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What is PowerPoint: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

What is PowerPoint? This blog provides the essence of PowerPoint, a versatile presentation software by Microsoft. Discover its features, uses, and the art of crafting compelling slideshows. Whether you're a student, professional, or simply curious, explore the power of PowerPoint and learn how to create impactful presentations effortlessly.

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According to Glassdoor , a PowerPoint designer's average salary in the UK is about £37,811 annually. In this blog, you will learn What is PowerPoint, its key features, its benefits, and how to use it, as well as learn some tips for creating effective presentations.   

Table of contents       

1)  What is PowerPoint?  

2)  Understanding the PowerPoint Interface  

3)  Key Features of PowerPoint 

4)  How to use PowerPoint to create a presentation? 

5)  Benefits of PowerPoint  

6)  Tips for Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations 

7)  Conclusion      

What is PowerPoint?   

PowerPoint is a versatile and popular presentation software developed by Microsoft (MS). It is a part of the Microsoft Office Suite and offers various features and tools to create visually appealing and engaging presentations. MS PowerPoint allows users to combine text, graphics, multimedia elements, and animations to convey information effectively .   

Evolution of PowerPoint   

Understanding the PowerPoint Interface   

The PowerPoint interface provides a user-friendly environment for creating and editing presentations. Familiarising yourself with its essential components will help you navigate the software efficiently. Here's a breakdown of the MS PowerPoint interface:   

1)  Ribbon : The Ribbon is located at the top of the MS PowerPoint window and consists of multiple tabs, such as Home, Insert, Design, Transitions, and more.    

2) Slides pane : The Slides pane is on the left side of the PowerPoint window. It displays thumbnail images of your presentation slides, allowing you to navigate and rearrange them easily. You can add, delete, duplicate, or hide slides from this pane.   

3)   Notes pane : The Notes pane is located below the Slides pane. It provides space for adding speaker notes or additional information related to each slide.    

4)  Slide area : The Slide area occupies the central part of the PowerPoint window. It displays the selected slide, where you can add and arrange content such as text, images, charts, and multimedia elements .    

5)  Task panes : Task panes are additional panels on the PowerPoint window's right side. They offer various functionalities such as formatting options, slide layouts, animations, etc. Task panes can be opened or closed based on your specific needs.   

Understanding the MS PowerPoint interface will help you navigate the software effectively and make the most of its features. Whether you are creating slides, adding content, or applying formatting, having a good grasp of the interface ensures a smooth and productive experience .  

Key Features of PowerPoint  

When it comes to creating captivating and professional presentations, MS PowerPoint stands out as versatile and feature-rich software. Its array of tools and functionalities enables users to bring their imagination and ideas to life. Moreover, it also helps engage their audience effectively .    

1) Slide Templates : PowerPoint provides a collection of pre-designed templates that make it easy to create visually appealing slides.   

2)  Slide Master : The Slide Master feature allows users to define the overall layout, font styles, and colour scheme for the entire presentation .   

3)  Animations and transitions : PowerPoint offers various animation effects and slide transitions to add visual interest and captivate the audience .   

4)  Multimedia integration : Users can embed images, videos, and audio files directly into their presentations, enhancing the overall impact .   

5)   Collaboration tools : MS PowerPoint allows multiple users to work on a presentation simultaneously, making it ideal for team projects and remote collaboration .   

6) Presenter View : The Presenter View feature gives presenters access to speaker notes, a timer, and a preview of upcoming slides, enabling a seamless presentation experience .   

These features collectively contribute to PowerPoint's versatility and make it a powerful tool for developing engaging and impactful presentations.  

How to use PowerPoint to create a presentation?   

Creating a presentation in PowerPoint is a straightforward process. Whether it's simple animations or explainer videos learning H ow to use PowerPoint is an extremely valuable skill. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to create a presentation:   

1)  Launch PowerPoint and choose a template or start with a blank slide. 

2)  Add slides by clicking "New Slide" or using the shortcut key (Ctrl + M). 

3) Customise slide content by entering text and inserting visuals.  

4)  Rearrange slides for a logical flow by dragging them in the slide navigation pane.  

5)  Apply slide transitions for visual effects in the "Transitions" tab.  

6)  Add animations to objects in the "Animations" tab.  

7)  Preview your presentation by clicking "Slide Show".   

8)  Save your presentation and choose a format (.pptx or .pdf).  

9)  Share your presentation via email, cloud storage, or collaboration tools.   

By following these steps, you can create a well-structured and visually appealing presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint. Remember to keep your content concise, use engaging visuals, and practice your presentation skills to deliver an impactful presentation .   

Benefits of PowerPoint   

1) Visual appeal : Microsoft PowerPoint allows you to create visually appealing presentations with its wide range of design tools and features. You can use templates, themes, and customisable layouts to make your slides visually engaging and professional .   

2)  Easy to use : PowerPoint has a user-friendly interface, making it accessible to users of all levels. The intuitive tools and straightforward navigation make it easy to create, edit, and deliver presentations efficiently .   

3)   Flexibility : PowerPoint provides flexibility in terms of content creation. You can include various types of content, such as text, images, charts, graphs, videos, and audio files, to enhance your message and engage your audience effectively.   

4)   Organisation and structure : PowerPoint offers features to help you organise and structure your content. You can create multiple slides, use slide masters for consistent formatting, and arrange the sequence of slides to create a logical flow .   

5)  Presenter tools : PowerPoint includes built-in presenter tools that aid in delivering presentations smoothly. You can use presenter view to see your notes and upcoming slides while your audience sees only the presentation. Additionally, features like slide transitions and animations add visual interest and help you control the flow of information .   

6)  Collaboration and sharing : PowerPoint allows for easy collaboration and sharing of presentations. Several users can simultaneously work on the same presentation, making it convenient for team projects. You can also share your presentations via email, cloud storage, or online platforms, ensuring easy access for viewers .   

7)   Integration with other tools : PowerPoint can seamlessly integrate with other Microsoft Office applications, such as Word and Excel. You can import data and charts from Excel or copy and paste content between different Office applications, saving time and effort .  

8)   Presenter-audience interaction : PowerPoint provides features that facilitate interaction between the presenter and the audience. You can include interactive elements like hyperlinks, buttons, and quizzes to engage your audience and make your presentations more dynamic.   

9)   Portable and accessible : PowerPoint presentations can be saved in various formats, such as .pptx or .pdf, making them easily accessible on different devices. This portability allows you to deliver presentations on laptops, tablets, or even projectors without compatibility issues .   

10)  Time and effort savings : PowerPoint simplifies the process of creating presentations, saving you time and effort. The pre-designed templates, slide layouts, and formatting options enable you to create professional-looking presentations efficiently .   

Unleash your creativity to deliver captivating presentations that leave a lasting impact with our Microsoft PowerPoint Masterclass – Sign up now!   

Tips for Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations   

1) Simplicity is key : Keep your slides clean and uncluttered. Use concise bullet points and simple visuals to convey your message effectively .   

2)  Visuals matter : Incorporate relevant, high-quality visuals such as images, charts, and diagrams to enhance understanding and engagement .   

3)  Limit text : Avoid overwhelming your audience with excessive text on slides. Use brief phrases or keywords to communicate key points .   

4)  Choose legible fonts : Opt for clear and readable fonts that are easy to read, even from a distance. Maintain consistency in font styles throughout your presentation .   

5)  Consistent design : Maintain a consistent design theme, including colours, fonts, and layout, to create a visually appealing and professional presentation.   

6)  Emphasise important points : Use visual hierarchy techniques, such as font size, colour, and formatting, to draw attention to essential information .   

7)  Use transitions and animations sparingly : Incorporate slide transitions and animations thoughtfully, focusing on enhancing content and transitions without distracting the audience .   

8)  S lide notes for guidance : Utilise the slide notes feature to include additional details, explanations, or reminders for a well-prepared and confident presentation.   

9)  Practice and time yourself : Rehearse your presentation to ensure smooth delivery and stay within the allocated time. Practice helps you refine your content and delivery.   

10)  Engage the audience : Encourage audience participation through interactive elements, questions, or discussions to foster engagement and make your presentation more memorable.   

By implementing these tips, you can create effective MS PowerPoint presentations that capture attention, communicate information clearly, and engage your audience effectively.  

Conclusion      

We hope this blog has helped you understand What is PowerPoint and how it can help you. It offers powerful features with a user-friendly interface for creating visually appealing presentations. With its tools for organising information, incorporating text and visuals, and delivering impactful content, PowerPoint is a valuable tool for beginners to communicate their ideas effectively .   

Master the art of effective communication and productivity and unlock your potential with our comprehensive Microsoft Office Training – Sign up now!  

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11 Advantages of Using Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations!

By: Author Shrot Katewa

If you suddenly find yourself in a position where you have to present information to other people, you might wonder what software is the best to use to deliver a professional presentation. There are different options to choose from and you just don’t know what to use.

The biggest advantage of using PowerPoint is that PPT files are the most commonly used and widely accepted file formats. PowerPoint is easy to use, cost-effective and boasts a huge online community for support. You also get access to thousands of templates to make your presentation look good.

But, there are several other advantages of using Microsoft PowerPoint for your presentations too. In this article, I’ll some of the most effective benefits of using Microsoft PowerPoint for presentation design!

Note – If you are on the fence but interested in getting PowerPoint, check out this limited-time deal to get Office 365 1-year subscription for the lowest price on Amazon!

1.   Most Widely Accepted File Format

Microsoft PowerPoint is a widely accepted file format where slides are used to convey information. It is a standard component of the Microsoft Office Suite and is compatible with Google Slides, Keynote, and other open-source presentation software.

According to some research results regarding the popularity and use of presentation software, it is estimated that PowerPoint is currently installed on more than a billion computers worldwide ! It is believed that there might be about 30 million PowerPoint presentations created every day.

The advantage of using such a popular and widely used software program is that it is most probably a familiar program for the person you share a presentation with.

2.   Wide Variety of File Export Options

A great advantage offered by PowerPoint is that you can export the whole presentation, or parts of it, in a variety of formats. PowerPoint presentations can also be made available on many different devices, and you can always control what content you want to display.

As you don’t have to send a presentation necessarily in .ppt or .pptx format, the receiver doesn’t require PowerPoint or PowerPoint Viewer to open the presentation.

You can export in PDF format and your layout and design will not be altered. The presentation’s slides can also be saved and exported in .png or .jpg format.

If needed, a presentation can also be exported to a video and saved in Mp4 format. If gifs form part of your presentation, they can be saved and exported as Animated GIFs . 

You always have the print option to export your presentation or parts of the presentation to Word. When you’ve exported it to Word the content can be edited before printing it.

Whichever way of exporting you decide on, you can export the presentation either as a whole or only some of the slides.  And it can be sent as an attachment with an email or you can use the Cloud to facilitate the saving and exporting processes of the presentation.

3.   Provides huge Flexibility in Design & Creativity

PowerPoint provides huge flexibility in design and creativity. You can, for instance, use its visual hierarchy features when you create your slides. With this feature, you assure that the right elements and content catch the eye.

Other features include the merging of shapes, the creation of layers, and the creative use of color. You also get an eyedropper tool in PowerPoint that allows you to use any color from your screen in your presentation!

With the Design Ideas feature , you can create the content of a slide and PowerPoint will offer you a variety of design choices to make it better.

The design features PowerPoint offers can in many aspects be compared to advanced design software solutions like Adobe InDesign. You don’t need separate software to design your slides – PowerPoint provides you with built-in features.

4.   Allows you to Use Creative Templates

The designs of your presentations are what catch the eye and help you to convey your message to your audience. PowerPoint’s creative templates spare you the time of designing your own templates.

However, if you are a good designer yourself, PowerPoint allows you to create your own templates if you want to.

Note – Check out some of the most popular PowerPoint templates on the internet!

When using PowerPoint’s creative templates feature, it automatically generates design ideas to choose from. You get virtually unlimited options because this feature matches the content you are creating to professionally designed layouts in the background.

This template creation feature is a great advantage for users without any design background. It lets you design presentations that look professional even if you don’t have a design background.

5.   Functionality to Use Both Online and Offline

PowerPoint offers you the option to work either online or offline. When you’re using PowerPoint online you can create and share basic presentations directly in your browser. 

But it must be remembered that web-based PowerPoint doesn’t have all the features that you’ll have access to with desktop PowerPoint.  For “normal” presentations the online web version is good enough and you can present your slide show from anywhere where you have internet access.

To utilize all the features of PowerPoint you have to install the software on your desktop device.

PowerPoint offers you the freedom to work online or offline whichever mode suits you the best for a specific presentation. Many PowerPoint users work with both modes – depending on what they are creating and for what purpose.

6.   Allows easy Collaboration and Sharing with other Team Members

PowerPoint is an ideal tool to share and collaborate with team members when you are creating a presentation as a team. You have various options.

You can independently create a presentation and then send it to team members for comments or editing. Or you can work simultaneously on the same presentation with others via web-based PowerPoint or by saving your desktop-created presentation in the Cloud.

7.   Option to Add a vast Variety of Multimedia

PowerPoint provides you with tools to make any presentation more interesting by using multi-media. When using PowerPoint you can in the same presentation have

• text with the option to install additional fonts ,
• videos and video snippets,
• background music,
• a narrator’s voice explaining the visual material on the screen,
• graphics to illustrate tendencies,
• tables to compare information, and more.

And you don’t need separate tools to create interesting presentations – everything is built-in into PowerPoint. You can either just add the various types of files to the presentation or you can add the formats as such into the presentation.   

8.   Suitable for Beginners and Advanced Users alike

The versatility of PowerPoint ensures that on the one hand, presentation creators with advanced design skills are not disappointed with the design tools and possibilities offered by PowerPoint and on the other hand, beginners and people without any designing background can create professional-looking presentations.

 This is one of the most important advantages of PowerPoint – anyone can use it successfully.

9.   Cost is relatively Inexpensive

PowerPoint is normally part of the Microsoft Office package and is included in the Microsoft Office one-off price or subscription. But if you are not a Microsoft Office user, you can purchase PowerPoint from the Microsoft Store at a reasonable price of about $160.

Note – Check out this limited-time deal to get Office 365 1-year subscription for as little as about $60 on Amazon!

Once you’ve purchased PowerPoint you can use it without extra charges to create presentations and to present them for non-commercial purposes. However, there are licensing and relatively small annual fees involved if you use the PowerPoint presentations commercially. 

10. Suitable for Teaching

A PowerPoint presentation in the class is an effective way to reinforce content that has to be retained.

With features like the possibility to record your voice to accompany the PowerPoint slides, it is also easy to convert the presentations that have been used in the class into videos to post online. The students can then review the work done in the class at home.  T

his method works effectively for academic lessons and training sessions.

PowerPoint presentations online can also sometimes be the only way to teach and train students. During the Covid pandemic, for instance, classes are sometimes not possible and online sessions are the only way to keep on teaching.

A large percentage of these online sessions have started as PowerPoint presentations.  

11. Huge Online Community and Microsoft Support for Troubleshooting Issues

Microsoft offers 24/7 support for PowerPoint users and there are literally hundreds of articles online available on how to troubleshoot issues. The huge online community of PowerPoint users is also actively involved on websites like Quora to help fellow users to get solutions for their issues.

Credit to benzoix (on Freepik) for the featured image of this article (further edited)

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• PowerPoint Tutorials

What is PowerPoint and what it is used for

Who has never used a PowerPoint template as visual support for their presentation? However, do we really know what it is and what it is used for?

Although it may be clear to us, answering this question clearly and concisely is not so easy, so Slidesgo has decided to tell you today what PowerPoint is and what it is used for so that you will never have doubts again and everything will be crystal clear.

PowerPoint is a program that belongs to the Microsoft Office suite along with other famous software such as the Word processor or the Excel spreadsheet. It is very likely that you have heard of or even used all of them, but without being completely clear about what they are and what they are for. Let's answer these questions!

What is PowerPoint: Definition

What is powerpoint used for, what is a slide in powerpoint.

As we have mentioned, PowerPoint is, in short, software for editing presentations. Through slides (don't worry, now we are going to talk about them too) you can present the content you want adapting it to your liking.

The editing procedure is simple: either create a new presentation from scratch or modify a previously created template, such as those available in Slidesgo .

There is no limit to creating a PowerPoint template: you can use and edit images, text, music, add animations, and much more. Being creative with PowerPoint is very easy, as the design options are practically endless. If you have doubts about what you can do in PowerPoint and how at Slidesgo School we have a whole section dedicated to PowerPoint tutorials .

So, what do you need to create a PowerPoint presentation? Well, two things. A subscription to the Microsoft Office suite, which will allow you to use their other products and even combine them with your presentations, and, above all, a desire to let your imagination run wild!

We already know what it is, now let's see what it's for so you can start editing and creating your presentations.

In short, PowerPoint is visual support. The information is usually clearer when the speech is accompanied by a visual tool , whether it is an image, a video, or in this case, everything collected in a presentation. 

The two areas in which PowerPoint excels are business and also education , although it can be very useful in any field or subject. You can use, for example, a PowerPoint as a visual aid in the presentation of a marketing plan to capture the attention of the audience or to teach a lesson on history .

Apart from attracting the attention of the listener, PowerPoint allows you to summarize concepts and highlight the information that you believe has priority in your speech.

All right, we are moving up a level. The next question is an "A" question: what is a PowerPoint slide? If you don't know, don't worry, we will tell you in detail.

Slides are the units that make up your presentation. These are the ones you are going to edit and where you are going to add your content. You can add everything previously mentioned: text, tables, charts, graphs, images, videos, you can animate them for transition, change the background, and much more.

And this is the end of the lesson. We hope you found it useful and that it will be a help when you are editing in PowerPoint. If you want to know more about this tool, you can read this article from Slidesgo School about the advantages of Google Slides and PowerPoint .

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Let’s take the most famous formula: E=mc^2, Einstein’s relativity equation. It wouldn’t be the same if it was E=mc2, right? Okay, yes, some people write it like that because it’s very famous and it won’t be misunderstood. But technically… It can! This is where the sophistication of superscript or subscript enters the room! Do you know how to write them in equations, copyright brands or even footnotes in your presentations? Let’s figure out how.

How to Add Superscript and Subscript in PPT

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UMGC Effective Writing Center Introduction to PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is the most widely used presentation tool in the world.

And the most misused.

The reason for its misuse can be stated simply: PowerPoint is not Microsoft Word, although many use it that way when trying to write their presentation and design their slides at the same time. Important rule: "Write it first, design it second."

PowerPoint slides aren't documents with bullets.

Write out what you want to say. Extract main points as if for an outline. Put only these main points on slides with graphics.  Remember:

NO SENTENCES ON SLIDES.

And that is the first reason you should never read from a PowerPoint: they are slideshows, not documents. Reading from a slide is a big no-no because:

PowerPoint & The Modality Effect

One key to an effective PowerPoint presentation is the Modality Effect. The modality effect states: Verbal information is processed more effectively when narrated with a graphic instead of presented as text with a graphic. The modality effect implies that PowerPoint slides are meant for graphics, not merely a way to present your text.

PowerPoint & The Redundancy Principle

Another key to effective PowerPoint presentations is the Redundancy Principle: The human brain cannot process identical simultaneous inputs. Occasionally reading a sentence from a slide can be effective for emphasis. However, reading aloud results in cognitive confusion for the audience: The brain's two processing channels (auditory and visual) cannot process the identical, simultaneous inputs. As a result, the audience tunes or shuts down to reduce the confusion.

Since PowerPoint slides form the basis of most presentations today, it is important that the following principles be incorporated in your PowerPoint.

PowerPoint & Design Rules

Apply the basic principles of graphic design: Visual SPD, which stands for visual space, visual progression and visual differentiation. 

• Space : providing adequate white space between parts of a slide so that each is distinct.
• Progression : providing hierarchy to parts by consistently using numbers, bullets, and indentation for lists.
• Differentiation : giving distinction to chunks with colors (type colors and fill colors), sizes, and shapes.

There is also a PowerPoint-specific design guideline that we would like for you to follow in this workshop:

• Five-by-Five Rule : No more than five bullets per slide. In addition, there should be no more than 1 line per bullet and no more than 5-9 words per line.

"The Beginner's Guide to Microsoft PowerPoint"

Follow along with YouTuber Technology with Teachers as they show you everything you need to know to get started with Microsoft PowerPoint--learn the basics, including choosing a theme, adding text and pictures, creating new slides, animating items, and more.

PowerPoint & Speaker Notes

Remember that you need to consider what you will say during your presentation.  It is customary to insert your what you will say while each slide is being displayed (i.e., your script) into the speaker notes.

Please use the following steps and the video to help you find and insert text into the Speaker Notes.

• First, locate the speaker notes expansion tab on the bottom right of the PPT work area when you are in edit mode. Click once and the notes area will open up.
• Next, copy and paste your pre-written text from your document into the area that says, “Click to add notes.”
• To see the text and edit it, first click on the View tab on the top toolbar. Then in the Presentation Views grouping, select Notes Page. Now you can see the full text and edit it.  (Note: This technique is important when editing large portions of text in the speaker notes area.)
• Again, click on the Notes tab to expand. Copy and paste your full text for this slide into the area marked “Click to Add notes.”

PowerPoint: How to Edit Speaker Notes with "Notes View"

When adding large portions of text to the Speaker Notes area of a PowerPoint presentation, it is important to use the "Notes View" function. PowerPoint's "Notes View" function allows you to edit Speaker Notes as if you were editing a document.

Assignment:

Please produce two slides:

• The first slide should be your presentation's title slide, also sometimes called the "welcome slide." It is what participants see when they enter the room.
• The second slide should be part of your presentation's body. Generally, all body sides have the same basic formatting.  Also, they should contain what you will say during the presentation (i.e., your script) in the Speaker Notes.

Please attach your slides to a reply for feedback.

Other Powerpoint Resources

See other resources that the UMGC Effective Writing Center has collected to help you make a great presentation.

How To Videos

• 5 Basic Principles of PowerPoint Design
• How to Create a Winning PowerPoint
• How to Insert a Hyperlink in PowerPoint
• How to Animate a Build Slide
• How to Create & Edit Speaker's Notes

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Basic tasks for creating a PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint presentations work like slide shows. To convey a message or a story, you break it down into slides. Think of each slide as a blank canvas for the pictures and words that help you tell your story.

Choose a theme

When you open PowerPoint, you’ll see some built-in themes and templates . A theme is a slide design that contains matching colors, fonts, and special effects like shadows, reflections, and more.

On the File tab of the Ribbon, select New , and then choose a theme.

PowerPoint shows you a preview of the theme, with four color variations to choose from on the right side.

Click Create , or pick a color variation and then click Create .

Read more: Use or create themes in PowerPoint

Insert a new slide

On the Home tab, click the bottom half of  New Slide , and pick a slide layout.

Read more: Add, rearrange, and delete slides .

Save your presentation

On the File tab, choose Save .

Pick or browse to a folder.

In the File name box, type a name for your presentation, and then choose Save .

Note:  If you frequently save files to a certain folder, you can ‘pin’ the path so that it is always available (as shown below).

Tip:  Save your work as you go. Press Ctrl+S often or save the file to OneDrive and let AutoSave take care of it for you. 

Read more: Save your presentation file

Select a text placeholder, and begin typing.

Format your text

Select the text.

Under Drawing Tools , choose Format .

Do one of the following:

To change the color of your text, choose Text Fill , and then choose a color.

To change the outline color of your text, choose Text Outline , and then choose a color.

To apply a shadow, reflection, glow, bevel, 3-D rotation, a transform, choose Text Effects , and then choose the effect you want.

Change the fonts

Change the color of text on a slide

Add bullets or numbers to text

Format text as superscript or subscript

Add pictures

On the Insert tab, select Pictures , then do one of the following:

To insert a picture that is saved on your local drive or an internal server, choose This Device , browse for the picture, and then choose Insert .

(For Microsoft 365 subscribers) To insert a picture from our library, choose Stock Images , browse for a picture, select it and choose Insert .

To insert a picture from the web, choose Online Pictures , and use the search box to find a picture. Choose a picture, and then click Insert .

You can add shapes to illustrate your slide. 

On the Insert tab, select Shapes , and then select a shape from the menu that appears.

In the slide area, click and drag to draw the shape.

Select the Format or Shape Format tab on the ribbon. Open the Shape Styles gallery to quickly add a color and style (including shading) to the selected shape.

Add speaker notes

Slides are best when you don’t cram in too much information. You can put helpful facts and notes in the speaker notes, and refer to them as you present.

Click inside the Notes pane below the slide, and begin typing your notes.

Add speaker notes to your slides

Print slides with or without speaker notes

Give your presentation

On the Slide Show tab, do one of the following:

To start the presentation at the first slide, in the Start Slide Show group, click From Beginning .

If you’re not at the first slide and want to start from where you are, click From Current Slide .

If you need to present to people who are not where you are, click Present Online to set up a presentation on the web, and then choose one of the following options:

Broadcast your PowerPoint presentation online to a remote audience

View your speaker notes as you deliver your slide show.

Get out of Slide Show view

To get out of Slide Show view at any time, on the keyboard, press Esc .

You can quickly apply a theme when you're starting a new presentation:

On the File tab, click New .

Select a theme.

Read more:  Apply a design theme to your presentation

In the slide thumbnail pane on the left, select the slide that you want your new slide to follow.

On the Home tab, select the lower half of  New Slide .

From the menu, select the layout that you want for your new slide.

Your new slide is inserted, and you can click inside a placeholder to begin adding content.

Learn more about slide layouts

Read more: Add, rearrange, and delete slides

PowerPoint for the web automatically saves your work to your OneDrive, in the cloud.

To change the name of the automatically saved file:

In the title bar, click the file name.

In the File Name box, enter the name you want to apply to the file.

If you want to change the cloud storage location, at the right end of the Location box, click the arrow symbol, then navigate to the folder you want, then select Move here .

On the Home tab, use the Font options:

Select from other formatting options such as Bold , Italic , Underline , Strikethrough , Subscript , and Superscript .

On the  Insert  tab, select  Pictures .

From the menu, select where you want to insert the picture from:

Browse to the image you want, select it, then select Insert . 

After the image is inserted on the slide, you can select it and drag to reposition it, and you can select and drag a corner handle to resize the image. 

On the slide canvas, click and drag to draw the shape.

Select the Shape tab on the ribbon. Open the Shape Styles gallery to quickly add a color and style (including shading) to the selected shape.

A horizontal Notes pane appears at the bottom of the window, below the slide.

Click in the pane, then enter text. 

On the  Slide Show  tab, select  Play From Beginning .

To navigate through the slides, simply click the mouse or press the spacebar.

Tip:  You can also use the forward and back arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the slide show.

Read more:  Present your slide show

Stop a slide show

To get out of Slide Show view at any time, on the keyboard, press Esc.

The full-screen slide show will close, and you will be returned to the editing view of the file.

Tips for creating an effective presentation

Consider the following tips to keep your audience interested.

Minimize the number of slides

To maintain a clear message and to keep your audience attentive and interested, keep the number of slides in your presentation to a minimum.

Choose an audience-friendly font size

The audience must be able to read your slides from a distance. Generally speaking, a font size smaller than 30 might be too difficult for the audience to see.

Keep your slide text simple

You want your audience to listen to you present your information, instead of reading the screen. Use bullets or short sentences, and try to keep each item to one line.

Some projectors crop slides at the edges, so that long sentences might be cropped.

Use visuals to help express your message

Pictures, charts, graphs, and SmartArt graphics provide visual cues for your audience to remember. Add meaningful art to complement the text and messaging on your slides.

As with text, however, avoid including too many visual aids on your slide.

Make labels for charts and graphs understandable

Use only enough text to make label elements in a chart or graph comprehensible.

Apply subtle, consistent slide backgrounds

Choose an appealing, consistent template or theme that is not too eye-catching. You don't want the background or design to detract from your message.

However, you also want to provide a contrast between the background color and text color. The built-in themes in PowerPoint set the contrast between a light background with dark colored text or dark background with light colored text.

For more information about how to use themes, see Apply a theme to add color and style to your presentation .

Check the spelling and grammar

To earn and maintain the respect of your audience, always check the spelling and grammar in your presentation .

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Which Industries & Professions Use PowerPoint?

Acquiring professional PowerPoint training can drastically improve your career prospects across various industries, including business, education, marketing, and human resources. Learning how to effectively use PowerPoint provides a valuable skill set that can boost a prospective career change or advance in your current field.

Key Insights

• PowerPoint, a standard part of the Microsoft Office suite, is most commonly used for presenting information in a vibrant, memorable, and professional manner across various industries.
• PowerPoint skills can enhance career prospects in multiple sectors, including business, education, marketing, and human resources.
• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a significant growth in various business-related professions, with Financial Analysts, Management Analysts, and Project Management Specialists experiencing higher than average growth rates.
• Teaching jobs are expected to grow in line with the average U.S. job growth rate, with New York, California, Massachusetts, Washington, and Connecticut offering the highest salaries for teachers.
• The future outlook for marketing jobs is robust, with the roles of Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers projected to grow significantly faster than the average U.S. job growth rate.
• Salaries for Human Resources Specialists are highest in the District of Columbia, New York, Washington, and New Jersey.

PowerPoint is a slideshow presentation software program created by Microsoft. It is a standard part of the Microsoft Office suite. An essential aspect of receiving professional PowerPoint training to set yourself up for a career change is learning what fields and industries that training will help you find work in. Each industry will have different requirements and expectations for prospective employees, and you should consider these expectations when you start your training. This is true for students who have an idea of what kind of work they want to do and for students who aren’t yet sure what path to take after learning PowerPoint skills.

What is PowerPoint?

Microsoft PowerPoint is a slideshow editing tool built to help users organize information, communicate effectively, and produce presentations to deliver through live address or without a presenter. It is the most commonly used presentation software across almost all professional industries. With PowerPoint, users can easily create vibrant and memorable presentations that quickly communicate meaning in a professional setting. They can add animations, transitions, graphics, and other imagery to their slides, ensuring they produce both communicative and impressive presentations for their audience.

Read more about what PowerPoint is and why you should learn it.

What Can You Do with PowerPoint Skills?

PowerPoint allows users to create vibrant and memorable visual presentations that can serve a wide variety of purposes. Its advanced features let users integrate dynamic animations and 3D-modeled graphics into their designs, creating more complex presentations than simple text projected onto a screen. Some people use PowerPoint to create informative slideshows that condense complicated information into a single, easy-to-digest presentation. This makes the program ideal for instructors and professionals who regularly host informational seminars. Other users utilize the program to persuade audiences, such as entrepreneurs meeting with potential investors, who might use PowerPoint to create memorable and persuasive presentations that convince the audience to invest in a product.

Common Industries That Use PowerPoint

There aren’t many industries that rely on PowerPoint as a primary design tool. However, at the same time, this program is used widely and regularly for a wide range of different jobs. For instance, professionals in the business world commonly use it to condense and share information with colleagues and stakeholders. PowerPoint is also a popular teaching tool. It isn’t limited to these fields, though. PowerPoint is a valuable tool in almost any professional setting.

PowerPoint is a great way to condense and present information and is widely used in a variety of business settings. Professionals in the business world frequently need to share information with team members, stakeholders, and others outside of the business. For instance, there might be a need to share project information with team members or to condense large amounts of data and highlight important points for stakeholders. PowerPoint is an effective tool for these purposes and many others. It is useful in live meetings and can be used to create presentations uploaded to a server or emailed to others.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides job information for various industries. According to BLS statistics, many different business-related professions will experience growth in the near future. For instance, it finds that the employment of Financial Analysts will grow by 9 percent in the next ten years, faster than the average U.S. job growth rate of only 5 percent. For Management Analysts, the growth rate is projected to be 11 percent , and for Project Management Specialists , it is expected to be 7 percent.

Teachers and other educators often rely on PowerPoint to help them present information in a way that is easy to understand and remember. For example, teachers often create PowerPoint slides that show the critical points of a lecture, making it easier for students to understand these points and take notes. Teachers frequently include visuals in their PowerPoint presentations, which is another effective way of helping students understand new information.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides job outlook data for many different industries. It reports that kindergarten and elementary teaching jobs will likely grow at a rate of 4 percent over the next ten years, middle school teaching jobs will grow about 4 percent , and high school teaching jobs 5 percent . These are all close to the average U.S. job growth rate of 5 percent, meaning that teaching is likely to be a stable industry in the near future. According to BLS statistics, New York, California, Massachusetts, Washington, and Connecticut are the highest-paying states for teachers

The marketing industry involves researching trends and designing and creating marketing strategies and campaigns to promote various products and services. Marketing professionals can use PowerPoint to create presentations and reports related to these activities and share information with team members and clients. Since PowerPoint presentations can include a wide variety of visuals and other creative elements, they can be particularly effective as a way to convince potential clients.

According to statistics provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, marketing jobs have a strong future outlook. The agency predicts that employment of Advertising, Promotions, and Marketing Managers will grow by 10 percent in the next ten years, and employment of Market Research Analysts will grow by 19 percent . The average U.S. job growth rate is only 5 percent. California and New York rank high for both employment levels and wages for both Market Research Analysts and Marketing Managers .

Human Resources

One of the roles of a Human Resources Manager is to oversee the process of hiring new employees. This involves sharing large amounts of information about the company procedures and resources and what is expected of these new employees. Many Human Resources Managers Utilize PowerPoint for this purpose. The program allows them to present important information in a format that is easy for new employees to understand and remember. PowerPoint presentations can also be saved, giving employees access to that information at a later date.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in the next ten years, the employment of Human Resources Specialists will grow by 8 percent faster than average. It finds that California, Texas, Florida, and New York have the highest employment levels for this job, while the District of Columbia, New York, Washington, and New Jersey are the top-paying states.

Learn PowerPoint Skills with Noble Desktop

Professionals looking to learn PowerPoint may consider skills development training through Noble Desktop. These courses, available in person at Noble’s Manhattan campus and through live online instruction, will give students hands-on training in designing and organizing information using PowerPoint. 

Noble offers a PowerPoint Bootcamp , which teaches students–even those without prior PowerPoint experience–how to design compelling and evocative presentations. It covers layouts, adding animations and graphics, and working with layers, charts, graphs, and other objects, in addition to more advanced skills. Since PowerPoint is a design program, Noble offers students a PowerPoint Presentation Design course . This class focuses on the rhetorical and theoretical side of communicating through PowerPoint. 

Key Takeaways

• PowerPoint is regularly used in a wide range of different jobs.
• Professionals in many businesses use PowerPoint to share information with colleagues and other interested parties.
• Teachers often incorporate PowerPoint into their lectures.
• Marketing professionals use PowerPoint for presentations and reports.
• With PowerPoint, Human Resources Managers can present important information to new employees.
• Noble Desktop offers several different PowerPoint classes live online and at its New York City campus.

How to Learn PowerPoint

Master PowerPoint with hands-on training. PowerPoint is a popular Microsoft Office application for designing and delivering slideshow presentations.

• PowerPoint Bootcamp at Noble Desktop : live, instructor-led course available in NYC or live online
• Find PowerPoint Classes Near You : Search & compare dozens of available courses in-person
• Attend a  PowerPoint class live online  (remote/virtual training) from anywhere
• Find & compare the  best online PowerPoint classes (on-demand)  from the top providers and platforms
• Train your staff with  corporate and onsite PowerPoint training

Sometimes abbreviated as PP or PPT , PowerPoint is a presentation program developed by Microsoft that creates a slide show of important information, charts, and images for a presentation. PowerPoint is frequently used for business and school presentations.

Where do you find or start PowerPoint?

• PowerPoint example.
• Benefits of PowerPoint.
• Related information.

If you have Microsoft PowerPoint or the entire Microsoft Office package installed in Microsoft Windows, you can find PowerPoint in your Start menu .

Realize that new computers do not include PowerPoint. It must be purchased and installed before it can run on your computer.

If you do not have PowerPoint and don't want to purchase Microsoft Office to get it, you can try using Google Slides , a free online presentation program similar to PowerPoint.

If PowerPoint is installed on your computer, but you can't find it in your Start menu, use the following steps to launch PowerPoint manually:

• Open My Computer .
• Click or select the C: drive . If Microsoft Office is installed on a drive other than the C: drive, select that drive instead.
• Navigate to the Program Files (x86) folder, then the Microsoft Office folder.
• If there is a root folder in the Microsoft Office folder, open that folder. Then open the OfficeXX folder , where XX is the version of Office (e.g., Office16 for Microsoft Office 2016). If there is no root folder, look for and open a folder with "Office" in the name.
• Look for a file named POWERPNT.EXE and double-click that file to start Microsoft PowerPoint.

Start PowerPoint without using a mouse

Follow these steps to launch PowerPoint without using a mouse.

• Press the Windows key .
• Type powerpoint .
• Select the PowerPoint entry in the search results using the arrow keys and press Enter to launch the PowerPoint application.

PowerPoint example

The picture below is an example of how Microsoft PowerPoint appears, with a red description in each major area.

PowerPoint slides may contain only text, or they can include pictures, videos, or animated text and images. Text may be formatted in the same ways as Microsoft Word , with custom color, size, and font type.

While the look and feel of PowerPoint has changed over the years, the functionality has remained mostly the same.

Microsoft PowerPoint files have the file extension .ppt or .pptx .

Benefits of PowerPoint

PowerPoint provides multiple benefits to users, including:

• It is widely used and considered the "standard" for presentation software. If you create a PowerPoint presentation, it's more likely to be easier for others to open and view.
• It includes many optional presentation features, including slide transitions, animations, layouts, templates, etc.
• It offers the option to export its slides to alternative file formats, including GIF (graphics interchange format) and JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) images, MPEG-4 video, PDF (Portable Document Format), RTF (rich text format), WMV (Windows Media Video), and PowerPoint XML (extensible markup language).

Related information

• How to create or add a slide in Microsoft PowerPoint.
• How to insert a picture in Microsoft PowerPoint.
• How to add a video to a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.
• How to insert a sound file into a PowerPoint presentation.
• How to add or remove animations in a PowerPoint slide.
• How to start and stop a PowerPoint slide show.
• Microsoft PowerPoint help and support.
• Software help and support.

Business terms , CamelCase , Computer abbreviations , File viewer , Google Slides , Notes Pane , Office , Office 365 , Office Online , Presentation program , Productivity tools , Software terms , Transition

Oral Presentations

Presentation tools.

First of all, decide whether you need to use PowerPoint, another presentation tool such as Powtoon, VoiceThread , YouTube, or no tool at all. The tool you choose depends on a number of factors:

• size of audience – if you have a very small audience, using PowerPoint or other presentation tools may seem too formal
• need for visuals – if images will help your audience better understand your information, choose a presentation tool that can easily and clearly house those images
• presentation context – is your presentation in-person?  Is your presentation virtual?  If virtual, is it real-time or asynchronous?
• need for personalization – if you want to personalize in a virtual presentation, you may want to consider YouTube or a synchronous tool such as Skype or Zoom that allows your audience to see you as you present
• expected format – if most presentations in your organization, or to outside organizations, usually occur in a certain medium, use that medium

Note that PowerPoint is very widely used professionally, but don’t choose PowerPoint just because of that fact.  Choose a presentation tool (or none) based on your purpose, audience, and context.  The rest of this page discusses a few very standard presentation tools that may be appropriate and useful to your presentations.  Realize that there are many more.

PowerPoint has been a standard presentation tool for decades.  With a market share of approximately 95 percent, PowerPoint is considered the industry standard for both business and education. PowerPoint supports over 100 languages and can be used on both Android and Mac devices. There are over 1 billion installations of PowerPoint worldwide, with 30 million presentations created daily.  Because it has been used so widely and for so long, if you determine that PowerPoint is the best tool for a presentation, your task will be to make it memorable, so that your audience doesn’t experience “death by PowerPoint.”  Here are some things to consider to create effective PowerPoint presentations:

• a PowerPoint is not – emphasize not – just your text put onto a slide. Include visuals, charts, diagrams, etc. along with text
• reduce text to main ideas – too much text is hard to read, and audiences cannot read and listen at the same time
• make sure there is enough “white space” on slides so that they are not crammed with too much information
• use a consistent, standard font, usually a sans serif (i.e., no decorative lines on the letters)
• present written information using a font size that your audience can quickly read – no smaller than 20-30 point
• current practice is moving away from PowerPoint’s pre-structured formats, and more toward blank slides, varied in their layout, to maintain audience interest
• maintain a consistent color palette throughout your varied slide designs

The following videos provide tips for creating effective PowerPoint slides.

To emphasize the need to apply good design principles to PowerPoint slides, look at the following three files.

• The first example provides a student PowerPoint  based on a formal proposal.  The content is very good for a formal proposal but not for a PowerPoint, as it’s all text.
• The second example is a professional presentation which applies some of the design principles discussed, in terms of reducing information on the slides, but uses a standard format.
• The third example offers the same information as the second example, but designs and presents that information differently, using visuals and varying the format.

If you were in the audience for these presentations, which one would you want to hear/see?

Although the next video is intended as a sales video, it contains a useful discussion of pre-formatted vs. free-form PowerPoint slides, with examples.

YouTube can be used for more than entertainment or sales; it can be a useful presentation tool. You may choose to create a YouTube video as your presentation, or to use within a presentation, for a number of reasons:

• to illustrate an overall process or procedure, to help your audience understand by actually seeing it
• to illustrate a small, key step in a process or procedure
• to vary a PowerPoint by inserting a video into the PowerPoint, to illustrate a process or procedure
• to provide specific training when a video makes sense, given the focus of the training (e.g., customer service training – what and what not to do)
• to personalize a virtual presentation and let your audience see and engage with you as the presenter

If you choose to use YouTube as a presentation tool, keep in mind some tips for creating effective YouTube videos in terms of content, delivery, and overall look of the video.

• Keep it relatively short.  Videos over 4-5 minutes may lose viewers.
• Plan your content carefully.  Let your viewers know what you will cover, and then move directly into your main ideas.  Write yourself a script to follow, using language that you’d normally use when speaking.
• Emphasize key ideas by using language on the screen as well as visuals.
• Even though it’s a good idea to write a script, practice your delivery so that it does not seem as though you’re reading from your script.
• Speak clearly, and at an appropriate pace.
• Use language appropriate for your audience.
• Make sure that your sound is clear, without background noise.
• Use a professional background.  Filming in your kitchen or living room, or in an office with other people passing in the hallway, may not present a professional image.
• Consider lighting, so that your audience does not see reflections.
• Create a video that’s interesting to view, with images, animations, charts, or any visuals appropriate to your audience and purpose.

View the following video to see an example of a short presentation whose purpose is to instruct.  What characteristics make it effective for you as a viewer?

Skype and Zoom are synchronous online tools.  Both allow you to hear and see your audience, share your desktop or presentation slides so that all participants can see, and maintain a written dialogue in a sidebar, which can complement the spoken dialogue.  Use Skype or Zoom if you want to include interaction and real-time discussion as part of your presentation to a geographically scattered audience.

Here are some tips for using Skype and Zoom:

• Outline your purpose and key points so that you have them in front of you, since it’s up to you to administer and supervise the flow of the meeting.
• As presenter, decide if and at exactly what points in the presentation you want to share your desktop or slides.
• Set interaction expectations at the start, especially if you have a relatively large number of participants.  For example, ask people to write “hand” or “talk” in the chat when they want to contribute, and then include them in the order in which they asked.
• Just as with a YouTube video, consider your background environment, lighting, and sound.  Especially when using Skype or Zoom, sign in early to adjust the camera angle on the computer so that your face shows appropriately.

The following video illustrates tips for using Skype or any other synchronous, online presentation tool.

Low-Tech Presentation Tools

If you are presenting in person, don’t forget various standard, low-tech presentation tools such as using a whiteboard, flip charts,  or handouts.

Whiteboard and Flip Charts

Use a whiteboard and/or flip charts if you need to record ideas, or want to emphasize key points.  Make sure to write legibly, and large enough so that your audience can easily read what you write.  It’s best to use a dark ink on white, and incorporate only one-two more colors if needed for emphasis.

If you use a whiteboard or flip charts, make sure that they are incidental to and not the focus of your presentation.  You want your audience to focus on you and the message you’re conveying.

The key questions related to handouts are whether to use them, and when to hand them out.  Is your presentation relatively simple or complex?  How many key points do you think your audience will retain on their own?  Ask and answer those questions to determine if you want to use handouts.

When considering when to provide a handout, you run the risk of your audience reading and not listening to/focusing on your presentation, and you invite distraction noise caused by audience members rifling through your handout, if you hand information out before or at the start of your presentation.  If you hand out information at the end, you run the risk of not getting that information to all audience members, you invite some disruption by having audience members stand up to take photos of your slides with their phones during your presentation, and you lose the chance to explain concepts more fully by referring them to a certain page on your handout. Determine what type of information your audience needs and when they need it in order to decide whether and when to provide handouts.

If you have never worked with PowerPoint or YouTube

Here are a few useful videos for beginners, from Lynda.com:

• Learning PowerPoint 2019 , Garrick Chow, 1 hr 16 min
• Learning PowerPoint Desktop (Office 365), Garrick Chow, 1 hr 11 min
• Presentation Tools, minimal information from Business Communication Skills for Managers, see attributions below. Authored by : Susan Oaks. Project : Communications for Professionals. License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial
• video Create Slides People Will Remember. Provided by : Harvard Business Review. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeV2fHEM4RI . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video
• video How to Give an Awecome (Powerpoint) Presentation. Provided by : Wienot Films. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i68a6M5FFBc . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video
• video Presentation Design Principles for Better Powerpoint Design. Provided by : BriteCarbon. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OlNF2iNfHU . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video
• video How to Organize and Make an Effective Presentation. Authored by : John H. Provided by : Smead. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCXQUwVcuVU . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video
• video Tips for Effective Skype Meetings. Provided by : CreativeBusinessBuild. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO3VJOM9ykQ . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video
• image man writing on whiteboard. Authored by : rawpixel. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/photos/board-business-company-creative-2449726/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
• Using Microsoft PowerPoint. Authored by : Nina Burokas. Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wmopen-businesscommunicationmgrs/chapter/using-microsoft-powerpoint/ . Project : Business Communication Skills for Managers. License : CC BY: Attribution
• video Teach Your Students the Modern Slide Design That Many Presentation Specialists Now Advocate. Authored by : Courtland Bovee. Provided by : Bovee and Thill Business Communication Videos. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsE6LNi83DM&list=PLOLNszug-ppev44SC_YG15lIWnOAqhKqV . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Using PowerPoint for Presentations

If you want to make visually captivating and professional-looking presentations, understanding PowerPoint and the benefits of PowerPoint is vital for you. Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular presentation tool used by students and professionals daily. 

Using PowerPoint has made communicating complex ideas and data easier and more engaging, thanks to its user-friendly interface and customizable presentation templates . While there are many benefits of powerpoint, it also has some drawbacks. This article examines what PowerPoint presentations offer and what they don’t. If you are still determining whether it is the right tool for your next presentation, we will help you decide.

What is Microsoft PowerPoint and How Does It Help Create Presentations?

Microsoft PowerPoint is a part of the Microsoft Office Suite developed by Microsoft Corporation. It is a widely used tool for making slideshows or presentations, including images, video, text, animation, and other multimedia elements. Users can use PowerPoint to effectively present their ideas and data to a broad audience in a simple and easy-to-understand manner.  It also helps in creating presentations real quick! So, let us see how it helps with the same: 

• Visual Appeal : Visual appeal is one of the main benefits of PowerPoint. Incorporating PowerPoint graphics , images, and multimedia elements facilitates the creation of visually appealing and engaging presentations in PowerPoint.
• Customization : One of the many benefits of PowerPoint presentations is the freedom to customize the template. It offers various customizable templates with different designs, tools, and effects that help the users or presenters to tailor their slides or presentations to the subject matter and audience.
• Multimedia Integration : To improve the quality and impact of the presentation, users can integrate multimedia elements in PowerPoint, like high-quality videos, audio, animations., etc.
• Audience Engagement : PowerPoint provides various tools and features, such as interactive polls and quizzes, to engage the audience and promote participation during the presentation.
• Accessibility : Accessibility is one of the advantages of PowerPoint that allows users to create presentations accessible to a broad audience, including those with hearing or visual impairments, through features such as closed captions and alternative text descriptions.

What Are The Top 10 Benefits Of Using PowerPoint For Presentation?

The benefits of using PowerPoint are not limited only to efficiently conveying ideas in a meeting, college or school presentations. Apart from students and business professionals, people in the creative field also use PowerPoint to create mood boards or to ideate any creative project. So, if you are wondering what are the benefits of using Microsoft PowerPoint then keep on reading: 

Offers Excellent Data Visualization

• Great Audience Engagement 

Create Visually Stunning Slides Quickly

Multiple interactive features, gives accessibility to different features, has various designs, and you can even create yours, highly collaborative tool.

• PowerPoint Presentations Can Be Saved In Various Platforms
• Helps To Communicate With The Audience Professionally

Offers Consistency To Each Slide

Great audience interaction.

PowerPoint Presentation Can Be Saved In Various Formats

Helps communicate with the audience professionally.

Now that we have discussed the advantages of Microsoft PowerPoint, let us jump onto seeing some of its disadvantages.

What Are The Disadvantages Of Using PowerPoint For Presentation?

Apart from the various benefits of Microsoft PowerPoint, it also has some disadvantages. Let us see some of the drawbacks of using PowerPoint for presentations: 

• Over-Reliance on Slides

Information Overload

• Files are not saved automatically
• Lack of originality
• Most features usually remain unexplored

Over Reliance on Slides

Files are not saved automatically, lack of originality, most features usually remain unexplored, when should i use powerpoint to create presentations.

Due to the diverse benefits of Microsoft PowerPoint, there are various instances when a user can use PowerPoint for Presentations. For example, when a user wants to present complex information or wants to include visual aids to support the information or wants to present to an audience that is not physically present or intends to propose an idea in a business meeting or conference. Here is a table showing how different professionals can use PowerPoint: 

Final Thoughts

Presenting visually appealing and engaging presentations can be achieved with PowerPoint. In addition to offering a wide range of design tools and features, it offers several communication tools that help presenters effectively communicate their ideas to a wide audience. 

However, apart from the benefits of a PowerPoint presentation, it’s imperative to remember that it also has disadvantages. The disadvantages include the potential for information overload, lack of originality, and the risk of disengaging the audience if not used appropriately. 

When choosing PowerPoint for a presentation, the decision should be based on the presentation’s goals and needs. In addition, the audience and the presenter should have their preferences taken into consideration.

Can I rely solely on PowerPoint to deliver an effective presentation?

How can i avoid information overload in my powerpoint presentation, can i use powerpoint presentations for remote presentations or online meetings, is it necessary to use templates for my powerpoint presentations, how can i ensure my powerpoint presentations are accessible to all audiences.

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Impactful PowerPoints: Why Professional Presentations Are Essential for Your Business

Businesses of all sizes use presentations to achieve a whole host of goals. Whether you’re selling a new product, onboarding new team members or educating potential investors, an effective PowerPoint allows you to showcase and enhance your message. The question is – are you using a trustworthy and creative design service to maximise your presentations’ potential? In today’s blog, we’re going to explain why professional PowerPoints are essential for your business.

What Is a PowerPoint Presentation?

While most people already have a basic understanding of what a PowerPoint is, let’s take a quick dive for maximum clarity. Traditionally, PowerPoint refers to Microsoft’s virtual slideshow software. While the term is technically specific to the tech giant, most people in the modern-day use the word PowerPoint to refer to any kind of digital presentation. Most software options like Keynote or Google Slides offer a templating system which allows users to fill in the blanks, as well as a host of different graphic and text elements to enhance design.  According to a 2020 survey, Microsoft PowerPoint is the most widely used presentation software globally. In fact, more than 35 million PowerPoint presentations are given each day to over 500 million audiences! If that isn’t a reason to incorporate them into your business strategy, we’re unsure what is…

What Makes a Presentation Impactful?

Now for the critical question: what makes a presentation impactful?  The truth is, it ultimately depends on the purpose of your PowerPoint. If you’re trying to convince your audience to participate in a charity event, it should be informative, motivating and emotionally appealing. Alternatively, if you’re looking for a loan from the bank, your presentation should be stat-driven, professional and easy to understand.   As a rule of thumb, ALL presentations should be:   — Branded to match your business or organisation — Clear, concise and minimal indesign — Always free from errors, typos or mistakes — Tailored to your target audience — User-friendly and customisable

5 Reasons Why Professional Presentations Are Essential for Your Business

Achieve maximum consistency.

Now imagine you’re the client – how do you feel? If confusion and apprehension come to mind, you’re probably on the right track.  ‍ Picture the scene. You’ve organised a sales pitch with one of your loyal clients, but this time you’re sending a new team member to secure the deal. The audience awaits the presentation, only to find it looks completely different to anything they’ve ever seen from your brand before. There are no logos, the colours are off, and the imagery just doesn’t match your visual identity. Investing in a professional design service allows you to make sure your presentations fit seamlessly with your brand identity – no matter who’s delivering them. This level of consistency is what takes your business to the next level, showcasing your values while making professionalism a priority.

Boost Face-to-Face Interactions

Another BIG benefit of professional presentations for businesses is the opportunity to meet face-to-face. While PowerPoints can easily be emailed over or shared via Zoom, they also give you the chance to meet potential clients or investors and win them over in person. In fact, this is often the most persuasive way to secure a deal and is bound to give you a competitive edge, according to Olivia Mitchell. The thing that sets bog-standard presentations apart from their professional counterparts is design. The colours you use, the visuals you incorporate and the flow of your presentation will make ALL the difference, so make sure you brand up effectively before your meeting.

Enhance Versatility and Accessibility

Having a bank of professionally designed PowerPoint presentations at your disposal is a major win for your business, especially if versatility, flexibility and accessibility are important. If you’re constantly switching between different target audiences or changing the aim of your presentations, being able to make minor adjustments without impacting your robust brand strategy is essential.  

Communicate With Your Audience

Professional and innovative presentations unlock a whole load of potential that you might have never thought to tap into, giving you new ways to communicate with your audiences. 70% of marketers believe that presenting interactive content is key for engaging your audience, something only possible with the right tools to make that connection. If you’re struggling to hold your audience's attention, a PowerPoint designed by a professional could be the solution. Striking visual imagery or graphics will pique their interest, and branded content will reaffirm your mission, allowing your presentation to speak for itself.

Get Creative With Facts and Figures

Let’s admit it: statistics may be impactful, but they can also be pretty boring. If your audience has already faced a long day of mind-numbing presentations, the last thing you want is to send them to sleep with a meaningless list of numbers.  Professional PowerPoint presentations allow you to put those numbers into context. Through innovative charts, digestible graphs or even creative animation, you can bring your statistics to life in a way that engages, motivates and inspires. Polling in-situ is also soaring in popularity, so why not collect some data in the moment while enhancing your interactivity?  No matter how you choose to represent the numbers, a professionally designed presentation is bound to make things more interesting.

Need help bringing your presentations to life? Ready to take your PowerPoint branding to the next level? We’ve got you covered. Get in touch today to boost audience engagement and maximise your presentation’s potential!

What to read next?

Why you need a brand, not just a logo, illustration, illustration and design trends 2022, why professional presentations are essential for your business, cookie policy.

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Chm Blog Curatorial Insights , From the Collection , Software History Center

Slide logic: the emergence of presentation software and the prehistory of powerpoint, by david c. brock | october 04, 2016.

In many parts of our world today, group communication centers on visual materials built with “presentation software,” often crafted by a speaker him or herself. As a result, meetings now generally depend on the use of personal computers, presentation software in the guises of product or service and display by digital projectors or flat-screens.

A humorous sample PowerPoint presentation supplied with the very first version in 1987. This clip was created with PowerPoint 1.0 for Mac running in a Mac Plus emulator.

So central have these visual materials become that the intended functioning of digital files, programs, computers, and peripherals has become an almost necessary condition for public communication. Choice of presentation software has even become a mark of generational and other identities, as in whether one uses Facebook or Snapchat. Millennials and Generation Z choose Google Slides or Prezi. Everyone else uses PowerPoint, its mirror-twin by Apple called Keynote, or, for political expression and/or economic necessity, LibreOffice. Membership in a highly technical community can be signified by using the typesetting program LaTeX to build equation-heavy slides.

It is PowerPoint, nevertheless, that has become the “Kleenex” or “Scotch Tape” of presentation software. A “PowerPoint” has come to commonly mean any presentation created with software. Microsoft rightly boasts that there are currently 1.2 billion copies of PowerPoint at large in the world today: One copy of PowerPoint for every seven people. In any given month, approximately 200 million of these copies are actively used. PowerPoint is simply the dominant presentation software on the planet. 1

It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that PowerPoint was not the first presentation program. Rather, there were several programs for personal computers that performed similarly to PowerPoint in many respects, which appeared starting in 1982—fully five years before PowerPoint’s debut. PowerPoint’s ubiquity is not the result of a first-mover advantage. 2

Further, many of PowerPoint’s most familiar characteristics—the central motif of a slide containing text and graphics, bulleted lists, the slide show, the slide sorter, and even showy animated transitions between slides—were not absolute novelties when PowerPoint appeared. These elements had been introduced in one form or another in earlier presentation software.

Here, the principal developers of PowerPoint—Dennis Austin and Tom Rudkin—describe the structure of the source code defining slides. Austin and Rudkin worked closely with the product’s architect, Bob Gaskins. This document is in a collection of materials donated to the Computer History Museum by Dennis Austin.

From 1982 through 1987, software makers introduced roughly a dozen programs for several different personal computers that allowed users to create visual materials for public presentations as a series of “slides” containing text and graphic elements. Frequently, these slides were printed on paper for incorporation into a photocopied report and transferred to a set of transparencies for use with an overhead projector. Other presentation programs allowed slides to be output as a sequence of 35mm photographic slides for use with a slide projector, a videotape of a series of slide images, or a digital file of screen-images for computer monitors. Makers and users called these programs “presentation software,” and just as commonly “business graphics software.” “Business” here is significant, I think. 3

Early presentation software was most commonly used to create overhead presentations. In this clip, Dennis Austin—a principal developer of PowerPoint—demonstrates the use of overhead projectors and presentations.

The six years from 1982 through 1987 saw the emergence of presentation software (including PowerPoint), with multiple makers introducing competing programs offering many similar capabilities and idioms. Why did multiple, independent software creators develop presentation software for personal computers at just this moment?

I believe that an analytical framework that I developed with historian Christophe Lécuyer to understand episodes in the history of solid-state electronics can also help us to unpack this very different case from software history. Our framework consists of three “contextual logics” that we argue shaped the emergence of the planar transistor, the silicon microchip, the simultaneous-invention of silicon-gate MOS technology, and, as Christophe and Takahiro Ueyama recently show, the history of blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs). 4

In their 2013 article, “The Logics of Materials Innovation,” Christophe and Takahiro describe these logics beautifully:

This framework distinguishes different types of contextual challenges that shape the creation of new materials and manufacturing processes: the materiality of substances, tools, and fabrication techniques (referred to as “material logic”); the needs, demands and interests of intended customers (“market logic”); and the competitive tensions among laboratories, firms, and nations (“competitive logic”). These material, market, and competitive logics are not determinative, in the sense that they do not lead to necessary outcomes. But they are particularly stable over time and provide powerful resources and constraints to innovators and their patrons.

The implication seems straightforward: People from similar backgrounds, in similar organizations, facing a common, structured set of contextual logics, will do similar—but not identical—things. But can these logics that help make sense of the history of semiconductor electronics, a technology deeply about materials, also give insights into the history of the ne plus ultra of the digital—software itself? I think it can. Competitive logic, Market logic, and Material logic: Let’s consider them in that order, and see what they can mean for the “prehistory” of PowerPoint.

Competitive logic centered on software makers. In the first half of the 1980s, makers of presentation software were typically connected to companies. There were, of course, makers of non-commercial software of various stripes—hobbyist, open source, libre and the like—but they do not appear to have been a factor in early presentation software. Rather, the makers of presentation software were what I call “integrated software manufacturers,” “software publishers,” and “author houses.” Sometimes the boundaries between these maker-types are blurry, but I think the categories are useful.

Integrated software manufacturers, ranging from cottage firms to public companies, wrote code, manufactured it mainly on magnetic media, wrote and printed technical documentation and guides, and distributed it in shrink-wrapped boxes. For integrated software manufacturers of this era, think of Microsoft, Lotus Development, and MicroPro International." Software publishers" did everything that the integrated manufacturers did, except write the code. Rather, they entered into contracts on a royalty basis with those who did write programs. Software publishers ran the gamut from stand-alone companies that only produced software written by others, to firms that published a mix of programs written internally and externally, and also to computer makers like Apple, who published software written by others under their own label as well as selling their own programs. Code authors ranged from individual sole proprietorships to “author shops,” partnerships between two or more programmers in an LLP or a small company.

The origins of Microsoft, perhaps the best-known integrated software manufacturer.

These author shops, publishers, and integrated manufacturers were, by 1982, competing in a growing market for personal computer application software: Spreadsheets, word processors, databases and “business graphics” programs that often used data from spreadsheets to generate line-graphs, pie-charts, bar-graphs, and other standard plots used in business, science, and engineering. This battle for market share in applications for personal computers was the ‘competitive logic’ for presentation software’s emergence. 5

“Market logic” centered on the intended users of software, and, in the case of presentation software, focused to the communication practices of white-collar workers in the United States (and, perhaps, elsewhere), particularly “managers” and “executives.” Contemporary commentators noted that personal-computer “business” software like spreadsheets represented a turn in “office automation,” the opening of a new phase in which software users would expand beyond specialists and secretaries to managers and executives. Personal computers with new software would be in the offices of Mahogany Row in addition to the accounting department and the typing pool.

For example, in September 1982, John Unger Zussman, a columnist for InfoWorld, noted: “…the market is changing. An examination of the changing word-processor marketplace can tell us a lot about the maturation of microcomputers and give us a clue to the role of micros in the office of the future. ‘There’s an expanding concept of reality in the modern office,’ says Gary Smith, NCR’s director of marketing. Software oriented toward managers, such as spreadsheet and slide-show programs and electronic mail, has increased the demand for distributed data processing. It is now legitimate for a computer to appear on a manager’s desk—or a secretary’s. The personal workstation, says Smith, is becoming ‘the major focus of white-collar productivity.’ This was not always the case. In the past, computers were the province of the data-processing department…and, besides, managers wouldn’t be caught dead typing at a keyboard…word processing became a stepping-stone into the automated office…the introduction of microcomputers into the office of the future seems to be more a process of infiltration than one of direct assault.” 6

In this 1979 commercial, Xerox presented just this vision of the office of the future.

In a 1984 article in the Proceedings of the IEEE titled “A New Direction in Personal Computer Software,” MIT Sloan School professor Hoo-Min Toong, with his postdoc Amar Gupta, identified the crux of the market logic to which presentation software was a response: The time that executives and managers spent in meetings. They write: “Top managers are noted to spend four-fifths of their time attending meetings—delivering or receiving presentations and reports, communicating, and gathering information for subsequent meetings. Meetings are the most prominent, time consuming element of an executive’s job.” They continue: “At present, business personal computers only represent information in numeric form, in text, and in simple charts and graphs. A crucial missing component is the ability to present and manipulate visual, pictorial data…A new layer…will bridge the gap from the present position…to supporting business communications with sophisticated images and color.” 7

Toong and Gupta’s diagram of the proportion of an “executive’s” time spent in meetings. © 1984 IEEE. Reprinted, with permission, from Proceedings of the IEEE.

Toong and Gupta then discuss a newly released example of such “presentation graphics software,” VCN ExecuVision, offered by the book publisher Prentice-Hall. VCN ExecuVision, which ran on the IBM PC, cost $400 but also required libraries of images and icons, that is, “clip art,” at $90 per floppy disk. Users could create “slide shows” of multiple “slides” that the user could craft with text, clip art, and geometric shapes, as well as pie, bar, and line graphs, with the completed slide show either printed or displayed on the PC monitor.

The idiom of the slide was directly adapted from the world of 35mm photographic slides. “Seeing a single slide is one thing,” Toong and Gupta write, “seeing an aggregate of slides is another. VCN ExecuVision supports slide shows in which the transition from one slide to another can be controlled either manually (pressing a key causes display of the next slide) or automatically… More significant is the support of animation techniques which give an illusion of seeing a running movie rather than a slide show…VCN ExecuVision brings sophisticated graphical capabilities to the realm of personal computers thus vastly expanding the horizons of personal computer applications in all four domains – office, home, science, and education.” Continuing their celebration of ExecuVision, Toong and Gupta illustrated their journal article with three full-color pages of ExecuVision slides, replete with images having the unmistakable aesthetic of clip art. Presentation software and clip art may have been born together.

Sample slides from VCN ExecuVision. © 1984 IEEE. Reprinted, with permission, from Proceedings of the IEEE.

Evidently, ExecuVision was the creation of Toong himself—in a Cambridge, Massachusetts author shop called Visual Communication Network Inc.—before the program had been sold or licensed to Prentice Hall. Toong filed articles of incorporation for the firm in October 1983, with his brother and a former MIT industrial liaison as the other directors. His brother was listed as the president and a Sloan School building was the firm’s address. Toong’s connection to ExecuVision is not mentioned in the article. 8

Lotus’ announcement of Executive Briefing System. Courtesy of the Kapor Archive.

Toong’s ExecuVision was, in late 1983, a new entrant into the presentation software market that two new integrated software manufacturers, located in neighborhoods on opposing sides of the MIT campus, had already enjoined. On one side was Mitch Kapor’s startup, Lotus Development. Kapor created his new firm on a windfall from two programs he had written that were published by Personal Software, Inc., later renamed VisiCorp. VisiCorp was also the publisher of the breakthrough spreadsheet program VisiCalc, written in Cambridge by Software Arts Inc., the “author shop” of Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston.

Mitch Kapor had written a statistical analysis and data graphing program for the Apple II called TinyTROLL, which he sold through a partnership with his friend and then MIT finance PhD student Eric Rosenfeld who had suggested the program to Kapor. The partnership was called Micro Finance Systems, and Kapor was approached VisiCorp to adapt TinyTROLL to work with data imported from VisiCalc. Kapor soon delivered VisiPlot and VisiTrend, programs that took VisiCalc spreadsheet data and generated pie, bar, and line graphs from them, as well as performed various finance-relevant statistical functions on the data. Kapor and Rosenfeld’s Micro Finance Systems received hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties for VisiPlot and VisiTrend before VisiCorp bought them outright for $1.2 million. With his share in the windfall, Kapor set up an integrated software manufacturer of his own, Lotus Development, and, in 1982, the firm released its first product, Executive Briefing System, for the Apple II. Todd Agulnick, a 14-year-old high school student, had been hired by Kapor and wrote the BASIC code for Executive Briefing System under his direction. 9

Lotus’ $200 Executive Briefing System was centered on the color video display of the Apple II. In brief, a number of programs for charting and graphing like VisiPlot offered the “BSAVE” command. Instead of routing data to immediately render an image on the video display, BSAVE sent the very same data to a stored file. In this way, a “screen shot” could be rendered on the video display at a later time, shared with others, archived for future use, etc. Lotus’ Executive Briefing System treated BSAVE’d files—these screen shots—as “slides” that could be modified and then displayed on the Apple II’s video display as a “slide show” for a “presentation.” Executive Briefing System users could edit slides of charts and plots by adding text and/or clip art of lines, geometric shapes, or “ornamental” motifs. Slides were arranged in slide shows, and saved to floppy disk. While the program allowed a slide show to be printed—as a paper report or for transparencies for overhead presentation—it focused on slide shows for the video display. A variety of animated “transitions” between slides were available, such as fades, wipes, and spinning-into-view. 10

An early Executive Briefing System demonstration. This clip was created by running an image of the demonstration disk in an Apple II emulator.

David Solomont’s Business and Professional Software Inc., another integrated software manufacturer developing products for the Apple II, was located at 143 Binney Street just a 25-minute walk across the MIT campus—and past Hoo-Min Toong’s office—from Kapor’s Lotus Development office at 180 Franklin Street. Like Kapor, Solomont’s firm had earlier developed a plotting and charting program for the Apple II to work with VisiCalc spreadsheets. Solomont struck a deal with Apple to license the plotting program, which was sold by Apple under the company’s brand as “Apple Business Graphics.” Soon thereafter, arriving on the market about the same time as Lotus’ Executive Briefing System, came Solomont’s “Screen Director” program in 1982. 11

A 2015 CHM oral history interview with David Solomont.

Screen Director, made for the then-new Apple III computer, fully embraced treating a computer running Screen Director like a 35mm slide projector. Users could organize BSAVE’d image files from programs like VisiPlot and Apple Business Graphics into various “slide trays” for presentation on the video display. While Screen Director did not allow for the editing of existing image slides, it did provide for the creation of text slides and for a limited set of animated transitions between slides. Screen Director even shipped with the standard two-button wired controller for slide projectors, but modified to plug into the Apple III for controlling Screen Director slide shows. 12

A 1982 print advertisement for Business and Professional Software’s Screen Director program.

So far I have described a meaning for “competitive logic” and “market logic” in the case of presentation software, and some early programs from 1982 through 1984. But what of “material logic?” Material logic here includes personal computers themselves, specifically personal computers with graphics capabilities that were expanding in the early 1980s. The computers’ physical performativity, their material agency, constituted a resource, medium, and constraint for software makers and users. Existing programs widely used on these computers, like spreadsheets and plotting programs, were themselves a critical part of the material logic. Software, like hardware, has an unavoidable materiality. At the most abstract, a computer program can be considered to be a specific pattern. In practice, every instance of a program is a pattern in something material, including the body of an author.

Finally, the material logic for presentation software included operating systems centered on the graphical user interface, or GUI. This style of computing had been pioneered at Xerox PARC in the late 1970s, most famously on the Xerox Alto computer. The Alto inspired other efforts to bring the GUI into personal computing during the first half of the 1980s: Apple’s Lisa and Macintosh computers, Microsoft’s Windows software, and VisiCorp’s VisiOn software to name but a few. 13

This material logic was especially important in the creation of PowerPoint. In 1983, two Apple managers, Rob Campbell and Taylor Pohlman, left the firm and created a new integrated software manufacturer, Forethought Inc. Simply put, they left Apple to bring a Xerox Alto like GUI operating system to the IBM PC. By 1986, however, Forethought Inc. had a change of plans. This story—of Forethought’s creation of PowerPoint—and other stories about what PowerPoint and its competitors can tell us about software history, will be the subjects of upcoming essays by me on the @CHM blog.

For more information about the development of PowerPoint, please see our Guide to the Dennis Austin PowerPoint Records .

• Oral history interview with Shawn Villaron, PowerPoint manager at Microsoft, date, forthcoming/in process.
• Indeed, a wonderfully helpful list of presentation software offerings from 1986 compiled by Robert Gaskins, the initiator and architect of the original PowerPoint project, can be found on pages 131-134 of his painstakingly detailed and comprehensive memoir, Sweating Bullets .
• One place in which these identifying names for the presentation software genre were evident was, and is, the pages of the trade magazine InfoWorld . Google Books has a large number of issues of the periodical available with full text and search. On the more general use of the genre names, see this Google Books NGram .
• See Christophe Lécuyer and David C. Brock, Makers of the Microchip: A Documentary History of Fairchild Semiconductor (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010); David C. Brock and Christophe Lécuyer, “Digital Foundations: The Making of Silicon Gate Manufacturing Technology,” Technology and Culture , 53 (2012): 561–97; and Christophe Lécuyer and Takahiro Ueyama, “The Logics of Materials Innovation: The Case of Gallium Nitride and Blue Light Emitting Diodes,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences , 43 (2013): 243-280.
• See, for example, Martin Campbell-Kelly, “Number Crunching without Programming: The Evolution of Spreadsheet Usability,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing , 29 3 (July-September 2007): 6-19 and Thomas J. Bergin, “The Origins of Word Processing Software for Personal Computers: 1976-1985,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing , 28 4 (October-December 2006): 32-47.
• The article may be viewed in InfoWord on Google Books.
• Hoo-Min D. Toong and Amar Gupta, “A New Direction in Personal Computer Software,” Proceedings of the IEEE , 72 3 (March 1984): 377-388.
• Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Articles of Organization, Visual Communications Network, Inc., October 13, 1983.
• Mitch Kapor, “Reflections of Lotus 1-2-3: Benchmark for Spreadsheet Software,” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing , 29 3 (July-September 2007): 32-40; David C. Brock telephone call with Todd Agulnick, July 15, 2016.
• Rik Jadrnicek, “ Executive Briefing System, a slide-show program ,” InfoWorld, May 17, 1982, 47–49.
• Oral History of David Solomont , Computer History Museum, 2015. Or watch it on YouTube .
• Richard Hart, “ Screen Director helps you present ‘slide shows,’ ” InfoWorld, November 8, 1982.
• See Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Comptuer Age, (New York: HarperCollins), 1999.

About The Author

David C. Brock is an historian of technology, CHM's Director of Curatorial Affairs, and director of its Software History Center. He focuses on histories of computing and semiconductors as well as on oral history. He is the co-author of Moore’s Law: The Life of Gordon Moore, Silicon Valley’s Quiet Revolutionary and is on Twitter @dcbrock.

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How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

• Guy Kawasaki

Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

• Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

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Chapter 9: Microsoft® PowerPoint®

What we’ll cover >>>, presentation software, microsoft powerpoint, slide formatting, slideshow design, transitions, review and distribution.

Presentation software  is designed to allow the user to present information in an engaging way with text, pictures, sound, and video. It is a way to communicate ideas in a powerful, organized manner. It utilizes sequences of  slides  that accompany an audio  presentation . The presentation may also be recorded and posted online. The slides are consolidated in virtual files  called slide decks.  Communication skills are necessary for many careers. Presentation software can help to deliver a message online or in-person to a large audience or small group. The goal is to create a presentation that will leave an impression on the audience, and not distract them from the message you are delivering. The ultimate goal is to create dynamic, interesting presentations that engage your audience.

Presentation software can be part of an integrated suite of tools, or be stand-alone. It can be installed on a computer for full and robust features and integration with other resources; it can be accessed on the web in a light format, and it can be a basic utility tool, like text editing applications. Some programs/suites are payware, such as those used in many workplaces; others are shareware or freeware. Information in this chapter should offer you transferrable skills for use in any word processing application.

Common presentation software programs

• Microsoft PowerPoint : Available across many platforms including mobile devices for ease of use. Integrates well with Microsoft Office.
• Apple Keynote : Included with most Apple devices. Real time collaboration. Use Apple Pencil on your iPad to create diagrams or illustrations that bring your slides to life.
• Google Slides : Integrates with other Google Apps, Q&A feature, Advanced web publishing features.
• Smartphone apps that allow for quick use and editing on-the-go.
• Word processing apps in free/open source office suites.

Since Microsoft® PowerPoint® (MS PowerPoint, PowerPoint) is widely used in business, and we are using Windows, we will focus on this presentation software. There are many similarities across presentation software, so the skills we are learning can be translated to other systems. Some of the tasks in PowerPoint may seem familiar because they were used in other applications. The following Try Me activities are designed to be completed using Microsoft PowerPoint in Office 365 on a PC with Windows 10 or higher.

DEMO EXAMPLE follow-through

Accessing powerpoint.

• In your Computer, use the relevant start menu to open MS PowerPoint (look for little red icon ). On a PC this is a start button on the keyboard, and/or menu on the lower left of the screen. On a Mac, this should be in the top-screen Menu option.
• PowerPoint will open with options to create a blank slideshow, open an existing file, and use templates.
• Observe the various Menu ribbons to learn what they offer.

The User Interface (UI) menus

In PowerPoint, the user interface contains several menu tabs ( tab ), with ‘Ribbons’ ( ribbon ) that display icons (like buttons) with text descriptions of various activities related to a task. On a ribbon, you will often see groups ( group ) of icons for tasks that relate to one another, like the Home ribbon’s Font group, Paragraph group, etc. Some of these icon buttons will do a simple task in one step, while others may open a panel ( panel ) which is a detailed, multi step or tab window of options. Sometimes you may instead see a context dropdown ( dropdown ) menus of options. Shown (in the program’s order) are:

• File : Accesses the program backstage area for various options. Set your preferences for workflow and productivity.
• Home : Basic text functions –  formatting, positioning, styles
• Insert : tables, images, shapes, charts, page sections
• Draw : For more effects your can add to a slide, like “circling” an important point.
• Design : Layout of the slides – margins, themes, colors, etc.
• Animations : Transitions and sound.
• Slideshow : For timing and practice.
• Record : For audio recording the slideshow, and for exporting the show to video.
• Review : Spelling, language, tracking, etc.
• View : screen views, rulers, gridlines, windows.
• Additional add -in/specialty tab menus : These are dependent on having MS Word-related add-ins like Acrobat, a reference manager, etc.
• Contextual tab menus : These are contingent on a specific item in the program’s workspace being activated. For instance, clinking on an image, table, or header / footer will activate a context menu/ribbon on the right side of the UI that shows a menu dedicated to actions that can be done specifically for the active item (picture editing).

About Presentations

Presentations are a multi-page slideshow used to present a cohesive set of information/images. They are routinely used to support other documentation, not be the primary report or documentation. This means that a slideshow should focus attention on a few key points with a few bulleted supporting points, not use long paragraphs of text. Use a consistent layout, color palette, image layout/type, and transition style for professionalism.

• Information to be shared should be highlights of main points, which are shared in small amounts that can support a more detailed audio presentation with report and other print handouts. The slideshow highlights, it doesn’t act as the main word-processed document,
• Customary is Title Page, Title and content pages, and Image/Caption pages, with as-needed comparison pages and blank pages with a specific image/content design you need for the show.
• Use rulers and guides to help align your work.
• Presentations can be short to very long, use audio media, and be timed for a specific flow of information.
• Create transition slides for large section transitions.
• Use section and subsection titles to break up information in long shows.
• Use an easy-to-read font/color/style for excellent contrast info reading. Using a good sized-font at every hierarchy level makes the whole slideshow readable, even from the back of a room.

Slideshows are made up of slides with content. Their common MS PowerPoint native (editing) file extension is . ppt x , and their PowerPoint show file extension is .ppsx . They can contain:

• Text paragraphs and lists.
• Images, tables, and clip art.
• Headings, subheadings, captions, and paragraph text.
• Transitions, animations, media, and timed content.

Slideshow Workspace

The default workspace for slideshows is a left-hand pane of slide thumbnails, the active slide being edited in the workspace, and a Notes pane below the workspace.

You can navigate through your slides by clicking on the thumbnails, or scrolling down the main workspace.

MedAttrib: author-generated. MS PowerPoint user interface thumbnails, workspace, notes pane.

Views – View Tab

• You can see different views as part of the main interface – lower right-hand side of the user interface, and also from the View tab’s ribbon.
• You can set rulers on or off.
• You can also set guides for aligning text and images.
• You can choose the window view you like to work in, such as normal, outline, slide sorter, notes page, or reading view layouts.

Preferences – File tab

Like MS Word and MS Excel, PowerPoint has a File tab Backstage area which lets you save slides in different formats, prepare them for print, and change the program’s options. You can set your PowerPoint program preferences for slides and program workflow, for smoother productivity, in the ‘backstage’ area of the program.

Same layout as Word, Excel, and Access and allows personalizing, print, save, and publish settings.

Slideshows are saved in the native editing format of PPTX, and when a show is meant to be actually shown when it opens, it is saved as a PPSX (show) format. They can also be saved in PDF format, and individual slides can be saved in image formats.

• You can set a slideshow up for printing out using the Print preview screen. Open the Print Preview screen to see the similar layout to Word and Excel.
• Go into the Info screen to inspect the slideshow for Accessibility and compatibility, and to protect a slideshow.
• Go into the File tab Options section, which you can use the change program settings.

MedAttrib: author-generated. MS PowerPoint user interface screen.

Text placeholder fields

In slideshows, you input text into editable fields (placeholders), with headings, paragraphs, lists, tables, images, etc. Text formatting includes indenting, spacing, and alignment. For instance, the alignment of text can be left, right, centered, or justified alignment; this paragraph is in Left alignment .

These fields also guide the kind of content you might put in them. Gor instance, a slide might have placeholders that state “Click to add title”, “click to add subtitle”. Etc.

Placeholder fields let you add text, and they also offer the option to add other items instead by showing icons that represent a table, an image, a video clip, and more.

Also, when you use a placeholder field for text, the text will routinely be added already in bulleted format. To decrease the level of the text, you need to click tab for an indented second-level of bulleted text. The thing to keep in mind here is that the bulleted text can get smaller quickly, so it is useful to look at your text formatting, make the bulleted text large enough to read, and to make the sub bulleted text, and sub-sub bulleted text, also sized to be readable.

Creating new text

If you don’t yet have text to work on yet when creating a document and setting paragraph formatting to use later as a saved style, consider using Lorem Ipsum, or one of its variants. Fun text fillers can include KittyIpsum, BaconIpsum, or ZombieIpsum. You can find Ipsum generators free online and copy/paste gibberish paragraphs into your document so you can play with some chunks of text. Let’s try some KittyIpsum now!

[Nap all day cat dog hate mouse eat string barf pillow no baths hate everything but kitty poochy. Sleep on keyboard toy mouse squeak roll over. Mesmerizing birds. Poop on grasses licks paws destroy couch intently sniff hand. The dog smells bad gnaw the corn cob.]

Home tab – Clipboard Group

At the very left of the Ribbon is the same clipboard group as we worked on in the Word and Excel chapters, which is a small set of tools you can use in relation to when text, images, and styles have been saved to the clipboard as you work. Clipboard-related activities include copy, cut, paste, and the format painter.

Home tab – Slides group

Every slide can be the same, or a slideshow can use a mix of pre-designed slide formats.

The slide text fields indicate what kind of slideshow page you are working on. A fully designed slideshow might have a title slide, title and contents pages, section header pages, comparison tables, image slides, and/or content (or a picture) with caption slides. You also can choose a blank slide without the editable regions on it fir full flexibility. The Slides group gives you the common slide layouts to choose from.

Home tab – Font Group

“Fonts” refer to the letters (characters) used in text. Font formatting includes resizing, changing the font family, adding bold or emphasis, adjusting spacing between letters, and more. You can right-click on a word or cluster of words for the contextual menu, or use the Home Tab’s font group options. These include font style, size, color, effects like bold / italics / underline, highlighting, and spacing formatting.

MedAttrib: author-generated. MS PowerPoint Fonts panel.

Home tab – Paragraph Group

You can modify your slide text paragraphs/bulleted lines in several ways. You can right-click on a piece of text, and choose “Paragraph” from the contextual menu. You can instead select some text, and use the Home ribbon’s one-touch paragraph group icons. You can also select some text, and choose the Home Tab’s paragraph group panel opener. With any of these, you can do alignment, spacing, indents, lists (bullets and numbers), shading, and borders.

Paragraph panel

The paragraph panel, which you can open from the lower right corner of the Home ribbon’s paragraph group, reveals a panel with several tabs of options: spacing before and after bulleted lines, specific indents, and line spacing.

MedAttrib: author-generated. MS PowerPoint Paragraph panel.

Inserts are basically anything you can insert into a slideshow that supplements your text content. You use the Insert Ribbon to choose what you want to add into a document: pictures, online art, icons, shapes, SmartArt, media, and text-related effects like WordArt.

Options for inserts – Insert tab

Just like Word and Excel, you can modify inserts using a contextual menu designed for the specific insert type: size, color, theme, position, etc. These Tab menu options only appear when you select an inserted item you want to modify.

ACTION: MS PowerPoint Try Me Activity #1

Let’s create a new slideshow, and then learn a few slide formatting tasks.

• Open PowerPoint.
• Open a blank presentation.
• Before you do anything else, save the new file into your Examples / MS_PowerPoint folder as PP _ formatting . pptx .

In the blank slideshow, you should see a single page, It shows placeholder text boxes that PowerPoint uses to help creators guide slide content creation and display. You type into them with your content, and PowerPoint styles the content – per the in-use theme – by hierarchical bulleted lists.

Before adding any text, let’s add more blank slides.

• On the Home ribbon, Slides group, click the New Slides , which gives a dropdown of possible slide layouts.

MedAttrib: author-generated. MS PowerPoint new slides panel.

Since the new slideshow already opens with the Title Slide, lets add a few pages that represent other slide layouts.

• In the New Slide dropdown, choose Title and Content .
• Add another slide using the New Slides icon: Two Content .
• Add another slide using the New Slides icon: Content with Caption .
• SAVE your work: CTRL S / MAC CMD S.

You should have mostly blank 4 slides in your show now – blank except for the placeholder fields.

When using the editable fields, PowerPoint’s default is to offer common heading and subheading styles, text styles, and bulleted hierarchy styles. This design becomes more important when using animations in a show, and how they are prioritized during a finished presentation.

• Go to the first slide. In the first placeholder that reads Click to Add Title, click inside and type First Show .
• In the second placeholder, type By YourName .
• Go to the second slide. In the first field, which reads Click to add title, type Slide Basics .

TIP: Slide Title placeholders. The placeholders that are for adding titles don’t mean that ever slide with one needs the title of the whole slideshow added there. They can also act as titles for a page, or within a section, to help a slideshow’s organization seem more cohesive.

The second placeholder is multi-purpose. You can immediately start typing text in it and use it in that way. However, a semi-transparent set of icons is also in the placeholder, which indicates that you can instead click on one of them to add content that the respective icon represents.

MedAttrib: author-generated. MS PowerPoint placeholder content field options.

In this slide, we’ll just add text to see how it works.

Type these lines, pressing your keyboard’s Enter key after each:

• Supporting point
• Third-level point
• Paragraph text
• Place your cursor in from of the line Supporting point, and press Tab.
• Place your cursor in from of the line Third-level point, and press Tab twice.

Observe how PowerPoint “demotes” the bullet levels so that they get smaller. This is a good time to learn that using more than one or two levels of bullets is as far as a viewable presentation should use, although you can also enlarge the size of the text of each bullet.

• Place your cursor in front of the line Paragraph text.
• On the Home ribbon, Paragraph group, click the Bullets icon to ‘turn off’ the bullet on this line. This demonstrate that you do not have to use bullets.

Go to the third slide, which has 3 placeholders. This is a standard comparison slide, which simply describes that you can have two sets of information side-by side. These could be text and graphic, table and graphic, two fields of text, etc.

• In the 1 st placeholder, type Comparison Slide .
• In the 2 nd placeholder (left one), type Item Description .
• In the 3 rd placeholder (right one), click the Online pictures icon , and use the search field that opens to search for (and insert) an image you like.

Go to the fourth slide, which has 3 placeholders. This is a standard content with caption slide, which simply describes that you can have captioned information side-by side with a table, a graphic, etc.

• In the 1 st placeholder, type Text header .
• In the 2 nd placeholder (left one), type Add some text here .
• In the 3 rd placeholder (right one), click the Table icon , and use the dialog box that opens to type 3 in the Number of columns, and 4 in Number of rows.

Now we have a basic slideshow with components we can practice manual font formatting.

Like in Word and Excel, formatting options happen mostly in the Home ribbon, with the Font group and Paragraph group.

Go to the first (Title) slide.

• Select the title text and use the Home ribbon Font group to make the text Bold, and dark blue .
• Select the subtitle text (your name) and use the Home ribbon Font group to make the text italicized .

Go to the second slide. Let’s make the content text larger.

• Select the 1 st bulleted item, and use the Home ribbon Font group to make the text 36 pts .
• Select the 2 nd bulleted item, and use the Home ribbon Font group to make the text 3 2 pts .
• Select the 3 rd bulleted item, and use the Home ribbon Font group to make the text 2 8 pts .
• Select the paragraph text, and use the Home ribbon Font group to make the text 32 pts .

Go to the third slide. Let’s edit the image.

• Click on the image. Like in Word and Excel, an activated image (or other insert) opens a new contextual menu/ribbon. For this image it is a Graphics Format ribbon .
• With your online image active, use the Graphics Format ribbon, Size group, to make the image 6 inches wide.
• Use your cursor to click and drag the image to make it seem more centered, if the resizing moved or altered its centered appearance.
• Click the image, and use the Graphics Format ribbon, Accessibility group , to add accessibility content.
• Click the Alt Text icon , which will open a docked Alt Text panel on the right of your workspace.
• In the Alt Text field, you may already see some text. However, replace it with: “Stock image of a (whatever the image is of).” This tells a screen reader that there is an image and what the image is.

Go to the fourth slide.

• Make the Text Header line bold and a medium-dark gray .
• Use the Home ribbon Font group to make the paragraph text below the Text Header 24 pts in size.

Let’s work on the table. Like in Word and Excel, tables should have a header row, and PowerPoint defaults to adding formatting form one to an inserted table.

• Click in the table’s first cell, which should be in a darker colored row – the header row.
• In the 1 st header cell, type Fave Weekday .
• In the 2 nd header cell, type Fave Activity .
• In the 3 rd header cell, type Saturday F un .
• If you’d like, you can fill in your faves in the table cells below.

Click on the table, and observe that a Table Design ribbon and related layout ribbon to its right appear.

• In the Table Layout ribbon, Table Styles group, choose a different table color and intensity.
• SAVE your work , and close the file. POWERPOINT ACTIVITY #1 FINISHED.

MedAttrib: author-generated. MS PowerPoint example 4-slide show with edits.

Now we’ve had a good introduction to new slides and basic manual font formatting.

Text and paragraph formatting are parts of what happens in a slide. This section is about the overall slideshow itself – how it will present when given as an active animated slideshow, printed out, and consumed by users. Slideshow formatting is characterized by actions that can affect the whole document, and in so doing, add efficiency and steps-saving to general text and paragraph formatting. These include document layout, themes and styles, headers and footers, and some use of sectioning. Much of this will seem familiar from Word and Excel.

Master Slides – View tab

In the View tab Master Views group, you can access a slide master view to show all the potential pages that you can use in a slideshow theme. This is useful, and a good first step to using a theme, so that you can add footer information, make sure your show’s title usage is consistent and correct throughout the show, and make specific style changes to the actual master pages of the show’s theme. You want to minimize having to touch individual slide designs.

The footer section in the slide master lets you add a page number, date, other footer content, and style it so that it appears the same way each time that slide is used.

One thing to not, and this is a reason why the master slides are considered more intermediate in skill; each and every possible style page in the master view needs to be edited for consistency, or else you may insert slides from your modified theme and still see some differences. For instance, if you change the size and content of a slide’s footer in one master view page, you need to make the same change to all the master view slide variations.

MedAttrib: author-generated. MS PowerPoint Slide Master interface.

Setting up slideshows – Design tab

The Design tab allows you to set the physical format of your slideshow, which is a good first starting step in developing a slideshow. This determines how large the slides will be, the orientation of the document, etc. In the Design tab Customize group, the Slide size icon dropdowns lets you choose an existing size or set a custom slide size.

MedAttrib: author-generated. MS PowerPoint themes, and color / font palettes.

Designing documents – Design tab

Themes apply decorative styles to your PowerPoint document (just like in Word and Excel), such as fonts, colors, effect options, paragraph spacing, etc. They can give a slideshow a consistent and attractive appearance and efforts look more professional. In business, they are best used as part of a “package” of documents, such as a slideshow accompanying an annual report with Excel graphs and charts inserted. They can enhance what you want to communicate by adding company branding colors and fonts. You can also:

• Make your slideshow more readable than just black-and-white text
• Tie consistent inserts, like shapes and borders, together with the rest of the document’s “look”
• Use different colors and font styles to punctuate headings from text
• Help your reader respond and/or act in the way you need, and
• Easily update the whole look of your document just by changing the color or font variants

Design: Theming / Design Tips

Like Word and Excel, using themes can be a double-edged sword. While they can add attractiveness to your documents, they can also, if misused, make your work look confusing, be hard to read, and muddy your communication message. Certain types of work should not use themes, like cover letters and resumes, which are routinely expected to be plain and standardized and which the receiver will likely scan into a program for database acquisition.

• Choose theme colors that make sense for the product, service, or idea(s) you are trying to communicate
• Choose theme backgrounds that have good contrast and allow text to be very easy to read
• Choose fonts for readability, based on need for headlines, lots of paragraph texts, easy bulleting, etc.
• Remember that less is more – more colors and font variations in one document can look unprofessional and take away from your message.
• Use themes only when you have full control over your own document – if you have an instructor or employer who does not want them used, then instead focus on using a template of the required styling.

Design: Theme Variants

Theme variants let you change aspects of a theme you select to apply a different core font family to it, or to change the color palette it will work with.

• Fonts : Font families in themes are designed and sized to be readable and hopefully scannable by screen readers for accessibility use. The style will offer a font for titles/subtitles, and another for general text. Available font families come installed with the computer’s operating system, and may also be accessed from the word processing software’s installation or cloud-based accessories.
• Color Palettes : Like fonts, color palettes are included in a style, and can also be changed independently to modify and create a new style. For instance, the overall design style of a theme may work for you, but the color palette assigned to it may not have enough contrast for your audience, or your company may focus on a different rage of core colors.
• Effects : These are subtle styles that can be attached to some inserted items, like image borders, shapes, SmartArt, etc.

Theme Variants

• Page Color : This allows assigning a color to a slide template, with previews of several colors in the theme’s palette.
• Design : The Design tab has a Designer group, with a Design icon that can help you generate additional layout ideas for your show.

ACTION: MS PowerPoint Try Me Activity #2

Let’s work on slideshow design.

Before you start, you should use your file manager utility to make a copy of the PP _ design . pptx file that is in your DataFiles folder, then paste the copy into your Examples / MS_PowerPoint folder.

• If MS PowerPoint isn’t open yet, open PowerPoint.
• Go to the Tile tab Backstage and Open a file, then use the browser dialog panel to find the PP _ design . pptx file that should be in your Examples / MS_ PowerPoint folder, then open the file.

You should have a show with six slides of different layouts. We’ll use this for slide formatting practice. Our goal is look at Master slides, set a theme, and view the slideshow layout.

• Let’s choose a theme. Use the Design ribbon, Themes group, to pick the Facet theme .
• Scroll through the slideshow to see how the theme affects each slide.
• If you see that some text looks off center, you can drag the text box to center it, and also use the Home ribbon’s Paragraph group to change the alignment of the text (like centering).
• Use the Design ribbon, Variants group, to pick a variant color of the Facet theme that you like.
• If you don’t like the selection, click the small arrow at the lower right-hand corner of the Variants group to open a dropdown menu that offers a colors palette , font palette, and effects options.
• Choose a different color palette from the selection.
• Choose the Effects option from the Variants group dropdown, and pick one you like.

In the last activity, we manually changed the font size of some of the bulleted text. Let’s do that here, using the Slide Master view, so that existing slides, and new ones, have larger body text (first three levels of bullets).

• Go to the View ribbon, Master Views group, and click Slide Master . The Slide Master view will show thumbnails at the left of each kind of page the show has built-in, so that you can touch any of them up and have newly created slides follow these Master Page changes. It also provides a Slide Master ribbon, which has the themes and background options, as well as a button to Close Master View.
• From the Thumbnails, choose the top slide , which has the key styles for all bulleted text for the slideshow. Clicking this thumbnail will place an editable version into your workspace.

Notice that there are several placeholders, including three at the bottom that act as footer information.

• In the Slide Master, select the 1 st line of bulleted text, and use the styles toolbar that opens (or the Home tab Font group options) to change the font size to 2 8 pts .
• In the Slide Master, select the 2 nd line of bulleted text, and use the styles toolbar that opens (or the Home tab Font group options) to change the font size to 2 4 pts .
• In the Slide Master, select the 3 rd line of bulleted text, and use the styles toolbar that opens (or the Home tab Font group options) to change the font size to 2 4 pts .
• Close the Slide Master view.

What this does is enlarge the base size of the overall slideshow text. To get more granular changes to every slide, we would need to touch every master slide.

• SAVE your work : CTRL S / MAC CMD S.
• Let’s find out what the slide size is. Use the Design ribbon, Customize group, and choose the Slide Size .

The Slide size defaults to Standard (4:3), with an alternative of (16:9) and of Custom Slide Size. Do not change the size.

TIP: Changing slide size. When slides change to a new size, but any Master Slide changes will revert to the new size’s Master Slide defaults.

• SAVE your work , and close the file. POWERPOINT ACTIVITY #2 FINISHED.

Transitions are one design item that is unique to PowerPoint. Because a slideshow is meant to be active and engaging, and because it may have many slides, one way to keep viewers from having a jolt from immediate slide changes is to program in transitions. A transition might take a couple of or a few seconds, provide a ‘slide separation’ effect, and help keep a show engaging.

Slide transitions – Animations tab

PowerPoint offers a number of build-in animated transition and layout actions. They can be used for an entire slide transition, or a specific in-slide item transition/animation. These give the feel of interaction and movement in presentations and allow creation of complex animated slideshows that can look like Flash Movies..

• Common animation thumbnails appear in the Transitions ribbon.
• The left-most is the Current animation theme.
• Clicking other thumbnails to the right of the Current  will change to that of the thumb you choose.
• You can also change the transition speed and sound.
• You can set slide advancement timing so that the presenter stays on a specific schedule.
• A transition can be applied to the current slide, or all slides in the show at one time.
• For a professional and non-jittery feel, you can consider applying the same transition to all the slides.

ACTION: MS PowerPoint Try Me Activity #3

Let’s do some work with transitions, and maybe a simple animation.

Before you start, you should use your file manager utility to make a copy of the PP _ transitions . pptx file that is in your DataFiles folder, then paste the copy into your Examples / MS_PowerPoint folder.

• Open a file, and use the browser dialog panel for the PP _ transitions .docx file that should be in your Examples / MS_ PowerPoint folder, then open it.

You should see six formatted slides. A theme has already been selected, and the Master Page has been updated to have larger base fonts. Our task here is to set slideshow transitions, maybe an animation, and to test the slideshow.

Transitions can be applied one page at a time, or on all slides. We’ll start small then learn more efficient practices.

• Go to the first page of the slide show.
• Activate the slideshow as it currently is. We want to observe how the slideshow works. When you start a slideshow viewing, by default it will begin from the slide you are currently on, unless you tell PowerPoint otherwise.
• Using the Slideshow ribbon, Start Slide Show group, choose the From Beginning icon. You can also use the Status bar’s Slide Show icon. The Function 5 key also starts a slide show.

Okay, now we see the first slide. It is just stuck there. What’s up? The default for moving pages along is to press the keyboard enter button, to click the mouse, or the keyboard Page Down button.

• Press the enter button, and the slide show changes pages. Keep pressing Enter, and the slideshow will progress until you reach the last slide, then it will exit back to the Edit mode.

That was nice. It will be nicer if the pages transition with some kind of effect.

• On the first slide, go to the Transitions ribbon, Transition to this Slide group.
• Click the dropdown to open the dropdown transitions selector. Choose Random Bars from the “Subtle” area.

Look at the thumbnails of the slides. The first slide, which we applied a transition to, has a small star to its left – this indicates there is a transition.

• On the Transitions ribbon, a Preview Icon becomes available at the left. Click it once to preview the transition.
• Now, use the Function5 key (F5) to start the slide show.

The slideshow starts with the transition. You need press Enter to advance the show, and. . . there are no more transitions.

• Use the Escape button to escape the slideshow.

A transition needs to be applied to every slide for every slide to use it. You can set transitions on every slide at one time two ways:

• Select all slides by clicking the first thumbnail, pressing the shift keyboard key, and then selecting the last thumbnail. Once all slides are selected, choose the transition, which will apply to all. Or,
• Use the Transitions ribbon, Timing group, and choose Apply to all.

In our case, make sure you are on the first slide which has the transition, then click the Apply to all. Now all the slides have the star icon.

• Use F5 to run the slideshow, and press Enter to advance the slides. Note that the most pronounced version of the transition happens when the show opens; the remaining pages transition more subtly.
• On the first slide, choose a different transition, such as the more “exciting” Honeycomb.
• On the Transitions ribbon, click the Apply to all, so that the new transition replaces the old one.
• Use F5 to rerun the show.

Can we change the time on a transition? Yes. Make sure you are on the first slide

• Using the Transitions ribbon, Timing group, change the Duration to 1.50.
• Add sound by using the Transitions ribbon, Timing group, and clicking the Sound dropdown. Choose the Chime sound (or another you prefer).
• From the First slide, use the Transitions ribbon and click the Apply to all to add the timing and sound to all the slides.
• Use F5 to rerun the show. The show is more dynamic, and seems to run faster.

Can we use some other method to advance the show besides the Enter button or mouse click? Yes!

Be on the first slide again.

• Using the Transitions ribbon, Timing group, and unclick the On Mouse Click. Put a check in the After checkbox, and adjust the time to read 00.03.
• From the First slide, use the Transitions ribbon and click the Apply to all to add this change.
• Use F5 to run the show. The slides will automatically advance every 3 seconds.

Animations are another design item that is unique to PowerPoint. An animation can be as simple as using a transition-like effect on an item, like fading out a picture. Or it can be used to bring in a list of text one bulleted line at a time. You can create an animated and programmable ‘button’ to advance pages on a slideshow with a click. You would use the Animations tab to add and time animation content so that the show feels like a movie. Animations can be applied to text, to pictures, and to ither inserts like shapes, clipart, WordArt, etc.

You can also open an Animation pane in the Animations tab Advanced Animation group. This pane is necessary because if you have multiple animations in a slideshow, and even on the same page, you will need to tell PowerPoint several things:

• What order to serve the animated items. The standard order is that the first things on a slide animate first – BUT, this can mean the first thing created on the slide, not the first thing in the order you ‘see’ the items.
• The timing of and between animation actions.
• The speed of an animated effect.
• How an animation should start – on a mouse click, on a timed delay, etc.
• How you choose to change the order of animations.

Let’s try an animation.

• First, go to the first slide, and then reset the Advance Slide option back to On Mouse Click, and uncheck the After checkbox. Otherwise, the automatic slide timing will conflict with any animation you create.
• From the First slide, use the Transitions ribbon and click the Apply to all to add this change to all the slides.
• Go to Slide 2, and in delete the contents of the right-hand placeholder, so that you can see the icons to add content.
• Choose the Stock Images, and find some vacation image from another country to import. Once the image imports, it will size itself to the size of the placeholder field.
• Click on the image, then go to the Animations ribbon, Animation group, and choose the Fade animation.
• On the Animations ribbon, Preview group, and click Preview.
• On the Animations ribbon, Timing group, and set the Duration to 1.2, then preview again.
• Go to slide 1, and use F5 to run the show. It should need you to press enter or use a mouse-click to advance the slides.
• Advance to slide 2 and stop. Notice that there is no image.
• Click the mouse or press Enter. The image should fade in.
• Press Enter again to continue advancing the show, or press Escape to escape the show.
• SAVE your work.

Shall we try an animated list of text? Go to Slide 3, which has 4 lines of bulleted text. Let’s determine how we can make each of these line appear one at a time from top to bottom.

• Click on the Slide 3 placeholder with the 4 lines of bulleted text.
• Go to the Animations ribbon, and choose Fly in from the Animation pane.
• Use the Go to the Animations ribbon Preview icon to see the animation. This is how the lines should ideally come in, considering timing, etc.

Look at the Placeholder box’s text, and notice that to the left of each bulleted line, a number appears.

MedAttrib : author-generated. MS PowerPoint text slide.

The numbers display the order in which the text will appear. In this case, we do not need to change the order.

• On the Animations ribbon, Timing group, and set the Duration to 1.5 , then preview again. The lines appear more slowly.
• On the Animations ribbon, Timing group, look at the Start field , which shows On Click . There are other options, but we’ll stay with this default.
• Go to Slide 1, then run the slideshow with F5. Use your mouse click or Enter button to advance each slide and animation.

For your own practice, you can try animating the text placeholder contents on slides 4 and 5.

On the final slide, let’s add a large image from your favorite travel place. In this case, you will need to remove the text-only placeholder, and simply import an image in to the page.

• Use the Inserts tab, Images group, Pictures / Online pictures, and search for an image.
• Import the image, and resize it to be about 10 inches wide.
• Use the Picture Format context ribbon to add a predesigned border from the Picture Styles group gallery .
• Click the image, and use the Animations ribbon, Animations group to pick an emphasis animation to apply to the image.
• Use the Animations ribbon, Timing group to change the Duration to 1.25 .
• Run the slideshow from the beginning.
• SAVE your work , and close the file. POWERPOINT ACTIVITY #3 FINISHED.

PowerPoint is about presenting work – in person, as timed online presentations, etc. It is used in meetings, conferences, sales contacts, on websites, in streaming threads, etc. The various illustration, transitions, and animation tools make PowerPoint uniquely capable of having interactive data presentation.

You can also create slide notes, to appear below slides, and/or to be printed out for a separate handout in a meeting.

Output – File tab

Review and distribution of your work is about preparing it for who will be consuming it. Will it stay in a Word document format, be saved as a PDF, printed onto paper, added as website content, populate an add or newspaper article, or be part of a book? Like Word and Excel, a PowerPoint file needs to be:

• Spell checked
• Grammar- and language- reviewed
• Accessibility enabled (alt text, proper use of heading styles, accessibility for screen readers).
• Have versioning considered.
• Have hyperlinks tested.
• Be cited and attributed properly for intellectual honesty.
• Passed for plagiarism and other content integrity needs.
• Presented for readable print viewing.
• Secured for limited/no editing.
• If meant for team collaboration, prepared for making shared/trackable changes, comments, and notes.

Output/distribute work

• You can test and adjust your documents and review your content before it goes live by looking at the File/Print sections Print Preview and settings.
• You can make sure you have added metadata for web/online reference by updating information in the File/Info page.
• Slideshows can be saved in as a slideshow, native slide prepared format, as a template, and in other formats, like images and PDFs.
• You can save files in different formats for distribution in the File backstage areas, like Save As (for current and older versions, RTF, text, and HTML), save as PDF, export, etc.

This should give you a good overview of MS Word skills that you can use in school and as a starter for basic workplace support tasks.

Business Technology Essentials Copyright © 2023 by L.J. Bothell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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6.3 Formatting Microsoft PowerPoint Slides: Layout and Design Principles

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Format the layout of each slide
• Understand best practices in design principles

It’s time to transform the five slides from My Life in a Snapshot by manipulating the layout and adding options. Formatting the layout of each slide in Microsoft PowerPoint is the process of adding, subtracting, and/or adjusting the arrangement of elements such as text, images, and shapes on a slide. You may want to format the layout of a slide in PowerPoint to make it more visually appealing and effective for your audience. PowerPoint includes many options for altering the layout of the slide. The slide layout can be changed by using the tool on the Home tab in the Slides command group . From the Home tab, select Layout tab from the Slides command group. Here, you will see a listing and image of the layout options.

We have used three types of layouts in My Life in a Snapshot . Here are some commonly used slide layouts:

• Title Slide : This layout includes a title and subtitle and is typically used for the first slide of a presentation .
• Title and Content: This layout includes a title, subtitle, and one or two content boxes that you can use for text or media. This layout is typically used to give an overview of the presentation and the main topics to be covered.
• Comparison: This layout includes two content boxes, which can be used to present different types of information, such as text and images, or to compare and contrast two pieces of information.
• Section Header: This layout is used to create a slide that can be used as a header for a section of a presentation. It typically includes a title and subtitle, with a distinctive design.
• Content with Caption: This layout includes a content box and a caption box, which can be used to present a single image or other media and provide additional information about it.

These common PowerPoint slide layouts can help you create a clear and effective presentation structure. You can add, remove, or customize placeholders as you need, as well as use combinations of these layouts to create a unique, personalized presentation. PowerPoint also offers a variety of built-in slide layouts that you can use to create different types of slides.

Formatting Layout

When you design your slide layouts, arranging text boxes and other objects becomes key in making sure they are positioned in an effective manner. In this section, we will review the Alignment Guides option within the View tab and discuss the numerous built-in layout designs that PowerPoint can offer.

Alignment Guides

As stated previously, getting things to look exactly how you want them to appear next to each other is crucial to maximizing the design power of PowerPoint. But it can be difficult to align objects with other objects on a single slide, or objects with text, using only your mouse. Under the View tab, you will find a helpful alignment tool that you can access by checking the Guides box. When this box is checked, there will be two dashed lines on the presentation slide, one centered vertically and the other centered horizontally.

When you hover your mouse over one of these lines while holding down the Ctrl key, the cursor turns into a double line with arrows. Drag the line to where you want one guideline to be and let go of the mouse. When you do this, another line is created.

Hold down the Option key, not the Ctrl key, to turn your cursor into a double line with arrows.

You can continue to add guidelines anywhere on your slide to insert and align objects, text boxes, photos, and so forth. (In the section on Adding Visuals and Features to Microsoft PowerPoint Slides , we will cover inserting objects and images.) See Figure 6.23 for a visual example of what the guides look like after adding them to a slide. (If you see that the Guides box is checked but no lines are apparent, just uncheck it and check it again. That will usually bring the guides back into view.)

Link to Learning

Not every presentation has to be delivered by a person. There are many reasons why creating a self-running presentation is valuable. Many companies will design a presentation that can be left unattended in a booth or kiosk, at a trade show or convention, or saved as a video and sent to a client list. A self-running presentation can also help address time-related constraints. Read Microsoft’s steps for creating a self-running slideshow in PowerPoint to learn more.

Design Principles

In this section, you will learn about some basic design principles that are best practices for designing your own slides or choosing a theme for your presentation. You’ll find out how to use proximity, alignment, repetition, contrast, and white space to make your design elements stand out.

In photography, proximity refers to nearness —the distance between the camera and the subject being photographed. In the context of PowerPoint , it refers to the distance between the audience and the subject matter being presented. You can control the relative proximity within a PowerPoint slide. In photography, proximity can affect the composition of the photograph by changing the relative sizes of the elements in the frame. For example, if the camera is positioned close to a small subject, the subject may appear larger in the frame; if the camera is positioned farther away, the subject may appear smaller. The proximity of the camera to the subject can also influence the overall look of the photograph. A photograph taken from a close distance may have a more intimate or detailed appearance, while one taken from farther away may have a more distant or expansive look.

Proximity is an important consideration in designing PowerPoint layouts because it can affect the composition, perspective, and overall look of each slide. In Figure 6.24 , you can see two different sizes of the budget sheet. The first one is effective for an overall view of what the document looks like. The second one is more effective if you want the audience to be able to read it. If so, it’s preferable to zoom in as close as possible to that content.

Aligning objects or text on a page adds organization and creates a sense of cohesion, making your content in general more usable. When alignment exists on a slide, the human eye knows where to focus, and the slide is more comfortable to view. In PowerPoint, alignment is the way that text, images, and other elements are positioned on a slide. Proper alignment is important because it helps to create a cohesive, professional-looking presentation. When elements on a slide are aligned, they are more visually balanced, which can make the slide look more organized and appealing to the audience. Properly aligned elements can help guide the viewer’s eye and create a natural flow from one element to the next, making the presentation easier to follow and understand. In addition to the Guides checkbox that we reviewed in the section on Formatting Layout , there are also checkboxes for Rulers and Gridlines. Ticking these boxes will show additional lines on the slide that will help you align your slide elements.

Repetition is the use of similar or identical elements, such as colors, fonts, or design elements, across multiple slides in a presentation. In a slideshow, repetition—especially when similar elements are repeated across multiple slides—can make the presentation feel more polished and professional and make it easy for the audience to follow and understand. Repetition also promotes a consistent look and feel for the presentation. Repetition of important elements such as headings or key points can establish a visual hierarchy that guides the viewer’s eye and makes your presentation easier to follow.

Repetition of visual elements is a good way of reinforcing the key points you want to establish with the audience because they know where to look. In this way, repetition makes the main message of your presentation more memorable and connected for the audience.

In presentations, contrast refers to the use of different elements, such as colors, fonts, and other design elements, to focus attention and create visual interest. You may want to use contrasting colors, such as complementary colors or light and dark shades, or contrasting fonts, such as a bold or decorative font for headings and a simple font for body text. Using contrast helps create a hierarchy and makes your presentation easier to follow.

Using contrasting design elements, such as different shapes or patterns, can help to add visual interest and break up the slide into distinct sections. Overall, contrast is a useful tool in presentations because it can help to draw attention, create visual interest, and make the presentation more effective and engaging for the audience. Notice how in the new title slide of My Life in a Snapshot ( Figure 6.21 ), the title is in large font, the subtitle is in small font, and the colors used are off-white, red, and black. The different font sizes and colors contrast with one another and create an engaging, yet professional, appearance.

White Space

The last design element to consider within this section is white space . White space, also known as negative space, is the unoccupied areas of a slide that are not filled with text or other content. By leaving enough white space around text and other elements, you can make the content easier to read and understand. White space can be used to create visual interest by creating balance and separating different elements on the slide. By surrounding a key point or element with white space, you can draw attention to it and make it stand out. Additionally, using white space consistently throughout a presentation can help to create a cohesive look and feel. It is an important element of slide design and can be used in a variety of ways to enhance the readability, visual appeal, and effectiveness of a presentation. Filling your slides with text or images will make them look too busy and hard for your audience to read. Using the Designer tool to suggest different layouts can help add white space and sustain interest throughout the presentation with aesthetically pleasing slides.

Another principle that underlies all the design principles reviewed in this section is known as the rule of thirds . This is a basic principle of photography and design that suggests that an image can be divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines. It is essentially a tic-tac-toe game board!

Real-World Application

Applying the rule of thirds.

The rule of thirds theory suggests that if you place the important elements of the image along these lines, or at their intersections, your photo or design will be more balanced and will have more visual interest. By placing the main subject of your photo or design along one of the lines or at an intersection, you can create a sense of tension and dynamism that draws the viewer’s eye into the image. Additionally, using the rule of thirds can help you avoid placing the subject of your image dead center every time, which can make for a static and uninteresting composition.

Although the rule of thirds is not a hard-and-fast rule, it is a useful guideline that can help you create more visually appealing and dynamic compositions in your slide creations and layouts. Figure 6.25 provides an example of a grid created according to the rule of thirds.

There are other composition models you can use, as well. The point is that in design, composition is the basis of it all. You want a well-composed layout and placement of text and images, aligned so that the eye moves easily about the slide.

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PowerPoint presentations are widely used as

A. Note outlines for teachers

B. Project presentations by students

C. Communication of planning

D. All of above

Answer: Option D

This Question Belongs to Computer Fundamentals >> Power Point

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Comments ( 1 ).

Related Questions on Power Point

Which tab is not available on left panel when you open a presentation?

D. All of above are available

Which of the following statements is not true?

A. You can type text directly into a PowerPoint slide but typing in text box is more convenient.

B. From Insert menu choose Picture and then File to insert your images into slides.

C. You can view a PowerPoint presentation in Normal, Slide Sorter or Slide Show view.

D. You can show or hide task pane from View >> Toolbars.

To start Microsoft PowerPoint application

A. Click on Start > Programs > All Programs > Microsoft PowerPoint

B. Hit Ctrl + R then type ppoint.exe and Enter

C. Click Start > Run then type powerpnt then press Enter

Which of the following section does not exist in a slide layout?

D. Animations

More Related Questions on Power Point

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Table of Contents

Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, effective use of powerpoint in professional & technical presentations.

• CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by Anna Lee

Regardless whether you are an engineer or a writer, a professional or a student, a business person or a scientist, you will be expected to communicate effectively with your supervisors, colleagues, clients, and the public. For most, that communication includes at least an occasional formal presentation.

Formal presentations in the workplace usually take one of three forms:

• Informational
• Instructional

Informational presentations are useful for reporting on research or giving a project update. Persuasive presentations can be used to make pitches to clients or supervisors. Instructional presentations, or “how-to” presentations, are formatted to teach, explain, or train.

In technical presentations, like most other genres of technical communication, good visual information design is essential. Visual aids are useful for increasing audience understanding of both the subject and the organization of a presentation.

Presenters should remember they have an array of options for visual aids from live demonstrations to interactive activities to old fashioned white boards; however, presentation software is the most commonly used option. Among the presentation software choices, PowerPoint is widely available and widely used in the workplace and in educational settings. Other software like Presi or Google Slides are becoming more popular and present may of the same opportunities and challenges that PowerPoint does.

PowerPoint can be a very effective tool for students and professionals if it is used appropriately for the purposes of a technical presentation. Unfortunately, effective use of this tool is not as intuitive as one would think considering its prevalence. To more effectively use PowerPoint often requires unlearning many of the common techniques displayed in the typical college class or even in the workplace.

Pitfalls of PowerPoint

Unfortunately, PowerPoint is controversial. Most students have experienced an ineffective PowerPoint presentation. In fact, a 2015 article on the website The Conversation claims PowerPoint “makes students more stupid and professors more boring” (Sorensen). Although this author and others make good points on the ineffectiveness of PowerPoint, others (Horvath & Lodge, 2015) contend that a tool is only as effective as the person using it. PowerPoint does not make students stupid and professors boring; rather, poor use of this tool makes for ineffective presentations and can lead to laziness in both the audience and the presenter.

One issue with PowerPoint is the preset templates and layouts Microsoft provides. These can guide a novice user to make inappropriate design choices that affect usability. For example, reversed text on a dark background can be challenging for audiences to read. Bullet points do not take advantage of the program’s visual potential. Purely decorative designs can distract from functional visuals and text.

Many of the problems with PowerPoint presentations are the result of a tool that is readily accessible being used by individuals untrained in rhetorical and visual design. Fortunately, students of technical communication can implement a change of strategy and follow a few guidelines to use PowerPoint more effectively.

Rethinking Bullet Points

The key to improving your use of PowerPoint as a presentation tool for technical or professional communication is to rethink the usual layout of presentations you have seen. Most poorly constructed PowerPoints have far too much text, usually in the form of bullet points covering, albeit in shortened form, everything the speaker is going to share. Your purpose should not be a mystery to your audience, but the audience cannot both read and listen to what you are saying at the same time. Rather you should treat your slides as true visual aids that primarily use something other than text to support your points.

Every substantive slide should present a visual that illustrates or supports the point you are making orally rather than summarizing or reiterating that point in text form. In other words, instead of the typical topic and bullet point slide layout, a more effective strategy for PowerPoint presentations slides can be to offer a claim and a visual support in the form of a photo, graph, illustration, chart, etc. (Alley & Neeley, 2005; Markel, 2009).

Sample slide with claim/visual support layout

This claim/support strategy accompanied by various orientation features creates a presentation that is free from visual noise, complimentary to the oral presentation, and easy for the audience to follow. Creating a PowerPoint presentation of this type requires significantly more thought and effort than a traditional summarizing bullet point format, but the payoff is worth the time spent.

Designing a Claim/Support Style Presentation

Although no one size fits all prescription exists for building an effective PowerPoint slide set for a professional or technical presentation, students can use the following steps and stratagems to guide their process.

1. Plan your presentation before making your slide set.

Rather than sitting down at the computer and opening PowerPoint to begin preparing for a presentation, you should start with your topic—the information you need share, the points you need to make, or the process you wish to teach—and determine what types of visual aids will best support your purpose. PowerPoint may not be the right fit for every purpose. If it is the best tool to employ, remember that the slide set is notyour presentation in and of itself but rather a way to visually support your claims and guide your audience through the organization of your presentation.

Follow the same process you would for any piece of academic or professional writing. Research your subject, narrow your scope to fit the constraints of the assignment, analyze your audience, and draft your presentation around your main points. Once you have a strong, organized case to make in support of your purpose, you can begin creating the visuals that will most effectively enhance your claims.

2. Design your template.

When you are ready to build your slide set, first prepare a slide template. This step will save you time formatting each slide and create consistency. Although PowerPoint provides many predesigned themes, avoid them. Creating your own template will give you more control and help you avoid some of the poor design choices represented in many of the preset templates. Using the “Master Slide” feature is a good way to design once and apply your choices throughout your presentation.

When designing a slide template for the body slides of your presentation, keep in mind these suggestions:

• Opt for a white (or very light) background. Although, many presentation slide sets use a dark background with light text, a more audience friendly choice is a light background and dark text. This combination is universally easier to read especially on a screen. Another benefit of a white background is that you can use a wider variety of image files and types without dealing with the white boxes that often appear in JPEG image files.
• Prefer a san serif font. As is true for reading on computer screens, san serif fonts are also easier to read on the large screens of PowerPoint slides. This is not to say that all serif fonts are unacceptable but rather a good rule of thumb is to prefer a san serif font.
• Include an orienting footer. Be sure to design a footer on your slides that includes the title (or abbreviated title) of your presentation, the date of the presentation, and particularly the slide number. This information is helpful for you in archiving the slide set or changing it for future presentations, but it is especially helpful in orienting the audience. It is much easier to ask a specific question at the end of a presentation if one can refer to specific slide number rather than trying to describe the visual after a single viewing.
• Avoid visual “noise.” In Presentation Zen, Reynolds explains the principle of signal-to-noise ratio and the effects of cluttering a slide with too much visual information that is unrelated to a point being made. He says, “There is simply a limit to a person’s ability to process new information efficiently and effectively” (2012, p. 134). In other words, avoid unnecessary design elements and visuals on slide in a technical presentation. This means eliminating meaningless clip art, images, or even an organizational logo on every slide in order to focus the audience’s attention on the visual that supports your claim. In most cases, less is truly more on a slide.

3. Create your orienting slides.

In addition to acting a visual aid to support the claims of presentation, the purpose of a slide set is also to help the audience understand the organization and follow the speaker’s thoughts more coherently. Many slide sets miss this opportunity. First, be sure to create a title slide that introduces your presentation and you to the audience. Next, slide sets, even for short presentations, should include an outline. The audience wants to know where a talk is going and when they can anticipate its conclusion. Your point in making a technical presentation should not be a mystery; tell the audience what you are about and show them in the form of an outline slide. Revisit this slide to reorient you audience in the middle of the presentation or even before each major point in a long presentation.

Sample of an outline slide

Another orientation feature that you should consider adding is borrowed from pedagogical theory: the advance organizer . A good presentation should help audience members connect new information to previous knowledge and understand why the information is important to them. This is also the purpose of an advance organizer.

Simply put, the advance organizer in slide set is a slide (or several) dedicated to visually introducing background or introductory material so the audience is prepared to accept the claims of the presentation. An advance organizer may take many different forms depending upon the type and purpose of a presentation. One example is visual “list” of supplies needed to perform a task you are teaching. Another might be a definition of a subject or an image of a finished product that the presentation aims to demonstrate the process of creating. Accompanied by the speaker’s oral explanation or even audience interaction, these slides help orient the audience and prepare them to receive the bulk of the material more effectively.

Sample of an advance organizer slide

4. Lay out your organization.

With a template created and orienting slides in place, you can now deal with the body content of the presentation. Follow the same form you would in presenting information effectively and persuasively in any medium by including the following elements: an introduction, several points (or claims), a conclusion, and a call for questions. The audience is familiar with receiving information in this way and will become confused or fail to recall your purpose if you do not sum up your points in a conclusion, for example.

Another organizational feature on the body slides that can become a missed opportunity is the headers. Many presentation slides employ single word or phrase headers. Research shows (Alley & Neeley, 2005) that this may not be the most effective format to persuade or teach. Alley & Neeley and others (Markel, 2009) advocate for the use of sentence case headers on body slides that make a strong, clear claim in a complete thought. Punctuating and capitalizing them as sentences is also recommended.

Sample of a slide using a sentence case header

Switching to sentence headers can be a challenge for students at first—even the student examples provided below do not fully follow this advice— because it is different from what most of us have experienced. However, using it can be effective when bullet points are eliminated in place of a visual support on each slide.

5. Add your visuals.

The final step, and arguably the most difficult, is adding visuals to the slides to support the your claims. Determining visuals that are effective in emphasizing the points, simple enough to comprehend, within the designer’s ability to create, or available to use without copyright infringement is quite a challenge. The following tips can help you begin to design visually based PowerPoint slides:

• Consider your options. Although challenging to think through whether an idea can be represented graphically, you have many possibilities available that work well in PowerPoint. Good options for visuals include graphs or charts for presenting data, tables for displaying lists (an alternative to bullet points), photographs or screen shots for showing steps in a process, illustrations or line drawings for simplifying complex images or showing internal workings, and PowerPoint SmartArt graphics for demonstrating relationships and processes. These are only a few of the choices available and a few potential uses for each. Once you have an idea of the type of visual to use, you will need to create or find it.
• Create your own visual. It is always best to create a visual yourself—if you have the programs and skills to do it—because it gives you complete control of the visual and avoids copyright issues. Although some programs for creating visuals are expensive or require specialized skills, others are readily available and easy to use. Consider screenshots, for example. These are simple to create and excellent for demonstrating a digital process. Likewise, most students can take their own photographs at a quality acceptable for presentations. Graphs are easy to make in Word or Excel and transfer into PowerPoint.
• Use the drawing tools in the presentation software. PowerPoint supplies easy to use tools, such as SmartArt, for creating visuals. You will find these tools intuitive to use, but you must be careful to select diagrams or graphs that accurately match the concept you are attempting to represent. Markel correctly notes, “Microsoft has always done a better job creating drawing tools than explaining how to choose the appropriate one” (2009, p. 126). You must also be careful to avoid design features on these graphics that make them difficult to read and understand. For example, a three-dimensional pie chart can be not only hard to read on the screen but also misleading, particularly if you use color inappropriately. Again, less is usually more; basic designs and simple color schemes are best.
• Find an existing visual. Sometimes you will not be readily capable of creating your own visual, and will need to find one somewhere else. If you work for an organization, check with the marketing department for photographs and logo files. (They can also supply you branded fonts and colors and perhaps even predesigned company slide templates.) Subject matter experts within your organization may be able to provide technical diagrams, line drawings, cross sections, etc. As a student, you can glean from the Internet helpful images of this kind, but should use them for educational purposes only. Be careful to credit borrowed images, and do not use images without permission for anything intended for a professional setting or for which you or anyone else will gain a profit.

Pulling It All Together

Shifting your thinking about the purpose and design of presentation slides and using the processes and tips provided is not rocket science, but pulling everything together will require careful thought and planning. The following examples show many of the elements discussed here in action. These are presentations created by real undergraduate students. They are not perfect cases, but they offer creative, real-life solutions to the same challenges you will face in implementing this new style of PowerPoint construction.

Powerpoint sample #1

Powerpoint sample #2

In addition to the strategy discussed in this article, students creating formal presentations using presentation software should study principles of good visual design. Also, study of graphic design tools for creating visual images would benefit students who need to present technical information frequently. This article certainly does not encompass everything you need to know about using PowerPoint effectively, but implementing the strategies advocated should dramatically improve your presentations.

Alley, M., & Neeley, K. A. (November 2005). Rethinking the design of presentation slides: A case for sentence headlines and visual evidence. Technical Communication, 4(52), 417-426.

Horvath, J. C., & Lodge, J. M. (2015, June 26). It’s not PowerPoint’s fault, you’re just using it wrong. Retrieved February 5, 2016, from https://theconversation.com/its-not-powerpoints-fault-youre-just-using-it-wrong-43783

Markel, M. (May 2009). Exploiting verbal–visual synergy in presentation slides. Technical Communication, 56(2), 122-131.

Reynolds, G. (2012). Presentation Zen: Simple ideas on presentation design and delivery. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Pub.

Sorensen, B. M. (2015, April 29). Let’s ban PowerPoint in lectures – it makes students more stupid and professors more boring. Retrieved February 5, 2016, from https://theconversation.com/lets-ban-powerpoint-in-lectures-it-makes-students-more-stupid-and-professors-more-boring-36183.

Brevity – Say More with Less

Clarity (in Speech and Writing)

Coherence – How to Achieve Coherence in Writing

Flow – How to Create Flow in Writing

Inclusivity – Inclusive Language

The Elements of Style – The DNA of Powerful Writing

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PowerPoint presentations

Microsoft PowerPoint is commonly used to create slide show presentations. Typically these include a combination of text, tables, images, charts, and graphics. This content can be accessible to users with disabilities, including assistive technology users, if the author follows the core principles outlined in our Documents page. The following information includes basic steps for applying these core accessibility principles.

UW students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to use the most current version of Microsoft Office on computers owned by the UW. This software can be downloaded with a valid NetID from the IT Connect UWare site.

Use built-in slide templates

Built-in slide layout templates are designed with accessibility in mind. Avoid selecting a blank slide and adding text boxes as these elements may not be recognized by assistive technology, and reading order will be compromised. Instead, select the drop-down “New Slide” option from the Home tab and choose a layout that best fits. For those who use the UW Brand PowerPoints , these were updated for accessibility on May 31, 2023. Please be sure you are using the latest version.

Use unique slide titles

People who use a screen reader skim slide titles to navigate; they can quickly scan through a list of slide titles and go right to the slide they want. Using unique slide titles allows users to clearly understand which slide they are on. Avoid using the same title for slides that have spill-over information, consider including additional information such as ‘Slide Title 1 of 2’.

Set reading order of slide contents

Screen readers can read the elements of a slide in the order they were added, this may be very different from the order in which things appear visually on screen. To make sure everyone reads the contents in the order you intend, it is important to check the reading order by using the Selection Pane. To do this, from the Home tab select the “Arrange” drop-down and click on “Selection Pane…” From this new window, you can drag elements to adjust the reading order of the contents on the slide. NOTE: The reading order in the Selection Pane should be arranged from the bottom up: The title should be at the very bottom with subsequent content moving upward.

NOTE:  The “eye” icon to the right of each slide element can be toggled on or off to hide or show the content visually. When considering whether to use this feature, please note that screen readers vary in how they handle it: Some will still read the visually hidden content; others will not.

Since PowerPoint is meant to be a visual medium but also functions as a document archive, the best practice would be to include a smart link within the body of the text and also include the non-linked text of the URL. In this way, the smart link is searchable by screen reader users, and the URL can be referred to during the live presentation for folks to follow.

Alt text and grouped images

As always, make sure images include alt text.  PowerPoint has the ability to group multiple images into a single, flat image. This allows the user to assign alt-text to a group of related images rather than assigning alt-text to each image element. To group images, select all of the items you would like to group by holding the Control key for Windows or the Command key for Mac, and click on each item. From the Graphics Format tab, click on the Group drop-down menu and select ‘Group.’ This will flatten the image and allow the user to assign alt-text to the group image.

For more detailed information on how to create accessible PowerPoint presentations, visit the Microsoft Accessibility Support website , or view WebAIM’s article on PowerPoint Accessibility .

Microsoft Office

6 minute read

5 Alternative Uses of Microsoft PowerPoint (Because it’s Not Just for Presentations!)

Kat Boogaard

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When you hear the word PowerPoint , you likely think of one thing: presentations. Yep, the tool is most commonly used for giving an audience something to fix their eyeballs on (in hopes that your slides distract them from the fact that you’re sweating profusely).

But, throw everything you thought you knew about PowerPoint out the window. Believe it or not, it can be used for far more than just bullet points, stock photos, and sending your words whooshing across the screen.

In fact, there are plenty of non-presentation-related things that you can create using PowerPoint. Like what? Well, here are a few ideas for inspiration.

Step up your PowerPoint game

Download our print-ready shortcut cheatsheet for PowerPoint.

1. Infographics

Infographics are a great way to share a bunch of information in a really digestible format. Plus, they’re just plain cool to look at.

If you don’t have a single design bone in your body, you might think that pulling together your own infographic just isn’t in your cards. But, using PowerPoint’s SmartArt feature , this task really isn’t all that challenging. Believe it or not, this interactive infographic was created entirely in PowerPoint (although, fair warning, something this advanced will take a little more elbow grease!).

You’ll want to start by resizing your slide. Head to the “Design” tab and click on “Slide Size.” Choose the custom option, and then enter your desired dimensions.

Next, click “Insert” and “SmartArt.” From pyramids to hierarchies, you’ll be presented with a bunch of different layouts you could use for your infographic. Select the one that works best for you, and then start creating and customizing!

Want some more in-depth tips (and even templates!) to create an awesome looking infographic using PowerPoint? Check out this HubSpot post !

Everybody loves a good GIF. But, they aren’t just for funny clips from your favorite reality shows. By using a series of slides to create your own custom GIF, they can also serve a purpose in business.

So, how can you create a GIF yourself using your PowerPoint slides?

To start, you need to convert your PowerPoint slides to a Graphics Interchange Format (that’s what GIF stands for—thank me when you ace your next trivia night!). Don’t worry, it’s not complicated. You just need to follow these simple instructions .

Once all of your slides are converted, you’re ready to start creating your own GIF using your separate slides as the images. Fortunately, there are plenty of websites that make this easy, including:

• makeagif.com
• recordIt.co  (Great for creating screencasts if necessary!)
• gifmaker.me

Follow the instructions on the website to use your individual slides to create your GIF, and you’ll have your own custom one in no time!

3. Engaging overviews

Have you heard of Prezi? It’s a tool that offers a really engaging way to provide an overview of a topic, as you’re able to start with a big picture and then zoom in and out on select pieces to get more specific information. It looks a little something like this:

But, guess what? If you have a newer version of PowerPoint, you can do this very same thing within that tool!

With PowerPoint’s new Morph feature , you can create similar animations that make it much easier to break down complex topics (anything from new employee onboarding training to a sales presentation!) into smaller pieces. To use this, you simply need to duplicate a slide, move objects to their next position, and then select the Morph animation. PowerPoint will automatically fill in the frames and make you look like a straight up pro!

Want to find out more about the Morph feature and see it in action? Check out this video:

4. Photo albums

Whether you want to showcase pictures of your dog (guilty as charged) or pull together a collection of product photos to share with your company’s clients, PowerPoint makes it easy to put together a photo album.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a glimpse at a simple one that I created for my dog (don’t judge me) with almost no effort:

The exact method you use to do this will vary based on your specific version of PowerPoint. In older versions, you just click “Insert” and then “Photo Album.” In others, you can select “File” and then “ New From Template .” In the template chooser, search for the term “photo album”, select the layout you like best, and then start inserting your images!

When you’re done, save it in your desired format—or even print your slides on photo paper!—and you’ll have a professional looking photo album to use to showcase whatever you need to (or, you know, to forever cherish your dog).

Want something extra creative and engaging? Why not create a quiz in PowerPoint? It’s way easier than you think! As a matter of fact, I did this simple one myself in about two minutes:

So, how do you do it?

You just need two text boxes: One for your question, and one for your answer. When you have both written on your slide, click the text box that contains your answer. With that text box selected, visit the “Animations” tab and then select “Appear Animation”. From there you can adjust how you’d like your animation to appear—which I did using a click trigger.

That way, when your slide pops up, only the question will be visible until you click to make the answer appear!

Of course, this is a basic example. But, after you play around for some time and get comfortable, you’ll have the know-how to build even more complex quizzes to keep people engaged.

Out with the bullets, in with the awesome

Think PowerPoint is just for straightforward presentations? Think again. As it turns out, there are plenty of alternative and creative uses for that handy tool.

Play around with these options and see what you come up with. Chances are, you’ll end up with a lot more than just boring ol’ bullets and clip art.

What else do you use PowerPoint to create? Let us know in the comments below!

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Kat is a writer specializing in career, self-development, and productivity topics. When she escapes her computer, she enjoys reading, hiking, golfing, and dishing out tips for prospective freelancers on her website.

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U.S. EPA Finalizes PFAS Drinking Water Standards — Now What?

Steven Siros

In what should come as a surprise to no one, on April 10, 2024, U.S EPA finalized its National Primary Drinking Water Regulation for six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”).  These final standards are summarized below:

Public water systems (“PWS”) will have three years to complete initial monitoring for these six specific PFAS to be followed by ongoing compliance monitoring.  If found in the drinking water above these standards, the PWS will have five years (2029) to implement solutions to reduce the PFAS to below these regulatory levels and provide public notification of the exceedance.

But what do these new PFAS drinking water standards really mean for the regulated community?  We already know that as a result of data being collected in connection with U.S. EPA’s Fifth Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule , PFOA and PFOS have been found in more than ten percent of the PWS that were required to sample and there is no reason to believe that this trend will be any different once all PWS are required to sample for these specific six PFAS.

Notwithstanding recent court approval of the multi-billion-dollar settlement with public water utilities, to the extent that any of these six PFAS are identified above the recently promulgated regulatory levels, impacted PWS are still likely to cast a wide net looking for other entities to contribute to the costs to address the PFAS-impacted drinking water.   And U.S. EPA’s ongoing efforts to implement its PFAS Strategic Roadmap will continue to generate data that can be relied on by PWS in searching for additional “responsible parties”. 

For example, in November 2023, U.S. EPA finalized a rule eliminating the de minimis exemption for reporting for 189 PFAS in Toxic Release Inventory (“TRI”) reports.   U.S. EPA estimated that by eliminating the de minimis reporting exemption, an additional 2,000 companies would be required to file TRI reports on PFAS releases into the environment.  Similarly, U.S. EPA’s recently promulgated PFAS Reporting Rule under the Toxic Substances Control Act requires companies to provide data on PFAS in consumer and industrial products dating back to 2011.  The rule requires that any entity that manufactured or imported PFAS, PFAS-containing articles, PFAS in mixtures, byproducts or as an impurity, provide specific information regarding PFAS uses, production volumes, disposal, exposures, hazards and environmental and health effects.  There is no de minimis reporting threshold under this rule. 

So there will soon be a lot of information flooding the public arena regarding historical and ongoing uses of PFAS that will likely be mined by PWS and other entities seeking to find potentially responsible parties to contribute to the costs to remediate PFAS-impacted drinking water.  In order to both mitigate risk and ensure compliance with applicable reporting requirements, companies would be well served to carefully audit their supply chain to identify potential PFAS uses.  Of course, that can pose a challenge where the PFAS might not be disclosed on safety data sheets or where there is uncertainty regarding what actually constitutes a PFAS.   

We will continue to monitor and report on new PFAS developments at the Corporate Environmental Lawyer Blog .