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How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation (Step-by-Step)

• PowerPoint Tutorials
• Presentation Design
• January 22, 2024

In this beginner’s guide, you will learn step-by-step how to make a PowerPoint presentation from scratch.

While PowerPoint is designed to be intuitive and accessible, it can be overwhelming if you’ve never gotten any training on it before. As you progress through this guide, you’ll will learn how to move from blank slides to PowerPoint slides that look like these.

Table of Contents

Additionally, as you create your presentation, you’ll also learn tricks for working more efficiently in PowerPoint, including how to:

• Change the slide order
• Reset your layout
• Change the slide dimensions
• Use PowerPoint Designer
• Format text
• Format objects
• Play a presentation (slide show)

With this knowledge under your belt, you’ll be ready to start creating PowerPoint presentations. Moreover, you’ll have taken your skills from beginner to proficient in no time at all. I will also include links to more advanced PowerPoint topics.

Ready to start learning how to make a PowerPoint presentation?

Take your PPT skills to the next level

Start with a blank presentation.

Note: Before you open PowerPoint and start creating your presentation, make sure you’ve collected your thoughts. If you’re going to make your slides compelling, you need to spend some time brainstorming.

For help with this, see our article with tips for nailing your business presentation  here .

The first thing you’ll need to do is to open PowerPoint. When you do, you are shown the Start Menu , with the Home tab open.

This is where you can choose either a blank theme (1) or a pre-built theme (2). You can also choose to open an existing presentation (3).

For now, go ahead and click on the  Blank Presentation (1)  thumbnail.

Doing so launches a brand new and blank presentation for you to work with. Before you start adding content to your presentation, let’s first familiarize ourselves with the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint interface

Here is how the program is laid out:

• The Application Header
• The Ribbon (including the Ribbon tabs)
• The Quick Access Toolbar (either above or below the Ribbon)
• The Slides Pane (slide thumbnails)

The Slide Area

The notes pane.

• The Status Bar (including the View Buttons)

Each one of these areas has options for viewing certain parts of the PowerPoint environment and formatting your presentation.

Below are the important things to know about certain elements of the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint Ribbon

The Ribbon is contextual. That means that it will adapt to what you’re doing in the program.

For example, the Font, Paragraph and Drawing options are greyed out until you select something that has text in it, as in the example below (A).

Furthermore, if you start manipulating certain objects, the Ribbon will display additional tabs, as seen above (B), with more commands and features to help you work with those objects. The following objects have their own additional tabs in the Ribbon which are hidden until you select them:

• Online Pictures
• Screenshots
• Screen Recording

The Slides Pane

This is where you can preview and rearrange all the slides in your presentation.

Right-clicking on a slide  in the pane gives you additional options on the slide level that you won’t find on the Ribbon, such as  Duplicate Slide ,  Delete Slide , and  Hide Slide .

In addition, you can add sections to your presentation by  right-clicking anywhere in this Pane  and selecting  Add Section . Sections are extremely helpful in large presentations, as they allow you to organize your slides into chunks that you can then rearrange, print or display differently from other slides.

The Slide Area (A) is where you will build out your slides. Anything within the bounds of this area will be visible when you present or print your presentation.

Anything outside of this area (B) will be hidden from view. This means that you can place things here, such as instructions for each slide, without worrying about them being shown to your audience.

The  Notes Pane  is the space beneath the Slide Area where you can type in the speaker notes for each slide. It’s designed as a fast way to add and edit your slides’ talking points.

To expand your knowledge and learn more about adding, printing, and exporting your PowerPoint speaker notes, read our guide here .

Your speaker notes are visible when you print your slides using the Notes Pages option and when you use the Presenter View . To expand your knowledge and learn the ins and outs of using the Presenter View , read our guide here .

You can resize the  Notes Pane  by clicking on its edge and dragging it up or down (A). You can also minimize or reopen it by clicking on the Notes button in the Status Bar (B).

Note:  Not all text formatting displays in the Notes Pane, even though it will show up when printing your speaker notes. To learn more about printing PowerPoint with notes, read our guide here .

Now that you have a basic grasp of the PowerPoint interface at your disposal, it’s time to make your presentation.

Adding Content to Your PowerPoint Presentation

Notice that in the Slide Area , there are two rectangles with dotted outlines. These are called  Placeholders  and they’re set on the template in the Slide Master View .

To expand your knowledge and learn how to create a PowerPoint template of your own (which is no small task), read our guide here .

As the prompt text suggests, you can click into each placeholder and start typing text. These types of placeholder prompts are customizable too. That means that if you are using a company template, it might say something different, but the functionality is the same.

Note:  For the purposes of this example, I will create a presentation based on the content in the Starbucks 2018 Global Social Impact Report, which is available to the public on their website.

If you type in more text than there is room for, PowerPoint will automatically reduce its font size. You can stop this behavior by clicking on the  Autofit Options  icon to the left of the placeholder and selecting  Stop Fitting Text to this Placeholder .

Next, you can make formatting adjustments to your text by selecting the commands in the Font area and the  Paragraph area  of the  Home  tab of the Ribbon.

The Reset Command:  If you make any changes to your title and decide you want to go back to how it was originally, you can use the Reset button up in the Home tab .

Insert More Slides into Your Presentation

Now that you have your title slide filled in, it’s time to add more slides. To do that, simply go up to the  Home tab  and click on  New Slide . This inserts a new slide in your presentation right after the one you were on.

You can alternatively hit Ctrl+M on your keyboard to insert a new blank slide in PowerPoint. To learn more about this shortcut, see my guide on using Ctrl+M in PowerPoint .

Instead of clicking the New Slide command, you can also open the New Slide dropdown to see all the slide layouts in your PowerPoint template. Depending on who created your template, your layouts in this dropdown can be radically different.

If you insert a layout and later want to change it to a different layout, you can use the Layout dropdown instead of the New Slide dropdown.

After inserting a few different slide layouts, your presentation might look like the following picture. Don’t worry that it looks blank, next we will start adding content to your presentation.

If you want to follow along exactly with me, your five slides should be as follows:

• Title Slide
• Title and Content
• Section Header
• Two Content
• Picture with Caption

Adding Content to Your Slides

Now let’s go into each slide and start adding our content. You’ll notice some new types of placeholders.

On slide 2 we have a  Content Placeholder , which allows you to add any kind of content. That includes:

• A SmartArt graphic,
• A 3D object,
• A picture from the web,
• Or an icon.

To insert text, simply type it in or hit  Ctrl+C to Copy  and Ctrl+V to Paste  from elsewhere. To insert any of the other objects, click on the appropriate icon and follow the steps to insert it.

For my example, I’ll simply type in some text as you can see in the picture below.

Slides 3 and 4 only have text placeholders, so I’ll go ahead and add in my text into each one.

On slide 5 we have a Picture Placeholder . That means that the only elements that can go into it are:

• A picture from the web

To insert a picture into the picture placeholder, simply:

• Click on the  Picture  icon
• Find  a picture on your computer and select it
• Click on  Insert

Alternatively, if you already have a picture open somewhere else, you can select the placeholder and paste in (shortcut: Ctrl+V ) the picture. You can also drag the picture in from a file explorer window.

If you do not like the background of the picture you inserted onto your slide, you can remove the background here in PowerPoint. To see how to do this, read my guide here .

Placeholders aren’t the only way to add content to your slides. At any point, you can use the Insert tab to add elements to your slides.

You can use either the Title Only  or the  Blank  slide layout to create slides for content that’s different. For example, a three-layout content slide, or a single picture divider slide, as shown below.

In the first example above, I’ve inserted 6 text boxes, 3 icons, and 3 circles to create this layout. In the second example, I’ve inserted a full-sized picture and then 2 shapes and 2 text boxes.

The Reset Command:  Because these slides are built with shapes and text boxes (and not placeholders), hitting the  Reset button up in the  Home tab  won’t do anything.

That is a good thing if you don’t want your layouts to adjust. However, it does mean that it falls on you to make sure everything is aligned and positioned correctly.

For more on how to add and manipulate the different objects in PowerPoint, check out our step-by-step articles here:

• Using graphics in PowerPoint
• Inserting icons onto slides
• Adding pictures to your PowerPoint
• How to embed a video in PowerPoint
• How to add music to your presentation

Using Designer to generate more layouts ideas

If you have Office 365, your version of PowerPoint comes with a new feature called Designer (or Design Ideas). This is a feature that generates slide layout ideas for you. The coolest thing about this feature is that it uses the content you already have.

To use Designer , simply navigate to the  Design tab  in your Ribbon, and click on  Design Ideas .

NOTE: If the PowerPoint Designer is not working for you (it is grey out), see my troubleshooting guide for Designer .

Change the Overall Design (optional)

When you make a PowerPoint presentation, you’ll want to think about the overall design. Now that you have some content in your presentation, you can use the Design tab to change the look and feel of your slides.

For additional help thinking through the design of your presentation,  read my guide here .

A. Picking your PowerPoint slide size

If you have PowerPoint 2013 or later, when you create a blank document in PowerPoint, you automatically start with a widescreen layout with a 16:9 ratio. These dimensions are suitable for most presentations as they match the screens of most computers and projectors.

However, you do have the option to change the dimensions.

For example, your presentation might not be presented, but instead converted into a PDF or printed and distributed. In that case, you can easily switch to the standard dimensions with a 4:3 ratio by selecting from the dropdown (A).

You can also choose a custom slide size or change the slide orientation from landscape to portrait in the Custom Slide Size dialog box (B).

To learn all about the different PowerPoint slide sizes, and some of the issues you will face when changing the slide size of a non-blank presentation,  read my guide here .

 B. Selecting a PowerPoint theme

The next thing you can do is change the theme of your presentation to a pre-built one. For a detailed explanation of what a PowerPoint theme is, and how to best use it,  read my article here .

In the beginning of this tutorial, we started with a blank presentation, which uses the default Office theme as you can see in the picture below.

That gives you the most flexibility because it has a blank background and quite simple layouts that work for most presentations. However, it also means that it’s your responsibility to enhance the design.

If you’re comfortable with this, you can stay with the default theme or create your own custom theme ( read my guide here ). But if you would rather not have to think about design, then you can choose a pre-designed theme.

Microsoft provides 46 other pre-built themes, which include slide layouts, color variants and palettes, and fonts. Each one varies quite significantly, so make sure you look through them carefully.

To select a different theme, go to the  Design tab  in the Ribbon, and click on the  dropdown arrow  in the  Themes section .

For this tutorial, let’s select the  Frame  theme and then choose the third Variant in the theme. Doing so changes the layout, colors, and fonts of your presentation.

Note: The theme dropdown area is also where you can import or save custom themes. To see my favorite places to find professional PowerPoint templates and themes (and recommendations for why I like them), read my guide here .

C. How to change a slide background in PowerPoint

The next thing to decide is how you want your background to look for the entire presentation. In the  Variants area, you can see four background options.

For this example, we want our presentation to have a dark background, so let’s select Style 3. When you do so, you’ll notice that:

• The background color automatically changes across all slides
• The color of the text on most of the slides automatically changes to white so that it’s visible on the dark background
• The colors of the objects on slides #6 and #7 also adjust, in a way we may not want (we’ll likely have to make some manual adjustments to these slides)

Note: If you want to change the slide background for just that one slide, don’t left-click the style. Instead, right-click it and select Apply to Selected Slides .

After you change the background for your entire presentation, you can easily adjust the background for an individual slide.

Inside the Format Background pane, you can see you have the following options:

• Gradient fill
• Picture or texture fill
• Pattern fill
• Hide background

You can explore these options to find the PowerPoint background that best fits your presentation.

D. How to change your color palette in PowerPoint

Another thing you may want to adjust in your presentation, is the color scheme. In the picture below you can see the Theme Colors we are currently using for this presentation.

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own color palette. By default, the Office theme includes the Office color palette. This affects the colors you are presented with when you format any element within your presentation (text, shapes, SmartArt, etc.).

The good news is that the colors here are easy to change. To switch color palettes, simply:

• Go to the  Design tab in the Ribbon
• In the Variants area, click on the  dropdown arrow  and select  Colors
• Select  the color palette (or theme colors) you want

You can choose among the pre-built color palettes from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

As you build your presentation, make sure you use the colors from your theme to format objects. That way, changing the color palette adjusts all the colors in your presentation automatically.

E. How to change your fonts in PowerPoint

Just as we changed the color palette, you can do the same for the fonts.

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own font combination. By default, the Office theme includes the Office font pairing. This affects the fonts that are automatically assigned to all text in your presentation.

The good news is that the font pairings are easy to change. To switch your Theme Fonts, simply:

• Go to the  Design tab  in the Ribbon
• Click on the  dropdown arrow  in the  Variants  area
• Select  Fonts
• Select  the font pairing you want

You can choose among the pre-built fonts from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

If you are working with PowerPoint presentations on both Mac and PC computers, make sure you choose a safe PowerPoint font. To see a list of the safest PowerPoint fonts, read our guide here .

If you receive a PowerPoint presentation and the wrong fonts were used, you can use the Replace Fonts dialog box to change the fonts across your entire presentation. For details, read our guide here .

Adding Animations & Transitions (optional)

The final step to make a PowerPoint presentation compelling, is to consider using animations and transitions. These are by no means necessary to a good presentation, but they may be helpful in your situation.

A. Adding PowerPoint animations

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust animations engine designed to power your creativity. That being said, it’s also easy to get started with basic animations.

Animations are movements that you can apply to individual objects on your slide.

To add a PowerPoint animation to an element of your slide, simply:

• Select the  element
• Go to the  Animations tab in the Ribbon
• Click on the  dropdown arrow  to view your options
• Select the  animation  you want

You can add animations to multiple objects at one time by selecting them all first and then applying the animation.

B. How to preview a PowerPoint animation

There are three ways to preview a PowerPoint animation:

• Click on the Preview button in the Animations tab
• Click on the little star  next to the slide
• Play the slide in Slide Show Mode

To learn other ways to run your slide show, see our guide on presenting a PowerPoint slide show with shortcuts .

To adjust the settings of your animations, explore the options in the  Effect Options ,  Advanced Animation  and the  Timing  areas of the  Animation tab .

Note:  To see how to make objects appear and disappear in your slides by clicking a button,  read our guide here .

C. How to manage your animations in PowerPoint

The best way to manage lots of animations on your slide is with the Animation Pane . To open it, simply:

• Navigate to the  Animations tab
• Select the  Animation Pane

Inside the Animation Pane, you’ll see all of the different animations that have been applied to objects on your slide, with their numbers marked as pictured above.

Note: To see examples of PowerPoint animations that can use in PowerPoint, see our list of PowerPoint animation tutorials here .

D. How to add transitions to your PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust transition engine so that you can dictate how your slides change from one to the other. It is also extremely easy to add transitions to your slides.

In PowerPoint, transitions are the movements (or effects) you see as you move between two slides.

To add a transition to a PowerPoint slide, simply:

• Select the  slide
• Go to the  Transitions tab in the Ribbon
• In the Transitions to This Slide area, click on the  dropdown arrow  to view your options
• Select the  transition  you want

To adjust the settings of the transition, explore the options in the  Timing  area of the Transitions tab.

You can also add the same transition to multiple slides. To do that, select them in the  Slides Pane  and apply the transition.

E. How to preview a transition in PowerPoint

There are three ways to preview your PowerPoint transitions (just like your animations):

• Click on the Preview  button in the Transitions tab
• Click on the little star  beneath the slide number in the thumbnail view

Note:  In 2016, PowerPoint added a cool new transition, called Morph. It operates a bit differently from other transitions. For a detailed tutorial on how to use the cool Morph transition,  see our step-by-step article here .

Save Your PowerPoint Presentation

After you’ve built your presentation and made all the adjustments to your slides, you’ll want to save your presentation. YOu can do this several different ways.

To save a PowerPoint presentation using your Ribbon, simply:

• Navigate to the  File tab
•  Select  Save As  on the left
• Choose  where you want to save your presentation
• Name  your presentation and/or adjust your file type settings
• Click  Save

You can alternatively use the  Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut to save your presentation. I recommend using this shortcut frequently as you build your presentation to make sure you don’t lose any of your work.

This is the standard way to save a presentation. However, there may be a situation where you want to save your presentation as a different file type.

To learn how to save your presentation as a PDF, see our guide on converting PowerPoint to a PDF .

How to save your PowerPoint presentation as a template

Once you’ve created a presentation that you like, you may want to turn it into a template. The easiest – but not technically correct – way, is to simply create a copy of your current presentation and then change the content.

But be careful! A PowerPoint template is a special type of document and it has its own parameters and behaviors.

If you’re interested in learning about how to create your own PowerPoint template from scratch, see our guide on how to create a PowerPoint template .

Printing Your PowerPoint Presentation

After finishing your PowerPoint presentation, you may want to print it out on paper. Printing your slides is relatively easy.

To open the Print dialog box, you can either:

• Hit Ctrl+P on your keyboard
• Or go to the Ribbon and click on File and then Print

Inside the Print dialog box, you can choose from the various printing settings:

• Printer: Select a printer to use (or print to PDF or OneNote)
• Slides: Choose which slides you want to print
• Layout: Determine how many slides you want per page (this is where you can print the notes, outline, and handouts)
• Collated or uncollated (learn what collated printing means here )
• Color: Choose to print in color, grayscale or black & white

There are many more options for printing your PowerPoint presentations. Here are links to more in-depth articles:

• How to print multiple slides per page
• How to print your speaker notes in PowerPoint
• How to save PowerPoint as a picture presentation

So that’s how to create a PowerPoint presentation if you are brand new to it. We’ve also included a ton of links to helpful resources to boost your PowerPoint skills further.

When you are creating your presentation, it is critical to first focus on the content (what you are trying to say) before getting lost inserting and playing with elements. The clearer you are on what you want to present, the easier it will be to build it out in PowerPoint.

If you enjoyed this article, you can learn more about our PowerPoint training courses and other presentation resources by  visiting us here .

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6 Simple Parts for Beginners to Create a PowerPoint Presentation

Last Updated: December 19, 2022 Fact Checked

Creating a New PowerPoint

Creating the title slide, adding a new slide, adding content to slides, adding transitions, testing and saving your presentation.

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Darlene Antonelli, MA . Darlene Antonelli is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. Darlene has experience teaching college courses, writing technology-related articles, and working hands-on in the technology field. She earned an MA in Writing from Rowan University in 2012 and wrote her thesis on online communities and the personalities curated in such communities. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 4,319,233 times. Learn more...

Do you want to have your data in a slide show? If you have Microsoft 365, you can use PowerPoint! PowerPoint is a program that's part of the Microsoft Office suite (which you have to pay for) and is available for both Windows and Mac computers. This wikiHow teaches you how to create your own Microsoft PowerPoint presentation on a computer.

Things You Should Know

• Templates make it easy to create vibrant presentations no matter your skill level.
• When adding photos, you can adjust their sizes by clicking and dragging in or out from their corners.
• You can add animated transitions between slides or to individual elements like bullet points and blocks of text.

• If you don't have a Microsoft Office 365 subscription, you can use the website instead of the desktop app. Go to https://powerpoint.office.com/ to use the website version.
• You can also use the mobile app to make presentations, though it's easier to do this on a computer, which has a larger screen, a mouse, and a keyboard.

• If you don't want to use a template, just click the Blank option in the upper-left side of the page and skip to the next part.

• Skip this step if your selected template has no themes available.

• If you're creating a PowerPoint presentation for which an elaborate title slide has been requested, ignore this step.

• You can change the font and size of text used from the Home tab that's in the orange ribbon at the top of the window.

• You can also just leave this box blank if you like.

• You can also click and drag in or out one of a text box's corners to shrink or enlarge the text box.

• On a Mac, you'll click the Home tab instead. [1] X Research source

• Clicking the white slide-shaped box above this option will result in a new text slide being inserted.

• Title Slide
• Title and Content
• Section Header
• Two Content
• Content with Caption
• Picture with Caption

• Naturally, the title slide should be the first slide in your presentation, meaning that it should be the top slide in the left-hand column.

• Skip this step and the next two steps if your selected slide uses a template that doesn't have text boxes in it.

• Text boxes in PowerPoint will automatically format the bulk of your text for you (e.g., adding bullet points) based on the context of the content itself.
• You can add notes that the Presentation will not include (but you'll still be able to see them on your screen) by clicking Notes at the bottom of the slide.

• You can change the font of the selected text by clicking the current font's name and then clicking your preferred font.
• If you want to change the size of the text, click the numbered drop-down box and then click a larger or smaller number based on whether you want to enlarge or shrink the text.
• You can also change the color, bolding, italicization, underlining, and so on from here.

• Photos in particular can be enlarged or shrunk by clicking and dragging out or in one of their corners.

• Remember to keep slides uncluttered and relatively free of distractions. It's best to keep the amount of text per slide to around 33 words or less. [2] X Research source

• Slide content will animate in the order in which you assign transitions. For example, if you animate a photo on the slide and then animate the title, the photo will appear before the title.
• Make your slideshow progress automatically by setting the speed of every transition to align with your speech as well as setting each slide to Advance . [3] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source

• If you need to exit the presentation, press Esc .

• Windows - Click File , click Save , double-click This PC , select a save location, enter a name for your presentation, and click Save .
• Mac - Click File , click Save As... , enter the presentation's name in the "Save As" field, select a save location by clicking the "Where" box and clicking a folder, and click Save .

Community Q&A

• If you save your PowerPoint presentation in .pps format instead of the default .ppt format, double-clicking your PowerPoint presentation file will prompt the presentation to open directly into the slideshow view. Thanks Helpful 5 Not Helpful 0
• If you don't have Microsoft Office, you can still use Apple's Keynote program or Google Slides to create a PowerPoint presentation. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Your PowerPoint presentation (or some features in it) may not open in significantly older versions of PowerPoint. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 1
• Great PowerPoint presentations avoid placing too much text on one slide. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=DBDCE00C929AA5D8!252&ithint=file%2cpptx&app=PowerPoint&authkey=!AH4O9NxcbehqzIg
• ↑ https://www.virtualsalt.com/powerpoint.htm
• ↑ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/set-the-timing-and-speed-of-a-transition-c3c3c66f-4cca-4821-b8b9-7de0f3f6ead1#:~:text=To%20make%20the%20slide%20advance,effect%20on%20the%20slide%20finishes .

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Make beautiful presentations, together

Stay in sync in your slides, with easy sharing and real-time editing. Use comments and assign action items to build your ideas together.

Present slideshows with confidence

With easy-to-use presenter view, speaker notes, and live captions, Slides makes presenting your ideas a breeze. You can even present to Google Meet video calls directly from Slides.

Seamlessly connect to your other Google apps

Slides is thoughtfully connected to other Google apps you love, saving you time. Embed charts from Google Sheets or reply to comments directly from Gmail. You can even search the web and Google Drive for relevant content and images directly from Slides.

Extend collaboration and intelligence to PowerPoint files

Easily edit Microsoft PowerPoint presentations online without converting them, and layer on Slides’ enhanced collaborative and assistive features like comments, action items, and Smart Compose.

Work on fresh content

With Slides, everyone’s working on the latest version of a presentation. And with edits automatically saved in version history, it’s easy to track or undo changes.

Make slides faster, with built-in intelligence

Assistive features like Smart Compose and autocorrect help you build slides faster with fewer errors.

Stay productive, even offline

You can access, create, and edit Slides even without an internet connection, helping you stay productive from anywhere.

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Secure by default

We use industry-leading security measures to keep your data safe, including advanced malware protections. Slides is also cloud-native, eliminating the need for local files and minimizing risk to your devices.

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All files uploaded to Google Drive or created in Slides are encrypted in transit and at rest.

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Our products, including Slides, regularly undergo independent verification of their security, privacy, and compliance controls .

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Slides adheres to the same robust privacy commitments and data protections as the rest of Google Cloud’s enterprise services .

You control your data.

We never use your slides content for ad purposes., we never sell your personal information to third parties., find the plan that’s right for you, google slides is a part of google workspace.

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Blog Beginner Guides

How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

By Krystle Wong , Jul 20, 2023

A top-notch presentation possesses the power to drive action. From winning stakeholders over and conveying a powerful message to securing funding — your secret weapon lies within the realm of creating an effective presentation .  

Being an excellent presenter isn’t confined to the boardroom. Whether you’re delivering a presentation at work, pursuing an academic career, involved in a non-profit organization or even a student, nailing the presentation game is a game-changer.

In this article, I’ll cover the top qualities of compelling presentations and walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to give a good presentation. Here’s a little tip to kick things off: for a headstart, check out Venngage’s collection of free presentation templates . They are fully customizable, and the best part is you don’t need professional design skills to make them shine!

These valuable presentation tips cater to individuals from diverse professional backgrounds, encompassing business professionals, sales and marketing teams, educators, trainers, students, researchers, non-profit organizations, public speakers and presenters. 

No matter your field or role, these tips for presenting will equip you with the skills to deliver effective presentations that leave a lasting impression on any audience.

Click to jump ahead:

What are the 10 qualities of a good presentation?

Step-by-step guide on how to prepare an effective presentation, 9 effective techniques to deliver a memorable presentation, faqs on making a good presentation, how to create a presentation with venngage in 5 steps.

When it comes to giving an engaging presentation that leaves a lasting impression, it’s not just about the content — it’s also about how you deliver it. Wondering what makes a good presentation? Well, the best presentations I’ve seen consistently exhibit these 10 qualities:

1. Clear structure

No one likes to get lost in a maze of information. Organize your thoughts into a logical flow, complete with an introduction, main points and a solid conclusion. A structured presentation helps your audience follow along effortlessly, leaving them with a sense of satisfaction at the end.

Regardless of your presentation style , a quality presentation starts with a clear roadmap. Browse through Venngage’s template library and select a presentation template that aligns with your content and presentation goals. Here’s a good presentation example template with a logical layout that includes sections for the introduction, main points, supporting information and a conclusion: 

2. Engaging opening

Hook your audience right from the start with an attention-grabbing statement, a fascinating question or maybe even a captivating anecdote. Set the stage for a killer presentation!

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

3. Relevant content

Make sure your content aligns with their interests and needs. Your audience is there for a reason, and that’s to get valuable insights. Avoid fluff and get straight to the point, your audience will be genuinely excited.

4. Effective visual aids

Picture this: a slide with walls of text and tiny charts, yawn! Visual aids should be just that—aiding your presentation. Opt for clear and visually appealing slides, engaging images and informative charts that add value and help reinforce your message.

With Venngage, visualizing data takes no effort at all. You can import data from CSV or Google Sheets seamlessly and create stunning charts, graphs and icon stories effortlessly to showcase your data in a captivating and impactful way.

5. Clear and concise communication

Keep your language simple, and avoid jargon or complicated terms. Communicate your ideas clearly, so your audience can easily grasp and retain the information being conveyed. This can prevent confusion and enhance the overall effectiveness of the message. 

6. Engaging delivery

Spice up your presentation with a sprinkle of enthusiasm! Maintain eye contact, use expressive gestures and vary your tone of voice to keep your audience glued to the edge of their seats. A touch of charisma goes a long way!

7. Interaction and audience engagement

Turn your presentation into an interactive experience — encourage questions, foster discussions and maybe even throw in a fun activity. Engaged audiences are more likely to remember and embrace your message.

Transform your slides into an interactive presentation with Venngage’s dynamic features like pop-ups, clickable icons and animated elements. Engage your audience with interactive content that lets them explore and interact with your presentation for a truly immersive experience.

8. Effective storytelling

Who doesn’t love a good story? Weaving relevant anecdotes, case studies or even a personal story into your presentation can captivate your audience and create a lasting impact. Stories build connections and make your message memorable.

A great presentation background is also essential as it sets the tone, creates visual interest and reinforces your message. Enhance the overall aesthetics of your presentation with these 15 presentation background examples and captivate your audience’s attention.

9. Well-timed pacing

Pace your presentation thoughtfully with well-designed presentation slides, neither rushing through nor dragging it out. Respect your audience’s time and ensure you cover all the essential points without losing their interest.

10. Strong conclusion

Last impressions linger! Summarize your main points and leave your audience with a clear takeaway. End your presentation with a bang , a call to action or an inspiring thought that resonates long after the conclusion.

In-person presentations aside, acing a virtual presentation is of paramount importance in today’s digital world. Check out this guide to learn how you can adapt your in-person presentations into virtual presentations . 

Preparing an effective presentation starts with laying a strong foundation that goes beyond just creating slides and notes. One of the quickest and best ways to make a presentation would be with the help of a good presentation software . 

Otherwise, let me walk you to how to prepare for a presentation step by step and unlock the secrets of crafting a professional presentation that sets you apart.

1. Understand the audience and their needs

Before you dive into preparing your masterpiece, take a moment to get to know your target audience. Tailor your presentation to meet their needs and expectations , and you’ll have them hooked from the start!

2. Conduct thorough research on the topic

Time to hit the books (or the internet)! Don’t skimp on the research with your presentation materials — dive deep into the subject matter and gather valuable insights . The more you know, the more confident you’ll feel in delivering your presentation.

3. Organize the content with a clear structure

No one wants to stumble through a chaotic mess of information. Outline your presentation with a clear and logical flow. Start with a captivating introduction, follow up with main points that build on each other and wrap it up with a powerful conclusion that leaves a lasting impression.

Delivering an effective business presentation hinges on captivating your audience, and Venngage’s professionally designed business presentation templates are tailor-made for this purpose. With thoughtfully structured layouts, these templates enhance your message’s clarity and coherence, ensuring a memorable and engaging experience for your audience members.

Don’t want to build your presentation layout from scratch? pick from these 5 foolproof presentation layout ideas that won’t go wrong. 

4. Develop visually appealing and supportive visual aids

Spice up your presentation with eye-catching visuals! Create slides that complement your message, not overshadow it. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean you need to overload your slides with text.

Well-chosen designs create a cohesive and professional look, capturing your audience’s attention and enhancing the overall effectiveness of your message. Here’s a list of carefully curated PowerPoint presentation templates and great background graphics that will significantly influence the visual appeal and engagement of your presentation.

5. Practice, practice and practice

Practice makes perfect — rehearse your presentation and arrive early to your presentation to help overcome stage fright. Familiarity with your material will boost your presentation skills and help you handle curveballs with ease.

6. Seek feedback and make necessary adjustments

Don’t be afraid to ask for help and seek feedback from friends and colleagues. Constructive criticism can help you identify blind spots and fine-tune your presentation to perfection.

With Venngage’s real-time collaboration feature , receiving feedback and editing your presentation is a seamless process. Group members can access and work on the presentation simultaneously and edit content side by side in real-time. Changes will be reflected immediately to the entire team, promoting seamless teamwork.

7. Prepare for potential technical or logistical issues

Prepare for the unexpected by checking your equipment, internet connection and any other potential hiccups. If you’re worried that you’ll miss out on any important points, you could always have note cards prepared. Remember to remain focused and rehearse potential answers to anticipated questions.

8. Fine-tune and polish your presentation

As the big day approaches, give your presentation one last shine. Review your talking points, practice how to present a presentation and make any final tweaks. Deep breaths — you’re on the brink of delivering a successful presentation!

In competitive environments, persuasive presentations set individuals and organizations apart. To brush up on your presentation skills, read these guides on how to make a persuasive presentation and tips to presenting effectively . 

Whether you’re an experienced presenter or a novice, the right techniques will let your presentation skills soar to new heights!

From public speaking hacks to interactive elements and storytelling prowess, these 9 effective presentation techniques will empower you to leave a lasting impression on your audience and make your presentations unforgettable.

1. Confidence and positive body language

Positive body language instantly captivates your audience, making them believe in your message as much as you do. Strengthen your stage presence and own that stage like it’s your second home! Stand tall, shoulders back and exude confidence. 

2. Eye contact with the audience

Break down that invisible barrier and connect with your audience through their eyes. Maintaining eye contact when giving a presentation builds trust and shows that you’re present and engaged with them.

3. Effective use of hand gestures and movement

A little movement goes a long way! Emphasize key points with purposeful gestures and don’t be afraid to walk around the stage. Your energy will be contagious!

4. Utilize storytelling techniques

Weave the magic of storytelling into your presentation. Share relatable anecdotes, inspiring success stories or even personal experiences that tug at the heartstrings of your audience. Adjust your pitch, pace and volume to match the emotions and intensity of the story. Varying your speaking voice adds depth and enhances your stage presence.

5. Incorporate multimedia elements

Spice up your presentation with a dash of visual pizzazz! Use slides, images and video clips to add depth and clarity to your message. Just remember, less is more—don’t overwhelm them with information overload. 

Turn your presentations into an interactive party! Involve your audience with questions, polls or group activities. When they actively participate, they become invested in your presentation’s success. Bring your design to life with animated elements. Venngage allows you to apply animations to icons, images and text to create dynamic and engaging visual content.

6. Utilize humor strategically

Laughter is the best medicine—and a fantastic presentation enhancer! A well-placed joke or lighthearted moment can break the ice and create a warm atmosphere , making your audience more receptive to your message.

7. Practice active listening and respond to feedback

Be attentive to your audience’s reactions and feedback. If they have questions or concerns, address them with genuine interest and respect. Your responsiveness builds rapport and shows that you genuinely care about their experience.

8. Apply the 10-20-30 rule

Apply the 10-20-30 presentation rule and keep it short, sweet and impactful! Stick to ten slides, deliver your presentation within 20 minutes and use a 30-point font to ensure clarity and focus. Less is more, and your audience will thank you for it!

9. Implement the 5-5-5 rule

Simplicity is key. Limit each slide to five bullet points, with only five words per bullet point and allow each slide to remain visible for about five seconds. This rule keeps your presentation concise and prevents information overload.

Simple presentations are more engaging because they are easier to follow. Summarize your presentations and keep them simple with Venngage’s gallery of simple presentation templates and ensure that your message is delivered effectively across your audience.

1. How to start a presentation?

To kick off your presentation effectively, begin with an attention-grabbing statement or a powerful quote. Introduce yourself, establish credibility and clearly state the purpose and relevance of your presentation.

2. How to end a presentation?

For a strong conclusion, summarize your talking points and key takeaways. End with a compelling call to action or a thought-provoking question and remember to thank your audience and invite any final questions or interactions.

3. How to make a presentation interactive?

To make your presentation interactive, encourage questions and discussion throughout your talk. Utilize multimedia elements like videos or images and consider including polls, quizzes or group activities to actively involve your audience.

In need of inspiration for your next presentation? I’ve got your back! Pick from these 120+ presentation ideas, topics and examples to get started. 

Creating a stunning presentation with Venngage is a breeze with our user-friendly drag-and-drop editor and professionally designed templates for all your communication needs. 

Here’s how to make a presentation in just 5 simple steps with the help of Venngage:

Step 1: Sign up for Venngage for free using your email, Gmail or Facebook account or simply log in to access your account. 

Step 2: Pick a design from our selection of free presentation templates (they’re all created by our expert in-house designers).

Step 3: Make the template your own by customizing it to fit your content and branding. With Venngage’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can easily modify text, change colors and adjust the layout to create a unique and eye-catching design.

Step 4: Elevate your presentation by incorporating captivating visuals. You can upload your images or choose from Venngage’s vast library of high-quality photos, icons and illustrations. 

Step 5: Upgrade to a premium or business account to export your presentation in PDF and print it for in-person presentations or share it digitally for free!

By following these five simple steps, you’ll have a professionally designed and visually engaging presentation ready in no time. With Venngage’s user-friendly platform, your presentation is sure to make a lasting impression. So, let your creativity flow and get ready to shine in your next presentation!

Productivity

The PowerPoint Online Guide: How to Make and Present Slideshows Anywhere

Over the past thirty years, PowerPoint has become synonymous with presentations. Give a speech, present a new product, share finances in a board meeting—all are typically done with a PowerPoint presentation. That’s easy enough if you’re presenting from your laptop and have Microsoft Office installed.

Or it can be far more difficult. You might need to email your slide deck to the event organizer—and hope they have the same version of PowerPoint installed. Or you may carry your PowerPoint file around on a flash drive to open it on the presentation computer. Neither are great solutions, especially for all the times you need to make a last-minute change to your slides or if you don’t typically use Microsoft Office.

A Quick Guide to Office Online

It starts with Office Online . Launched in 2010 as Office Web Apps , Office Online today includes simplified, free versions of Microsoft Office’s most popular apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

If you’ve ever used the iPad or Android tablet versions of Office, Office Online will feel instantly familiar. The basics are the same. Each Office Online app includes an Office-style toolbar with Home , Insert , Design , and other tabs to organize core editing tools. Office Online apps don’t include all of their Windows features. They include instead a focused set of editing tools that, for most documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, are all you need.

The big difference is that the apps are online. Instead of emailing files back and forth, or syncing changes via OneDrive or Dropbox then sending messages to colleagues when something’s finished, changes happen automatically in Office Online. Your team can open files at the same time, make changes or add comments, and Office will save and sync it to all your OneDrive accounts automatically. Office Online apps also work everywhere. Open any browser, go to Office.com, and your work is ready to pick up where you left off.

Office Online is free for personal use—log into Office.com with a Microsoft account and fill up OneDrive’s free 5GB of storage with all your Office files. A business version is included with Office 365 for business and enterprise accounts as well.

The basics are the same. If you’ve used PowerPoint before, you’ll feel at home in PowerPoint online. Here are the things to keep in mind, the tips to help you work efficiently in your browser, and ways to work around Office Online’s limitations.

For your number crunching needs, check our Excel Online Guide to learn everything you need about Microsoft’s free Excel.

A Quick PowerPoint Online Tour

Ready to make a new presentation? Open PowerPoint Online at office.live.com/start/PowerPoint.aspx , and sign in with your Microsoft account (including Outlook.com, Xbox Live, and Office 365 accounts). You’ll then see the Office template picker with many of the presentation templates from desktop PowerPoint—with your recently opened presentations on the left sidebar.

Select a template or open an existing presentation to open it in PowerPoint Online. With a similar design to recent versions of PowerPoint for Mac and Windows, you’ll find the core text and design tools on the main Home tab, options to add images and embedded videos and tables in the Insert tab, slide and template options in the Design tab, animations in the Transitions and Animations tab, and so on. If you can’t find the feature you need, type what you need in the Tell me what you want to do box to search through PowerPoint’s features and documentation.

Need to edit a picture or tweak a SmartArt graph? Select it, and a new Format tab will appear with additional tools as in desktop PowerPoint.

You may not need to look through the toolbars for tools, though. Select text in a slide and PowerPoint shows quick formatting options in a pop-over to change the font, color, and more. Or right-click on most other elements to find their quick editing options. You can then double-click on the toolbar to hide it and increase your workspace, if you’d like, relying on the popover tools to work faster.

Add a new slide: Ctrl + M or CMD + M

Move slides up or down: Ctrl + arrow or CMD + arrow

Add a comment: Alt + N

Go to next slide in Slideshow view: N

Go to previous slide in Slideshow view: P

Go to a specific slide in Slideshow view: G , then type slide number

Exit Slideshow view: Esc

Check Microsoft PowerPoint Online keyboard shortcut list for more details.

How to Add Presentations to PowerPoint Online

PowerPoint Online is part of Microsoft’s OneDrive file storage. Open a PowerPoint file in OneDrive, and it’ll first show a preview with the option to edit it online.

But surprisingly, PowerPoint Online also works with Dropbox. That gives you another way to open your presentations online. You can save your presentations to either OneDrive or Dropbox, and then when you open PowerPoint Online, you can search through your presentations from both services. Either way, any change you make will automatically be saved to the original file.

The Dropbox integration only works for newer .pptx files. To open .ppt files, download them first, then upload them to PowerPoint Online or OneDrive. When you open them there, PowerPoint will automatically make a copy then convert the presentation to the new format so you can edit it online.

Or, if you have a PowerPoint file on your computer, open PowerPoint Online first, click the Upload a Presentation button, then select your presentation to upload it to OneDrive and open it for editing in PowerPoint Online at the same time.

How to Collaborate on PowerPoint Presentations

Want someone else to proofread your slides, or add their research to a team presentation? That’s easy in PowerPoint Online. From your presentation, click the Share button in the top right toolbar.

The default option is to email an invite link along with a message to your collaborators. You can choose to make the presentation editable or view only and can require a Microsoft account or not.

Or, you can copy a share link to send to anyone or share publicly online if you’d like. Select the Get a link tab to copy a link to your presentation—again, as a view-only presentation or with permission to edit. Here, if you make an editing link, anyone can tweak the presentation without signing into an account.

PowerPoint Online will show an icon beside the slide your collaborator is currently editing and will mark the section they’re working on in the same color. You can’t see the exact changes they make while they’re editing—changes take a few seconds to sync—so it’s best not to edit the same slide others are editing at the same time.

Want to chat with your collaborators? As long as everyone has a Skype account, you can open a Skype sidebar and talk with them in your PowerPoint presentation.

What’s Not In PowerPoint Online?

The core editing features are all here. You can add and edit text, photos, shapes, and SmartArt in PowerPoint online, add core transitions and animations to slides and elements, and present your presentation all from PowerPoint Online.

One of the main differences from PowerPoint’s desktop apps are the embedding options. In desktop versions of PowerPoint, you can embed video and audio from your computer, along with data from other Office apps and macros. In PowerPoint Online, you can embed online videos from YouTube—along with graphs and data from PowerBI and other add-ins in the Office Add-ins pane.

Animations are also more limited in PowerPoint Online. It includes only eight transitions, including Fade and Push , with animations that don’t require graphics acceleration. If you add a presentation that uses other animations from PowerPoint for Windows or Mac, you’ll need to select others or present without animations.

Fonts are another core difference. PowerPoint Online includes 18 fonts, including Arial, Comic Sans, Courier New, Garamond, Georgia, Rockwell, Tahoma, Times New Roman, and Verdana. You can’t install 3rd party fonts or choose fonts you have installed on your computer.

So, to make sure your PowerPoint presentations look great everywhere, stick with the fonts included with PowerPoint Online. That’s easy as they’re the only options in PowerPoint Online, but if you use another PowerPoint app, try using the Web fonts as they’re mainly fonts that work everywhere.

If you upload a presentation that uses a font not included in PowerPoint Online, you can still view the text in the correct font in PowerPoint Online on your computer or another computer with that font installed. If you don’t have the font installed, PowerPoint Online will replace that font with another similar font.

Beyond that, though, PowerPoint Online is surprisingly full-featured. It includes everything you need for making and showing presentations online—as long as you don’t need to use custom fonts, embed non-YouTube videos, or build advanced animations.

How to Present PowerPoint Presentations From Your Browser

Once you’ve finished creating your presentation, it’s time to present it. That’s as easy in PowerPoint Online as in the desktop apps. You can start the slideshow from the slide you’re currently editing via the Slide View button in the lower right-hand corner. Or, click the View tab and select to start the slideshow from the beginning or current slide.

PowerPoint Online will switch your browser to a full-screen preview mode. Click anywhere on the screen to go to the next slide, or tap your right and left arrows on your keyboard to navigate between slides. When finished, click again at the end of the presentation or press the Esc key to exit the slideshow and switch back to the windowed editor mode.

PowerPoint also includes controls on the lower left of the slideshow view, along with options in the right-click menu to switch slides or jump to a specific slide.

PowerPoint Online doesn’t include presenter view to show lecture notes on one screen while presenting your presentation on another—but there’s a workaround. While you’re giving your presentation full-screen, your browser with the original PowerPoint Online tab won’t show your slide content (Chrome hides the original window; Safari shows a Exit Full Screen placeholder). Instead, you can open a new tab or window and open your presentation there as well.

When you switch slides, move your mouse to your projection screen and click to advance—then move your mouse back to your laptop’s screen and select the next slide in your other PowerPoint Online window. Another option is to open your presentation in PowerPoint’s mobile apps and use your phone or tablet to view lecture notes while presenting from your laptop.

How to Convert PowerPoint Presentations Online

PowerPoint Online—unlike PowerPoint for Windows or Mac—can only open .pptx presentation files made with a newer version of PowerPoint. If you open an older .ppt file or a .odp presentation from another app, PowerPoint Online can convert the file to .pptx on the fly so you can edit the presentation.

But once you’ve opened the presentation, you can export it in 3 formats: PowerPoint, ODP (used with OpenOffice), or PDF. Click the File tab in the toolbar to open the core PowerPoint menu, select Download As , then choose the file format you want. PowerPoint Online will convert your presentation and save it to your computer so that you can share the original file with others.

The best option is to share the PowerPoint presentation directly in PowerPoint Online—but when you need a traditional presentation file, that’s a handy way to get it.

How to Save All Your Presentations to PowerPoint Online

There’s one trick to make PowerPoint Online the presentation app that’s always ready when you need it is: Save all your presentations to OneDrive or Dropbox. That way, whenever you need to present something, it’ll be a few clicks away inside PowerPoint Online.

If you already use OneDrive or Dropbox to sync your files, you’re halfway there. Save every new presentation there, every time. Whenever someone sends you a presentation, save it there also.

App automation tool Zapier can do that for you automatically. One of the most common ways to share presentations is through email—so Zapier can watch your Gmail or IMAP-powered email account for new presentation files. With Gmail, you can include a search to watch for presentation files. Use has:presentation to watch for any presentation—though note that this will also include Google Slides presentations which won’t work with PowerPoint Online. Or, use filename:pptx OR filename:ppt to watch for all PowerPoint attachments.

With IMAP email—or any other app where colleagues may send you presentations— add a Filter step to your Zap to watch the filename for .pptx or .ppt extensions.

Then, Zapier can save the presentation file to online storage to open and edit it in PowerPoint Online. The simplest is OneDrive since it’s PowerPoint Online’s core storage, though you could use Dropbox instead as it only takes a few extra clicks to open your presentations there.

You can save the presentation in any folder, and add a customized file name if you’d like. Then select the attachment from Gmail or your IMAP email and have Zapier copy that file to OneDrive or Dropbox. Next time you need to present something someone emailed you, don’t open your email app—instead, open PowerPoint Online and open the presentation there directly.

Ready to save any presentation you get emailed to PowerPoint Online? These Zaps will help you get started in a few clicks—remember to set up your search or filter to watch only for PowerPoint files:

Save new Gmail attachments to OneDrive

Save new email attachments to OneDrive

Save new attachments in Gmail to Dropbox

Back up new IMAP email attachments to Dropbox

That’s PowerPoint Online. It’s a handy way to tweak and present your presentation, even if you don’t have a copy of PowerPoint installed. And it just might be the new presentation app you need for a more focused, free way to make presentations anywhere.

Need more presentation tips and tools? Check out these other Zapier guides:

Want a different presentation app? Check out our roundup of the best PowerPoint alternatives for a dozen new ways to present your ideas.

Can’t figure out what to say? Here are tips to make every word count and nail your next presentation .

Once you’ve made a slide deck, here are the best ways to share your presentation online .

Then, get ready to present it with these 5 tips to overcome the fear of public speaking .

Auditorium photo by Nathan Dumlao via Unsplash .

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Matthew Guay

Matthew Guay is an editor and writer in Bangkok. When he's not writing, he's likely reading a new book or exploring random streets in a new city. Follow Matthew at @maguay.

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Google Slides cheat sheet: How to get started

How to use Google Slides to create, collaborate on, and lead business presentations.

Need to build a slide presentation for a meeting, training, or other event? Google Slides is an easy-to-use web app that comes with the essential tools and more. It stores your presentations in the cloud with Google Drive. Anyone with a Google account can use Slides and Drive for free, and they’re also included with a Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) subscription for business and enterprise customers. There are Google Sheets mobile apps for Android and iOS, too.

This guide will help you become familiar with the Google Slides web interface and show you how to start a new presentation, upload a Microsoft PowerPoint file to edit in Google Slides, collaborate with others on your presentation, and finally, present it to others.

Create or open a presentation

Log in to your Google or Workspace account. Then:

From Google Slides : At the top of the home page, you’ll see a “Start a new presentation” header, with a row of thumbnails underneath. To start a new, blank presentation, click the Blank thumbnail. To start a new presentation in a template, select one of the thumbnails to the right or click Template gallery toward the upper-right corner, then click any thumbnail on the page that appears.

The Google Slides home page. (Click image to enlarge it.)

Below the “Start a new presentation” area you’ll see a list of presentations that are stored in your Google Drive or shared with you. To open a presentation, click it in this list.

The list of your presentations appears in reverse chronological order starting with the presentation you most recently opened. Clicking the “AZ” icon at the upper right of this list changes the sort order to Last modified by me , Last modified , or in alphabetical order by presentation title. You can also browse to a specific folder by clicking the folder icon next to the “AZ” icon.

From Google Drive : Presentations stored in your Google Drive are listed in the main window of the Drive home page. To see a listing of presentations that others are sharing with you, click Shared with me in the left column. From either list, double-click a presentation to open it in Google Slides.

To start a new, blank presentation, click the New button at the upper-left of the screen and then click Google Slides .

If you want to use a template to start a new presentation, click the New button, then move the cursor over the right arrow next to Google Slides and select From a template . The template gallery for Google Slides will open; click a thumbnail to start a new presentation in that template.

Creating a new presentation from Google Drive.

From Google Slides or Drive: You also can use the search box at the top to find presentations in your Google Drive or shared with you. Enter words or numbers that may be in the presentation you’re looking for.

Upload a PowerPoint presentation to Slides

You can edit a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation in Google Slides, but first you must upload it to Google Drive.

From Google Slides: Click the folder icon ( Open file picker ) that’s above and toward the right corner of your presentations list. On the panel that opens, click the Upload tab. Drag-and-drop your PowerPoint file (.ppt or .pptx) onto this panel, or browse your PC’s drive to select it.

From Google Drive: Click the New button, then File upload , and select the PowerPoint file from your PC’s drive and click Open .

Traditionally, when you uploaded PowerPoint files to Google Drive, they were automatically converted to Slides format. That’s still the case when you upload PowerPoint files via the Google Slides home page .

However, Google now supports the ability to edit Microsoft Office files in their native format. By default, any .pptx files that you upload via Google Drive will remain formatted as PowerPoint documents. You can edit and collaborate on a PowerPoint file right in Slides, with all changes made by you or your collaborators saved directly to the PowerPoint file.

On the Google Slides and Drive home pages, native PowerPoint files will be denoted with an orange “P” icon, and when you open a native PowerPoint file in Sheets, you’ll see a “.PPTX” flag to the right of the document title.

Native PowerPoint files show the PowerPoint icon (top) instead of the Google Slides icon (bottom).

If you’d rather have Google convert PowerPoint files to Slides format automatically when you upload them via Google Drive, click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the Drive home screen and select Settings from the drop-down menu. In the Settings box next to “Convert uploads,” check the checkbox marked Convert uploaded files to Google Docs editor format .

Work in a presentation

When you open a new or existing presentation, its first slide appears in the main window of Google Slides. Here’s a breakdown of the toolbars, menus, panes, and sidebars that appear around your presentation.

The left pane shows thumbnails of all the slides in your presentation. Click a thumbnail, and the slide it represents will appear in the main window, where you can edit it.

The Google Slides editing interface. (Click image to enlarge it.)

Your presentation’s title appears along the top of the screen. To change it, click anywhere inside the title and start typing.

The menu bar below your presentation’s title has a complete set of tools for working with presentations. These are the main submenus to know:

• File has commands for taking action on the whole presentation, including Print, Rename, and Share.
• Edit lists the standard editing commands such as copy, cut, paste, delete, duplicate, and find and replace.
• View lists several ways that you can view your slides as you design and edit them. This includes arranging them into a grid, previewing them as a slideshow, or zooming in on them. You can also watch the transition effect that takes place between slides when they’re played in a slideshow.
• Insert lets you add several objects to your slides, including charts, diagrams, pictures, tables, and text. You can also add links to YouTube videos or sound or video files that are stored in your Google Drive.
• Format lets you change the look of your slides. Certain functions on this submenu become clickable depending on whether you’ve selected an image or text on a slide, or selected the slide itself.
• Slide is where you can add, delete, or duplicate a slide that you’ve selected. You can also add a preset layout to a slide, change its background or theme color, or add and edit a transition effect that takes place between slides when your presentation is played as a slideshow.
• Arrange lists tools that let you group or reorder objects on a slide in relation to another. For example, you can place an image behind another image or group an image and a block of text together to make them easier to move at once.
• Tools leads to several miscellaneous functions. These include letting you record a voice clip to go with a slide, running a spell checker, and showing you a list of objects in your presentation that are linked to other files.

The toolbar directly above your presentation puts commonly used commands in easy reach. From this toolbar, you can click buttons to add to a slide or change its background, comments, layout, objects (images, lines, shapes, text), text style, theme colors for the whole presentation, transition effects during a slideshow, and more. The buttons on the toolbar change depending on whether you’ve selected image or text on a slide or the slide itself.

Notice that there’s no Save button in the toolbar — or anywhere in Google Slides. That’s because Slides automatically saves any changes you make to your presentation.

Speaker notes: Along the bottom of each slide you’ll see an area marked Click to add speaker notes . Here you can type in brief notes to remind yourself what to do or say when the slide is being shown. Only you will see these notes when you show your presentation to an audience.

Themes sidebar: When you start a new blank presentation, the Themes sidebar opens on the right side of the screen. (You can also open this sidebar at any time by clicking Theme on the toolbar above your presentation.) Themes apply the same fonts, colors, and other design elements to all the slides in a presentation, giving it a consistent look and feel. Click a thumbnail in this sidebar to change your presentation to that theme.

Create and manage slides

Here are the basic things to know about working with slides in a presentation.

Add a new, blank slide to your presentation: Click the + button at the left end of the toolbar above your presentation. Alternatively, if you click the down arrow next to the +, you can choose a layout to use as the basis for a new slide.

Click the down arrow next to the + button in the toolbar to choose a layout for a new slide.

Apply or change a slide’s background: Select the slide’s thumbnail in the left sidebar and click Background on the toolbar above your presentation. On the panel that opens, you can change the slide’s background color or use an image file from your Google Drive, Google Photos account, or PC as the background.

Apply or change a slide’s layout: Select the slide’s thumbnail in the left pane, then click Layout on the toolbar above your presentation. On the panel that opens, select the layout you want to apply to this slide.

Apply or change a slide’s transition: Select the slide’s thumbnail in the left sidebar and click Transition on the toolbar above your presentation. In the Motion sidebar that opens along the right side of the screen, you can apply or change the animated transition effect that is played before this slide.

Choosing a transition style in the Motion pane.

Move a slide to a different spot in the slideshow sequence: Click and hold its thumbnail in the left sidebar, drag it up or down to another place in the sequence, and release it.

Delete a slide: Right-click its thumbnail in the left sidebar and select Delete from the pop-up menu. Alternatively, select its thumbnail and select Edit > Delete from the menu bar or just press the Delete key.

Share and collaborate on a presentation

Presentations are often a group effort, with several team members contributing to and polishing a presentation. In Slides, it’s easy for multiple collaborators to work on a presentation together.

First, you need to share the presentation. When you’re viewing your presentation in Google Slides, click the Share button at the upper-right. Or, from your Google Drive homepage, click to highlight the presentation that you want to share. Then, in the toolbar toward the upper right, click the Share icon (a head-and-shoulders silhouette with a +).

Either way, the “Share” panel will open.

Setting permissions for a file being shared privately.

Share a presentation privately

In the entry box, enter the email addresses (or names of your Google Contacts) of the people with whom you want to share. By default, the people you invite to your presentation can edit it and reshare it with others.

To change access permissions for invitees: Click Editor to the right of the entry box and choose another option from the drop-down menu. Commenter means they can view your spreadsheet and add comments but can’t change it. Viewer means they can view your presentation but can’t edit it or add comments.

To prevent your presentation from being reshared, downloaded, or printed: Click the gear icon at the upper-right of this panel. On the smaller panel that opens, uncheck the boxes by Editors can change permissions and share and Viewers and commenters can see the option to download, print, and copy .

When you’re done setting permissions (and, optionally, typing in a message to your invitees), click Send , and everyone you’ve added will receive an email with a link they can click to access the document.

The shared presentation icon.

A presentation you’ve shared (or that others have shared with you) will have an icon of two silhouetted heads next to it in the presentations list on your Google Sheets and Google Drive home pages.

To limit or change a person’s access to your presentation: With the presentation open in Google Slides, click the Share button at the upper-right. Or, from Google Drive, highlight the presentation and click the Share icon.

The Share panel reopens showing a list of all the people you’ve invited, along with their permission status. Click the down arrow to the right of a person’s name, change their permission level or remove their access entirely, and click Save .

You can change permissions for people you’ve shared a presentation with on an individual basis.

If you have a Google Workspace subscription, another option is to select Give temporary access and, next to Access expires , select a date within one year of the current date. If you set an expiration date for a person that you’ve assigned as Editor, their access will be downgraded to Commenter on the expiration date.

Share a presentation publicly

Most business users will want to share presentations privately with select colleagues or clients, but you do have the option to share a presentation publicly. At the bottom of the Share panel is a “General access” area where you can copy a link to the document. By default, this link is restricted to those you invite to the document. To change it to a public link, click Restricted and select Anyone with the link from the menu that appears.

Click Copy link and the link to your presentation will be copied to your PC’s clipboard. You can share this link by pasting it into a chat message, document, email, forum post, or most other means of online written communication. Anyone who clicks this link will be able to view your presentation online. (Be aware that anyone can copy and reshare this link.)

To allow anyone in the public to comment on or edit your presentation: At the bottom right of the Share panel, click Viewer and select Commenter or Editor from the drop-down menu. Then click the Done button. Now the web link to your presentation will let anyone who clicks it add a comment or edit it.

Sharing a spreadsheet publicly.

To turn off public sharing for your presentation: Bring up the Share panel again. Near the bottom, click Anyone with the link and select Restricted from the menu, then click the Done button.

Note: You can apply both public and private sharing methods to your presentation. For example, you could allow the public to only view your presentation, but allow specific people that you’ve invited to comment on or edit it.

Collaborate on a presentation

The people you’ve shared a spreadsheet with can view or work on it at the same time as you or at other times. Remember that people who have Editor privileges to your presentation can change all aspects of it. Having multiple people making changes to a presentation can get confusing. In most cases, setting everyone to Commenter is the best way to collaborate in Slides: People can attach comments to a slide or to objects in a slide, but their comments won’t alter your presentation’s information or design.

To add a comment to a slide: Right-click its thumbnail in the left sidebar and select Comment from the menu that opens. Alternatively, you can select its thumbnail and select Insert > Comment from the menu bar or click the Add comment button (a speech balloon with a + sign).

A blank comment card with your name on it opens to the right of the slide in the main window. On this card’s entry line, type a brief comment, and when you’re finished, click the Comment button.

Typing in a new comment.

To add a comment to an object on a slide: Right-click the object (a block of text, chart, image, picture, etc.) and select Comment from the menu that opens. Alternatively, you can select the object and select Insert > Comment from the menu bar.

To draw someone’s attention to a comment: As you’re composing the comment, type the @ symbol and begin typing their name, then select the person from the list of suggested Google contacts that appears. They’ll receive an email notifying them of the comment and linking to it.

To read, reply to, or remove a comment: A slide that contains a comment is denoted in the left sidebar with a speech balloon by its thumbnail. Click the slide’s thumbnail to make the slide appear in the main window, and you’ll see all its comment cards on the right.

To reply to a comment, click its card. The card will expand to reveal an entry line where you can add a comment in response.

Replying to a comment.

Clicking the checkmark at the upper right marks the comment card as “resolved” and removes the card from the presentation. Clicking the card’s three-dot icon opens a menu that lets you edit or delete your comment.

To see a list of all comments: Click the Open comment history icon (the speech balloon) to the left of the Slideshow button. A sidebar will open along the right side of the screen; it lists all the comment cards in your presentation. When you click a comment on this list, the view of your presentation in the main window will jump to the cell where the comment is located and open its comment card.

The Comments pane lets you quickly review all comments and jump to specific ones.

For more details about collaborating on your presentation, including what it’s like to collaborate in real time, see “ How to collaborate on a document ” in our Google Drive guide. You can also collaborate on a presentation in Google Chat; that’s covered later in this story.

Recover older versions of a presentation

It’s easy to go too far when making tweaks to a presentation. Fortunately, it’s also easy to roll back to an earlier version of the presentation. Click File > Version history > See version history . This opens a panel on the right that shows a list of older versions of your presentation.

Using Version history to view an earlier version of a presentation. (Click image to enlarge it.)

To view an earlier version of your presentation: Click the date for it in the list. That version of the presentation will then appear in the main window.

To restore an earlier version so it replaces your current presentation: With the version you want to restore showing in the main window, click the yellow Restore this version button at the top of the screen. The restored version will then appear at the top of the version history list.

To give an older version a unique name: Click on its date. You’ll be prompted to type in words to replace the date. (The date and time will then appear in smaller size underneath the new name.)

Give a presentation

When it’s time to play your presentation to an audience, Google Slides has two modes: Slideshow and Presenter view. Slideshow mode essentially shows what your audience will see. Presenter view mode provides additional tools for your eyes only that run alongside Slideshow mode.

Slideshow mode: Click the Slideshow button at the upper-right corner of the screen. Google Slides will expand to full-screen view and show the slide that’s currently in the main window. (If you want to start the slideshow from the first slide in your presentation, click the down arrow to the right of the Slideshow button and select Start from beginning .)

The control bar in Slideshow mode lets you click through the slides, turn on auto-play, use a laser pointer effect, and more. (Click image to enlarge it.)

When you move the on-screen pointer to the lower-left corner of your presentation, a control bar appears. You use this to click forward and back through the slides. Clicking the three-dot icon on the control bar opens a menu with other controls, such as starting auto-play and adjusting how quickly it moves from slide to slide.

On this menu, Turn on the laser pointer turns the mouse pointer into a simulated red laser dot. Captions preferences — available only if you’re using a Chrome browser or Chromebook — lets you turn on real-time, automatic transcribing of your words as you say them (English only) and shows them to your audience as on-screen captions. Open speaker notes takes your presentation out of full screen and opens a separate “Presenter view” window, as described below.

Presenter view mode: Click the down arrow to the right of the Slideshow button and select Presenter view . This shows the presentation in your browser window and launches a separate window that assists you while you’re giving your presentation.

Presenter view lets you (but not your audience) see your speaker notes while presenting. (Click image to enlarge it.)

From the Presenter view window, you can jump to any slide in your presentation, read the speaker notes you wrote for a slide, and control the Q&A feature. There’s also a timer that you can set to remind yourself how much time you’re spending showing a slide — or the entire presentation — to your audience.

Click the AUDIENCE TOOLS tab to use the Q&A feature, which lets you take questions from your audience. To open questions for a slideshow, click the Start new button. A web link appears at the top of your presentation. An audience member watching your presentation on their computer, phone, or tablet can click/tap that link, which will take them to a page where they can type a question for you. You’ll see the question  in your Presenter view window, and you can choose whether to show their question to the rest of your audience during the presentation. To close questions for a presentation, turn the switch from ON to OFF .

Audience members can submit questions from their devices, and the presenter can decide whether to display them as part of the slideshow. (Click image to enlarge it.)

Present in Google Meet

Need to give a presentation during a Google Meet video meeting? As long as you’re using a Chromium-based browser (Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, etc.), it’s easy: Toward the upper right of the Google Slides page, click the Google Meet icon. From the panel that opens, select a meeting that’s scheduled on your Google calendar today, start a new meeting, or type/paste in the web link or code that you have for another meeting.

Click the Meet icon to get started presenting to a video meeting.

If you start a new meeting, a sidebar for the meeting will open on the right. At the bottom of the sidebar, click the Present now icon (a box with an up arrow). On the panel that appears, select your presentation and click the Share button, and you’ll be presenting to the meeting.

Choose which tab or window you want to share and click the Share button. (Click image to enlarge it.)

If you join a scheduled meeting, you have two choices: “Join the call” and “Just present this tab.” If you click Join the call , a sidebar for the meeting will open on the right. Follow the same steps as above to present to the meeting. If you click Just present this tab , you’ll go directly to the panel where you select your presentation and click Share , but you won’t have a sidebar where you can follow the main meeting.

To stop sharing your presentation to the meeting, click the Stop sharing button at the top left of your browser window.

For more details about using Google Meet, see our Google Meet cheat sheet .

Download and export a presentation

Google Slides lets you download presentations for use offline. On the top menu, select File > Download and choose a file format. You can save your presentation to your PC as a PowerPoint (.pptx) file or in other formats such as PDF, or as JPG or PNG for an individual slide.

5 tips for working with Google Slides

Now that you’re comfortable working in Google Slides, try these intermediate tips.

Use the Google Slides mobile app

With the exception of the “Version history” tool, the Google Slides app for Android , iPhone , and iPad has many of the same features described in this guide.

When you have a slideshow open, the toolbar at the top of the screen lets you take a variety of actions:

• To present your slides on your phone or tablet, on a Chromecast device, or in a Google Meet meeting, tap the triangle icon.
• To share your presentation with other people, the headshot silhouette. (See “How to share from the Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides mobile apps” in our Google Drive cheat sheet .)
• To view all the comments in the presentation, tap the Comments icon (a chat balloon) if you see it in the toolbar, or tap the three-dot icon and select View comments from the menu that appears.
• The three-dot menu also lets you see the presentation’s Q&A history, export it, make it available offline, and more.

The Google Slides Android app.

To edit or comment on a slide: Tap the slide, and a menu will appear that lets you add or view comments for that slide or edit it. Tap an element on a slide, such as text or an image, and tools to edit that element will appear.

Any changes you make to your presentation in the mobile app are automatically saved and will appear the next time you open it in the Google Slides web app.

Get suggested slide layouts and content

Click the Explore icon at the lower-right corner of the screen. The Explore sidebar will open along the right side. In most cases, you’ll be presented with thumbnails of suggested layouts that Google Slides has automatically customized for the slide that’s open in the main window. Click the one you want, and it will be applied to the slide.

Use the Explore tool to get suggested layouts (left) and search for images (right).

At the top of the Explore sidebar is a search box. You can type in a word or phrase to find related content on the web or in your Google Drive. Search results appear on separate Web, Images, and Drive tabs in the sidebar. Click a web or Drive result to open it in a new browser tab. On the Images tab, click the + icon on the upper-right corner of an image to insert it onto your slide.

Create custom slide layouts to use as templates

You can design your own slide layouts to use as templates in any future presentation. First, open a new, blank presentation as described above. Then:

• On the menu bar over the blank presentation, select View > Theme builder .
• The main window switches to a layout editor. Toward the left you’ll see a column with the heading THEME on top and LAYOUTS just below that. Click the thumbnail of any layout in the LAYOUTS list. It will appear in the main window.
• You can remove objects that are already in any layout. For example, click on a block of text. A frame appears around the text. Without selecting the text itself, move the pointer to ward an edge of the frame, right-click, and select Delete from the menu that opens.

Creating a custom slide layout. (Click image to enlarge it.)

• Using the formatting toolbar above the slide, you can add new objects to the slide, including images, image placeholders, shapes, lines, and blocks for text. (Tip: enter placeholder words inside the text blocks.) When you click on any object, a frame appears around it. Drag and drop the frame to relocate it on the slide, or drag its edges to change its shape or size. You can also add or change the border and background colors for any object on the slide and/or change the background color for the whole slide.
• When you’re finished designing your layout, click the Rename button above the slide and give the layout a unique name.
• If you want to create another custom layout, click on the thumbnail of another layout under the column LAYOUTS and repeat the above steps starting from #3.
• When you are finished custom-designing all your layouts, click the X toward the upper-right of the slide layout in the main window.
• Along the top of the screen, click anywhere inside Untitled presentation and start typing. Tip: Use a name that indicates this is a template (e.g., “Annual Budget Presentation – Template”).

In the future, you can make new presentations starting from this template, and your custom slide layouts will be available.

• Open the template presentation you created in the steps above. On the menu bar, click File > Make a copy > Entire presentation . On the panel that opens, type in a name for the new presentation you want to create and click the Make a copy button. Google Slides will open this new presentation in a new browser tab.
• On the toolbar above the first slide of your new presentation, click Layout . From the panel of thumbnails that opens, select one of the layouts that you created. It will then be applied to the slide in the main window.

Collaborate on a presentation in Google Chat

An alternative way to collaborate on a presentation is to share it in Google Chat. Other people in your chat can add comments and help make changes to your presentation.

Start in Google Chat . To the left of the box where you type in your chat messages, click the + icon and select Drive file from the menu that opens. A panel will open over the screen listing the files in your Google Drive. Find and click your presentation to highlight it, then click INSERT on the lower-right corner.

You’ll be taken back to the chat message box. Click the blue right-pointing arrow to the right of the box, and a panel will open over the screen designating permissions for the shared presentation. By default, permissions are set to Comment. To change this, click Comment and select View or Edit . You can also allow the people in the chat to share a web link to your presentation with others outside of the chat by selecting Turn link sharing on .

You can share a presentation to individual or group chats in Google Chats. (Click image to enlarge it.)

After you’ve set the permissions, click SEND , and your message will appear in the chat stream with a large thumbnail of your presentation. To open a presentation in the chat, click the thumbnail. The presentation will open inside a large window that’s laid out alongside the right of the chat stream.

This is actually Google Slides running inside the chat window with your presentation loaded in it. Thus, most of the Slides commenting and editing tools are available for you and others in the chat to use on your presentation (if you granted them permission to comment or edit). The user interface is the same, except there’s no menu bar.

Collaborating on a presentation from within a Google Chat. (Click image to enlarge it.)

Use keyboard shortcuts

Save time in Slides by using keyboard shortcuts for common tasks. Below are some of the most useful to know. For more, select Help > Keyboard shortcuts from the top menu when you have a spreadsheet open or press Ctrl + / (Windows, Chrome OS) or ⌘ + / (macOS).

Handy Google Slides keyboard shortcuts

This story was originally published in September 2019 and updated in August 2022.

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Howard Wen ( www.howardwen.com ) is a longtime contributor to Computerworld . He specializes in explainer guides, how-tos, and reviews of office applications and productivity tools.

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How to Make a Presentation on a Computer: Effective Guide

In our work or study, we often need a presentation to make a report, prepare a speech, present a task as completed, even to present ourselves favorably for a CV or portfolio. If you struggle with creating presentations or want to clarify or delve into some aspect of the presentation making process, then our instruction article on how to make a presentation on a computer will help to answer the main questions: What to start with? What a presentation must include? What software may be used? Where to find inspiration, cool examples and lifehacks?

Getting prepared: What to consider?

We have collected the best tips in our detailed guide on how to make a presentations more professionally so that they achieve their goals. But what do you need to consider at the very beginning?

Before opening your presentation program and adding a new slide, it’s important to answer questions that will define the composition, structure and style of your future presentation. Let’s discuss them one by one.

• What is your presentation for? Here, elaborate for yourself on why you are creating the presentation, what its purpose is, what you want to change by these words or slides. Perhaps, this is the main question to ask in order to define your subsequent work.
• Who is this presentation for? A lot of depends on who will see your presentation, the presentation’s structural logic, the arguments to be used and the graphic style. Before preparing the presentation, define who you viewers will be and what they expect to see on your slides.
• How are you going to present? You also need to realize what is going to happen with the presentation after you finish the last slide: Will you distribute it by email and wait for a reply or will you present in person? That influences the amount of text on slides, the design and your preparation.
• Are there host or client requirements for the presentation? An important point that is often forgotten. Before making a presentation, inquire what the required format is, if there are restrictions for slides or a fixed structure, how long the presentation shall take, and other organizational issues. If you check for it in advance, you will have time to comply and will be confident about your material.

Presentation ideas and important notes can be conveniently gathered in  Miro  or other similar services

Basic components of a presentation

Having answered the questions above, you can proceed to the presentation preparation itself. And if you have already clicked ‘New Slide’, please wait. Don’t hurry. We have cool lifehacks for you to facilitate you further work. Let’s start with discussing the basic components of any presentation.

Structure of a presentation

Nice presentations are not created spontaneously. Talks by TED speakers are a huge work that is prepared and perfected long before they come on stage. The resulting simplicity, irony and fascination of presentations by professionals of such level are achieved owing to the perfected structure – the control of the listeners’ attention is exercised naturally and consistently. So, what do you need to elaborate to be listened to with the same fascination? 1. Basic problem What do you talk about in your presentation, i.e. , what pain, problem, statement? It is important to describe in a literally single sentence the specific problem you’re going to talk about and call to solve, so that a person who has attended or read your presentation would get solid understanding. 2. Plan of the presentation Now, compile a plan for your presentation – anything that can be used as a framework for your argumentation and scenario, you may even us the approach taught to us back in school at literature classes: exposition, developments, climax, resolution. First, define the major sections, then elaborate on your statements within each section. The beginning of your presentation is the entry point for your story and problem, here you can have an introduction and describe the subject briefly. The last slide is good for the speaker’s contact details, main idea, acknowledgements or emotional conclusion. 3. Arguments To have the audience dive into the problem and come to the decision, idea or conclusion that you need, you have to carefully choose your arguments for every item on your plan. Appropriate arguments would be facts from studies, various projects, quotes, opinions by experts, case studies (as experienced by you or other people involved). Visualized data would work well here, since it’s always easier to comprehend — as well as speaker’s experience or stories that are relatable to anyone. This helps put the audience in the particular context.

Lifehack 1: Barbara Minto Pyramid The Minto pyramid principle  is an argumentation system invented by Barbara Minto from McKinsey. This system is based on a strict principle: We structure our points in the form of a pyramid and move from the basic idea, issue or problem to arguments, stating conclusions in the end of each group of arguments. This versatile approach helps structure either compelling short meetings or full-featured addresses.

Lifehack 2: Put your plan on paper Researches and empirical observations show that information on physical media is easier comprehended and structured by our brain. This also matters when you think of how to make a presentation more engaging. In the process of coming up with the plan and arguments, it’s usually easier and more efficient to deal with paper: you strike through, draw, arrange sheets in a different order and experiment — electronic environment will not pressure you to promptly compose a slide layout and perfect design, so the process will move faster.

The preparation of the text for a presentation on business or studying issues depends on your chosen purpose, as discussed above, and whether you are going to present in person or the presentation is for reading only.

• If your presentation is for reading only: It is important here to have your ideas understood as accurately and correctly as possible. Therefore, work on your arguments and information visualization – diagrams, hyperlinks to supplemental materials, clearly structured text, fully covering the presentation’s subject and problem — this is what a good presentation for reading must have. Depending on the situation, such presentation may be built from a report, your portfolio, or a completed task. 2.  If you are to present in person:  You have 2 tools at your disposal: the text on your slides, and your speech. The basic rule is that they shall differ and not duplicate each other. Otherwise, the audience will not appreciate your work at all and will lose their focus at the 3 rd slide already. The text in the presentation should better be shortened and in separate statements, emphasizing only main points, while the conclusions and some details should be spoken out. It is most convenient to prepare it when you already have at least draft presentation – try to tell it in usual and simple words on a voice recorder. A couple of such rehearsals will help to get rid of excessive words, phrases and terms that would be challenging for you to articulate during your speech.

Visual design

The finishing touch for every presentation is its visual design. It is the design of slides that helps us hold and control the viewers’ attention, and it’s also what may put off a person and provoke mistrust. How to make a presentation look nice and sound? The points below will help with that:

Colors Choose several, like 2 or 3, harmonious colors. Typically, these are the background color, the body text color and the color for accents in headers and graphics. You can pick cool combinations with the help of some tool like  Paletton.com ,  ColorPalettes .  Example selection of a three-color scheme for a presentation

Fonts You shouldn’t overdo the fonts, too — better limit them to 1 or 2, one for body and one for headers or accents. Pick fonts that are easy to read, like Century Gothic, Muller, Roboto, Monserrat, Oswald. Even a single font might be enough, if it has various variations: Bold, Italic, Regular, and their combinations. It can help emphasize your main points and form easy-to-read text blocks.

 Google’s font selection service

Images Cool pictures in your created presentation help convey the main idea without words, create a bright visual image that will highlight your arguments. To find quality images, use stocks ( e.g. , pexels.com ,  unsplash.com ) or specialized services, like  Popsters : if you authorize in Flickr on it, you can search for the most popular images by key queries that suit you (make sure to check the license to use).

Graphics Data visualization is the power of a presentation. Anything that can be presented visually is better to form into visual elements rather than text. To find cool templates and blanks for diagrams and plots, also use specialized services and stocks, such as Freepik ,  flaticon.com . 

How to make your presentation look pretty

The design and formatting of presentations, as we have already found out, are a complex subject where a lot can be perceived subjectively. To avoid such an approach, assume that design has to solve a certain problem, for example, to effectively and simply get your ideas across to the listeners. The following principles may also help you throughout all the steps of presentation creation:

• Express yourself briefly and point by point The clearer is your thought from a slide, the better. Try to remove excessive phrases and words at all, read it out loud to check that no meaning is lost. And, of course, add new slides, use bigger font sizes and, if necessary and the number of slides is not limited by the requirements, you shouldn’t try to fit everything in one slide.
• Don’t be afraid to use a template If you have little time to prepare or you are not confident in your skills, take a presentation template and focus on working out the structure and text. Thus, you will get much more detailed and quality result. However, there’s always a chance that your template was already used by someone, so, if possible, you should customize it or work on the design by yourself.
• Less is better This principle is applicable to texts, images, fonts and colors in presentations. A frequent mistake made by beginners when creating slides is to use all at once. Remember that your best beginner’s kit to help create a really stylish presentation is point-by-point narration, few same-style quality illustrations, 2 fonts and 2 to 3 colors at most.

Presentation services and software

Presentation preparation and formatting is quite a common task, which is often has to be done in a wide variety of areas. A lot of services have been developed to facilitate this task, so we are going to discuss the major ones below. They offer a convenient and simple way of creating a presentation on your computer.

PowerPoint This is, perhaps, the best-known presentation software, from the Microsoft Office suit. Therefore, it is quite natural to have a desire to know the features of how to make a presentation in PowerPoint. PowerPoint’s advantages include wide functionality, clear and user-friendly interface; newer versions, starting 2019, also use automatic tips and settings that make your work easier, for example, accelerate alignment to grid. It is distributed on a paid basis, however there’s a 1-month trial version available.

 PowerPoint’s initial interface

Lifehack:  Check with the organization where you work or study, if they have Microsoft Office subscription available for their employees/students — quite possibly, they have.

Google Slides Google’s cloud presentations for teamwork — a convenient platform for those who work on a project in team or remotely. Google Slides has a simple interface, which is clear and easy to learn from scratch, however the set of fonts, transitions and visual elements is limited.

Keynote A standard presentation application by Apple. It offers simple and clear basic functionality similar to Google Slides. One disadvantage is platform restriction, so you’ll have to convert you presentation to PDF or PPTX to be able to open it in another program.

Canva An online platform for slide preparation with a large set of various templates that are suitable for both work and study. There are paid functions but the free functionality and set of templates are sufficient to make a nice presentation.

Prezi A website for creating animated presentations with many transitions and animation effects. It offers clear functionality and possibility to work online. Drawbacks include controversial perception that may be caused by continuous animation, the necessity to present information very briefly, limited visualization capabilities.

Where to find useful materials and inspiration?

To make your presentation interesting and engaging, your visual experience also matters, as well as the ability to quickly find a certain useful tool, get a tip or advice. We have collected for you several recommendations on where to get those.

TikTok and Instagram Social media have long become not just a place for likes and pictures but a real tool for education. The format of quick educational videos and posts more and more rapidly takes over these platforms, so TikTok and Instagram now already have many cool accounts with useful tricks, analyses, secrets and tools that are helpful in creating presentations. On TikTok, for example, this is  @Thatrelatablestudent  talking on how to quickly create stylish slides, useful services and lifehacks for presentation structuring, colors and fonts; and on Instagram —  @deardatapostbox  with her selections of tools, simple and bright ways to visualize table and data.

Accounts on presentation creation:  @Thatrelatablestudent  and  @Nandovtwork

Slideshare The best-known presentation hosting  website  — you can find here presentations on very different subjects, from TED talks to educational materials and portfolios. It is useful to follow companies who are particularly specialized in presentations, to draw ideas, experience and inspiration.

Behance A website  for designers that exhibits a lot of graphic works and illustrations from all over the world. It helps to develop your visual experience, find trends and ideas for presentations and interior designs.

Pinterest Perhaps, the best-known  platform  for inspiration. If you use a search query associated with presentations and design, you can get nice selections on various subjects, find illustrations, get inspiration from examples of working with fonts and prepare a mood board for your presentation.

Slide Bank by Bonnie & Slide The bank of free slides  from the Bonnie&Slide Presentations Academy will help to find specific sample slides for numerous topics, check what similar tasks others solved in presentations, and get inspired to create effective and bright works.

Creating a nice presentation for your study, work or public talk seems an uneasy task at first glance. However, constant training, use of advices and lifehacks will provide you with the needed experience. So, now that you have all the knowledge on how to make a presentation interesting and engaging, it's time to start with the very first step. Try, experiment, present – and we’re sure you’ll be able to make cool and effective presentations on any subject.

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How to Create Slides That Suit Your Superiors: 11 Tips

When you’re pitching ideas or budgets to execs in your organization, you need to deliver slides that fit those particular people just right. This checklist identifies the key considerations.

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I recently interviewed 20 of my customers, all in senior roles at Fortune 100 companies, and asked them their biggest pain point in presenting to higher-ups and even colleagues. What I heard consistently was that it can feel like Goldilocks bouncing from one option to the next, testing to figure out what’s “just right.” Does the audience want deep reports? Sparse slides? Something in between? Like … what?

Teams often come to presentation meetings with vast amounts of backup content just in case an exec wants to take a deep dive on any given point. There’s often a struggle to anticipate every direction attendees might want to go. It’s frustrating, and it’s not efficient.

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There are many ways to build slides. I’m not just talking about crafting them well versus poorly. I’m talking about all of the important decisions regarding how to organize them, how much text to use, when to lean into a chart, the best ways to use bullets and color, and whether to include an appendix with additional information. Before you make your next proposal or request of the executive team, use this list of 11 tips for your next set of slides as a guide.

Four Things You Must Have in Every Exec’s Slides

Before we drill down into the harder aspects, the ones where your executives’ tastes may vary widely, let’s quickly cover four aspects that you can consider the building blocks — the basics you should never proceed without.

Start with an executive summary. Begin the slide deck with a tight executive summary that follows a three-act structure. First, start with stating the current realities. Second, clearly state the problem or opportunity your idea addresses and its potential impact. Third, explain how your recommendation solves the problem or exploits the opportunity and the next steps you’re proposing.

Have a logical organization. The arc of the deck — the package from beginning to end — should make sense. If your audience reads only the headline of every slide, the order should be coherent and make most of the case for you. The content below each slide’s headline must support the statement made in the title. Remove everything that doesn’t support your point; as writers will tell you, you sometimes need to “kill your darlings” when you’re editing.

Begin the slide deck with a tight executive summary that follows a three-act structure.

Make it skimmable. Help your audience to quickly grasp the point without getting bogged down in details. Create a clear visual hierarchy. Guide the reader’s eye through the content: Use bold headings, bullet points, and numbered lists to break down information into digestible pieces. Highlight key takeaways or conclusions in a different color or font size to draw attention to these critical points.

Focus on concise insights. Succinct statements with clear insights are everyone’s jam. Every slide should serve a purpose and contribute directly to the decision-making process. Distill complex information. Don’t use 100 words when 20 words will nail it. If you’re having difficulty trimming, consider using company-approved AI tools to help you take out the fluff.

Five Preferences to Confirm With the Person You Want to Reach

Now we’ll delve into what your particular audience does and does not want. If you haven’t yet, start by asking the person you’re presenting to what they generally prefer. They probably know themselves well but have not been asked to articulate how they like to receive information.

Ask how dense is too dense. Some executives prefer detailed slides with comprehensive data. Others favor a more high-level approach. You’re weighing how to balance informative content with readability, ensuring that slides are not overloaded yet are sufficiently detailed to support decision-making.

Confirm the delivery format and timing. Some execs like information presented to them. Others prefer a pre-read of the material followed by a discussion. I always recommend our tool Slidedocs (I’ve written a free e-book on them), which are visual documents using both words and images. The templates help presenters organize their thoughts into a document for a pre-read or a read-along. They are designed to be skimmable and able to travel through your organization without the help of a presenter.

I’m a huge fan of pre-reads and prefer to use my time in meetings to ask questions and build alignment. If your audience didn’t review your material in advance, ask at the top of the meeting whether they would like you to present it or would prefer to read through it and then discuss it.

Find out how much data visualization they prefer. Charts, graphs, photos, and illustrations often communicate complex data more clearly than words alone. When execs can see what you’re saying, they often can better understand the impact of your idea. Does the exec want to understand exact numbers? Bar charts allow them to move their eyes across a series of specifics. Does the exec want to know the shape of a trend over time? Line charts can show the pattern. (See “Classic Charts Communicate Data Quickly.”) Some prefer charts with annotations that draw attention to what you think is the most important point. Others want to make their own conclusions from the data.

One of my clients, the CEO of a massive commercial real estate company, doesn’t want anything visualized. He prefers numbers, only in a table, and only in two colors — black and red. You might think this is archaic. But the fact that he’s clear to his teams about what he wants takes all the mystery out of how to communicate with him.

When the stakes are high, have a conceptual thinker help with diagrams and concepts. If you don’t have one on your team, and when it’s high stakes, find an internal designer to help you or hire one. You can’t afford to have the baby (your idea) thrown out with the bathwater (terrible slides).

Identify which details need spelling out. How well do the people you’re presenting to know the landscape and function of the company and products you’re talking about? For example, if your engineering team threw a slide into a deck about an issue that requires executive approval, do the execs all speak geek? Or do you need to explain the technology so that they will really understand the ask? Either eliminate internal jargon and acronyms or unpack those bits, especially if your proposal deeply involves expertise outside of the executives’ domain.

Ask whether appendices will be useful. When you’re organizing a presentation, you often troll data, read through complicated reports, and even hire external experts to figure out what’s best for the company. Do your execs want access to that supporting data? You can add a document to the end of the presentation as an appendix to show all of the data and source material. This allows the main content of the slides to remain focused and accessible while still providing comprehensive background information for those who want more.

Two Tips to Improve Your Presentation Skills

Getting materials in place is the biggest step. They will be your best tools for selling your ideas. But there are two extra areas to pay attention to as a presenter: how you handle questions and how you use every experience to improve.

Anticipate questions, and practice your answers. Before you have your meeting, gather a small team to challenge every point you make. Invite colleagues you trust to role-play as “a rapidly inquisitive exec” or “the doubting naysayer exec” so you are prepared to present your idea well. They’re gonna grill you, and practicing will help you remain unruffled when it happens.

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Ask for feedback after the presentation. Establish a feedback loop with those you presented to. Ask what worked well and how you can improve. If attendees don’t have the time, find people who have had their ideas funded and talk to them about what they did that worked. Advice and some perspective will help you nail your performance even better next time.

Empathetically understanding your audience members and how they process information, whether it’s executives or peers, sets up your ideas for success. Clarity creates efficiency. When a presentation fits just right, you’ve given your great thinking the best chance of moving through your organization and having maximum impact.

About the Author

Nancy Duarte is CEO of Duarte Inc. , a communication company in the Silicon Valley. She’s the author of six books, including DataStory: Explain Data and Inspire Action Through Story (Ideapress Publishing, 2019).

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Presentations > How to use AI to help improve your presentations

How to use AI to help improve your presentations

Creating and giving a presentation isn’t always easy, especially if you want to deliver a dynamite lecture. However, by harnessing the power of AI tools, you can elevate your presentations and leave a lasting impression on your audience. See how AI can provide valuable insights and enhancements to make your presentations stand out.

How AI can create structure in your presentation

No matter the subject, every great presentation has a narrative. You begin by introducing yourself and why you’re the best person to present this subject. Then, you mention the general outline and key topics before diving into the details: problems, potential solutions, and calls to action. Finally, you end with a conclusion that wraps up your topics and brings your presentation full circle.

Sometimes, this structure can be hard to define. Asking AI to create an outline for a presentation can be a great time-saving shortcut. If you’re starting with a complex research paper or passage, you can directly copy and paste it into the AI chat window, then ask to summarize it. AI can also extract key points for headings, which can create your outline for slide titles.

Use AI to design visually attractive presentations

You don’t need to be a graphic designer to create presentations that are both striking and easy to follow. With AI tools integrated into Microsoft PowerPoint , you can design slides that consider factors like readable fonts, compatible color schemes, the informational hierarchy , and information spacing that won’t overwhelm the audience with too much to see on each slide.

AI image creators can also translate your text into custom visuals: not only can this bring your slides to life, but it can also save you time from searching through image libraries, stock photos, or visual sources from the Internet.

Tell your story with captivating presentations

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AI tools that transcribe recordings into presentations

While the visual presentation is one aspect of your project, your speech and delivery are vital. The key to this is practice. Rehearsing your presentation out loud, and especially multiple times before you go onstage, can aid in balancing when to present new points, ensure smooth transitions between slides, time your overall presentation, and help you refine your text so you can sound clearer.

AI can help! Advanced tools can transcribe your spoken words, both in real-time and through prerecorded clips on your computer or mobile device. This not only assists in creating accurate speaker notes but also provides an opportunity to learn how you sound, allowing you to refine and improve your delivery. In PowerPoint, speaker notes are hidden from the audience during a live presentation, and AI integration can generate live notes from the sound of your voice—which makes it easy to practice and familiarize yourself with your content.

AI tools that can summarize, design, and transcribe your presentations can make it easier to engage with your audience confidently. See more presentation tips to enhance your points, such as how to craft a compelling story or how to overcome public speaking anxiety .

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Create a presentation

Create a presentation in powerpoint for the web.

With PowerPoint for the web running in your web browser, you can:

Create presentations that include images, videos, transitions, and animations.

Get to your presentations from your computer, tablet, or phone.

Share and work with others, wherever they are.

If you're using the desktop version of PowerPoint on a Windows PC, see the PowerPoint Quick Start .

If you're using the desktop version of PowerPoint on a Mac, see Office for Mac Quick Start Guides and PowerPoint for Mac Help .

Create, open, and name a presentation

Go to powerpoint.office.com .

Select New blank presentation , open a Recent file, select one of the themes , or start with a presentation template .

To name the presentation, select the title at the top and type a name.

If you need to rename the presentation, select the title and retype the name.

Add a slide

Select the slide you want your new slide to follow.

Select Home > New Slide .

Select Layout and the you type want from the drop-down.

When working in PowerPoint for the web, your work is saved every few seconds. You can select File > Save a Copy to create a duplicate copy in another location.

Or choose File > Download As to save a copy to your device.

When you're online, AutoSave is always on and saves your changes as you work. If at any time you lose your Internet connection or turn it off, any pending changes will sync as soon as you’re back online.

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