the algorithm

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/EA389U4UK4/10%20Mazes%202D%20-%20Path%20Complexity.png (10 Mazes 2D - Path Complexity.png)

Puzzle Maker Pro - Geometric Mazes contains a combination of different algorithms (rules) to create the maze. It's always random, but some algorithms create longer, meandering paths, while other algorithms create more direct paths.

In the screen shot you can see the slider for "Solution Complexity". When you slide it to the left, it will create straightforward paths, when you slide it to the right, the paths will be more complex. However, it's always random.

Controlling the type of path

In addition to the maze generator algorithm, you can also choose how you want the path to run through the maze, by setting the start and end points. By default it runs from top left to bottom right, or in the case of circles, from top to bottom.

Random Path

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/r8Le03N96R/11%20Mazes%202D%20-%20Solution%20Path%20Style%20Random.png (11 Mazes 2D - Solution Path Style Random.png)

The "Random" Path option will randomly set the start and end points at opposite sides of the maze, as can be seen in the screenshot.

Longest Path

https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/wuGqS3zSeN/resources/1mUrVzte4o/12%20Mazes%202D%20-%20Longest%20Path.png (12 Mazes 2D - Longest Path.png)

The "Longest Path" option will look over the generated maze, and find two points that have the longest distance to each other (the highest number of intermediate cells to pass), and choose them as start and end points. In most cases the start and end points will be somewhere in the middle of the maze.