this enhances viewer experience in powerpoint presentation

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Tips for Powerpoint by Regina Griffin

How To Get Into Presentation Mode In PowerPoint

Are you looking to take your PowerPoint presentations to the next level?

Presentation Mode in PowerPoint is a powerful tool that can help you create engaging and professional presentations.

We will discuss why you should use Presentation Mode, how to enter it, its key features, and how to navigate through your slides.

Explore the ins and outs of Presentation Mode in PowerPoint, brought to you by teacher Regina Griffin from Oregon, US. Enhance your presentation skills!

Key Takeaways:

• Presentation mode in PowerPoint allows for a more engaging and organized presentation, resulting in a better experience for both the presenter and the audience.
• To enter presentation mode, simply click on the “Slide Show” tab and select “From Beginning” or “From Current Slide”.
• Presentation mode offers features such as a full-screen display, laser pointer/pen tool, and presenter view with notes and slide previews, making it easier to navigate through slides and deliver a professional presentation.

What Is Presentation Mode in PowerPoint?

Presentation Mode in PowerPoint refers to a feature that allows presenters to display their slides in a full-screen view, enhancing the visual impact of their presentation.

This mode is particularly useful during formal presentations, as it eliminates distractions and ensures that the audience’s focus remains on the content being discussed. In Presentation Mode , presenters can navigate through their slides smoothly, interact with their content, and make annotations in real time. One notable advantage of this mode is the Presenter view , where speakers can see upcoming slides, and speaker notes, and even manage time effectively without disrupting the flow of the presentation.

Why Use Presentation Mode in PowerPoint?

Using Presentation Mode in PowerPoint offers numerous advantages, such as creating a more engaging and professional presentation experience for both the presenter and the audience.

When in Presentation Mode, your PowerPoint transforms into a seamless slide show that eliminates distractions and focuses solely on your content. This feature optimizes the screen view for your audience, ensuring they stay engrossed in your message.

Presentation Mode allows the presenter to navigate slides effortlessly, maintaining a smooth flow of information that keeps the audience’s attention intact. The ability to preview slides on a separate monitor while presenting ensures that the speaker remains in control of the presentation pace and content delivery.

Allows for a more engaging and professional presentation

One of the key reasons to use Presentation Mode in PowerPoint is that it allows presenters to deliver a more engaging and professional presentation by providing advanced control over their slides, including features like a laser pointer .

With Presentation Mode, presenters can seamlessly navigate through their slides, controlling the flow of information and keeping the audience’s attention focused. The ability to access advanced controls such as animations, transitions, and speaker notes enhances the overall delivery quality.

The built-in laser pointer feature enables presenters to highlight specific points on the slides, emphasizing crucial information and guiding the audience’s focus. This interactive element adds a dynamic touch to the presentation, making it more engaging and memorable.

Helps the presenter stay on track and organized

Presentation Mode in PowerPoint aids presenters in maintaining focus, organization, and efficiency throughout their presentation by offering tools like Presenter View, where notes and slide previews can be accessed.

This feature is particularly useful as it allows presenters to keep an eye on upcoming slides while also referring to their speaking notes discreetly, enhancing the flow of the presentation. The ability to adjust display settings such as screen mirroring or extending desktops simplifies the setup process, ensuring that the presentation runs smoothly. The note-taking capabilities within Presentation Mode enable presenters to jot down important points or reminders directly within the application, eliminating the need for external notes and promoting a more organized approach to presenting.

Provides a better experience for the audience

Engaging Presentation Mode in PowerPoint not only benefits the presenter but also enhances the audience’s experience by ensuring a seamless and visually appealing display of the content.

When toggling to Presentation Mode, the display settings undergo a transformation that optimizes the presentation for viewer interaction. The ability to seamlessly swap displays allows the presenter to effortlessly navigate through slides, ensuring a smooth transition between different sections of the presentation. This elegant integration of features not only captivates the audience but also enables a more fluid and engaging delivery of the content. The visual appeal of the slides is enhanced, making it easier for viewers to follow along and grasp the key points being presented.

How to Enter Presentation Mode in PowerPoint?

To enter Presentation Mode in PowerPoint, follow these simple steps: open your presentation, click on the ‘Slide Show’ tab in the menu bar, and select ‘From Beginning’ or ‘From Current Slide’ to start your presentation.

If you want to ensure a seamless transition into Presentation Mode, it’s essential to set the right display options. First, check your display settings by going to the ‘Slide Show’ tab and clicking on ‘Set Up Slide Show.’ Here, you can choose whether to present your slides on the primary monitor, a secondary monitor, or in a window. Make sure to select the appropriate display mode based on your setup to guarantee a professional and effective presentation.

Step 1: Open your PowerPoint presentation

The first step to enter Presentation Mode in PowerPoint is to ensure that your presentation file is open and ready for display.

To do so, open PowerPoint and locate the file containing your presentation. Click on the file to open it. Review that the slides are arranged in the correct order and that any speaker notes or animations are set up as desired. Check the slide sorter view to confirm the flow of your presentation. Ensure that the current slide is the one you want to begin with when Presentation Mode is activated. This initial setup is crucial for a seamless transition into your presentation.

Step 2: Click on the ‘Slide Show’ tab in the top menu bar

Once your presentation is open, navigate to the ‘Slide Show’ tab located in the top menu bar of PowerPoint to access presentation controls and features like zooming into specific slides.

Once you’re on the ‘Slide Show’ tab, you’ll find a variety of essential controls that aid in delivering a seamless presentation experience. Here, you can click on ‘From Beginning’ to start the slide show from the very first slide. You can choose ‘From Current Slide’ to begin from the slide you’re currently on.

You’ll notice the ‘Slide Show’ tab offers options to toggle various functionalities like accessing presenter view or setting up custom slide shows. This tab is a hub of useful tools that elevate your presentation delivery.

Step 3: Select ‘From Beginning’ or ‘From Current Slide’ to start the presentation

After accessing the ‘Slide Show’ tab, choose between the ‘From Beginning’ or ‘From Current Slide’ options to initiate your presentation in Presentation Mode, ensuring the desired display settings and presenter view are selected.

When you opt for ‘From Beginning,’ your presentation will start from the very first slide, whereas selecting ‘From Current Slide’ allows you to start your presentation from the slide you are currently on. This choice depends on whether you want to begin at the start of the presentation or jump in at a specific point.

It is crucial to carefully review and adjust the display settings to ensure that your content appears as intended on the screen during the presentation. Make sure to enable the presenter view option for a more dynamic and organized delivery of your content, offering you control over what the audience sees and what you see on your screen.

What Are the Features of Presentation Mode in PowerPoint?

The features of Presentation Mode in PowerPoint are designed to enhance the presenter’s experience and engage the audience, offering functionalities such as Presenter view with notes, laser pointer integration, and slide previews.

Presenter view with notes allows speakers to refer to their talking points discreetly, ensuring a seamless delivery. The incorporated laser pointer feature permits highlighting key areas on slides, directing the audience’s focus effectively. Slide previews provide a comprehensive overview of the presentation flow, aiding in smoother transitions between topics. The option to hide or reveal slides as needed enhances the element of surprise and control during the presentation, captivating the audience’s attention. These combined features transform the presenter’s performance into a dynamic and engaging experience for all participants.

Full-screen display of slides

Presentation Mode in PowerPoint offers a full-screen display of slides, ensuring that the audience can focus solely on the content being presented.

This feature eliminates distractions and directs attention to the key points of the presentation. By seamlessly transitioning between slides, the flow of information is maintained, keeping the audience engaged throughout the talk. The full-screen view enhances the visibility of multimedia elements, such as images and videos, making them more impactful.

Ability to use a laser pointer or pen tool

Presentation Mode enables presenters to use a laser pointer or a pen tool to highlight key points on slides, enhancing the clarity and impact of their presentation.

The laser pointer, a staple in traditional presentations, offers a precise way to direct attention to specific details, aiding in engaging the audience. On the other hand, the pen tool, usually found in digital platforms like smartphone apps or presentation software, allows for more creativity and flexibility in drawing emphasis without the need for physical devices like remote controls. This versatility caters to different presenter preferences and presentation styles, ensuring a dynamic and interactive delivery of content.

Presenter view with notes and slide previews

Presenter view in PowerPoint provides presenters with a comprehensive overview of their slides, including notes and slide previews, facilitating better organization and seamless delivery.

When utilizing the Presenter view, presenters gain the advantage of accessing notes discretely without them being displayed to the audience, allowing for a more professional and polished delivery. In addition, having a live preview of the upcoming slides enables the presenter to seamlessly transition between points, enhancing the flow of the presentation. Through system preferences or the displays app, customization options such as adjusting the layout to suit individual preferences or toggling between speaker notes and slide previews can be easily configured, providing a tailored experience for each presenter.

Option to hide the presentation controls

One convenient feature of Presentation Mode is the ability to hide presentation controls , providing a cleaner and more immersive viewing experience for both the presenter and the audience.

By opting to hide presentation controls, presenters can focus on delivering their content without any distractions or overlays obstructing their view. This is especially beneficial when engaging in live demonstrations, showcasing visual content, or utilizing mirror displays for a seamless and professional presentation.

In scenarios where presenters are utilizing a two-monitor setup for advanced display configurations, such as showing notes on one screen while presenting on the other, hiding presentation controls on the main display ensures that only the essential content is visible to the audience, maintaining a neat and streamlined appearance.

How to Navigate Through Slides in Presentation Mode?

Navigating through slides in Presentation Mode can be done efficiently using keyboard shortcuts, mouse controls, or specific commands within PowerPoint.

One handy method to quickly move to the next slide during a presentation is by pressing the Spacebar or Enter key on your keyboard. Conversely, to go back to the previous slide, you can use the Backspace key. You can effortlessly jump to a specific slide by entering the slide number followed by pressing the Enter key. For a more visual approach, you can click on the slide thumbnails on the left sidebar or use the scroll wheel to navigate through the slides.

Use the arrow keys on your keyboard

Utilize the arrow keys on your keyboard to seamlessly advance through slides in Presentation Mode, ensuring a smooth and controlled flow of your presentation.

With the simple and intuitive collaboration of the arrow keys, you can effortlessly navigate through your slides, enabling precision in delivering your content. The arrow keys allow you to move forward or backward with ease, keeping the focus on your message during the presentation. This feature is especially useful in Presenter View, where you can see upcoming slides and speaker notes, maintaining a seamless delivery. When you record a slide show, the arrow keys help you pace your narration perfectly, ensuring synchronization between your speech and slide transitions.

Click on the arrows in the bottom left corner of the screen

For a more interactive navigation experience, users can click on the directional arrows located in the bottom left corner of the screen to progress through their presentation while having access to speaker notes and animations.

Users can enhance their presentation experience by utilizing the fullscreen mode . By entering fullscreen, viewers can keep the focus solely on the presentation content, removing any distractions from the surrounding interface elements. This feature is particularly useful when showcasing detailed slides or when presenting to a larger audience, allowing for a more immersive and engaging delivery.

Use the scroll wheel on your mouse

Another seamless way to navigate through slides in Presentation Mode is by utilizing the scroll wheel on your mouse, providing smooth and intuitive control over slide transitions and content progression.

The scroll wheel allows users to effortlessly advance slides without the need to click buttons or use keyboard shortcuts, enhancing the overall presentation experience.

With its responsive nature, the scroll wheel ensures quick and precise movements, enabling presenters to fluidly transition between slides with the utmost ease.

This feature is particularly handy when presenting slides with high resolution , allowing for a seamless display of detailed content in a visually appealing manner.

How to Exit Presentation Mode in PowerPoint?

Exiting Presentation Mode in PowerPoint is a simple process that involves pressing the ‘Esc’ key on your keyboard, clicking on the ‘End Show’ button, or selecting ‘End Show’ from the drop-down menu to return to the normal viewing mode.

To exit Fullscreen mode in PowerPoint, you can simply press the ‘Esc’ key, the keyboard shortcut that is universally used to escape full-screen views across various applications. This action will promptly take you out of the immersive mode and back to the regular interface.

Another convenient way to exit the Presentation Mode is by navigating to the bottom left corner of the screen and clicking on the ‘End Show’ button. This button serves as a quick exit route from the full-screen display, offering an immediate transition back to the standard PowerPoint screen.

Step 1: Press the Esc key on your keyboard

The first step to exit Presentation Mode is to press the ‘Esc’ key on your keyboard, which will promptly exit the full-screen display and return you to the standard PowerPoint interface.

Exiting Presentation Mode using the ‘Esc’ key is a simple maneuver that can swiftly transition you back to your familiar workspace. Once you press the ‘Esc’ key, the fullscreen effect will dissolve, and any Speaker Notes you might have been glancing over will no longer dominate your screen, ensuring a seamless flow as you exit the presentation. This action provides an effortless way to shift the focus back to the general view of your PowerPoint, facilitating a smooth continuation of your usual workflow.

Step 2: Click on the ‘End Show’ button on the top left corner of the screen

To exit Presentation Mode, users can also click on the ‘End Show’ button located in the top left corner of the screen, providing a direct and visible method to conclude the presentation.

Once you are ready to end your presentation and exit the immersive Presentation Mode, simply direct your attention to the top left corner of the screen where the ‘End Show’ button awaits your command. By clicking on this button, you seamlessly transition back to the regular view, enabling you to navigate your presentation’s content, check additional details, or record the slide show for future reference. This function provides an effortless way to not only conclude your speech but also to review or amend content from the current slide onward, ensuring a smooth transition and accessibility for your audience.

Step 3: Select ‘End Show’ from the drop-down menu

For a more detailed exit process, users can select ‘ End Show ‘ from the drop-down menu within PowerPoint, ensuring a controlled and comprehensive conclusion to their presentation.

Once ‘End Show’ is chosen, users can seamlessly transition back to PowerPoint’s standard interface, bidding farewell to the presenter view. Exiting this mode allows presenters to access additional options to end their presentation smoothly and efficiently.

Upon choosing ‘End Show’, users can review their content, make final adjustments, and conclude their presentation with confidence, maintaining professionalism throughout the process. This method ensures a polished and professional exit from Presentation Mode, leaving a lasting impression on the audience.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do i enter presentation mode in powerpoint.

To enter presentation mode in PowerPoint, click on the Slideshow tab in the top menu and then select “From Beginning” or “From Current Slide” depending on where you want to start your presentation.

Can I customize the way I enter presentation mode in PowerPoint?

Yes, you can customize the way you enter presentation mode by going to the Slideshow tab and selecting “Set Up Slide Show.” From there, you can choose options such as looping, presenter view, and more.

Is there a shortcut to enter presentation mode in PowerPoint?

Yes, you can press the F5 key on your keyboard to enter presentation mode in PowerPoint. You can also press Shift+F5 to start from the current slide.

Can I use a different display for presentation mode in PowerPoint?

Yes, you can use a different display for presentation mode by going to the Slideshow tab and selecting “Set Up Slide Show.” From there, you can choose to present on a secondary monitor or projector.

How do I exit presentation mode in PowerPoint?

To exit presentation mode in PowerPoint, press the Escape key on your keyboard or right-click and select “End Show.” You can also press the B key to go back to the previous slide.

Can I add speaker notes while in presentation mode in PowerPoint?

Yes, you can add speaker notes while in presentation mode by clicking on the Notes section at the bottom of the screen. This will allow you to add notes that only you can see while presenting.

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January 12, 2021 / Articles custom fonts, Livestreaming, Office Mix, powerpoint presentations

Don’t let distance get in between you and your audience. Livesteaming your PowerPoint allows you to still be the face of your presentation. Several online platforms can bring your presentation out of the boardroom and into digital spaces. These enable you to reach a wider audience without having to sacrifice your personal presentation style.

While many people may have figured out workarounds to livestreaming, the truth is there are many options, which are not too difficult to navigate once pointed in the right direction. Here are three ways you can livestream your next PowerPoint presentation.   

Broadcast Online from PowerPoint 

Microsoft itself offers a safe, reliable means to  broadcast your PowerPoint presentation online to remote audiences (for PowerPoint 2013 and newer versions).

First, find your presentation and open it up. In the  File  tab, you can start livestreaming your presentation through the  Share  button.  

Next click the  Present Online  button. A dialog box will generate a custom URL for your presentation. You can then copy the link to send directly to your audience.

Once they’ve received the link, click  Start Presentation . Viewers will then be able to see your presentation as you guide them through each slide in real time. 

This highlights how  Presenter View  will appear only on your screen. Your audience will see your slide show as you present it. 

Once you’re done, simply hit the  End Online Presentation  in the  Present Online  tab. 

This option is convenient when meeting in person is not possible. However, the slight downside is that some of your original deck’s features may be compromised. All transitions will automatically be set to “fade” from the audience’s view and a file size limit may be imposed on your upload. 

In this situation, a  concise deck  is more advisable for livestreaming to minimize the lag in your loading times. 

Use Office Mix   

Office Mix is a free downloadable add-on for Office 365 subscribers. It makes livestreaming presentations much easier.  

Office Mix retains more content such as audio, video, polls, and quizzes than broadcasting through PowerPoint alone. These features are helpful for presenters seeking to maximize  audience engagement . using their deck. Consider reviewing each feature to see which will work best in your presentation, especially as you are livestreaming.

In the Mix tab, you can see Quizzes Video Apps . 

The platform also features “live digital inking.” This is a more hands-on approach that enables you to guide the audience using video, audio, and illustrations. Office Mix offers several helpful  tutorials  on their site for navigating these useful features.  

Office Mix requires an internet connection to share your presentation. However, your audience will be able to review your slides after you’ve concluded the presentation. And because Office Mix gathers audience data and feedback for in-depth analysis you can keep track of how your presentation went over with your audience and maximize on keeping track of after-presentation impact.

Upload to Online Platforms  

This third option offers the least audience interactivity in the moment but can maximize your audience reach. And it may be the easiest to execute. 

If the previous options are unavailable, you can  upload and design your presentation  on deck hosting platforms such as SlideShare. 

Publishing your slides online will allow you to reach out to a wider audience. While you can configure the presentation to be viewed by selected viewers only, default settings keep your deck open for public viewing. Adding tags to your presentation makes it easier to search online, further enabling mass sharing. 

These online platforms often require compressing your presentations to a size that websites can handle. While uploading to online platforms can be limited in file size, audiences will be able to view them at their own pace which can be a great benefit for a leave-behind aspect to your presentation.

Livestreaming Design Elements to Enhance Viewer Experience

Your deck plays a key role in the impact of your presentation and there are many ways to make your presentation accessible.

Because the presentation is being streamed from your source, you won’t need to worry about losing any of your custom fonts . That’s a common pain when people send their decks via email. Here are a few other assets that add value and enhance viewer experience: 

• Interstitial Graphics: Controls broadcast flow and breaks it into segments 
• Overlay Graphics: Media that plays over the main content  
• Alert Overlays: Pulls live data from online sources and displays over the stream 

You may notice these things on streaming platforms like Twitch. Adding these elements to your presentation can give you a leg-up over other presenters and help you stand out with your audience.

Planning for the Future

Being able to present your deck effectively online will help amplify your message and showcase your skills as a presenter to your audience even while remote. And while working from home or hybrid interactions continue to be the norm, it’s essential to utilize all the tools you have at your disposal. Livestreaming solutions have made it so much easier to deliver a smooth online presentation experience. Take these tips as unique chances to improve your skills for your next big presentation.

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• 50 tips on how to improve PowerPoint presentations in 2022-2023 [Updated]

While PowerPoint helps create a compelling presentation, a business meeting or a lecture can easily turn boring if the information is less engaging or distracting. This post acts as a guideline on how best to improve PowerPoint presentation and make your message remembered by any audience, whether business owners, students or even homemakers. Plus, you will also learn the easiest ways to make a better PowerPoints presentation without it taking forever and convey the content in the best possible way by presenting it with maximum impact. So let’s get down to it!

Create a memorable opening slide

Your presentation’s opening slide resembles a book cover. You choose whether to open and read the book based on what you see. The same often holds true for PowerPoint slides. To make better PowerPoint slides that immediately catch the audience’s attention, you should always make sure the opening slide contains an intriguing headline and a noticeable image.

These tips will help you create a perfect opening slide:

• Come up with a catchy headline.
• Keep your ppt slides tidy.
• Impress with sophisticated colors and images.

Remember, for your PowerPoint slides makeover to get the desired results, your slides have to be designed following the best practices.

Keep your presentation simple

Do you often find yourself typing, “how to improve my presentation,” but can’t seem to get a definitive answer? The answer could be a PowerPoint slide makeover. Too much text on a PowerPoint makes the presentation forgettable, hard to pay attention to, confusing, and overwhelming.

To improve PowerPoint presentation:

• Ensure that your slides don’t have too many words.
• Go for a PowerPoint redesign where a striking image is teamed with a simple but clear message.
• Use the 1-6-6 ppt presentation redesign rule to include not more than six bullet points and six words per slide.

Pros usually improve PowerPoint presentation by limiting the words on the slides to allow the audience to listen to you and not focus more on reading. So instead of using complete sentences in your ppt redesign, use short forms that improve your memory. That way, a presenter can focus on each specific point and make it easier for the audience to comprehend which point in the ppt slides is being covered.

Present one idea per slide

If you want to craft a powerful PowerPoint like a pro, the first tip is to have only one idea per slide. But why is it necessary to have one main point per slide?

The first reason is to improve PowerPoint presentation. Your slides should not read like a textbook or novel. Otherwise, you might redo the whole thing or get a PowerPoint slide makeover. So let’s uncover more reasons why you should have only one idea per slide.

• The audience will focus on a single idea that prevents them from getting confused or overwhelmed by the slides.
• It allows the presenter to give more details orally, which motivates students to attend class.
• It prevents giving out too much information that dilutes the central message in the slides.

If you are worried about the low word count in your slides, go for a PowerPoint redesign and add impactful imagery or visual aids. Ensure each point is consistently structured and there is a clear transition in all slides.

Relevance and quality of content are key

There is plenty to consider when making a PowerPoint slide makeover. However, the relevance and quality of the content are among the top factors. The text has to be supported by relevant and quality images to ensure the presentation exudes professionalism.

In addition, PP slides created specifically for students must be aimed at improving learning. Some quick tips to ensure your slides are relevant and of decent quality are:

• Before presenting the content, ensure it engages the audience.
• Maintain quality by ensuring a slide is not full of text.
• Use structure to keep the content organized.
• If it does not fit in a single line, chances are high it is not relevant.

Ensure your slides don’t have too much information, as it reduces relevance. Since the human brain process images faster than text, convert any long paragraphs into appropriate visual formats.

Eliminate unnecessary text

The first step to improve PowerPoint is removing unnecessary text that might reduce the white space and make the slide look uncluttered. If the text is too much, your audience will focus more on reading the slides than what you want to say.

Don’t know how to make your slides simple? Use these tips:

• Remove any content that is not intended for your audience.
• Any phrases that are not clear should be eliminated.
• Be brief and clear.
• Only add two to three sentences on each slide.
• Replace words with visual elements.

No need to cram everything into a single slide redesign. Instead, include main phrases that help you remember what you want to talk about and ensure the listeners absorb the information you are conveying.

Always use one story per slide

The correct way to improve PowerPoint presentation is to use one story per slide. That way, your ppt slides won’t overwhelm your audience with too much information. Moreover, if you improve a ppt redesign, it will also prevent the presenter from diverting away from the main topic. Besides, people don’t attend lectures to read the ppt slides. But rather to hear you speak because you are an expert in that subject matter.

When you include only one story in a ppt redesign, it gives the audience a chance to:

• Concentrate on what you are saying.
• Quickly digest the information.
• Use the texts on the ppt slides to support your verbal presentation.

The story is what helps you focus on the central message and drive the point home. But even if you put a single story in each slide, ensure there is a great transition to avoid confusing the listeners. Also, make sure the story is consistently structured and doesn’t generalize the subject under discussion.

Use white space to make texts more readable

Using white space to your advantage is another way to improve PowerPoint presentation. How? With a good redesign, you will improve the readability of the text and add a professional effect to your slides. Without white space in a redesign, the information on your slides becomes disorganized, hard to read, and showcases clutter.

We all know that cluttered PowerPoint presentation slides are unattractive. But how do you know you need white space in your PowerPoint presentation slides? If you try to add white space but run out of space, your slides could probably benefit from less content and a redesign.

To improve PowerPoint presentation and make your redesign effective, consider active and passive white space and micro and macro white space. Overall, the type of white space to use to improve your redesign is determined by:

• User research
• The message being conveyed
• User interface design

White space is also crucial in directing the audience to focal points and helps improve specific text parts. So play around with the number of white spaces to improve your ppt redesign and shine the spotlight on specific points. If you are still wondering, “how do I redesign my presentation?” try improving the white or negative space.

Rework text-heavy PPT screens

Most people, especially in formal presentations, focus on making text-heavy slides. This often bores the audience and results in a disastrous presentation. Such a case leads a presenter to wonder, “how do I improve my presentation.” Ensure your slides are not loaded with text, as it reduces the chances of the audience paying attention to what you have to say.

Instead, the audience will be busy reading the heavy text screens, which reduces learning or understanding of the information. If you have heavy text slides and urgently need to enhance PowerPoint presentation, here are three tips to help you change them into impressive slides:

• Change data into graphs, charts, diagrams, or appropriate visual elements.
• Use infographics to showcase step-by-step procedures.
• Use different shapes to show the relationship between subjects or items.
• Convert long texts into bullets.

Finally, remove all text irrelevant to the central message and include only short phrases.

Visualize data

Do you have a lot of data in text format and want to change it to improve your slides? Visualize that data to enhance PowerPoint presentation. For complex data that can be compared, consider changing it into a graph format. This helps to reduce heavy text usage and makes the information easier to comprehend.

Wondering, “how do I improve my presentation through data visualization?” Use these tips:

• Go for visual elements that tell a story.
• Tweak the elements to make them easier to comprehend.
• Always opt for visual consistency.
• The headers for graphs and charts should be simple.
• Use one color to represent one type of data.

Data visualization is a great option for those who want to improve PowerPoint presentation. It makes it easier to convey a lot of information and still uses limited space. It also allows the audience to comprehend complex data.

Use original PowerPoint presentation templates

Looking at the same old PowerPoint template slides can make a fascinating topic boring. That’s why if you wish to make better PowerPoint slides, you must use original templates from trustworthy sites. For example, Microsoft PowerPoint has original template slides that you can use to create a great visual experience for the audience.

But why do you need original ppt template slides?

• To access a wide range of ppt redesign choices.
• To make it easy to create professional and visually appealing ppt presentations.

And the best part is that you don’t have to be an IT pro to use the ppt template slides.

Overall, original ppt template slides improve the redesign and give you confidence in the work you are presenting. They also eliminate the time-wasting factor of looking for and arranging the ppt redesign slides from scratch. When you redesign a PowerPoint template, the slides are already prepared and laid out for you. Adding fancy fonts, graphics, and relevant photos helps to improve your PowerPoint slides makeover even more.

These template examples can provide some inspiration:

Remember, even after you improve the slides and have a ppt template at your disposal, you can still create custom slides. So take advantage of all the great features such as themes, shapes, and editing tools to improve a ppt redesign and give it a professional look.

Don’t let PowerPoint decide how you use it

If you allow the default settings of PowerPoint to dictate how you will create and present your slides, you are more likely to come up with a less creative piece. Instead, opt to improve your PowerPoint presentation with a ppt redesign.

Consider PowerPoint as a blank canvas but keep the design simple. That way, you won’t get overwhelmed by what to do or, worse, end up with a confusing ppt slide. Listed below are important tips to use when creating PowerPoint slides.

• Make better PowerPoints when dealing with macro details or concepts.
• Balance the text and image appropriately to avoid losing the audience’s attention.
• Make the message in the ppt slide clear and clutter-free.

After PowerPoint slides makeover, ensure that the content or concept is easy to absorb. Remember, there is no one-size-fits-all approach, and PowerPoint slides are effective for a large audience of around 20 people.

Create a new PPT presentation for a template or blank page

When you start a project in PowerPoint, you have to create a new presentation. This can either be from a ppt template or blank slides. You can also opt to open a previously made or an existing presentation and edit it to improve PowerPoint. The great part about making professional ppt slides is that you can work with the same presentation without making several changes.

Using a predesigned ppt presentation or template is also advantageous and time-saving. This is because ppt templates have custom formatting options that allow you to save designs. This, in turn, reduces the need to start a new ppt project from scratch. With a ppt template acting as the foundation, each presentation will inherit:

While ppt templates come with the material you can recycle for future presentations, they are often harder to modify. In such a case, it’s better to consider a PowerPoint redesign and start with a blank presentation.

Use slide master to edit your PPT slide template design

Knowing how to redesign a slide template is a great skill for anyone who wants to improve PowerPoint presentation. Editing a template allows the user to make the necessary changes that translate to an effective ppt presentation.

When you redesign your favorite ppt template or one that you really love, it creates custom designs that are clean and professional-looking. So how do you edit a PowerPoint template?

• First, pick a suitable ppt template.
• Add the number of ppt slides that fit the content elements you want to include.
• Adjust the ppt fonts and color.
• Remove the ppt slides you don’t need to make the redesign process easier.

The trick with good ppt slides redesign is to use the slide master placed under view and ensure the slides grouping fits what you want. Note that while the slide master is open, any changes you make to one ppt slide affect the entire pack.

Use duplicate slides to save time

Are you asking yourself, “how do I redesign my presentation without spending a lot of time doing it?” Use duplicate ppt slides! Using slides from a previous presentation eliminates the need to redesign the entire PowerPoint lecture.

The duplicate slide and copy-paste are some methods used to create duplicate ppt slides. The easiest method to duplicate ppt slides is to use the copy and paste method. For this ppt procedure to work, follow these steps:

• Start by right-clicking the ppt slide you want to duplicate.
• Select “copy” from the menu.
• Move it to a specific section on the ppt slide.

The duplicate technique involves opening the ppt slides show and selecting the sliding thumb from the slide you wish to duplicate. Then, when you right-click on any of the ppt slides, a menu will appear, allowing you to click on the duplicate slide option.

Select the right font

Font can make or break your PowerPoint presentation. When chosen right, it will improve PowerPoint presentation. Unfortunately, most presenters make the mistake of choosing a fancy font to add visual appeal to the content. That is a big mistake. When it comes to professional presentation, stick to a standard-looking font that doesn’t detract from the main message.

Some of the standard fonts that give slides a professional and clean look while making the text readable include:

• Times New Roman

You don’t even need to download these fonts as they are accessible in all PowerPoint slides. So if you are still wondering, “which is the easiest way to redesign my presentation,” the answer is to use the appropriate font. Comic Sans and Mistral should be avoided, and using fonts like Forte sparingly is better. Serif and Helvetica are great for headers.

Make sure you use the proper font size

Your content font size greatly impacts how the audience perceives the information you are presenting. For example, it can affect navigation speed, the amount of content included in a single slide, and a reader’s experience. That’s why presenters who ask, “how do I improve my presentation?” are often advised to check the font size.

But which font size is appropriate for a PowerPoint presentation?

• Larger than 18 points improve readability.
• For titles, the font size is between 36 and 44.
• For text, maintain a range of between 24 and 36.
• Use a font size of 18-20 when adding explanatory text to a diagram or graph.

Overall, use a big enough fit to ensure anyone sitting at the back of the room can clearly see the slides’ contents.

Settle on specific style and color to use in a redesign

Thanks to its numerous features, PowerPoint has become the go-to option for making professional and impactful presentation redesign. That’s why when considering a PowerPoint slide makeover, style and color are some of the first things you should look into. For your redesign to improve, you can choose a specific style, color, and design with themes. To create consistency and improve the redesign, use the same style or design in all the slides.

Use the following tips to improve the style and color of your redesign:

• Experiment with different ppt theme styles before settling on a specific one.
• Mix and match color, effects, and font until you get a unique ppt look that fits your presentation.
• Customize the themes to fit the style and color you want.

Using themes makes it easier to get clues on the general style, design, and color you wish to have. But for a ppt redesign, go further and customize the themes by modifying the color, font, background styles, and effects.

Avoid PPT templates with too many colors

One of the things you should do when you want to improve PowerPoint presentation is to use different colors to your advantage to inspire your audience. Unfortunately, ppt templates with too many colors distract and fail to drive the message home.

But the right color combination evokes the right emotions that lead to enjoyment of the PowerPoint presentation. For example:

• Blue shows trust, peace, and confidence.
• Yellow portrays optimism and happiness.
• Red shows passion and grabs attention.
• Green is associated with nature and the environment.

When selecting a ppt template with the right colors, consider the following:

• Your brand or that of the company you are representing.
• Niche or industry.

So if you need to improve PowerPoint presentation redesign quickly, use colors that are easy on the eyes and look harmoniously together. Use ppt templates with complementary color schemes when you want to draw attention to a specific point or data.

Stick to using basic coloring

Color themes are a powerful thing that can easily improve PowerPoint presentation. You can use colors to emphasize specific information or draw attention to a specific element in a slide. Yes, if you are a pro, you can use more than two colors in a slide, especially when giving an informative PowerPoint presentation. However, if you are giving a formal presentation to adults, stick to basic coloring.

Young kids will enjoy bold and vibrant colors in a presentation. However, when dealing with adults, consider using neutral hues. Besides considering your target audience, what else should you do when it comes to colors?

• Use color to create contrast.
• Use colors to make information pop and direct the train of thought.
• Take advantage of complementary and monochromatic color schemes.
• Brighter or vibrant colors balance dark backgrounds.

Don’t use more colors than needed in one slide, as it affects balance and creates confusion. On the other hand, the right colors improve PowerPoint presentation and deliver excellent results.

Contrast in a presentation is essential

One of the most effective ways to improve PowerPoint presentation is through contrast. It draws the eye towards something specific. Colors help to show contrast in slides and draw the viewer to something specific.

But when choosing to use different colors as a way to create contrast, remember that some of your viewers might have color blindness issues. While there are different types of contrast, including shape, shade, color, and size, here are the top tips for creating contrast:

• Black and white provide the strongest contrasts.
• The colors in the background and foreground should be different.
• The colors in the slides should be 30% lighter than what you see on your laptop.

The display for your slide, whether a laptop or projector, and even the room you will be giving the presentation might alter the color and brightness. So check the colors in dark and light to see the contrast difference.

In PPT, images are more powerful than words

Our brains process images faster than text. That’s why visuals or images will be a good option for when you need to improve PowerPoint presentation. Besides, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by text in a ppt redesign.

On the other hand, images add visual appeal to the ppt slides, improve concertation and engagement. Having fewer texts and more images in slides also applies to academics and scientific ppt presentations.

But how many images are too many in ppt? Pros tend to combine beautiful images with text. However, it’s better to have more relevant images than text to redesign the ppt and make the content engaging. We are not just talking about pictures but also infographics, animations, and GIFs added to ppt.

Incorporating images in ppt slides has the following advantages:

• Saves time by preparing the ppt slides.
• Reduces boredom or dullness associated with class PowerPoint presentations.
• Helps to make complex concepts presented in a ppt redesign easy to comprehend.

Overall, the best PowerPoint slides makeover is rich in memorable imagery.

Use high-resolution clip art for your PPT redesign

Adding clip art is one of the things that can spice up a PowerPoint presentation. Instead of having ppt slide after slide, clip art breaks the monotony of the text and adds a striking visual effect to the PowerPoint redesign presentation. It also allows the presenter to showcase additional information not included in the PowerPoint slides. The advantages of adding clip art to a ppt redesign include:

• Helps get rid of using too many words.
• Keeps the audience’s attention.
• Improves the information in the ppt redesign and makes it memorable and engaging.

While, in some cases, outdated clip art makes your redesign presentation look unprofessional, it’s a great PowerPoint slide makeover if only it’s of high quality and can be scaled without distortion. So support your ppt redesign text with clip art as it assists the audience in visualizing the words.

Add meaningful visuals and interactions

Want a PowerPoint slides makeover to ensure your presentation makes a lasting impression? Add meaningful visuals and interactions. Most times, what differentiates a great PowerPoint presentation from a bad one is the content and visuals.

High-quality, relevant images make a presentation more visual. The trick is not to get carried away with the number of visuals included in a single slide. Instead of subjecting your audience to one boring slide after another, make a PowerPoint redesign and create an interactive presentation. How?

Tailor the presentation redesign to suit a wide range of audiences without having to edit the slides beforehand. When it comes to visuals and interactions in a redesign, stick to these three principles:

• Less is more.
• Consistently use high-resolution and quality images.
• Treat each slide as a special visual object.

Not all visuals will fit your message or the redesign you want. So choose correctly and avoid those with too many focal items, color, and contrast.

Align elements properly

Icons, shapes, and images are the most common elements in a PowerPoint presentation. Keeping these crucial elements properly aligned showcases professionalism in ppt and helps to grab the audience’s attention. It also keeps the ppt slides organized and makes it easier to convey the main message effectively.

Here are some tips to help you align elements like a PowerPoint redesign expert:

• Always select the object you want to align.
• Use ppt redesign guides are a reference to align objects correctly.
• For ppt redesign, have the option to align two or more objects.
• In a ppt redesign, you can align left, right, center, top, or bottom.

When you choose a specific position, for instance, to align the center if it’s two or more objects, they will be aligned vertically but centered on the ppt slides. For users who want a ppt redesign, aligning the text is another way to go. This involves tweaking the text placed inside the ppt text box.

Include a good background picture to improve your slides

Are your slides lacking a unique look? The simplest step to improve a ppt redesign is to include a background picture that will improve your PowerPoint presentation and clarify the message. A good background photo will personalize your PowerPoint presentation redesign and take it to the next level.

Here are five tips to help improve and select a great background image for a redesign:

• Go for a photo with a high resolution.
• Avoid choosing small photos as they will be distorted if the slide size is bigger.
• Ensure the picture makes it easier to see the text in the slides.

If the background image obscures the text, improve PowerPoint presentation redesign by adjusting the transparency or fine-tuning the text percentage. If you want to use that same background image in all the slides, don’t forget to select the “apply all” option when redesigning.

Incorporate interactive mockups

Don’t be fooled into believing that screenshots and diagrams can improve PowerPoint presentation. They add too much information to a slide and, in turn, make the presentation boring and visually unappealing. A quick way to improve a PowerPoint redesign is to use interactive mockups.

Even if you don’t have exceptional design skills, a mockup is a great way of ensuring your presentation makes a lasting impression. 3D mockups are also unique and a great tool for conveying your message. In case you feel stuck and require a unique way to make better PowerPoints, consider these tips:

• Use screenshots to create unique mockups.
• Copy the screenshots on a blank ppt slide.
• Edit and crop the image to hide unnecessary elements.
• Ensure the changes made on your mockups are duplicated in all the slides.

It’s optional to use PowerPoint hyperlinks to create interactive mockups. However, always test the mockup on different platforms such as laptops and mobile phones to ensure the font size is not affected regardless of the medium used.

Add relevant images to the redesign

Creating a redesign with engaging presentation slides that summarize the key points and capture attention is not easy. That’s why most professional presenters add pictures to improve PowerPoint presentation slides. But in a formal setting or when presenting complex or scientific information, most people don’t add photos to improve the redesign. However, that’s a mistake because it reduces the overall success of your redesign and PowerPoint presentation.

Before you add a specific visual aid to the redesign, consider its purpose. For example, apart from assisting in ppt redesign, use visual aids to:

• Summarize information.
• Reduce the total words to be included in redesign slides.
• Improve and enforce the points being talked about in the redesign.
• Make a stronger impact.
• Engage your audience and capture their attention.

While there are many benefits of using pictures in a ppt redesign, avoid cluttering them as it will make your work look unprofessional. So if you are asking yourself, “which is the ideal way to improve my presentation slides?” use these redesign tips:

• Use images consistently in all ppt redesign slides.
• Go for pictures that tell a story and improve the ppt slides.
• Incorporate photos that improve understanding of the ppt slides.
• Prioritize clarity and simplicity in your ppt redesign.

Adjust and format images appropriately in a redesign

PowerPoint has numerous effective features that can help correct a picture. That means you can play around with color, resizing, saturation, and even apply artist effects. This is a great option for anyone looking for “quick ways to fix my PowerPoint presentation.” What’s to love about PowerPoint redesign is that it ensures no non-destructive editing for adjusting photos.

If you realize that you have made a mistake in your PowerPoint presentation redesign, you can quickly reset, remove any changes, and get your original image. The editing and redesign option allows you to format your photo to ensure it holds the audience’s attention. Some of the tips that you can use to make your photo better and redesign your slides include:

• Sharpen the image to refine edges and correct slightly blurry images in the presentation redesign.
• Use brightness and contrast to improve the pictures and the redesign.
• Scale an image to fit your redesign slides.

Crop any parts of the images that you don’t want to appear on the redesign slides.

Use graphs to increase understanding of content

Graphs come in handy when ppt data is too large or complicated to be represented in the text. Graphs are a great tool when you need to “fix my PowerPoint presentation” or redesign the project because they can help showcase trends or similarities between two variables. The benefits of incorporating graphs in a PowerPoint presentation include:

• Improve comprehension of data added in the ppt redesign.
• Improve the visual interpretation of any complex numerical to be included in a ppt redesign.
• Highlight and improve the interpretation of salient features of the ppt data.
• Showcase relationships that may not be that obvious when viewing the ppt redesign.
• Improve comparison of a different set of data.

While a specific presentation may call for different types of graphs, all of them work to enhance PowerPoint presentation. Graphs improve focus and allow the audience to concentrate on one salient point. That’s why a presenter should create graphs with one clear message that is simple to understand and find meaning in presented data. Graphs also allow a user to back up their claims.

Modify graphs to suit the data in the presentation

Did you know that one great way to improve PowerPoint presentation is by enhancing the appearance of a chart? To improve it, override the default graph format and edit. However, if not used correctly, graphs can be distracting. So to improve a redesign, keep each graph simple and easy to comprehend.

That way, the audience won’t get confused or spend much time deciphering what the graph from your redesign means. For large data, convert it to graphs but follow these redesign tips to ensure you improve the slides’ visual aid:

• To improve a redesign, you have to choose a specific graph presentation that tells a story.
• The elements included in the graphs should not be distracting but improve the redesign and PowerPoint presentation.
• To improve a redesign, use colors to highlight the key message.
• To improve a redesign, use different colored lines to improve and contrast two items or variables.

Another trick to improve a ppt redesign is adding titles to your graphs with information you want the audience to remember. Then, for a simple PowerPoint slides makeover, apply the simple formatting commands that adjust the font size, color, and style.

Add bulleted lists to organize ideas

Writing, whether in an academic or professional setting, must be clear, concise, and organized. Bullet points can help to organize ideas. For example, to use them to “redesign my presentation and improve it,” list out key points or items from the PowerPoint presentation.

This is mostly because even in a PowerPoint presentation , the audience might scan your content instead of reading it line by line. A bulleted list will break up long blocks of text, improve it, and motivate your audience to read the information.

But for bullet points to be effective in a ppt redesign, you should do the following:

• To improve the ppt redesign, keep bullets short in order to motivate the reader to move through the presentation.
• To improve the ppt redesign, the bullets must be brief and act as mini headlines.
• Bullets should be formatted the same way as the text in the PowerPoint presentation.

Since bullet points should be thematically related to the text, you might wonder how they can help redesign or improve PowerPoint presentation. A bulleted list in a ppt redesign breaks up long blocks of texts into digestible chunks and keeps the audience reading down the slides.

Make the slides pop with the 2/4/8 rule

One of the quickest ways to enhance PowerPoint presentations or give a PowerPoint redesign a fresh look is to use the 2/4/8 rule. To improve your redesign, you should not spend more than 2 minutes on a slide. Moreover, a single slide should not have more than four bullets. Finally, a bullet point should not have more than eight words.

This powerful rule is popular among professional presenters. So to help you out, here are some pointers for the 2/4/8 rule that can help improve a redesign:

• Ensure that 2 minutes are enough to inform the audience about the key points.
• The four bullet points should highlight the main points.
• Adding only eight words per line to every slide ensures the audience doesn’t get bored.

The 2/4/8 rule works to ensure that your slides are not cluttered. It also shows that there is no need to squeeze all the information into a single slide. Instead, it helps supplement the short words with a lengthy verbal presentation

Replace long bullet lists with pictures

Replace a long bulleted list with a high-quality image. Combining graphics and information to create infographics is another great way to achieve an impactful PowerPoint slide makeover.

Since the infographic accommodates varying font types, font sizes, color contrasts, and imagery, it eliminates monotony and adds visual appeal. So which is the correct way to add infographics to PowerPoint slides? Follow these tips:

• Use data visualization to turn lengthy data in slides into fascinating pictures.
• Opt for a ppt slides redesign to play with different shapes and diagrams.
• In your ppt redesign, include icons to improve the overall look.
• Use vector graphics that can be customizable per your preference to improve the ppt redesign.

While bullets in a ppt redesign were meant to break long blocks of text and make paragraphs easier to digest, sometimes they fail to create a fascinating visual aid. But when replaced with a picture or infographic, your message becomes memorable and works to enhance PowerPoint presentation.

Make use of PowerPoint redesign presentation examples

If you want to improve your PowerPoint presentation by always ending up with a blank page, find appealing and relatable redesign examples online. The redesign samples will act as guidelines and inspiration for your next project. With a redesign example to follow, you will know which colors to use and what to include to ensure your PowerPoint slides makeover is a success. The trick is to use online redesign examples from reputable sites. When looking at examples, follow these tips:

• Go for redesign examples that capture your attention and note which areas you focus more on.
• Use the redesign example to check how the slides have been customized and use that aspect to create your pieces.
• Use the redesign sample to determine whether the PowerPoint presentation is image-heavy or text-heavy or combines the two approaches.

It’s often best to combine text and images in equal proportion to help give PowerPoint presentation redesign in a conversational style.

Improve the layout

Did you know that you can improve clarity with layouts? This is simple but important to help improve PowerPoint presentation. When the layout has too much content, including a chart, text, and picture, in a single redesign or slide, the audience often gets confused. That’s why when it comes to a perfect redesign, avoid complex layouts and stick to simple ones.

Not all PowerPoint slides will be equal. However, when it comes to ppt redesign, here are essential tips that result in a great layout:

• Always limit the number of items you add in a single slide layout.
• Ensure every text added to the layout is readable.
• Don’t overfill the entire layout.
• For a stunning redesign, leave white space between each element.

Use placeholders in the slide layout to set a good position for texts, images, graphs, and other visual elements. You can also create custom layouts and save them within the chosen ppt template.

Use shapes to redesign a winning PPT presentation

Are you fond of asking, “how do I redesign my presentation?” Shapes can enhance your PowerPoint presentation. Using other format options, PowerPoint shapes will elevate your slides and add a visual appeal to the content.

What’s even greater is that you don’t have to stick to using common shapes such as rectangles, circles, and ovals. Instead, opt for sleek shapes that transform your ppt presentation.

Shapes can help you create simple or even complex ppt illustrations that will showcase your professionalism. But what’s so great about shapes, and what are their benefits in PowerPoint redesign?

• PPT shapes can be resized without getting distorted or losing image quality.
• PPT shapes offer immense flexibility.
• PPT shapes come in a variety of sizes, from large to small.
• PPT shapes are great for creating flowcharts, illustrations, and other basic diagrams.

Use the rule of thirds to improve PowerPoint slides

Anyone looking for a quick way to improve PowerPoint presentation should use the rule of thirds. It offers an easy way to make attractive slides that capture attention. The rule of thirds is based on the principle of dividing the slides into nine equal parts with two horizontal and vertical intersections.

Based on the rule, you should keep important visual elements in your redesign within the intersections. To use the principle effectively to redesign slides, follow these tips:

• Use the guide feature in PowerPoint to draw four lines on the slides and improve your redesign.
• Both the vertical and horizontal lines should divide your images into thirds and make the redesign better.
• In the redesign, ensure the lines intersect at four points, also known as the power points.

Note that even if your image has several elements, the viewer’s eye will be focused on the power points. Therefore, when you need to improve PowerPoint redesign and achieve maximum impact, place the key elements in the power points.

Add GIFs to your PowerPoint slides

Is your ppt presentation missing a wow factor that can appeal to a target audience? Are you asking yourself, “how do I fix my PowerPoint presentation and make it less boring? Insert a GIF into your ppt slides. A well-placed GIF makes the ppt presentation entertaining, which appeals to a younger audience. The ppt slides redesign can also add humor and capture attention.

Most people might refrain from adding GIFs to PowerPoint presentations because they believe it requires special skills or tools. However, inserting a GIF into ppt slides is just like adding an image. The steps include:

• Download a GIF.
• Open PowerPoint slides.
• Insert a picture.
• Choose the location where you placed the downloaded GIF.
• Insert the GIF in a specific position in the ppt slides.

Depending on the device you are using or the version of PowerPoint, you may choose clip art or picture instead.

Make slides advance automatically

PowerPoint allows users to improve their presentation with special effects. For example, you can create slides that advance automatically using the autoplay feature. This eliminates the need to keep clicking a slide whenever you want to move to the next one.

For a presentation, having an automatic advance feature shows professionalism and that you are well prepared. On the other hand, clicking a slide during a PowerPoint presentation can be distracting and cause you to lose flow or rhythm.

If you want an effective PowerPoint slide makeover, consider creating a slide show that advances automatically. But before setting the advance option, consider the following:

• Have you practiced beforehand to ensure your slides advance with your speech?
• Do you want to focus on the audience instead of looking at the slides?

A self-advancing PowerPoint slide would fit your needs if you answered yes to any of these questions.

Use animations wisely

Animation can improve PowerPoint presentation. It’s also a go-to option for anyone who wants to make better PowerPoints. While adding animation to ppt slides is risky, especially if it’s distracting, it will often improve the presentation redesign.

The trick is to use animations that complement your ppt message. That way, the audience understands what the animation represents, eliminating misunderstandings. If you want to incorporate animations as a way to improve PowerPoint, consider these tips:

• Use animation as a tool to help your audience connect with the message in the ppt.
• Use eye-catching animations to break the monotony of the ppt text and capture attention.
• For long ppt presentations, use animations to engage the audience and prevent fatigue.
• Use animations to draw attention to key points or new terms in the ppt.

While animations are great for presentations, they can only be effective if kept simple. So avoid using several animations in a single slide and use them consistently.

In PPT, it’s better to keep transition effects at a minimum

Animation and slide transition effects have a poor reputation among many professional PowerPoint presenters because they can distract the audience. However, simple animations and quick slide transitions can add meaning and improve PowerPoint presentation or redesign. But before you include a transition and animation into your slide as a way to “improve my presentation redesign,” consider the following:

• Context and relevancy.
• Whether the ppt redesign presentation involves complex or simple data.
• Which points need more attention and can help improve the ppt redesign.

If you fail to use transition effects or animations, your PowerPoint presentation can appear boring. Adding only one or two animation effects is a great PowerPoint slide makeover. This ensures that the effects of the redesign don’t overpower the message.

PPT slide transitions also add professional impact and draw attention to important data. When appropriately customized, you can use the effects to control the speed at which the PowerPoint slides appear on the screen.

Change slide size to fit your presentation

PowerPoint usually has two common slide sizes: 16:9 and 4:3. The first size is ideal for ppt presentations that involve a modern projector. However, 4:3 is great when you are using an old model device. But what if I want to redesign my presentation? Are these the only slide sizes appropriate for ppt? Of course, not.

You can customize the slides to fit the size you want. This is often an option if 4:3 and 16:9 are unsuitable for the ppt redesign. But before you customize the size of your slides, here are some tips to consider:

• 4:3 is great for creating multipurpose ppt content to be printed or shown across different platforms.
• 16:9 is great for high visual ppt content.
• Use 4:3 when the ppt slides are not going to be projected on the LCD screen.

It would be best if you also educated yourself on the ppt aspect ratio. For instance, the 4:3 aspect ratio is 1024×768 pixels, ideal for smaller ppt slides and screens.

When in doubt, dump the slides

Thanks to PowerPoint, it’s possible to have a ppt redesign that creates engaging content. However, sometimes even after looking at several examples, you can find out that your presentation is still dull. For example, if you have tried several times to improve PowerPoint presentation, but the result is slides that will bore the audience, then dump the whole project and start over.

The main aim of a PowerPoint presentation is to hook the audience on the message you are conveying and make them understand it. That is, if your ppt redesign does not have the necessary elements to hook the audience from the word go, it’s best to trash it. To make your next PowerPoint redesign a success, adhere to these tips:

• Replace large chunks of texts in ppt with stunning visual elements.
• Use animations, clip art, and GIFs sparingly in ppt.
• Instead of adding text in ppt, think like an editor and delete what can be omitted.

Finally, be consistent with font size, color schemes, font types, and bullets used in any ppt redesign.

Now that you know how to create a perfectly-balanced presentation, let’s find out how to present it to your audience in the best possible way. These tips will be especially relevant for teachers, lecturers, and presenters.

Present PPT material in short phrases

Presenting the material in short phrases rather than full sentences is another way to improve PowerPoint redesign. It ensures you don’t focus more on reading from ppt slides as it’s an ineffective way to teach. Instead, adding only a few short phrases to improve PowerPoint presentation allows you to focus on one idea and make the topic easier for the audience to understand.

The benefits of shorter phrases in a PowerPoint presentation redesign are as follows:

• It leaves less room for your audience to focus more on what is written on the ppt slides.
• It allows your audience to focus on your thoughts, explanation, and insights on the subject discussed in the ppt redesign.
• It lets the audience know and focus on the main point presented in the ppt redesign.

To improve PowerPoint presentation at any time, stick to short phrases that do not exceed 30 words or one line. Emphasize the short phrases with bold or bigger font sizes.

Include verbal explanations for pictures/graphs

It’s without a doubt that visual aids improve PowerPoint presentation redesign. PPT slides increase an audience’s understanding of the topic. That’s why pictures and graphs are great for anyone asking themselves, “how do I fix my PowerPoint presentation redesign.”

But without a verbal explanation, it can be challenging to comprehend the information in the ppt redesign presentation. So to give PowerPoint slides makeover, accompany visual aids with verbal explanations. Adding verbal explanations in ppt redesign slides is important because:

• A real-time ppt presentation allows the audience to ask questions about the visual aids used in the redesign.
• It enables your audience to assimilate the content better and freely discuss any doubts.
• It allows the lecturer or presenter to give real-time answers to any relevant question asked.

Simplicity in the verbal explanation is key in assimilating the message and a great way to improve a redesign or a PowerPoint presentation.

Don’t make the audience read the information on the slides

It’s hard for people to concentrate on what you are saying and still read the content on the slides. So if you want to make better PowerPoint presentation, don’t make your audience read the slides. Instead, allow them to listen to you and digest the information you have given in the redesign.

When the audience reads the slides, there is a high chance that they will not listen attentively. This reduces the concentration and retention of relevant information. It also beats the purpose of PowerPoint slide makeover. Besides, listening makes it easier for the audience to take notes and remember the key points in the redesign. When making a redesign, instead of allowing your audience to read the slides on their own, consider these four tips:

• At the beginning of the PowerPoint presentation, tell the audience what to expect.
• Elicit conversation to prevent the audience from focusing on the slides.
• Use the redesign to open with a story that ties to the topic to captivate your audience.
• Blackout the screen to ensure you are not competing with the PowerPoint redesign slides.

Fade to black when speaking

In search engines, the phrase “redesign my presentation” is commonly asked by presenters who want to be pros. However, one answer that is often overlooked but can easily improve PowerPoint presentation is the fade-to-black effect.

It’s often considered a transition that prevents the audience from concentrating too much on the slides. Instead, it allows the listeners to focus on the presenter. If fade-to-black is a new concept to you, check out the tips below:

• Use the fade-to-black effect to carry and improve your narrative.
• Fade-to-black provides room to pause and move on to the next slide.
• Use fade-to-black to get undivided attention and connect with the audience.

The chances are high that you have not been using the fade-to-black effect in your presentation. However, we recommend you try it because you are definitely missing out on a big opportunity that can enhance PowerPoint presentation.

Use PowerPoint slides to boost note-taking skills

One efficient way to make better PowerPoint presentation slides is to ensure your lectures improve note-taking skills. How?

With PowerPoint slides that summarize the subject or topic under discussion, students will have all it takes to improve and make good notes. In addition, learners will be able to follow what the lecturer is saying to understand key points given in the ppt slides.

The key to improving note-taking skills is to do it when the professor is not talking, decreasing information retention and learning. If a professor realizes that students focus more on taking notes than listening, they might have to do a PowerPoint redesign. For starters, ensure the ppt slides don’t have too much text that takes too much time for students to write down. When presenting your ppt slides, promote active listening by:

• Repeating the main points stated in the ppt slides.
• Asking questions to help learners focus on what is being said in the ppt slides.
• Don’t cover what is not included in the ppt slides.
• Don’t speak too fast or often point at the ppt slides.

And last but not least, take breaks or pauses between ppt slides to allow students to catch up and not miss any crucial information.

Give PowerPoint slides before the lecture

Do you sometimes see a specific student struggle to understand your ppt presentation? The solution might lie in the PowerPoint slide makeover. Most professors are used to presenting the slides during the actual lecture. This is because some students will not attend class if given the ppt slides before the lesson. However, there are numerous advantages to making the ppt slides available before the lecture.

• The ppt slides act as a guide for note-taking.
• When you improve a ppt redesign, it allows your audience to add information that was verbally discussed during class.
• PPT redesign increases student participation and concentration.

PowerPoint slides given before class allow the audience to gauge which sections they might find difficult to comprehend and ask relevant questions. However, if your students don’t attend class after getting the slides and you ask yourself, “how do I fix my PowerPoint presentation?” we recommend considering the quality of the slides. Ensure the slides don’t divulge every important detail. That way, you leave room for a verbal presentation to fill in the blanks and explain the subject matter further.

Use PowerPoint slides structure to complement lectures

Every teacher has used PowerPoint slides to improve lectures. But some of the teachers end up creating the slides in a dull way that makes students bored. However, the appropriate use of PowerPoint slides can be a great teaching tool as long as it follows a logically sound structure. This is another great tip to improve PowerPoint presentation redesign.

So how do you structure slides and improve PowerPoint presentations?

• As a way to improve the ppt slides, include the outline view to help you get a quick overview of the content
• Ensure slides from the ppt redesign include the table of contents to ease navigation
• Combine ppt slides into collapsible and expandable sections

The trick to improve PowerPoint slides is to make the presentation just like any other narration. Ensure the ppt redesign has an introduction, body, and conclusion. Besides, you can also give the PowerPoint presentation slides to students before class to enhance understanding and memory.

Wrapping up

PowerPoint presentations can be a great tool to get information across, demonstrate your expertise, projects, and accomplishments, as well as supplement a lecture. However, slides have to be created using best practices to get you the result you want.

Observance of a few simple principles will help you easily make effective PowerPoint presentations in 2022:

• Design your PowerPoint slides in one style. Use font, color, and shapes to create a visual hierarchy.
• Arrange elements so that everyone can immediately read the most important message.
• Highlight key elements with color, shape, or layout. Create a contrast or color spot.
• In the text, try to highlight the most critical phrases. This can be done using the color, thickness, or size of the text.
• Choose flat icons and simple shapes instead of 3D elements and rendered details.
• Use the built-in alignment tools (ruler, guides, and grid in PowerPoint).
• Copy slides and elements instead of re-creating them. An excellent PowerPoint presentation design is the reproduction of items, colors, and other objects.

In case you’re not good at slide design, don’t worry. SlidePeak can help you ensure each slide of your PowerPoint presentation looks professional and grabs your audience’s attention from the first line.

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• Presenting techniques
• Keynote VS PowerPoint
• Types of presentations
• Present financial information visually in PowerPoint to drive results

8 rules of effective presentation

How to make a presentation interactive

The biggest trends in graphic design for presentations in 2022/2023

How to See Your Notes When Presenting in PowerPoint

As a presenter, delivering a seamless and confident presentation is key to making a lasting impression. However, it can be challenging to remember every detail of your presentation, especially if you have a lot of content to cover. Fortunately, with PowerPoint’s Presenter View, you can easily access your notes and confidently deliver your presentation. In this article, we will cover all aspects of using PowerPoint’s Presenter View to enhance your presentation.

Table of Contents

Why You Need to See Your Notes When Presenting in PowerPoint

Presenting without having your notes at hand can be daunting and can affect the quality of your presentation. Whether you are presenting in front of a small group or a large audience, you will need to have access to your notes. This will help you deliver your presentation confidently, as you will have a clear idea of what to say or do next. In addition, having your notes visible can help you stay focused on the topics you want to cover and avoid straying off-topic.

Another reason why it is important to see your notes when presenting in PowerPoint is that it can help you manage your time effectively. By having your notes visible, you can keep track of the time and ensure that you are covering all the important points within the allocated time frame. This can help you avoid rushing through the presentation or running out of time before you have covered all the key points.

Furthermore, having your notes visible can also help you engage with your audience better. When you are confident and well-prepared, you are more likely to make eye contact with your audience and use body language effectively. This can help you build a connection with your audience and keep them engaged throughout the presentation.

How to Access Presenter View in PowerPoint

Before you can access Presenter View, you need to have a PowerPoint presentation open in Slide Show mode. Once your presentation is open, simply click on the ‘Slide Show’ tab and check the box beside ‘Use Presenter View.’ Your screen will then automatically switch to Presenter View, allowing you to see your notes and other helpful controls.

Presenter View is a great tool for giving presentations, as it allows you to see your notes and upcoming slides while your audience only sees the current slide. You can also use Presenter View to zoom in on specific parts of your slide, draw on your slides, and even use a virtual laser pointer to highlight important information. To exit Presenter View, simply press the ‘Esc’ key on your keyboard.

Understanding the Presenter View in PowerPoint

Presenter View is a powerful tool that enables you to manage your presentation effectively. It comprises several elements, including:

• The slide display area, which shows the slide that your audience sees.
• The notes section, which displays any text that you have added as notes or comments.
• The timer, which can help you stay within your allotted time.
• The navigation controls, which let you move forward and backward in your presentation easily.
• The zoom slider, which enables you to zoom in and out of your slides for added detail.
• The laser pointer and highlighter tools, which allow you to emphasize important points on your slides.

Presenter View also allows you to preview upcoming slides, giving you a chance to prepare for the next section of your presentation. This feature can be especially helpful if you need to refer to specific information on a later slide.

In addition, Presenter View provides a way to keep your audience engaged by allowing you to add annotations to your slides. You can draw attention to specific areas of your slide, highlight key points, or even add additional information that may not be included in the slide itself.

Setting Up Presenter View: Step-by-Step Guide

If you want to customize your Presenter View experience, follow these steps:

• On the ‘Slide Show’ tab, click ‘Set Up Slide Show.’
• Under ‘Multiple Monitors,’ select the ‘Use Presenter View’ checkbox.
• If you’re using a single monitor, select the ‘Display slide show on’ option and choose your primary monitor.
• If you’re using dual monitors, select the ‘Display slide show on’ option and choose the monitor that you want to display Presenter View on.
• Customize the Presenter View by selecting the options that you want to use, such as speaker notes, the timer, and the navigation controls.
• Click ‘OK.’ Your Presenter View should now be set up.

It’s important to note that not all versions of PowerPoint have the Presenter View feature. If you don’t see the ‘Use Presenter View’ checkbox under ‘Multiple Monitors,’ it’s likely that your version of PowerPoint doesn’t support this feature. In this case, you may need to upgrade to a newer version or use a different presentation software that offers Presenter View.

How to Customize Presenter View Settings in PowerPoint

If you have specific preferences for Presenter View, you can customize it by following these steps:

• Click the ‘Settings’ button in the Presenter View toolbar.
• Select the options that you want to use, such as the color scheme, font size, and slide size.
• Click ‘Save Changes’ to apply your changes.

Customizing your Presenter View settings can greatly enhance your presentation experience. For example, you can choose to display your notes on one screen while your audience sees only the slides on the other screen. Additionally, you can select the option to display a timer or a clock to help you keep track of time during your presentation. Experiment with different settings to find what works best for you and your audience.

Using Presenter View on Dual Monitor Setup

If you have a dual-monitor setup, you can use Presenter View to present your slides on one screen while managing your notes and tools on the other screen. To do this, simply select the ‘Use Presenter View’ checkbox under ‘Multiple Monitors’ in the ‘Set Up Slide Show’ dialog box. Once you start presenting, the Presenter View screen will appear on the secondary monitor, while the slides will appear on the primary screen.

Presenter View is a great tool for presenters who want to keep their notes and tools hidden from the audience. With Presenter View, you can see your notes, upcoming slides, and a timer, while your audience only sees the current slide. This feature is especially useful for longer presentations, where you may need to refer to your notes or keep track of time.

Another benefit of using Presenter View is that it allows you to easily navigate through your presentation. You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move forward or backward through your slides, or you can use the thumbnails on the Presenter View screen to jump to a specific slide. This makes it easy to adjust your presentation on the fly, without having to interrupt the flow of your presentation.

Troubleshooting Common Issues with Presenter View in PowerPoint

If you experience common issues with Presenter View, such as notes not displaying correctly, audio not working, or distorted visuals, try these troubleshooting tips:

• Make sure that your computer meets the minimum system requirements for using Presenter View.
• Check that the correct audio output is selected in the control panel.
• Review your slides and notes to ensure that there are no formatting errors.
• Try closing other open applications to free up system resources.
• Ensure that your computer is updated with all available updates.
• Try reinstalling or repairing PowerPoint to eliminate any software conflicts.

However, if these troubleshooting tips do not resolve your issues, there may be other factors at play. One possible cause of issues with Presenter View is outdated or incompatible drivers for your computer’s graphics card. Check with your computer manufacturer or graphics card manufacturer to see if there are any updates available.

Another potential issue could be related to your computer’s display settings. Make sure that your display settings are optimized for the resolution and aspect ratio of your presentation. You may also want to try adjusting the scaling settings to see if that improves the display of your slides and notes.

Tips and Tricks for Effective Note-taking During Presentation

To get the most out of Presenter View, try these effective note-taking tips:

• Organize your notes by slide or topic to stay on track during the presentation.
• Use bullet points and keywords to keep your notes concise and easy to read.
• Include cues or action words to remind you of any demonstrations, animations, or other interactive elements in your presentation.
• Use the highlighter tool to draw attention to the most critical points.

Enhancing Your Presentation with Presenter View

Presenter View can enhance your presentation in several ways, such as by allowing you to add visual aids and multimedia elements, manage your time effectively, and engage your audience. By using Presenter View, you can keep your presentation on track, highlight key information, and maintain your audience’s attention throughout.

The Importance of Rehearsing Your Presentation with Presenter View

Practicing your presentation with Presenter View can help you become familiar with the interface, identify any errors or issues, and ensure that your presentation will run seamlessly. Use Presenter View during your presentation rehearsal to simulate the actual presentation environment and get a feel for how it works.

Taking Advantage of the Laser Pointer and Highlighter Tools in Presenter View

The laser pointer and highlighter tools are handy for emphasizing key points on your slides and improving audience engagement. To use them, simply press and hold the ‘Ctrl’ key and click the mouse to activate the laser pointer or highlighter. Release the key to deactivate them.

How to Switch Between Slides and Notes during a Presentation

If you need to switch between slides and notes during your presentation, simply click the ‘Notes’ button in the Presenter View toolbar. This will display your notes and allow you to scroll through them as needed.

Utilizing the Timer and Countdown Features of Presenter View

The timer and countdown features are useful for keeping your presentation on track and ensuring that you do not exceed your allotted time. To use them, simply enable the ‘Timer’ feature in the ‘Settings’ section of Presenter View. You can then set the countdown time and choose whether to display it during the presentation or keep it hidden.

Sharing Your Screen Using Presenter View in Microsoft Teams or Zoom Meetings

If you are using Microsoft Teams or Zoom Meetings to deliver your presentation remotely, you can still use Presenter View by sharing your screen. To do this, simply select the ‘Share Screen’ option and choose the ‘Presenter View’ screen. This will allow you to present your slides while keeping your notes and controls visible to you for an uninterrupted presentation experience.

By following the steps and tips outlined in this article, you can use PowerPoint’s Presenter View to deliver a polished and professional presentation that wows your audience. Always remember to rehearse your presentation before the actual day so that you’re comfortable with the tools and settings for Presenter View, and ready to tackle any issue that might arise.

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How to Design a PowerPoint: A Visual Guide to Making Slides with Impact

Home > Speaking > How to Design a PowerPoint

A quick Google Images search for “worst PowerPoint slides” proves two very clear realities: 1) anybody can create a PowerPoint; and 2) many don’t know how to do them well.

That’s understandable, though. Unless you’ve recently taken courses or training in design, data visualization, and public speaking, you likely haven’t had any more education on how to create an effective slide deck than a ten-year-old.

And you’re not alone.

Bad PowerPoints are everywhere: professor lectures, science conferences, human resources trainings, team meetings, sales review gatherings, thesis and dissertation defenses, product pitches, job interviews, you name it. Some of the brightest people in the world have created some of the most awful PowerPoints. For most, it’s just not a natural skill.

That’s unfortunate, too, because a well-designed slide deck can make a tremendous difference in the reception of the message you’re trying to convey.

To start designing excellent slide decks right away, follow my quick guide to designing better PowerPoints right after this paragraph. To get a whole workshop’s worth of information about how to design better slides, scroll below. 🙂

Click image to enlarge.

The question is, does designing a nice PowerPoint actually matter?

Well, if you’ve made it this far, you already know my opinion. But the short answer is, YES! Effective slide decks can make a HUGE difference in the outcome of your presentation. Why? Because slides—which should be used to supplement and enhance your well-prepared script (not be the presentation, as we often see in slides that are nothing more than bulleted lists)—significantly improve engagement during the presentation and recall after the presentation.

Basically, if you want people to both pay attention AND remember what you said, good slides can make all the difference. Plus, research has shown that people trust information more when it’s well-designed. In sum, good slides will cause your audience to:

• Pay attention more and stay more engaged;
• Remember the key messages from your presentation better;
• Trust you and your information more; and
• Believe you are super smart and awesome. (I mean, you already are, but good slides will seal the deal.)

Bad slides, on the other hand, are not only distracting, but they can actually damage a person’s ability to understand and follow your message.

At best, poorly designed slides will make you look less professional. At worst, they’ll encourage people to not listen to anything you have to say. Bad slides (which are caused by a whole range of things, including being too text-heavy, too busy, too inconsistent, or too color crazy, etc. [see my article on 40 Ways to Screw Up a PowerPoint Slide ]), overwhelmingly distract from your presentation.

If a slide has too much text, people try to read it and listen to you at the same time—which damages their ability to do either well. If your slides are too busy, your audience won’t be able to understand the information quick enough. If it’s ugly, well…people just tune out and ignore (and judge you, to boot).

Okay, so enough of the why . Let’s get to making better slides!

The 9 Steps to Designing a Better PowerPoint Slide

Step 1: empathize with your audience.

The term “empathy” in this context comes from a relatively new theory called “design thinking,” in which you can apply the mindset of a designer to a variety of contexts. So, whether you’re creating a toothbrush, a video game, an automobile, or…a PowerPoint, you need to be thinking a like a designer—which starts with empathy.

Empathizing with an audience is like applying the Golden Rule: present unto them as you would like to be presented to. Of course, the content of presentation itself comes first and foremost, but the design of your slides should support and enhance your content, so you’ll be thinking of your script and your slides at the same time. To begin, it’s best to start with a few concrete questions about your audience:

• Why are they there? Are they at your presentation because they want to be, or because they have to be? Is your presentation the only one of the day, or is it one of many (like at a conference)? Are they expecting to learn, be entertained, be inspired, be trained? In essence, you want to know their state of mind before coming so you can plan to accommodate that as best you can.
• Why would they care? Dig deep here. Does your audience actually care about the topic as much as you do? And…if you don’t care, why don’t you? If the topic isn’t meaningful and you can’t make it feel that way, then why even present? But…if they do care, know why they do. What will they hope for and expect out of it? What can you do to meet and exceed their expectations?
• What do they need to know? And what DON’T they? How much about your subject do they already know? Are they novices, experts, or a blend of both? Does it make more sense to break your topic into separate presentations on separate days, rather than giving it all at once? Is it focused and narrow enough to make an impact? Can you leave anything that is irrelevant out?
• What will keep them engaged? Consider your content and your big takeaways. Consider the personalities and knowledge base of the audience? What can you do to keep them engaged? Now…remember that “engaged” doesn’t mean “entertained” (though it can). If you’re a scientist presenting on bacterial infections in the liver, entertainment is obviously not appropriate. But…if you don’t engage them, they may not appreciate your research, no matter how valuable it is. What will they want to see, hear, and know and how can you display that to them in a way that will keep them interested?

Once you have clear idea about your audience’s needs and desires, you can begin to develop slides (along with the content of your script) that will give them exactly what they’re looking for rather than wasting their time (and yours).

Step 2: Define the Story

Think of your presentation as a story and you, the presenter, as an author in real time. As you deliver a presentation, you are creating the tone, setting, and plot for what happens. Your execution of the presentation will, if done right, create a climax/conflict and an important resolution. Consider how your slide development functions like the five components of a story, then write down how you plan to control (define) that story:

• The Setting. You create a mood and presence by the way you enter the room, interact with the audience, and display your title. While you may not have full control over who comes and what the room looks like, you do have relative control over the tone and ambiance and how they will react to your message. Consider the title of your presentation. Does it capture your message while also creating a buzz about your topic? Can you add a photo on the title slide that will intrigue your audience? What colors will you use? How do you plan to interact with the slides and how will you keep the audience involved?
• The Characters. You may not know all the people in the room, but you should know as much about them as possible (start with Step 1). Still, you have a way to shape their interest and engagement in this topic. Characters in this story are stakeholders. Your ultimate goal for giving should be one of three things: help them think about something in a new, meaningful way; learn something valuable they didn’t know before; and/or act as a result of what they learned. If you can’t get them to one of those three points, you’ve never really developed the characters.
• The Plot . A plot in storytelling is a series of events that build towards a conclusion. A plot needs to have direction, with clear and meaningful series of events. As you develop your script, you should be thinking about your rhetorical progression of ideas—your building towards a final outcome or conclusion. The development of slides can help you with this and they can help your audience stay on track. The key is, you need to make sure your audience is following the plot. If the plot starts to feel loose, disconnected, fragmented, or…all over the place, you’ll lose them faster than a 0-star rated movie.
• The Conflict. There must be some reason why everyone is there to see you presentation. It’s possible they don’t fully understand it themselves, but you, as the presenter, must make their purpose evidently clear. You must make them care. The more and more you pull them into your subject matter, the more you have effectively built a climax, which is the key to any successful story.
• The Resolution . The resolution is the takeaway—it’s what resolves the conflict. If you’ve built a strong climax, you now need to make sure your audience leaves with something valuable. If they leave thinking in a new, meaningful way; if they have learned something valuable that they can apply today; or if they are ready and knowledgeable about how to act, then the resolution is there and you, the author, have done your job.

Step 3: Brand Your Message

Jeff Bezos is famous for having said, “Brand is what others say about you when you’re not in the room.” You might think similarly about your presentation. How will your audience feel about your presentation afterwards, when you’re not around?

That can be an intimidating question to ask. And, it may seem a little odd to think about your message as a “brand.” But…applying brand theory to messaging makes a lot of sense. You want people to get on board with what you have to say. To do that, you have to establish what they value, what motivates them, and what you’ll have to do meet or exceed their expectations.

Brand experts use a lot of terms to describe and define brands. Let’s address a few, and apply them to slide design:

• Differentiation. How yours is different from the rest. What can you do to make your message stand out from a world of clutter and information? What makes yours unique? Is it your approach, the stories you tell, your language, your humor, your ideas, something else?
• Authenticity . How much you genuinely care. Audiences can tell if you’re passionate or not. They know if you care about both your topic and them learning it. If you fake it, the message gets diluted. Use your slides to help showcase how much you care.
• History . What people already know about you, your topic, or your experience. Do you need to establish credibility, or do you already have it? Do you have experience you can lean into? Does your audience already like/agree with this topic? Is it totally new and unfamiliar to them? How can you bring the history of your topic and yourself into the presentation? Will you audience need a primer on the history or does it matter?
• Simplicity. Making the most important things stick. Good brands almost always have simple logos, simple taglines, and simple brand positioning statements. Many also focus on limited products—they focus on what they do well. Your message can work the same way. Can you simplify your entire message into 2 – 5 key points? Can you reduce the amount of information that has to be taken in all at once? Can you help organize and chunk information to be clearer and simpler to follow? People generally have a hard time remembering complex information all at once—determine what the real purpose of your presentation is and what your audience can reasonably get out of it, then simplify to make sure that happens.
• Visual Identity . Your message, like a brand, can be enhanced if people resonate with the overall look and feel. Just like with buying a brand of shoes, people will be drawn to the design of your information. If it looks static, cliche, poorly design, or just plain ugly, you’ve created an undesirable visual identity and people will have a harder time buying into it. But if you can take your message and harmonize with strong design and imagery, people will be more likely to be attracted by, latch onto, and “buy in” to what you have to say. What should your visual identity look like, considering your topic?

Step 4: Select Your Fonts

The choice of your font may seem a small thing, but it can make the difference between a sleek, professional presentation and one that is static, boring, or, worse, painfully obnoxious.

If you’re not a professional designer, being font savvy may not come natural. Fortunately, there just a few rules you can follow to help you make your choices:

• Avoid the Defaults . In PowerPoint (as in MS Word), the default font is Calibri. Before 2010, the default was Times New Roman. Other programs use Arial or Myriad Pro as the default. What’s wrong with defaults? The fonts themselves are actually fine fonts—that’s why Microsoft went with them. BUT…because they’re the defaults, they are so widely used that they’ve become dull. If you just leave the defaults, your audience will subconsciously feel that you didn’t design your PowerPoint (because you probably didn’t). Just changing the font can bolster your PowerPoint’s professionalism quickly.
• Stick to Simple, Modern Fonts. Okay, so you don’t want to use the defaults, but what DO you use? Something simple. Don’t go crazy. Find something that is similar to the default, with just a little variation. Find something that is super easy to read and looks clean, simple, and sleek. Nothing distracting. Remember: you want people to focus on your story and message, not the lettering. Look at the graphic above for a list of some good, simple, modern fonts. Avoid, at all costs, the notoriously ugly or cliched fonts: Comic Sans; Chiller; Papyrus; Algerian; Curlz MT; and so forth.
• Make Sure Your Fonts Are on the Computer(s) You’re Presenting On. Remember: fonts are installed on individual computers, not attached to a program. A misunderstanding that many people have is that a font comes with PowerPoint (or any other program you’re working on). That’s NOT accurate. Fonts are installed on your computer. So…if you use a cool font that was on your desktop PC, but you are presenting your slides on a MacBook laptop, you’ll want to check that both computers have the font you’re using. Some fonts are pretty standard and you’ll find them on pretty much all computers: Palatino Linotype, Century Gothic, Segoe UI, Garamond. Others, however, are proprietary and may not be on other computers: Acumin Pro, Raleway, Helvetica. If you know you’ll be presenting on multiple different computers, find a standard font. One I’ve always liked to use is Century Gothic.
• Consider Using Two Fonts . The “two-font rule” suggests that designs will be more attractive if they use two fonts—one for headings and titles, the other for body text. You can get away with just one font if you make your headings stand out in some way—by size, weight, or color—but it’s often a nice aesthetic to use two. Just be sure that the two fonts are obviously different from each other (don’t use both Arial AND Century Gothic—they’re too similar, which will look like an accident) and that they harmonize well together. It’s often good to use a serif font (the type with little “feet” like in Palatino Linotype) paired with a sans serif font (the kind without “feet,” like Century Gothic).

Step 5: Narrow Your Colors

A hallmark of any good design is a simple, consistent color scheme. Keep your slide designs to fewer than four colors. Often, it’s good to use black, white, gray, and then one or two accent colors. Years ago, when I was new to design, I had someone tell me that a brochure I created looked like a clown exploded on the page. You DON’T want your slides to look like a clown exploded! To avoid that, find your color scheme in advance and stick to it.

Color can be tricky. If you work for a company that already has a pre-established style guide and color scheme, definitely use it! Not only is that important for your company’s brand, it makes your life a whole lot easier. If you do have to choose colors yourself, though, consider going to this website first: color.adobe.com . You can type things into the “explore” bar and you’ll be led to color schemes that look nice.

What you want to look for are colors that are a bit muted and won’t overwhelm the eyes of your viewers. Remember that you want to keep a high contrast so it doesn’t strain your audience members’ eyes. So…stick to black or really dark gray for text. Keep a white or very light background. Use the accent color for headings or important pieces of content. And…just make sure the colors match your topic or industry.

Step 6: Divide into Sections

Good presentations are well organized. Your slides should visually reflect your organization by using different slide “types” for different parts of your presentation or content.

All presentations should have at least three slide types: a title slide, a body slide, and a closing slide. Most presentations will have a fourth: a section slide. Section slides are used to transition your presentation from one major topic to the next. Many presentations can also benefit from callout slides, which are used to designate unique types of content that show up periodically—like for direct quotes or polling questions to audience members.

If you’ve ever taken a college course on public speaking, you probably remember your professor telling you to use “signposts.” A signpost is a metaphor for visual or oral cues that let your reader know where they’re at in the journey. Signposts keep your audience oriented. Sectioning your slides provides a visual signifier to your audience that you are shifting gears—plus, it just makes your slides feel cohesive, professional, and organized.

Take the time to design your slide types first. Then, fill in the content from your presentation script.

A quick note about body slides, though. These are going to be the most frequently used slides, the ones that you put the majority of your content on. Note that body slides don’t all have to look identical. They need to be consistent in design—repeating the same fonts, colors, photography style, highlights, etc.—but the layouts can change. Providing some visual variation is good for your audience.

Step 7: Visualize Every Slide

One of the biggest errors inexperienced presenters make is believing that audience members need to be able to read a lot of text to understand the message.

The reality is, when you put a lot of text on the screen—even if it’s in a bulleted list—you end up creating more difficulty for your audience. They’ll try to read while also trying to listen to you, creating a conflict of noise that will eventually cause them to only catch about half of what you wanted them to. Plus, a lot of text is boring and not efficient for the human brain.

Research has actually shown (and there is significant evidence to prove this) that making information visual is good for humans for four reasons: engagement, cognition, trust, and recall.

• Visual information is more engaging . Most all people will tell you that they are “visual learners.” The reality is that pretty much all humans are. We pay attention to visual information because our brains are designed to process visual information faster. When you provide visuals—photographs, charts, diagrams, icons, etc.—people will pay far more attention than if you just have text. In fact, if you just have text on a screen, people will likely zone out.
• Visual information is easier to understand. If designed well and related to the topic, people will understand visual information faster than they will from reading. Even as you read this article (assuming you’re still here!), the information that is really going to help you are the visual examples and explanations I’ve added for each section. That’s the stuff where you’ll say, “aha! now I know what Curtis is telling me to do.” All this text—it’s just ancillary stuff to provide more detail. But the photos/graphics are what you’ll really learn from.
• Visualized information builds trust. For better or for worse, humans are wired to trust information more when it has been visualized, especially when it looks professional. If you take a table of data and turn it into a data visualization that is professionally design, people will tend to trust it more. Something about taking the time to visualize information makes people assume you know what you’re talking about. Now, that said, you have to make sure your data visualizations are accurate. The real pitfall here is that people will tend to trust it more, even if it’s misleading. If they discover any flaws, your entire argument (and credibility) will go out the window.
• Visual information is easier to remember . Research studies have shown that visual information will be retained more than six times better if visuals are attached to it. If you actually want people to remember your presentation you must do two things: tell stories and use pictures. If you simply regurgitate information and make it very text-heavy, your audience will forget almost everything you said within three days. If you add pictures, though, they’ll have mental images to trigger memory, helping them retain your message much longer.

Find ways to visualize every chance you can, making sure that your visuals emphasize, clarify, or enhance the content you are talking about. Look at the examples above. Find ways to reduce text and enlarge graphics; turn bullets into images or icons; and use simple, easy to understand graphics that draw attention to the most important point.

Step 8: Play with Photos and Layouts

This is the one that takes the most practice, but it can be the most fun and rewarding. Recognize that your body slides can take multiple forms and that there are endless ways to organize, crop, and adjust visualizations, photos, headings, and designs. As long as you keep your color scheme, fonts, and highlighting techniques consistent, the slides will still feel uniform and professional, while giving variety to your slides.

Some things to think about as you play with the design of your slides:

• CONTRAST: Make sure you use high contrast in colors, especially for areas where you have text (black text on white backgrounds almost always work best). In addition, make sure that things that are different actually look significantly different. If two fonts are different sizes, make them obviously different sizes. If you’re using two colors, make them completely different colors. When two things look similar, there isn’t much contrast, which looks accidental and/or visually dull.
• REPETITION: Repetition is all about consistency in design. Repeat design elements throughout: fonts, colors, highlights, logos, shapes, styles, etc. Repeat the same visual feel for photos. Use the same types of icons and graphics. The more unified the design, the strong the appeal and the more professional you look.
• ALIGNMENT: Make sure everything on your slide is aligned with something else. Nothing should be “floating,” or placed arbitrarily. Align photos to titles, words to other words, rules/lines to other elements. Keep it all tightly aligned and crisp.
• PROXIMITY: Put things that are related close together and things that aren’t apart from each other. The brain will automatically assume that, if two things are next to each other (like a photo and a caption) that they are connected. Avoid confusing your audience by separating things that are different and connecting things that go together.
• Move Photos to the Bleeds . The term “bleed” is a graphic design principle that describes moving photos to the edge of page (where the ink “bleeds” off) in order to reduce visual noise. An old design principles developed by Josef Albers, 1+1=3, suggests that when you insert two objects, you automatically create a third—the space between. When you insert a photo, you end up creating a margin of white space around the edges. If that white space isn’t necessary, just make the image larger and push clear to the edge of the screen. This will remove the margin and the noise. Plus, it just makes slides look simpler and more professional and it really draws the eyes to the photo.

Step 9: Orient Your Audience

In addition to creating section slides (see Step 6 above), you can help your audience—and yourself—stay organized by giving visual cues and textual information in footers, slide counts, and headers or sidebars.

These orienting features of a slide deck can be especially valuable if you’re giving a long presentation, workshop, or training.

Start by creating a footer. These aren’t required and you don’t need them on every slide, but in most costs, presentations will benefit from some information in the footer. Some of the most common things to include in a footer:

• Company logo
• Company name
• Name of presenter
• Name of event or conference
• Title of presentation
• Copyright information

Beyond the footer, you can also include a slide count (in example above, look at the bottom right of the slide). While some argue that this can be distracting, most would say that a slide count will help audience members know how much more to expect, putting their “I’m being held hostage by this presenter!” fears away.

If your presentation is particularly long (like, say, 45 minutes or more) or you’re giving a workshop, you can really help your audience by giving them a sort of contents or guide, so that they know where they’re at in relation to everything else. You might, for example, create a small sidebar on the left that includes the section they’re in with the subsection. Or, as in the example at the top (see top left of example), you might just include which section you’re on and a summary title of that section.

There is no one or perfect way to orient your audience members. Just make sure it’s on the forefront of your mind as you work to build empathy into your slide design. The presentation is for them, after all, not you. Give them as much as you can to help them appreciate the message you’re delivering.

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Home / What is Visual Communication and How it Helps to Elevate Your Presentations

What is Visual Communication and How it Helps to Elevate Your Presentations

In a world of big data, visual communication is a vital skill to have .

Being able to present an easy-to-understand, visual version of all those facts and figures is essential to a growing number of jobs .

Add in a pandemic and our new working from home culture, and the ability to convey information in a visual format has never been more important.

Talking online, we can’t rely on the usual gestures, cues or props. Visual content can fill that gap, helping us to convey our message to better effect. 

Whatever your industry or your department, there’s a lot to be gained from good visual communication:

• Sales teams can use it to create emotive presentations that close more deals. 
• HR can improve internal communications. 
• Training teams can develop more effective instructional materials. 
• Marketers can create visual presentations that better engage their customers.

All of this is possible when you master visual communication strategies.

So, what is visual communication?

Why is visual communication important, how to use visual communication to raise your presentation game, use images and icons.

• Use visual metaphors

Master the use of color

Use geometric shapes, use charts and graphs.

• Convert complex explanations into diagrams and infographics
• Create the right mood with typography

Try using GIF and video

How to get started with communication design.

Visual communication means sharing ideas using visual elements as well as speech and text . We’re talking images, graphs, videos, infographics, and so much more .

Just imagine: if someone speaking to you reeled off a bunch of statistics, it would be very hard to put those figures into context.

Now, if that same person had a beautifully designed graph or infographic to illustrate their data, it would be much easier to understand and make sense of the numbers you were being presented with.

This is visual communication.

Because it has a number of really important benefits for audiences, presenters and brands.

It’s easier to process   

Words are obviously essential to our communication. But they’re abstract. Our brains find it much easier to process images.  

In fact, studies have shown that when text is accompanied by visuals, it improves audience memory and understanding of that text by 36%.

It’s good at creating emotion

Visuals reach your audience at a subconscious level. Color, images and other design elements evoke a range of different emotions. Pick the right ones and you can really drive home your message.

It makes content more accessible 

Not everyone is a whizz when it comes to complex words and numbers. A visual presentation offers an alternative (and more accessible) way to convey information and data.

So what are the best ways to employ it? How can you better engage with your audience? And what visual communication strategies can you apply to your PowerPoints right now?

Here are a number of tips and tricks that will help you to improve your visual communication game:

A picture speaks a thousand words . It’s a cliché. But it’s nonetheless very true. When you incorporate images and icons into your presentation slides, you can really cut down your word count.

Use images to illustrate a technical process. Summarize a paragraph of text with a preceding icon. Show rather than tell your audience what you want them to know.

Images and icons are the best tools to create a communicational shortcut — a quick and easy way to convey your message. They also never fail to engage an audience.

Use visual metaphors 

Being literal isn’t always the best approach. A metaphorical image has the power to create emotion and to get your audience thinking.

So it pays to think outside the box when you’re choosing images to accompany your text.

When looking for or creating images, think of abstract concepts — like creativity or wanderlust . Images that represent abstract concepts are much more likely to inspire and engage your audience .

Color is an essential part of any presentation. When it can be used to such great effect, it’s just plain silly to leave your presentation color palette on its default setting.

Learn the basics of color theory and you’ll discover that every color produces some kind of emotional response or subconscious association in a viewer. And that bright colors can create particularly powerful emotional responses amongst your audience.

Use this knowledge to your advantage! Add color that helps to convey your message. Or refocus an audience’s attention.

Also, remember — color is important but there’s no need to use overly complicated or busy color palettes. A simple but colorful background or a colorful title text can make all the difference.   

Geometric shapes — like circles, triangles and hexagons — can be put to a number of different uses in your presentation.  

You can use shapes to group related text together. Then, by adjusting the size, color and outline of a shape, you can draw attention to key information first. A bold outline or a contrasting color, will set that information block apart from the rest of the slide.

You can also use shapes — in the form of lines and borders — to indicate the relationship or flow between different ideas . This all helps to convey concepts quickly, without lots of additional explanation from you!

Shapes will help to organize the information you’re presenting. But they also speak to an audience on a subconscious level:

• Squares and rectangles convey strength and stability
• Triangles draw the eyes upwards and suggest direction
• Circles represent completion and harmony

If you’re feeling creative, you can also use exaggerated and asymmetrical shapes to create an even more striking visual effect.

Stats, numbers and quantitative evidence create trust amongst your audience . The information you convey is important. But so is the design of your charts and graphs.

When it comes to presenting your data, it shouldn’t look like you’ve just lifted it from your Excel spreadsheet.

Instead, you should:

• Analyze the data and use it to tell a story
• Get rid of data that doesn’t illustrate your point
• Emphasize anything that’s particularly meaningful so people get the key insights 

You can then customize the appearance of your data. Colors should fit with your overall scheme. Any text should be legible. Both PowerPoint and Google Slides have the tools to make graph customization easy-peasy.

This will all help your audience to understand context and discern patterns within the data. It will also make your figures much more memorable .  

Convert complex explanations into diagrams and infographics 

Long, text-based explanations aren’t helpful. They can be daunting to a reader. And difficult to digest.

So what’s the visual alternative? Diagrams and infographics can be used to convey complex ideas, information and processes. And they do it really well !

Audiences find it easier to make sense of information and later remember it when it’s presented to them in one of these visual formats. They get both the big picture and the most important details too .

What’s more, the internet loves a useful and well-designed infographic. Feature it on your presentation but — wherever relevant — share it on the web too. Great visual communication like this will draw attention to your brand.

Create the right mood with typography 

Good visual communication extends way beyond images and charts. The fonts you choose also create a visual impact. Just think of all the different typography you see in company logos. A typeface can communicate so much!

So choose a font that complements your presentation narrative. Here’s a quick rundown of some better-known typefaces:

• Serif fonts are generally classy and elegant
• Sans serif fonts are modern, informal and sometimes a little bit techy
• Handwritten fonts help to give a personal touch — but avoid especially flouncy ones. They’re sometimes completely unreadable!
• Soft, round fonts convey a friendly and approachable tone

Play around with fonts and you’ll get to know which ones fit your context and your audience best.

The human eye is drawn towards movement. That’s why videos and GIFs attract our attention so easily!

Moving images work really well in presentations, as long as they’re used sparingly and in the right context.

GIFs are informal and often humorous. If you know your audience well, they can be used to illustrate a point or highlight an idea in just seconds .

Short videos (around 30 seconds) are also really great at conveying lots of information in a short space of time. From showing how a product works to filmed testimonials to a guided tour — a video can say so much — without you having to say a word!

If you don’t happen to have a graphic design background, you might be wondering just how you’ll put these design principles into practice.

Whilst it’s often easier than you think, a professional presentation template can really set you off on the right foot. And help to avoid long hours spent slogging over your presentation.

Using a PowerPoint template or Google Slides template means you don’t have to start from scratch. Browse our presentation template library and you’ll find lots of excellent examples of visual communication strategies at work. Our templates combine color, font, shape, image and chart best practice .

Just pick a professional template, add in your text, then customize as much or as little as you like. Whatever your approach, with a SlidesCarnival template, your presentation design is sure to be on point.

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Understanding Presenter View in PowerPoint: A Deep Dive Guide

Origin and Evolution of Presenter View

Why presenter view is a game-changer for professionals, activating and customizing presenter view in powerpoint, in-depth features of the presenter view, common mistakes and how to avoid them, advanced tips for a power presentation, final tips for enhancing your presentation game, introduction to presenter view.

Have you ever found yourself awkwardly toggling between slides and speaker notes during a presentation? Or wished you could preview the next slide without your audience seeing? Enter Presenter View in PowerPoint, a feature designed to make presenting smoother and more professional.

In essence, Presenter View is a special mode in PowerPoint that allows the presenter to see their speaker notes on one screen, while the audience views the note-free presentation on another screen. This dual-screen setup means you can have your notes, upcoming slides, and timer conveniently on one screen while your audience remains blissfully unaware.

“Presenter View is the unseen ally behind many successful PowerPoint presentations.”

Microsoft’s PowerPoint, with its roots tracing back to the late 1980s, has undergone several metamorphoses. Over the years, as technology improved and presentation dynamics changed, Microsoft introduced new features to make the software more user-friendly and versatile. One such innovation is the Presenter View.

Back in the early days of PowerPoint, presenters had to rely on printouts or separate documents for their speaker notes. The advent of Presenter View in the early 2000s was a game-changer. It allowed presenters to merge their slides and speaker notes into one cohesive presentation experience.

The beauty of Presenter View lies not just in its conception but in its evolution. Over different versions of PowerPoint:

• 2003 : Introduction of a basic Presenter View with slides and notes.
• 2007 : Enhanced screen setup with better dual-monitor support.
• 2010 : Introduction of slide zoom and laser pointer features.
• 2013 & Beyond : Integration with touch features, improved UI, and annotations.

Each version brought refinements, making it more intuitive and packed with features, tailoring to the evolving needs of presenters globally.

Fun Fact : Presenter View wasn’t initially as popular as it is today. It took a few iterations and user feedback loops for Microsoft to perfect the balance between utility and user experience.

The Core Components of Presenter View

Presenter View in PowerPoint is like the cockpit for pilots: it’s where all the essential controls and information are at the presenter’s fingertips. Whether you’re a newbie to PowerPoint or a seasoned professional, understanding these components can transform your presentation experience.

• This provides a glance at your current, previous, and upcoming slides. It ensures you’re always prepared for what’s coming next and can seamlessly transition between points.
• The soul of your presentation, speaker notes, are discreetly placed at the bottom or side, only visible to you. These notes can be elaborate explanations, quick pointers, or even personal reminders. They’re like your secret cheat sheet!
• Ever worried about running over time? This feature shows the elapsed time since you began the presentation and, in some versions, allows you to set a countdown. Stay on track and manage your pace efficiently.
• Interactive features that allow you to draw on slides or use a virtual laser pointer. These are especially helpful when you want to emphasize or explain specific points visually.
• Navigate between slides effortlessly and zoom into specific parts of a slide to draw attention or elaborate on details.

Table: Core Components Overview

Quote : “Presenter View is to a presenter what a dashboard is to a driver. It empowers, directs, and enhances the journey of your narrative.” – Jane Harris, Lead PowerPoint Expert – Powerbacks team

Understanding these components is one thing, but leveraging them effectively during a presentation can make a significant difference. Let’s delve into the ‘why’ behind the significance of Presenter View.

Stepping onto the stage or presenting in a boardroom can often be an overwhelming experience. The constant juggle between capturing the audience’s attention and keeping track of your slides can lead to nervousness. But what if there was a way to have everything you need right in front of you, ensuring smooth sailing through your presentation? Enter Presenter View.

• Having a preview of the upcoming slides and personal notes right in front of you can be a massive boost to confidence. You’re always one step ahead, knowing exactly what’s coming next.
• Instead of turning back to view the screen repeatedly, Presenter View lets you face your audience directly. This creates a more engaging and personal interaction.
• Gone are the days when you’d hold a bunch of cue cards or sheets of paper. With digital speaker notes, you have a cleaner, more organized setup.
• Using the annotation tools and laser pointer, you can make your presentation more interactive, leading to better retention and engagement from your audience.
• There’s no denying that seamlessly transitioning between slides, using interactive tools, and having no physical notes gives a more polished and professional look.

Table: Benefits of Using Presenter View

Quote : “Embracing the Presenter View is not just about leveraging a tool; it’s about amplifying your message and connecting more profoundly with your audience.”

It’s evident that the Presenter View has undeniable advantages for professionals. But how do you activate it and customize it to suit your needs? Let’s walk through the steps.

Starting with PowerPoint 2013, Microsoft enhanced the Presenter View to ensure that it’s both intuitive and user-friendly. Activating it and making it work for you is simple, as outlined in the following steps:

Step-by-Step Guide to Activate Presenter View :

• Start by opening your PowerPoint presentation. This will be the one you intend to deliver.
• At the top, you’ll notice several tabs. Click on the one labeled ‘Slide Show’.
• Within the Slide Show tab, you’ll spot a checkbox labeled ‘Use Presenter View’. Ensure that it’s ticked. If it’s not, simply click on it.
• If you’re using an external projector or display, make sure it’s connected. PowerPoint will automatically detect it and use the Presenter View on your primary display, showing the main presentation on the external one.
• Start your presentation by either pressing F5 on your keyboard or clicking on ‘From Beginning’ in the Slide Show tab.
• Next Slide Preview : Gives a preview of what’s coming next.
• Speaker Notes : Displays your notes for the current slide.
• Slide Navigation : Use this to jump to a specific slide.
• Annotation Tools : Highlight or draw on your slides in real-time.
• Timer : Keeps track of how long you’ve been presenting.
• You can move around the different elements, increase font size of your notes for better readability, or even hide specific components if they’re not required.

Table: Quick Access Tools in Presenter View

Quote : “The beauty of PowerPoint’s Presenter View is the control and flexibility it offers. It’s like having a personal assistant during your presentations.” – Linda Green, Presentation Expert

Now that we know how to activate and customize the Presenter View let’s delve deeper into its features and tools for maximum efficiency during presentations. Shall we proceed?

PowerPoint’s Presenter View is not just a simple “next slide” preview; it’s a hub of tools and functionalities designed to make the presenter’s job easier and the presentation more engaging.

H3: Slide Preview This is arguably the most straightforward feature but also the most helpful. At a glance, you can see what’s coming up, ensuring that you’re always prepared for the next topic or section.

• Smooth Transitions : Eliminates awkward pauses between slides.
• Improved Pacing : Know when to speed up or slow down based on upcoming content.
• Reduced Anxiety : No unpleasant surprises during your presentation.

H3: Speaker Notes For those who don’t rely on pure memory, speaker notes are a lifesaver. They’re your secret weapon, visible only to you, that provides additional context or reminders about what to say.

• Bold the crucial points to ensure they stand out.
• Use concise bullet points for easier and quicker reading.
• Add time cues if you’re aiming to cover specific points within certain timeframes.

H3: Slide Navigation While it’s always best to move sequentially through your slides, there might be instances when you need to skip ahead or return to a previous point. With the slide navigation tool, you can effortlessly hop around your presentation.

• Case Study : During a corporate presentation, John, a sales manager, was posed with a sudden question about Q2 performance. Thanks to slide navigation, he quickly reverted to the relevant slide, addressed the query, and resumed without any hiccups.

H3: Annotation Tools Engage your audience by turning your presentation into an interactive canvas. Whether you’re highlighting an essential statistic or drawing a quick graph, these tools can make a significant impact.

• Use contrasting colors to ensure visibility.
• Don’t overdo it; the aim is to emphasize, not to overwhelm.
• Practice beforehand to ensure you’re comfortable with these tools during the presentation.

H3: Timer It’s easy to lose track of time during a presentation. With Presenter View’s timer, you can keep tabs on the elapsed time, helping you manage the pace and duration of your talk.

• Tip : Always allocate a buffer period. If you’re presenting for 30 minutes, aim to finish in 25. This allows for Q&A or any unexpected delays.

Quote : “PowerPoint’s Presenter View is like a dashboard for presenters. It provides every tool one might need, all within arm’s reach, ensuring a seamless and interactive presentation experience.” – Michael Roberts, Tech Analyst

Understanding the features of the Presenter View is the key to unlocking its potential. With practice and familiarity, it becomes an extension of the presenter, leading to more confident and impactful presentations.

Making the Most of Presenter View

If you’ve ever wanted to feel like a presentation Jedi, mastering the Presenter View is your path to the force. But having the tool isn’t enough – it’s about leveraging its features optimally. Here’s a detailed guide on maximizing the benefits of the Presenter View:

H3: Setup and Access Before harnessing its power, you need to ensure you can access Presenter View without hitches.

• Connect your computer to the projector or external display.
• Launch PowerPoint and open your presentation.
• Go to the Slide Show tab and select Set Up Slide Show .
• In the pop-up, ensure Browsed by an individual (window) is selected.
• Start the slide show. Presenter View should appear on your computer, while the audience sees only the slides.

H3: Customize the Display Remember, it’s your dashboard; make it as comfortable and efficient for you as possible.

• Within Presenter View, hover over the bottom to reveal the toolbar.
• Click on the gear icon to adjust settings.
• Reorder tools based on your preference or hide those you don’t need.

H3: Practice, Practice, Practice The tool’s efficiency relies heavily on your familiarity with it. Do dry runs to ensure you know where everything is and how each feature works.

• Pro Tip : Mimic the presentation environment during practice. If you’re presenting in a large hall, practice with the same setup.

H3: Seamlessly Integrate Other Media If your presentation includes videos, animations, or other media, ensure they play seamlessly in Presenter View.

• Deep Dive : Always embed media within the presentation. Relying on external links or files can disrupt the Presenter View experience.

H3: Engage the Audience Use the tools not just to aid your presentation but to engage your audience. Pose questions, use the pen tool to sketch quick diagrams based on audience inputs, and make it interactive.

• Table of Engagement Techniques :

H3: Master the Art of Transitions Smooth transitions are key to maintaining audience attention. With a preview of the next slide, prepare your narrative to flow seamlessly.

Even with the most powerful tools, human error can play a spoilsport. The Presenter View, as intuitive as it may be, has its quirks. Here’s a list of common pitfalls users face and ways to steer clear of them:

H3: Not Checking Hardware Setup Before you even start the presentation, ensure your hardware is correctly set up. This includes checking the display connection, ensuring the projector or external monitor is detected, and setting up the correct display settings.

• Pro Tip : Always keep a spare HDMI or VGA cable. Technical glitches often come from the most unexpected sources.

H3: Overlooking Speaker Notes Having made the effort of adding speaker notes to your slides, it would be a shame not to use them. They serve as a discreet prompt, ensuring you don’t miss any critical points.

• Fact : According to a study, presenters who actively used speaker notes were 25% more consistent in delivering their core messages.

H3: Ignoring the Timer Time management is crucial. If you have a fixed time slot, exceeding it can inconvenience others and may appear unprofessional. Conversely, finishing too early can leave your audience unsatisfied.

• Actionable Advice : Always have a buffer. If your slot is 30 minutes, aim for a 25-minute presentation, leaving room for Q&A or unexpected delays.

H3: Relying Exclusively on Presenter View Despite its usefulness, never be wholly dependent on Presenter View. Technical glitches happen, and the ability to continue smoothly without it showcases professionalism.

• Case Study : At a major tech conference in 2018, a renowned speaker’s Presenter View malfunctioned. Instead of panicking, he smoothly transitioned to the standard view, using his printed notes as a backup. The audience lauded his adaptability, and his message wasn’t overshadowed by the hiccup.

H3: Not Adapting to Audience Feedback The tools in Presenter View, like slide navigation, are meant to enhance adaptability. If you sense your audience resonating more with a particular topic, don’t be afraid to dwell on it a bit longer or even revisit slides.

By sidestepping these common mistakes, you not only harness the full potential of Presenter View but also project confidence and control. Next, we’ll explore some advanced features to elevate your presentation game even further.

Mastering Presenter View basics can tremendously improve your presentation skills. But if you’re looking to elevate your game and leave a lasting impression, dive into these advanced features:

H3: Seamless Transition Between Slides The art of a great presentation lies not just in the content but also in the delivery. A choppy slide transition can disrupt the flow. PowerPoint offers a plethora of transition effects — from subtle fades to dynamic 3D effects.

• Go to the Transitions tab.
• Browse and select your preferred effect.
• Adjust the transition duration if needed.
• Click Apply To All to maintain uniformity.

H3: Use Zoom to Focus on Details Occasionally, you might want to draw attention to specific details on a slide. Instead of making your audience squint, use the in-built Zoom feature.

• Tip : Combine zoom with a laser pointer or pen tool for emphasis.

H3: Ink Annotations Annotating directly on your slides can be beneficial for interactive sessions or workshops. PowerPoint’s “Ink” feature allows you to do just that.

• Did You Know? : Ink annotations made during a presentation can be saved for future reference!

H3: Embed Multimedia for a Rich Experience Modern presentations often go beyond static slides. Consider embedding videos, audio clips, or even live web content to keep your audience engaged.

• Navigate to the Insert tab.
• Choose Video or Audio and select your file.
• Adjust playback settings under the Playback tab.

H3: Custom Slide Show Sometimes, different segments of your audience require varied content. Instead of having multiple PPT files, create a custom slideshow within the same presentation.

PowerPoint’s Presenter View is akin to a secret weapon, waiting in the wings, ready to empower speakers, educators, and presenters globally. Whether you’re a novice taking your first steps into the world of presentations or a seasoned speaker aiming to refine your skills, the Presenter View, along with the myriad features PowerPoint offers, ensures your content shines in the best light.

Remember, a successful presentation doesn’t merely rely on flashy slides or multimedia elements. It’s the seamless blend of content, delivery, and engagement. And with tools like Presenter View, you’re equipped to handle the technical aspects, allowing you to focus on what truly matters – connecting with your audience.

As Bill Gates once said:

“If you think the PowerPoint presentation is there for you as the presenter, you’re wrong. It’s there for the audience.”

So, the next time you’re gearing up for that crucial pitch, workshop, or lecture, take a moment to familiarize yourself with Presenter View. Your audience — and your confidence — will thank you for it.

Happy presenting!

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Seven tips for giving an engaging and memorable presentation

Effective and memorable presentations should be fun, and informative for the presenters and the learners. Engaging presenters stimulate connections with the audience. Excellent presentations not only provide information, but also give opportunities to apply new ideas during and after the talk to ‘real-life’ situations, and add relevant ‘take-home’ messages. 1 In this article we highlight educational techniques that can be used to enhance the impact of a presentation. Although all these techniques can be incorporated in the modified form into large plenary lectures, we suggest that the ‘think-pair-share’, ‘role-playing’, and ‘flipped classroom’ techniques may be more effective in smaller classroom settings.

Tip 1: Know your audience—before and during your talk

Every audience has a different level of interest, knowledge, and experience. A presentation about asthma should be different when given to patients compared with intensivists. The presenter should have a clear a priori idea of why the learners are coming to this lecture, what may motivate them, and what would be valuable to them . Whenever feasible, an assessment of the audience's needs is helpful for the presenter to focus on meaningful points. Sometimes needs-based assessments are prepared in advance, depending on the lecture or meeting, and this information may be available from the organisers of the meeting. However, if the information is not available beforehand, there are methods for collecting real-time assessments that are themselves engaging to learners. Another benefit of engaging audiences in this way is that an audience response system (ARS) can provide real-time feedback before, during, and after a presentation. 2 ARS can range from low-technology (hand raising), to newer generation ‘iClicker’ devices, or online websites such as Poll Everywhere, which can also be used to collect free-text responses. The audience's responses can help learners reinforce the importance of the topic, and provide a gauge for the presenter to customise subsequent information. Furthermore, research has shown that incorporation of multiple-choice questions to allow for ‘test-taking’ is an effective way of solidifying new knowledge. 2 Advantages of web-based ARS programs are that they are free, user-friendly, and accessible by various mobile devices. The potential disadvantages are reliability of Wi-Fi or cell phone carrier connectivity in a lecture theatre. In the absence of connectivity, an invitation to raise hands can engage participants, although without anonymity.

Tip 2: Tell a story

Stories connect people. A story that is personal to the speaker can evoke memories that are relatable and add concrete meaning to the presentation. 3 Consider starting your presentation with a story that shows why the topic is important to you. In addition, stories focus the audience on the speaker, rather than a slideshow. Even when the stories are not based on personal experiences, they can invoke learners to imagine themselves in similar situations applying knowledge to solve a problem. Descriptions of clinical cases that focus on initial presentations of patients allow learners to imagine seeing that patient and stimulate critical thinking. Experiencing the case vicariously makes the learning more memorable.

Tip 3: Trigger videos

Trigger videos are short (ideally 30 s to 3 min) audiovisual clips that represent a case or problem. Videos can be created using a handheld video recorder or smartphone, and edited using movie-editing software. Alternatively, videos can be found online and incorporated into presentations with appropriate attributions. Chosen well, trigger videos can present a thought-provoking dilemma that encourages discussion and debate. 4 They can alter the dynamics of a presentation. Success requires careful linking or embedding the videos into the presentation, making sure they play on the computer and projector, and confirming appropriate loudness of the audio settings.

Tip 4: Think-pair-share

When introducing a novel concept to a small group, consider using the ‘think-pair-share’ technique. In this technique, learners first think quietly about the challenging idea, then pair with neighbours to discuss, and then share their collective thoughts with the audience. 5 This technique gives the audience time to pause, think, and reflect on educational content. Encouraging the audience to come to work with the knowledge in a collaborative way incorporates experiential learning into your presentation. To be successful, allow for extra time in the presentation, ensure the audience's seating arrangement is conducive to small conversations, and display summarised ideas for referencing throughout the presentation. 5 , 6

Tip 5: Role play

When presenting an abstract concept that is controversial or thought-provoking, the use of scripted actors can be helpful. Both exemplary and poor examples can be demonstrated for topics such as obtaining informed consent, speaking up about safety concerns, or giving difficult feedback. Similarly, small group role-play can allow audience members to practice and experiment with actions and language with their peers. 7 The instructor should introduce the exercise in a way that helps assure psychological safety among learners, with an emphasis on deliberate practice rather than perfect performance.

Tip 6: ‘Flip’ the classroom

In situations where homework is assigned, consider ‘flipping’ the classroom experience where work is prepared by the learners before the teaching session. Preparatory work can comprise reading material or watching videos of lectures or demonstrations. This allows for more active collaborative learning, for example learners can solve a diagnostic challenge together, debate the pros and cons of a controversial topic, or practice skills. 8 The classroom experience is enriched by the interaction of many learners, rather than the perspective of a single presenter.

Tip 7: Applying the ‘take-home message’

Many are familiar with the framework of ‘ tell them what you are going to say, say it, and then summarise what you just said. ’ We advocate an additional component in the conclusion, where learners are challenged to commit to a change in their behaviour as a result of something they just learned: ‘ What is something you can do differently and better tomorrow or with your next patient as a result of this presentation? ’ Incorporating this question in the evaluation of a presentation can help facilitate behaviour change by having the learners write an example. Similarly, incentives can be offered for behaviour change: ‘ We have your email addresses, and with your permission we would like to follow-up with you in 2 weeks to see if you have any stories to share about applying this new information. We'll be collecting the responses and having a raffle to select one person to receive a gift card... ’ Not only does this provide an incentive to experimentation, but it also gives valuable and often heart-warming feedback to the presenter.

Dynamic educational techniques increase the engagement of the audience. We emphasise the importance of connecting with the learners and obtaining a commitment to apply the new knowledge for change and improvement. The extent to which these techniques are used will depend on the level of audience expertise, time constraints, and access to audiovisual aids. When used, they can result in a more memorable experience for both learners and presenters.

Declaration of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Biographies

Christine Mai MD MS-HPEd is assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and program director of the Pediatric Anesthesia Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her clinical and research interests are in simulation education and graduate medical education.

Rebecca Minehart MD MS-HPEd is assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and program director of the Obstetric Anesthesia Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital.

May Pian-Smith MD is associate professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and director of quality and safety for the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Matrix codes: 1H02, 2H02, 3J02

The Ultimate Guide to PowerPoint Viewer: Enhance Your Presentation Experience

Introduction

When it comes to creating and delivering impactful presentations, Microsoft PowerPoint has remained a cornerstone tool for professionals, educators, and students alike. The ability to convey ideas, information, and visuals in a compelling and organized manner is paramount, and PowerPoint has consistently risen to the occasion. One crucial aspect of the PowerPoint ecosystem that often goes overlooked is the PowerPoint Viewer – an auxiliary tool that brings an enhanced presentation experience to both creators and viewers. In this comprehensive guide, we'll delve into every facet of the PowerPoint Viewer, from its features and benefits to tips and tricks for optimal utilization.

Understanding PowerPoint Viewer

PowerPoint Viewer is a dedicated application designed to allow users to view PowerPoint presentations without requiring the full Microsoft PowerPoint software. Whether you're a presenter who wants to share your content seamlessly with others or an audience member who wishes to access and interact with presentations without the editing capabilities, PowerPoint Viewer has you covered.

Key Features of PowerPoint Viewer

Interactive Viewing : PowerPoint Viewer enables users to engage with presentations, zoom in on details, and navigate through slides intuitively.

Formatting Integrity : Maintains the original formatting and design of the presentations, ensuring that your content is displayed exactly as intended.

Slide Show Experience : Offers a seamless slide show experience, complete with animations, transitions, and embedded multimedia elements.

Print Capabilities : Allows users to print presentations directly from the viewer, retaining the visual quality of the slides.

Compatibility : Supports a wide range of PowerPoint file formats, ensuring accessibility to presentations created on different versions of the software.

Accessibility Features : Incorporates accessibility features to ensure that presentations are usable by individuals with diverse needs.

Making the Most of PowerPoint Viewer

Maximizing the potential of PowerPoint Viewer involves understanding how to use its features effectively. Let's explore some strategies to enhance your presentation experience:

Optimal Presentation Design

Creating presentations that are well-structured and visually appealing is the first step towards a successful delivery. With PowerPoint Viewer, your design choices are showcased with fidelity, making it imperative to focus on:

Slide Consistency : Maintain a consistent theme and layout throughout your slides to provide a cohesive visual experience.

Visual Elements : Utilize high-quality images, charts, and graphs to support your content and enhance audience engagement.

Engagement and Interaction

PowerPoint Viewer empowers both presenters and viewers to engage and interact with the content. Here's how you can leverage this aspect:

Navigational Aids : Implement clear navigation buttons and hyperlinks to allow viewers to move between slides seamlessly.

Annotations : Encourage viewers to annotate directly on the slides, fostering interaction and collaborative discussions.

Accessibility Considerations

To ensure your presentations are accessible to a wider audience, follow these accessibility guidelines:

Alt Text : Add descriptive alt text to images and visual elements, making the content understandable for individuals with visual impairments.

Font and Color Choices : Opt for legible fonts and color contrasts to enhance readability, particularly for those with visual or cognitive challenges.

Is PowerPoint Viewer Available for Mac Users? Unfortunately, PowerPoint Viewer is not available for Mac users. However, Mac users can use other methods to view PowerPoint presentations, such as using the online version of PowerPoint or converting presentations to PDF format.

Can I Edit Presentations in PowerPoint Viewer? No, PowerPoint Viewer is a read-only application. You cannot edit presentations or create new ones using this tool. Its primary purpose is to provide a seamless viewing experience.

Are Embedded Videos Supported in PowerPoint Viewer? Yes, PowerPoint Viewer supports embedded videos within presentations. Viewers can watch videos directly from the slides during the presentation.

Can I Use PowerPoint Viewer on Mobile Devices? As of now, there is no dedicated mobile app for PowerPoint Viewer. However, PowerPoint files can be viewed on mobile devices using the PowerPoint mobile app or other compatible apps.

Is PowerPoint Viewer a Free Tool? Yes, PowerPoint Viewer is available for free download from the official Microsoft website. It's a standalone application separate from the paid Microsoft Office suite.

Can I Play Animations in PowerPoint Viewer? PowerPoint Viewer supports many animations and transitions. However, complex animations or those involving certain custom effects might not work as intended in the viewer.

In the world of presentations, where conveying information effectively is crucial, PowerPoint Viewer emerges as an indispensable tool. Its ability to faithfully reproduce the original design, animations, and interactive elements of presentations makes it an asset for both creators and viewers. Whether you're a presenter looking to share your content seamlessly or an audience member seeking an immersive viewing experience, PowerPoint Viewer has you covered. By understanding its features, optimizing your presentation design, and considering accessibility, you can harness the full potential of this remarkable tool. Explore the power of PowerPoint Viewer and elevate your presentation experience today.

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• Add speaker notes​ Video
• Practice and time your presentation​ Video
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Use Presenter View

PowerPoint Presenter View shows you the current slide, the next slide, and your speaker notes, to help you focus while presenting and connect with your audience. 

Select the Slide Show tab.

Select the Use Presenter View checkbox.

Select which monitor to display Presenter View on.

In Presenter View , you can:

See your current slide, next slide, and speaker notes.

Select the arrows next to the slide number to go between slides.

Select the pause button or reset button to pause or reset the slide timer in the upper left.

See the current time to help you pace your presentation.

Select the font icons to make the speaker notes larger or smaller.

Select the annotations pen icon to draw on the screen in real time, or select a laser pointer.

Select the thumbnail icon to see all the slides in your presentation and quickly jump to another slide.

Select the magnifying glass icon to zoom in on a particular part of a slide.

The screen icon let's you make the screen temporarily black to focus the attention on you.

Select END SLIDESHOW when you're done presenting.

Start the presentation and see your notes in Presenter view

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3 Ways to Enhance Your PowerPoint Presentations

A common pitfall when making a PowerPoint presentation is the urge to share EVERYTHING you want to cover in your training. The way we typically do this is by copying the material from our training manual or notes straight onto the slides. Then, we pick a design template, arrange your text in bullet points, and add a title slide. Finally, we save the presentation and it’ll serve us for many years to come. Here are two creative and one technical tip to improve your PowerPoint slides.

1.      Less is More

If your slides are filled to the brim with text, you will intimidate your audience. Truth is, that you, the speaker, might be just as intimidated! As a result, you may simply start repeating what’s written on the slide. This doesn’t create engagement. When you have a lot of text on a slide, think about how you can transform your message into a story and simply show a picture that fills the slide. Be sure the graphic you choose is high-quality. Avoid using Clip Art and stick figures, your audience has seen those a million times before. If you are sharing a list of key points you want to elaborate on, dedicate a whole slide to each point. This will prevent your viewers from reading ahead and blanking out on what you are saying to support the information on your slide.

2.      Limit Animations

Subtlety and consistency are key here. If you want your presentation to look professional, a simple fade or wipe animation will be all you need. Avoid the fly and swirl animations that scream for attention and are simply distracting your viewer from your content. If you opt to add transitions between your slides, choose one for the entire presentation for the same reason.

3.      Aspect Ratio

These days, virtually all monitors and projectors have a 16:9 aspect ratio. The aspect ratio of a screen describes the proportional relationship between its width and its height, not how big or small the screen is. Before the 21 st century, the common aspect ratio used to be 4:3. If you are still using this ratio today it screams to the viewers: “I haven’t updated this PowerPoint in many years”. Unless the equipment you use in your business is still using a 4:3 aspect ratio, this simple trick changes the aspect ratio of your PowerPoints to 16:9:

Open the PowerPoint you want to convert. Click on Design in the menu ribbon. Find the Slide Size option and switch it to 16:9.

Next, you will be presented with two options about how you want your existing content to behave.

Maximize scales up your content up to fill the extra width the 16:9 ratio has over the 4:3 ratio. This option could result in your content not fitting on the slide and may need more manual tweaking.  Ensure Fit scales down your content. This could make your content appear smaller but ensures all content fits on your slide. In both cases, you should check all your slides to make sure they look professional after the conversion.

Remember, you are the speaker. The PowerPoint slides are merely there to support what you are teaching. Don’t let the PowerPoint derail or complicate your presentation!

Go get your geek on,

Maarten Cappaert

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7 PowerPoint Mistakes to Avoid for Outstanding Presentation

Kavithalaya.

• July 26, 2023

Table of Contents

Business professionals use PowerPoint in their everyday routines, making it an integral part of our professional lives.

Byway, it’s overcrowded slides, a lack of visual appeal, or a monotonous delivery, these mistakes can quickly turn your audience off and make them distracted.

This is why it’s crucial to be aware of these mistakes and take proactive steps to avoid them.

We’re here to help you to avoid these pitfalls and create presentations that captivate and impress. By doing so, you can ensure that your presentation stands out from the rest and leaves a lasting impression on your audience.

Let’s explore the seven most common PowerPoint mistakes and provide you with practical tips and strategies to overcome them. So, grab your notepad and get ready to take your presentation skills to the next level!

Before that, there is another option to avoid these mistakes: simply sign up and download free PowerPoint templates online. Here, we’ll explore common mistakes made when creating an investor pitch deck for your business upgrade.

Overwhelming Slides with Too Much Text

Presenters often make the mistake of overwhelming their audience with text on their slides. This can make it difficult for the audience to focus on the main points of the presentation. Slides should complement the presentation, not serve as a script.

To avoid this mistake, presenters should keep their text brief and use bullet points to highlight the key points. This will make it easier for the audience to scan the slides and identify the main ideas.

Presenters should also break down complex information into smaller, more manageable chunks. This will make it easier for the audience to understand and remember the information.

By following these tips, you can create slides that are clear, concise, and visually appealing. This will help your audience to focus on the key points of your presentation and retain the information.

Slide Design and Visual Elements

A clear and attractive slide design is essential in PowerPoint to capture and maintain audience attention.

Using too many colors, fonts, or complicated graphics can make your slides look cluttered and unprofessional.

To create an attractive slide, keep your design simple and consistent.

Stick to a limited color palette and use fonts that are easy to read. You can also incorporate relevant images, charts, or graphs to enhance understanding and engagement.

Always keep in mind that less is more in slide design, and simplicity often leads to better comprehension and retention.

Lack of Consistency in Your Style

Consistency is key when it comes to PowerPoint presentations.

Using different tools like fonts, colors, and styles on each slide can make your presentation look disjointed and unpolished. It’s important to establish a visual theme and stick to it throughout your presentation.

Choose your font and color scheme that aligns with your message and brand. Use the same fonts and colors consistently on each slide to create a harmonious and professional look.

According to some psychology-proven facts, Consistency in font, color, and style will not only make your presentation visually appealing but also help reinforce your message in the minds of your audience.

Additionally, pay attention to the size and spacing of your text to ensure readability.

Explore presentation design services to create impactful and effective slides that leave a lasting impression on your audience.

Importance of the Structure

Storytelling and structure are two essential elements of any good PowerPoint presentation. When used effectively, they can help you connect with your audience, make your message more memorable, and persuade them to take action.

However, many presenters make the mistake of ignoring the importance of storytelling and structure. They focus on simply presenting information, without taking the time to tell a story or create a clear structure. This can result in presentations that are boring, confusing, and ineffective.

Start with a strong introduction that captures your audience’s attention. Your introduction should set the tone for your presentation. Use clear and concise language that is easy to understand. Your audience should be able to follow your presentation without getting lost.

They help you to connect with your audience. When you tell a story, you are essentially creating a bond with your audience. They will be more likely to listen to you and understand your message if they can relate to it on a personal level!

By following these thoughts, you can create PowerPoint presentations that are clear, engaging, and memorable. And by using storytelling and structure to your advantage, you can increase the chances that your audience will connect with your message and take action.

Not Practicing Properly

Among the most common slip-ups by presenters is not practicing and rehearsing their presentations adequately.

Not practicing your presentation can lead to a number of problems, including stumbling over your words, losing track of your thoughts, or going off on tangents. This can damage your credibility and make your audience lose interest.

To avoid these problems, it is important to set aside dedicated time for practice and rehearsal.

First, familiarize yourself with the content and flow of your presentation. This means reading through your slides and notes several times so that you know the material inside and out.

You should also practice delivering your presentation aloud, paying attention to your tone, pace, and body language.

Second, rehearse in front of a mirror or record yourself. This will help you to identify any areas that need improvement, such as awkward pauses or repetitive phrases.

You can also use this time to experiment with different delivery techniques, such as using gestures or facial expressions.

The more you practice, the more confident and polished you will be during the actual presentation. This will make you appear more credible to your audience and help you to keep their attention throughout your talk.

Overusing Animations and Transitions

Add animations and transitions in your presentation to avoid distractions. Overusing them can also lead them away from your message. So try to be it enough you need and void presentation.

Here are some tips for using animations and transitions effectively:

Use them sparingly. Too many animations and transitions can be overwhelming and distracting.

Choose simple and subtle effects. Avoid flashy or gimmicky animations that will take away from your message.

Use animations and transitions to highlight key points. This will help your audience to focus on the most important information.

Use animations and transitions to guide your audience’s attention. This can be done by animating text or objects to move around the slide or by using transitions to move from one drop to the next.

Remember, the goal is to enhance your message, not overshadow it with unnecessary visual effects.

Neglecting the Audience’s Needs and Preferences

Presenters should also tailor their presentation to the audience’s needs and preferences.

Understanding your audience’s background, knowledge level, and expectations is essential for creating a presentation that resonates with them.

Research your audience beforehand and tailor your presentation accordingly. Consider their interests, industry-specific terminology, and learning preferences. Adapt your content and delivery style to meet their needs and engage them on a deeper level.

By doing so, you’ll be able to connect with your audience and deliver a presentation that is both informative and relevant.

After you give your presentation, ask your audience for feedback. This will help you to identify any areas where you can improve your presentation for future audiences.

PowerPoint presentations have the power to engage, inform, and inspire. However, common mistakes can hinder your ability to deliver a stellar presentation that leaves a lasting impact on your audience. By avoiding overcrowded slides, poor design choices, lack of consistency, and neglecting storytelling and audience needs, you can elevate your presentation skills and captivate your audience from start to finish.

Remember, a well-crafted PowerPoint presentation is a powerful tool that can help you communicate your message effectively and achieve your presentation goals. So, take the time to avoid these common mistakes, implement the tips and strategies mentioned in this blog, and watch as your presentations become truly stellar.

Related Blogs

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How to Deliver a Presentation with Confidence in Public Speaking?

Why Should You Use Images and Icons for Better Presentation Design?

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How to Enable PowerPoint’s Automatic Advance Slide Feature: A Step-by-Step Guide

Crafting a PowerPoint presentation that progresses slides automatically can elevate the professionalism of your presentation and facilitate smooth flow during a speech, meeting, or informational display. This feature is particularly useful when you want to ensure consistent timing or create a hands-free experience. Let’s take a moment to discuss how we can enable PowerPoint presentations to advance slides without manual input.

We often encounter situations where engaging the audience’s attention is crucial, and having to manually advance slides can disrupt our connection with them. By setting up a PowerPoint presentation to auto-advance, we can maintain a seamless narrative. Whether for a timed assessment, a trade show booth, or an educational video, this functionality is an essential skill to master.

Using PowerPoint’s built-in tools, we can customize the timing of each slide to match the rhythm and pace of our content. This customization can include specific delays before a slide advances, applying transitions, and even integrating multimedia elements without the need to click through slides. We’ll walk through the necessary steps to achieve this level of automation, ensuring that your presentation delivers a polished and engaging viewer experience.

• 1.1 Accessing the Transitions Tab
• 1.2 Choosing Transition Effects
• 1.3 Customizing Transition Timing
• 2.1 Automatic Slide Advance
• 2.2 Rehearsing Slide Timings
• 2.3 Controlling Advance on Mouse Click
• 3.1 Setting Up Self-Running Presentations
• 3.2 Preparing for Speaker-Led Events
• 3.3 Adjusting for Individual Browsing
• 4.1 Incorporating Audio and Video
• 4.2 Utilizing Narration and Annotations

Setting Up Slide Transitions

Setting up slide transitions in PowerPoint enhances your presentation by creating a smooth flow from one slide to the next. We’ll guide you through accessing the transition options, selecting effects, and customizing the timing to suit your needs.

Accessing the Transitions Tab

Firstly, we need to navigate to the Transitions tab to access all the transition-related features. Open your PowerPoint presentation, and you’ll find this tab at the top of the PowerPoint ribbon. Once here, you’ll view a range of different transition effects available.

Choosing Transition Effects

In the Transitions tab, you have various transition effects to choose from, like the popular Fade or more dynamic options. Each effect offers a preview, so by clicking on different options, you can visualize how your slide will appear during the transition.

Customizing Transition Timing

Lastly, it’s vital to set the right pace for your presentation by customizing the timing of your slide transitions. In the Transitions tab, locate the timing options:

• Duration: Adjust the length, in seconds, that the transition effect will take to complete.
• Advance Slide: Here, you can choose when the slide will advance—either after a certain time has elapsed or on mouse click.

If you aim for consistent pacing across all slides, the Apply to All button is a straightforward solution. By selecting this after setting your preferences, all slides will inherit these timing settings, ensuring a uniform transition throughout the presentation.

Managing Slide Advancement

We will guide you through setting up automatic slide transitions, rehearsing timings to perfect your presentation’s flow, and controlling slide advancement manually. Ensuring your slides advance at the right moment is essential for a smooth presentation experience.

Automatic Slide Advance

To have slides advance automatically, we configure settings in the “Timing group” of PowerPoint’s “Transitions” tab. Here’s how:

Rehearsing Slide Timings

Rehearse timings to polish the flow of our presentation. Here’s our process:

• Click on the “Slide Show” tab and choose “Rehearse Timings.”
• Advance the slides as you would during the actual presentation. PowerPoint will record the time it takes for you to advance each slide.
• Once completed, you can choose to keep the recorded timings, ensuring every slide advances as practiced.

Controlling Advance on Mouse Click

For more control over slide transition, we utilize the “on mouse click” feature:

• Under the “Transitions” tab, in the “Advance Slide” section , you’ll find the option to check or uncheck “On Mouse Click.”
• If unchecked, slides won’t wait for a mouse click to advance. They will stick to the automatic timings you’ve set previously or will not advance until manually triggered.
• Checking it means you’ll control when to move on to the next slide with a simple click, which can be combined with automatic advancement if desired.

Configuring for Different Presentation Types

In PowerPoint, ensuring your slides align with the event type is crucial. We’ll guide you through setting up various configurations for self-running presentations, speaker-led events, and individual browsing.

Setting Up Self-Running Presentations

Preparing for speaker-led events, adjusting for individual browsing, enhancing presentations with multimedia.

To truly captivate an audience, incorporating multimedia such as audio and video, alongside narration and annotations, can transform a standard presentation into an engaging experience. Through these elements, we ensure our message is both heard and seen, creating a dynamic atmosphere that resonates with our audience.

Incorporating Audio and Video

To keep our audience engaged, we use animations to sync with media playback, making the content more memorable. Here’s a simple way to insert and set up media on our slides:

Utilizing Narration and Annotations

Narration is a powerful tool to guide our audience through the presentation. Using a microphone, we record our voice to elaborate on slides, providing context that might not be immediately evident through text and images alone. We often include speaker notes as a reference while recording to maintain precision and relevance in our commentary.

To aid our delivery, we use the following steps to add and manage our narration and annotations:

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6 Built-In Features in PowerPoint to Enhance Presentations with Visual Slides

Last updated on May 1st, 2024

The use of visually appealing content in reports and presentations makes them more persuasive. You can use attractive content in your slides such as images, graphics, and videos to make your slides more engaging. However, despite your best effort and hours of work, your presentation slides can often look dull. To make your job easy, you can use the built-in features in PowerPoint to visually enhance your presentations.

Why Use Visual Aids in Presentations?

Visual aids in slides can help make outstanding academic, scientific, educational, or professional presentations. For this purpose, you can use the simple methods mentioned below to enhance the visuals for your presentations. These techniques cannot only be used with PowerPoint but also Google Slides, especially now that the conversion from PowerPoint to Google Slides has been streamlined. But before we show you how to use PowerPoint to make your slides more engaging and enhance your presentation visuals, let’s look at a few reasons why visual aids in presentations can help you make the most out of your slide decks.

1. To Makes Your Presentations More Engaging

The use of visual aids can make presentations more engaging. Appropriate visuals that are eye-catching can be attention-grabbing and help you engage your audience. Whether you’re making a presentation for an interactive session or need to present before an audience without much or any interaction, visuals can be your storyboard to take your audience on a journey.

2. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Do you need to explain a complex concept, model, or process in a presentation? The use of infographics, diagrams, and videos incorporated in presentations can help you save time and make your content easier to understand. The term ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is literally applicable here. The difference is you can also substitute the picture with a video to make the explanation even easier.

3. Helps Communicate Your Message More Effectively

There are very few presenters that can keep the audience engaged with just the tone of their voice. Most presenters also need visual aids and something to keep the audience awake. This is especially true when it comes to low attention spans due to the frequent use of digital devices by the modern audience.

4. Makes Your Content Memorable

In a previous post, we discussed the Principle of Recency to make your content memorable. Another factor that makes content memorable are visuals that the audience can remember because of their visual appeal. It’s just like how brands use logos, pictures, and dynamic imagery to attract customers by making their brand names, products, and corporate images a part of people’s lives. When you present a slide deck, the use of visual aids can make at least parts of your presentation memorable due to factors like images that stand out or resonate with the audience, humor, the novelty of something in your presentation, or even your accent.

When making a presentation, you can ask yourself what type of content might be memorable for you? If you’re a teacher presenting the diagram of the solar system before your students, do you think they might pay more attention to a static image or an animated slide?

5. To Avoid Death by PowerPoint

While a picture speaks 1,000 words, in the quest to catch your audience’s attention, you can easily fall prey to Death by PowerPoint . Using visual aids proportionally and appropriately can help you stay away from traditional bullet points, text-heavy slides, and dull layouts and enable you to combat  Death by PowerPoint .

Make Visually Appealing Slides in PowerPoint – Insert Images, Illustrations, Cutout Pictures, Stickers, Scenes, and Icons

Back in 2014, Microsoft caused quite a stir when it removed clipart. While many users seemed a bit perturbed regarding the move to replace clipart in favor of Bing images at the time, Microsoft has gradually introduced a number of useful alternatives. One of these are visual enhancements provided in PowerPoint. Available via the Insert tab, different options such as the Icons option or Pictures -> Stock Images enable presenters to insert not only icons but a wide range of royalty-free images, Illustrations, cutout pictures, stickers, scenes (videos), and icons.

The first section in this menu provides images. You can quickly search for the desired image type or use the various categories to find one that resonates with your slide deck. These high-quality images offered by Microsoft are free to use without the need for you to purchase premium images from expensive stock photo websites to enhance your PowerPoint presentations. With that said, you may still want to use an AI photo enhancer tool to sharpen, zoom in, or crop the image to fit into your slides better. If this is a branded project, you’ll want to showcase visuals that make sense to you and your stakeholders, which may require quickly editing or tweaking the look and feel of your photos. 

2. PowerPoint Icons

The icons available in PowerPoint can help you make your content easier to understand with the use of icons that can be universally understood. The vast icons library offered by powerPoint can cater for almost any topic, such as business, animals, weather, communication, arts, processes, analytics, celebration, medical science, travel, and tourism, etc.

By using relevant icons for PowerPoint, you can make your slides easier to grasp and create your diagrams and infographics to show complex ideas with simple illustrations. For example, a process diagram can be made with small icons on each step, depicting the kind of step in the process under discussion. Similarly, a business presentation can use icons related to finance, analytics, bookkeeping, etc.

3. PowerPoint Cutout Pictures

This is perhaps the most exciting part of the Icons menu and another great feature of PowerPoint. You can pick cutouts of people in different situations to insert in your slides to make them visually descriptive. You can even create storyboards using these human figures with different postures and design layouts with a picture book style layout.

4. Stickers in Presentations

Stickers are a common feature available in social media and messaging apps. This feature has also been incorporated in the latest version of PowerPoint. You can pick different stickers to add some humor to your slides to make them fun and memorable. The use of stickers is more likely to resonate with Millennials and Generation Z audience members. Stickers are also one of the great features of PowerPoint to add some emotions to reflect a digital language that most young and middle-aged audiences are now quite accustomed to.

There are a wide variety of sticker categories to choose from and a quick search can help you instantly find something to make your slides fun and exciting.

5. Presentation Videos

With various videos providing presenters with scenes related to nature, technology, art, food, and a range of other categories, the videos section in PowerPoint provides presenters with the utility to create video presentations with something unique and novel in just a click. These videos can also be used as animated backgrounds, to complement your text, to announce a mid-presentation break, etc.

6. Illustrations for Presentations

Perhaps the closest replacement of conventional clipart are illustrations. These are clipart like graphics that can be used to create anything from basic presentation slides to diagrams, timelines, PowerPoint infographics, roadmaps, etc. Like other types of content mentioned earlier, you can also edit the incorporated Illustrations in PowerPoint.

In our other article with websites for presentations we have compiled a list of other website resources that you can use to find great illustrations and graphics to use in your PowerPoint slides.

How to Manipulate the Graphics Inserted in PowerPoint

Graphics are inserted as vectors, which have some additional properties when compared to traditional PowerPoint shapes.

Convert Vector Object to PowerPoint Shape

By using the Convert to Shape option in PowerPoint (select the shape, right-click and then click Convert to Shape ) you can easily convert the vector graphic into a PowerPoint shape.

Alternatively, you can use a free SVG blob generator tool to generate organic shapes in SVG format, and then insert them into your PowerPoint slides.

Use the Format Shape Options to Customize the Shape Properties

You can easily adjust the graphics colors, by changing the properties of the image. Illustrations inserted in PowerPoint can also be edited using the Graphics Format option in the Ribbon menu or via Format Graphics from the right-click menu. By changing the color of the graphic, resizing it, or animating it, you can make changes to its original structure.

Use of PowerPoint Designer to Edit Visuals

The images, icons, graphics, cutouts, stickers, and videos inserted in your slides also come with suggestions via PowerPoint Designer (Design Ideas). This is a PowerPoint feature that provides automatic suggestions to help design slides using layouts that can appear visually appealing and professionally crafted. The below image shows Design Ideas providing suggestions for an illustration and video background mashed up in a single slide. You can learn more about automatic design suggestions in PowerPoint from our post about PowerPoint Designer .

Other Alternatives to Built-in Features in PowerPoint to Design Presentations

As an alternative to inserting graphics using built-in features, resources like SlideModel can help to boost the productivity at the time of designing presentations. By reusing 100% editable templates, designers, presenters and professionals can get access to a huge catalog of presentation templates, slide designs and design elements to use in their presentations.

If you are looking for free resources, then the free templates and resources we publish at FPPT.com can be of help. Our catalog of free templates includes a collection of free PowerPoint templates and presentation assets that you can use to make slides with great looking background templates for presentations.

Final Words

Over the years, the number of PowerPoint features has evolved, as we can learn reading the history of PowerPoint . Visual aids provided by PowerPoint can help presenters to incorporate high-quality pictures, graphics, and videos to support their existing content. This can not only save time and money but also help presenters get instant ideas to visually enhance their slides and make them more visually descriptive.

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How to Use Microsoft's Free PowerPoint Viewers

Use PowerPoint on the web or mobile app to view, create, and print PowerPoint files for free

• Emporia State University

In This Article

Jump to a Section

• PowerPoint Online

PowerPoint Mobile Apps

Other free powerpoint viewers, what to know.

• PowerPoint Online is Microsoft's free stripped-down, web-based version of PowerPoint.
• Another way to get PowerPoint free is with the mobile app.
• Some non-Microsoft programs also support PowerPoint files, like LibreOffice and Google Slides.

This article explains all the different ways you can create, share, edit, print, and open PowerPoint files for free, without ever installing PowerPoint to your computer.

Instructions in this article apply to desktop and mobile users on basically any platform.

Microsoft PowerPoint Online

PowerPoint Online is the web version of PowerPoint and my absolute first pick when I need to edit a PPTX file online. It doesn't have all the features as the desktop edition but it still lets you edit existing files, create new ones, share presentations with others, and print off presentations. And all of this works from a browser, so there's nothing to download or install.

This version of PowerPoint is available if you have a Microsoft account (any email address that ends with hotmail.com, outlook.com, live.com , or msn.com ) or a Microsoft 365 work or school account.

The easiest way to view or edit an existing PowerPoint file online is to drag it from your computer and drop it directly on the PowerPoint Online web page, or use the Upload link on that page. You can also save it to your OneDrive account.

PowerPoint Online is compatible with all versions of PowerPoint. You can save a presentation from PowerPoint Online back to your computer in a number of file formats, including images, PDF, PPTX, and ODP.

Microsoft also provides PowerPoint to mobile users. There's an app for Android, iPhone, iPad, and Windows 11/10 devices (mobile, PC, and Surface Hub). The Microsoft 365 app for Android and iOS also includes PowerPoint, along with Word and Excel.

Download For:

Similar to the online PowerPoint viewer, the app has you log in with your Microsoft account so that you can access all the files from your OneDrive account, the ones that are stored on your device, and PowerPoint files saved in other cloud storage services (like Dropbox, Box, and several others).

You can edit directly from the app and use the menu from an open slideshow to save as a new title and to print it off.

The two options described above are Microsoft's free methods for opening PowerPoint files, but third-party programs can be used, too.

Unless you're interested in the Microsoft 365 free trial which lets you have PowerPoint for a limited time only, check out our lists of free online presentation makers and free Microsoft 365 alternatives for some additional choices that won't cost you a dime.

You might be relieved at the variety that's available, especially if you're looking for a way to open and edit PowerPoint files in a program that doesn't resemble Microsoft's software so much.

Microsoft used to let you open slideshows without PowerPoint with their free viewer tool , but it was restricted to viewing only and is no longer available from their website.

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Top 13 Popular PowerPoint Alternatives in 2024 

Table of Contents

In the world of presentations, PowerPoint has been a popular choice for a long time. However, its limitations are becoming more noticeable as both presenters and audiences seek more advanced options. There’s a growing demand for presentation tools that are engaging, dynamic, and easy to use. Many people have experienced the boredom of static slides and too much information on one screen, which can make presentations feel overwhelming.

Luckily, there are now many other presentation software options available, each with its own unique features. These alternatives offer things like better design, interaction with the audience in real-time, and the ability to include multimedia seamlessly. They’re changing the way presentations are done.

This article will look at a selection of these PowerPoint alternatives, each with its own strengths. Whether you’re looking for a sleek design, collaboration features, or exciting animations, there’s presentation software out there to suit your needs. Let’s explore the world beyond PowerPoint together.

PowerPoint Alternatives: Finding The Best Option For Beautiful And Engaging Presentations 

Choosing the right PowerPoint alternative can be a bit overwhelming with so many options out there. To find the best presentation software for you, it’s important to compare features like templates, design elements, collaboration tools, and mobile support. By looking into these features, you can find a PowerPoint alternative that suits your needs and improves your presentations. Let’s dive in and take a look at some options. 

1. Google Slides

Google Slides is a web-based presentation tool included in the Google Workspace suite, enabling seamless collaboration and creation of presentations.

Key Features: Notable features include real-time collaboration, integration with Google Workspace, accessibility from any device, diverse template selection, and the ability to import PowerPoint presentations.

Advantages: It’s free to use, integrates smoothly with Google Workspace, supports multiple users editing at once, and works on all devices.

Limitations: Despite its strengths, Google Slides may lack some advanced animation and design functionalities present in other presentation software options.

Cost: Google Slides is available for free with a Google account.

Ideal Users: It is particularly suitable for teams seeking a straightforward and collaborative presentation tool that seamlessly integrates with Google Workspace.

While Google Slides is a great tool, SlidesAI can add some helpful features. Our extension uses artificial intelligence to automate tasks, suggest creative content, and recommend design improvements. With SlidesAI, you can create presentations faster and explore design options that might not have occurred to you before. It can be a valuable tool to take your Google Slides presentations to the next level.

2. Mentimeter 

Mentimeter is a platform designed to engage audiences through live polls, quizzes, and real-time feedback accessible on their mobile devices. It operates on the cloud, eliminating the need for participants to download additional apps.

Key Features:

Mentimeter offers live polls, quizzes, word clouds, Q&A sessions, and real-time feedback, and integrates seamlessly with PowerPoint presentations.

Advantages:

This platform excels in interactivity, user-friendliness, and enhancing audience engagement, making it suitable for both in-person and virtual gatherings.

Limitations:

While Mentimeter offers a free plan, customization options are limited, and consistent internet access is required for both presenters and participants.

Mentimeter offers a free plan with paid options starting at $9.99 per month. Paid plans unlock additional features such as diverse question types and enhanced customization capabilities.

Ideal Usage:

Mentimeter is ideal for interactive meetings, workshops, conferences, and classrooms where audience engagement and immediate feedback are essential.

Keynote is Apple’s well-regarded presentation software, known for its impressive graphic features and smooth animations. It’s available for Mac and iOS devices and comes with a variety of useful features including cinematic transitions, object animations, real-time collaboration via iCloud, and a range of templates.

Keynote offers high-quality animations and design options with an easy-to-use interface. It seamlessly integrates with other Apple devices, enhancing user experience.

Weaknesses:

One downside is its exclusivity to Apple devices, limiting access for users on other platforms.

Keynote is free for users of Apple devices, making it an appealing choice for those already invested in the Apple ecosystem.

Ideal Users:

Best suited for Apple users who want to create visually appealing presentations with sophisticated design and animation features.

Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software that moves beyond traditional slide-by-slide presentations. Instead, it utilizes a single canvas that zooms in and out on various parts of the content.

Features: Prezi offers non-linear presentations, a zoomable user interface, collaboration tools, and Prezi Video for incorporating video content into presentations.

Strengths: Prezi allows for dynamic and visually engaging presentations, seamlessly integrating big-picture concepts with detailed information.

Weaknesses: For first-time users, Prezi may pose a learning challenge, and some viewers may experience motion sickness due to its zooming motion.

Price: Prezi provides a free basic plan, with paid plans starting at $7 per month. Paid plans include additional features like privacy controls and offline access.

Best for: Prezi is ideal for presentations that require a more dynamic and visually engaging approach compared to traditional slide presentations.

Canva is a user-friendly graphic design tool with built-in presentation features, offering a wide range of professional templates.

Key Features : It includes thousands of customizable templates, a simple drag-and-drop editor, collaboration tools for team projects, and an option for more advanced needs with Canva for Work.

Strengths : Canva provides an extensive selection of design options, making it accessible to users with varying levels of design experience. It supports different types of content, such as images and videos, allowing for creative versatility.

Weaknesses: While the free version offers many features, some advanced functionalities require a Pro subscription. Additionally, Canva’s animation and transition capabilities may not be as robust as those found in dedicated presentation software.

Pricing : Canva offers a free basic version, with the Pro subscription priced at $119.99 per year, offering additional features like the Brand Kit and premium templates.

Ideal Users: Canva is suitable for users who prioritize ease of use and professional-looking designs. It caters to individuals and organizations in marketing, education, and small businesses seeking visually appealing presentations.

Create presentation slides with AI in Seconds in Google Slides

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Works with Google Slides

6. Beautiful.AI

Beautiful.AI is a presentation tool driven by artificial intelligence, designed to simplify the process of creating professional-looking slides quickly.

Key Features : The platform offers smart templates that adjust as you add content, along with AI-powered design for automated layout adjustments and collaboration tools.

Strengths : Users benefit from significant time savings thanks to the AI-powered features, making it easy to create polished and consistent presentations.

Weaknesses : Some users may find that they have less control over specific design elements compared to manual design tools, and there is a limited variety of templates available.

Pricing : Starting at $12 per month for the basic plan, users get unlimited slides and AI content generation.

Ideal User : Beautiful.ai is best suited for professionals and teams who need to create impressive presentations quickly, even if they lack extensive design skills.

Vyond is a cloud-based platform that lets users create animated video presentations. It allows you to tell stories using customizable characters, props, and scenes.

Features : Vyond offers customizable characters, a wide range of animations, voice-over capabilities, a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, and the ability to integrate with other tools.

Strengths: Vyond makes it easy to create engaging animated video presentations. It provides a variety of assets and templates, and its user-friendly interface means you don’t need animation skills to use it.

Weaknesses: Compared to basic presentation software, Vyond comes with a higher price point. Creating animations may also take more time than traditional slide-based presentations.

Price : Vyond’s Essentials plan starts at $299/year, with more advanced features available in the Premium and Professional plans.

Best for: Vyond is suitable for marketing professionals, educators, and businesses looking to create engaging animated videos for training, promotions, or explanations.

8. Zoho Show

Zoho Show is an online tool for creating, editing, and delivering presentations collaboratively.

Features: It allows real-time collaboration, works well with Zoho’s suite and other platforms, provides various themes and templates, and enables live presentation broadcasting.

Strengths : Zoho Show supports team collaboration, is accessible from anywhere, offers an easy-to-use interface, and integrates smoothly with other Zoho apps.

Weaknesses : It may lack some advanced features compared to competitors, and its range of templates might be limited.

Price : It’s free to use with a Zoho account, and additional features are available through premium plans.

Best for : Zoho Show is suitable for teams and individuals already using Zoho’s products or anyone in need of a straightforward, collaborative presentation tool.

Emaze is an online presentation software designed to help users create visually captivating presentations. It offers a diverse selection of design templates and animated effects to enhance the overall appeal of presentations.

Emaze boasts an extensive library of templates, including options for 3D designs and video backgrounds. The use of HTML5 technology ensures compatibility across various platforms. Additionally, the platform provides automatic translation capabilities and analytics tools for monitoring presentation views.

One of Emaze’s standout features is its collection of unique and creative templates, setting it apart from other presentation tools. The platform emphasizes user-friendly design, making it accessible to individuals with varying levels of technical expertise.

While Emaze offers a range of templates, some users may find the platform less intuitive compared to other presentation software. Additionally, customization options may be limited for certain templates, restricting users’ ability to tailor presentations to their exact specifications.

Emaze offers a basic free plan for users, with paid subscription options starting at $13 per month. Paid plans include additional features such as privacy settings, offline viewing capabilities, and advanced analytics tools.

Emaze is well-suited for individuals seeking to create visually striking presentations with minimal effort. It caters to a wide range of users, including those in education, business, and creative fields.

10 .  Focusky

Focusky is a versatile tool for creating presentations and animated videos, offering a dynamic platform for sharing ideas. It features unique zooming and panning effects, enhancing the visual appeal of presentations.

• 3D transition effects
• Video backgrounds
• Built-in word art
• Recording narration
• Extensive library of templates and characters

Focusky’s standout feature is its engaging zooming and panning effects, which make presentations memorable. It also offers a variety of visual assets and supports multimedia content integration.

Users who are new to non-linear presentation styles may find Focusky challenging to navigate initially. Some users may also feel overwhelmed by the abundance of features.

Focusky offers a free version with basic features. Paid plans start at $99 per year, providing access to more advanced functionalities and assets.

Focusky is suitable for educators, marketers, and creative professionals seeking a more dynamic alternative to traditional slide presentations.

11. SlideDog

SlideDog offers a distinct feature by enabling users to effortlessly combine different types of media into a single multimedia presentation.

Features:  It supports a variety of file formats, including PowerPoint, Prezi, PDFs, videos, and web pages. SlideDog also includes features for live sharing and audience interaction, along with playlist functionality for organizing presentation content.

Strengths:  SlideDog excels in its ability to integrate multiple formats into a cohesive presentation. It allows for real-time sharing with audiences and offers interactive features to enhance viewer engagement.

Weaknesses:  One drawback is that SlideDog relies on external applications for content creation and lacks built-in design tools. Additionally, managing multiple file types may pose some challenges for users.

Price:  SlideDog provides a free version, with the option to upgrade to the Pro version for $99 per year. The Pro version offers additional features such as offline playback and enhanced audience engagement tools.

Best for:  SlideDog is ideal for presenters who need to seamlessly integrate various types of content into their presentations. It is particularly suited for conferences, meetings, and educational settings.

Visme is a versatile tool designed for creating presentations, infographics, reports, and other visual content, with a focus on design and interactivity.

Key Features:  Visme offers a variety of templates and design elements, interactive features like pop-ups and rollover effects, analytics, content access control, and collaboration tools.

Strengths:  Visme stands out for its customization options, ability to create different types of content, and its emphasis on visual appeal and interactivity.

Weaknesses:  Some of the more advanced features require a paid plan, and users may find it challenging to fully utilize all of its capabilities.

Pricing:  Visme has a free basic plan, with paid options starting at $15 per month. Paid plans include access to more templates, assets, and features such as analytics and a brand kit.

Best for: Businesses

Loom provides a user-friendly platform for creating instant video recordings of screen activity, optionally incorporating webcam footage. It’s particularly useful for delivering presentations that require a personal touch or detailed explanations.

Loom offers simple screen recording, webcam integration, easy sharing via links, basic video editing tools, engagement metrics (views, reactions), and a comments section.

It simplifies the process of creating and sharing concise video explanations or presentations. Moreover, it enhances communication by adding a personal touch through video, supports asynchronous communication, and facilitates feedback collection directly on the video page.

While Loom is great for asynchronous video messaging, its interactive features for live presentations are limited. The platform is primarily designed for asynchronous communication rather than traditional interactive presentations.

Loom offers a free version with basic recording and sharing functionalities. The Pro version is available at $8 per user per month, offering additional features such as engagement insights, unlimited video length, and drawing tools.

Educators, team leaders, and professionals looking to convey concepts, provide feedback, or make announcements in a more engaging manner than text-based or traditional slide presentations. Loom is especially suited for tutorials, quick updates, and feedback sessions that benefit from visual and personalized communication.

• No design skills required
• 3 presentations/month free
• Don’t need to learn a new software

Closing Thoughts

Presentation software has come a long way. Gone are the days of dull slides. These days, there are many tools available to help you create presentations that are both informative and engaging for your audience. Whether you’re looking for something simple and easy to use, or a platform with more advanced features, there’s an option out there for you. So explore what’s available and ditch the outdated slides for a more dynamic presentation style!

Save Time and Effortlessly Create Presentations with SlidesAI

• Preferences

How Guest Lecturers Enhance Student Engagement and Learning Outcomes in Higher Education - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

How Guest Lecturers Enhance Student Engagement and Learning Outcomes in Higher Education

In the evolving landscape of academia, guest lectures in higher education have become an invaluable tool for enriching the student experience. by bringing in experts from various fields, institutions can offer unique insights and practical knowledge that go beyond traditional classroom teaching. – powerpoint ppt presentation.

PowerShow.com is a leading presentation sharing website. It has millions of presentations already uploaded and available with 1,000s more being uploaded by its users every day. Whatever your area of interest, here you’ll be able to find and view presentations you’ll love and possibly download. And, best of all, it is completely free and easy to use.

You might even have a presentation you’d like to share with others. If so, just upload it to PowerShow.com. We’ll convert it to an HTML5 slideshow that includes all the media types you’ve already added: audio, video, music, pictures, animations and transition effects. Then you can share it with your target audience as well as PowerShow.com’s millions of monthly visitors. And, again, it’s all free.

About the Developers

PowerShow.com is brought to you by  CrystalGraphics , the award-winning developer and market-leading publisher of rich-media enhancement products for presentations. Our product offerings include millions of PowerPoint templates, diagrams, animated 3D characters and more.

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Microsoft fabric updates blog.

Microsoft Fabric May 2024 Update

• Monthly Update

Welcome to the May 2024 update.  

Here are a few, select highlights of the many we have for Fabric. You can now ask Copilot questions about data in your model, Model Explorer and authoring calculation groups in Power BI desktop is now generally available, and Real-Time Intelligence provides a complete end-to-end solution for ingesting, processing, analyzing, visualizing, monitoring, and acting on events.

There is much more to explore, please continue to read on. 

Microsoft Build Announcements

At Microsoft Build 2024, we are thrilled to announce a huge array of innovations coming to the Microsoft Fabric platform that will make Microsoft Fabric’s capabilities even more robust and even customizable to meet the unique needs of each organization. To learn more about these changes, read the “ Unlock real-time insights with AI-powered analytics in Microsoft Fabric ” announcement blog by Arun Ulag.

Fabric Roadmap Update

Last October at the Microsoft Power Platform Community Conference we  announced the release of the Microsoft Fabric Roadmap . Today we have updated that roadmap to include the next semester of Fabric innovations. As promised, we have merged Power BI into this roadmap to give you a single, unified road map for all of Microsoft Fabric. You can find the Fabric Roadmap at  https://aka.ms/FabricRoadmap .

We will be innovating our Roadmap over the coming year and would love to hear your recommendation ways that we can make this experience better for you. Please submit suggestions at  https://aka.ms/FabricIdeas .

Earn a discount on your Microsoft Fabric certification exam!  

We’d like to thank the thousands of you who completed the Fabric AI Skills Challenge and earned a free voucher for Exam DP-600 which leads to the Fabric Analytics Engineer Associate certification.   

If you earned a free voucher, you can find redemption instructions in your email. We recommend that you schedule your exam now, before your discount voucher expires on June 24 th . All exams must be scheduled and completed by this date.    

If you need a little more help with exam prep, visit the Fabric Career Hub which has expert-led training, exam crams, practice tests and more.  

Missed the Fabric AI Skills Challenge? We have you covered. For a limited time , you could earn a 50% exam discount by taking the Fabric 30 Days to Learn It Challenge .  

Modern Tooltip now on by Default

Matrix layouts, line updates, on-object interaction updates, publish to folders in public preview, you can now ask copilot questions about data in your model (preview), announcing general availability of dax query view, copilot to write and explain dax queries in dax query view public preview updates, new manage relationships dialog, refreshing calculated columns and calculated tables referencing directquery sources with single sign-on, announcing general availability of model explorer and authoring calculation groups in power bi desktop, microsoft entra id sso support for oracle database, certified connector updates, view reports in onedrive and sharepoint with live connected semantic models, storytelling in powerpoint – image mode in the power bi add-in for powerpoint, storytelling in powerpoint – data updated notification, git integration support for direct lake semantic models.

• Editor’s pick of the quarter
• New visuals in AppSource
• Financial Reporting Matrix by Profitbase
• Horizon Chart by Powerviz

Milestone Trend Analysis Chart by Nova Silva

• Sunburst Chart by Powerviz
• Stacked Bar Chart with Line by JTA

Fabric Automation

Streamlining fabric admin apis, microsoft fabric workload development kit, external data sharing, apis for onelake data access roles, shortcuts to on-premises and network-restricted data, copilot for data warehouse.

• Unlocking Insights through Time: Time travel in Data warehouse

Copy Into enhancements

Faster workspace resource assignment powered by just in time database attachment, runtime 1.3 (apache spark 3.5, delta lake 3.1, r 4.3.3, python 3.11) – public preview, native execution engine for fabric runtime 1.2 (apache spark 3.4) – public preview , spark run series analysis, comment @tagging in notebook, notebook ribbon upgrade, notebook metadata update notification, environment is ga now, rest api support for workspace data engineering/science settings, fabric user data functions (private preview), introducing api for graphql in microsoft fabric (preview), copilot will be enabled by default, the ai and copilot setting will be automatically delegated to capacity admins, abuse monitoring no longer stores your data, real-time hub, source from real-time hub in enhanced eventstream, use real-time hub to get data in kql database in eventhouse, get data from real-time hub within reflexes, eventstream edit and live modes, default and derived streams, route streams based on content in enhanced eventstream, eventhouse is now generally available, eventhouse onelake availability is now generally available, create a database shortcut to another kql database, support for ai anomaly detector, copilot for real-time intelligence, eventhouse tenant level private endpoint support, visualize data with real-time dashboards, new experience for data exploration, create triggers from real-time hub, set alert on real-time dashboards, taking action through fabric items, general availability of the power query sdk for vs code, refresh the refresh history dialog, introducing data workflows in data factory, introducing trusted workspace access in fabric data pipelines.

• Introducing Blob Storage Event Triggers for Data Pipelines
• Parent/child pipeline pattern monitoring improvements

Fabric Spark job definition activity now available

Hd insight activity now available, modern get data experience in data pipeline.

Power BI tooltips are embarking on an evolution to enhance their functionality. To lay the groundwork, we are introducing the modern tooltip as the new default , a feature that many users may already recognize from its previous preview status. This change is more than just an upgrade; it’s the first step in a series of remarkable improvements. These future developments promise to revolutionize tooltip management and customization, offering possibilities that were previously only imaginable. As we prepare for the general availability of the modern tooltip, this is an excellent opportunity for users to become familiar with its features and capabilities. 

Discover the full potential of the new tooltip feature by visiting our dedicated blog . Dive into the details and explore the comprehensive vision we’ve crafted for tooltips, designed to enhance your Power BI experience. 

We’ve listened to our community’s feedback on improving our tabular visuals (Table and Matrix), and we’re excited to initiate their transformation. Drawing inspiration from the familiar PivotTable in Excel , we aim to build new features and capabilities upon a stronger foundation. In our May update, we’re introducing ‘ Layouts for Matrix .’ Now, you can select from compact , outline , or tabular layouts to alter the arrangement of components in a manner akin to Excel. 

As an extension of the new layout options, report creators can now craft custom layout patterns by repeating row headers. This powerful control, inspired by Excel’s PivotTable layout, enables the creation of a matrix that closely resembles the look and feel of a table. This enhancement not only provides greater flexibility but also brings a touch of Excel’s intuitive design to Power BI’s matrix visuals. Only available for Outline and Tabular layouts.

To further align with Excel’s functionality, report creators now have the option to insert blank rows within the matrix. This feature allows for the separation of higher-level row header categories, significantly enhancing the readability of the report. It’s a thoughtful addition that brings a new level of clarity and organization to Power BI’s matrix visuals and opens a path for future enhancements for totals/subtotals and rows/column headers. 

We understand your eagerness to delve deeper into the matrix layouts and grasp how these enhancements fulfill the highly requested features by our community. Find out more and join the conversation in our dedicated blog , where we unravel the details and share the community-driven vision behind these improvements. 

Following last month’s introduction of the initial line enhancements, May brings a groundbreaking set of line capabilities that are set to transform your Power BI experience: 

• Hide/Show lines : Gain control over the visibility of your lines for a cleaner, more focused report. 
• Customized line pattern : Tailor the pattern of your lines to match the style and context of your data. 
• Auto-scaled line pattern : Ensure your line patterns scale perfectly with your data, maintaining consistency and clarity. 
• Line dash cap : Customize the end caps of your customized dashed lines for a polished, professional look. 
• Line upgrades across other line types : Experience improvements in reference lines, forecast lines, leader lines, small multiple gridlines, and the new card’s divider line. 

These enhancements are not to be missed. We recommend visiting our dedicated blog for an in-depth exploration of all the new capabilities added to lines, keeping you informed and up to date. 

This May release, we’re excited to introduce on-object formatting support for Small multiples , Waterfall , and Matrix visuals. This new feature allows users to interact directly with these visuals for a more intuitive and efficient formatting experience. By double-clicking on any of these visuals, users can now right-click on the specific visual component they wish to format, bringing up a convenient mini-toolbar. This streamlined approach not only saves time but also enhances the user’s ability to customize and refine their reports with ease. 

We’re also thrilled to announce a significant enhancement to the mobile reporting experience with the introduction of the pane manager for the mobile layout view. This innovative feature empowers users to effortlessly open and close panels via a dedicated menu, streamlining the design process of mobile reports. 

We recently announced a public preview for folders in workspaces, allowing you to create a hierarchical structure for organizing and managing your items. In the latest Desktop release, you can now publish your reports to specific folders in your workspace.  

When you publish a report, you can choose the specific workspace and folder for your report. The interface is simplistic and easy to understand, making organizing your Power BI content from Desktop better than ever. 

To publish reports to specific folders in the service, make sure the “Publish dialogs support folder selection” setting is enabled in the Preview features tab in the Options menu. 

Learn more about folders in workspaces.   

We’re excited to preview a new capability for Power BI Copilot allowing you to ask questions about the data in your model! You could already ask questions about the data present in the visuals on your report pages – and now you can go deeper by getting answers directly from the underlying model. Just ask questions about your data, and if the answer isn’t already on your report, Copilot will then query your model for the data instead and return the answer to your question in the form of a visual! 

We’re starting this capability off in both Edit and View modes in Power BI Service. Because this is a preview feature, you’ll need to enable it via the preview toggle in the Copilot pane. You can learn more about all the details of the feature in our announcement post here! (will link to announcement post)  

We are excited to announce the general availability of DAX query view. DAX query view is the fourth view in Power BI Desktop to run DAX queries on your semantic model.  

DAX query view comes with several ways to help you be as productive as possible with DAX queries. 

• Quick queries. Have the DAX query written for you from the context menu of tables, columns, or measures in the Data pane of DAX query view. Get the top 100 rows of a table, statistics of a column, or DAX formula of a measure to edit and validate in just a couple clicks! 
• DirectQuery model authors can also use DAX query view. View the data in your tables whenever you want! 
• Create and edit measures. Edit one or multiple measures at once. Make changes and see the change in action in a DA query. Then update the model when you are ready. All in DAX query view! 
• See the DAX query of visuals. Investigate the visuals DAX query in DAX query view. Go to the Performance Analyzer pane and choose “Run in DAX query view”. 
• Write DAX queries. You can create DAX queries with Intellisense, formatting, commenting/uncommenting, and syntax highlighting. And additional professional code editing experiences such as “Change all occurrences” and block folding to expand and collapse sections. Even expanded find and replace options with regex. 

Learn more about DAX query view with these resources: 

• Deep dive blog: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/blog/deep-dive-into-dax-query-view-and-writing-dax-queries/  
• Learn more: https://learn.microsoft.com/power-bi/transform-model/dax-query-view  
• Video: https://youtu.be/oPGGYLKhTOA?si=YKUp1j8GoHHsqdZo  

DAX query view includes an inline Fabric Copilot to write and explain DAX queries, which remains in public preview. This month we have made the following updates. 

• Run the DAX query before you keep it . Previously the Run button was disabled until the generated DAX query was accepted or Copilot was closed. Now you can Run the DAX query then decide to Keep or Discard the DAX query. 

2. Conversationally build the DAX query. Previously the DAX query generated was not considered if you typed additional prompts and you had to keep the DAX query, select it again, then use Copilot again to adjust. Now you can simply adjust by typing in additional user prompts.   

3. Syntax checks on the generated DAX query. Previously there was no syntax check before the generated DAX query was returned. Now the syntax is checked, and the prompt automatically retried once. If the retry is also invalid, the generated DAX query is returned with a note that there is an issue, giving you the option to rephrase your request or fix the generated DAX query. 

4. Inspire buttons to get you started with Copilot. Previously nothing happened until a prompt was entered. Now click any of these buttons to quickly see what you can do with Copilot! 

Learn more about DAX queries with Copilot with these resources: 

• Deep dive blog: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/deep-dive-into-dax-query-view-with-copilot/  
• Learn more: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dax/dax-copilot  
• Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kE3TE34oLM  

We are excited to introduce you to the redesigned ‘Manage relationships’ dialog in Power BI Desktop! To open this dialog simply select the ‘Manage relationships’ button in the modeling ribbon.

Once opened, you’ll find a comprehensive view of all your relationships, along with their key properties, all in one convenient location. From here you can create new relationships or edit an existing one.

Additionally, you have the option to filter and focus on specific relationships in your model based on cardinality and cross filter direction. 

Learn more about creating and managing relationships in Power BI Desktop in our documentation . 

Ever since we released composite models on Power BI semantic models and Analysis Services , you have been asking us to support the refresh of calculated columns and tables in the Service. This month, we have enabled the refresh of calculated columns and tables in Service for any DirectQuery source that uses single sign-on authentication. This includes the sources you use when working with composite models on Power BI semantic models and Analysis Services.  

Previously, the refresh of a semantic model that uses a DirectQuery source with single-sign-on authentication failed with one of the following error messages: “Refresh is not supported for datasets with a calculated table or calculated column that depends on a table which references Analysis Services using DirectQuery.” or “Refresh over a dataset with a calculated table or a calculated column which references a Direct Query data source is not supported.” 

Starting today, you can successfully refresh the calculated table and calculated columns in a semantic model in the Service using specific credentials as long as: 

• You used a shareable cloud connection and assigned it and/or.
• Enabled granular access control for all data connection types.

Here’s how to do this: 

• Create and publish your semantic model that uses a single sign-on DirectQuery source. This can be a composite model but doesn’t have to be. 
• In the semantic model settings, under Gateway and cloud connections , map each single sign-on DirectQuery connection to a specific connection. If you don’t have a specific connection yet, select ‘Create a connection’ to create it: 

• If you are creating a new connection, fill out the connection details and click Create , making sure to select ‘Use SSO via Azure AD for DirectQuery queries: 

• Finally, select the connection for each single sign-on DirectQuery source and select Apply : 

2. Either refresh the semantic model manually or plan a scheduled refresh to confirm the refresh now works successfully. Congratulations, you have successfully set up refresh for semantic models with a single sign-on DirectQuery connection that uses calculated columns or calculated tables!

We are excited to announce the general availability of Model Explorer in the Model view of Power BI, including the authoring of calculation groups. Semantic modeling is even easier with an at-a-glance tree view with item counts, search, and in context paths to edit the semantic model items with Model Explorer. Top level semantic model properties are also available as well as the option to quickly create relationships in the properties pane. Additionally, the styling for the Data pane is updated to Fluent UI also used in Office and Teams.  

A popular community request from the Ideas forum, authoring calculation groups is also included in Model Explorer. Calculation groups significantly reduce the number of redundant measures by allowing you to define DAX formulas as calculation items that can be applied to existing measures. For example, define a year over year, prior month, conversion, or whatever your report needs in DAX formula once as a calculation item and reuse it with existing measures. This can reduce the number of measures you need to create and make the maintenance of the business logic simpler.  

Available in both Power BI Desktop and when editing a semantic model in the workspace, take your semantic model authoring to the next level today!  

Learn more about Model Explorer and authoring calculation groups with these resources: 

• Use Model explorer in Power BI (preview) – Power BI | Microsoft Learn  
• Create calculation groups in Power BI (preview) – Power BI | Microsoft Learn  

Data connectivity  

We’re happy to announce that the Oracle database connector has been enhanced this month with the addition of Single Sign-On support in the Power BI service with Microsoft Entra ID authentication.  

Microsoft Entra ID SSO enables single sign-on to access data sources that rely on Microsoft Entra ID based authentication. When you configure Microsoft Entra SSO for an applicable data source, queries run under the Microsoft Entra identity of the user that interacts with the Power BI report. 

We’re pleased to announce the new and updated connectors in this release:   

• [New] OneStream : The OneStream Power BI Connector enables you to seamlessly connect Power BI to your OneStream applications by simply logging in with your OneStream credentials. The connector uses your OneStream security, allowing you to access only the data you have based on your permissions within the OneStream application. Use the connector to pull cube and relational data along with metadata members, including all their properties. Visit OneStream Power BI Connector to learn more. Find this connector in the other category. 
• [New] Zendesk Data : A new connector developed by the Zendesk team that aims to go beyond the functionality of the existing Zendesk legacy connector created by Microsoft. Learn more about what this new connector brings. 
• [New] CCH Tagetik 
• [Update] Azure Databricks  

Are you interested in creating your own connector and publishing it for your customers? Learn more about the Power Query SDK and the Connector Certification program .   

Last May, we announced the integration between Power BI and OneDrive and SharePoint. Previously, this capability was limited to only reports with data in import mode. We’re excited to announce that you can now seamlessly view Power BI reports with live connected data directly in OneDrive and SharePoint! 

When working on Power BI Desktop with a report live connected to a semantic model in the service, you can easily share a link to collaborate with others on your team and allow them to quickly view the report in their browser. We’ve made it easier than ever to access the latest data updates without ever leaving your familiar OneDrive and SharePoint environments. This integration streamlines your workflows and allows you to access reports within the platforms you already use. With collaboration at the heart of this improvement, teams can work together more effectively to make informed decisions by leveraging live connected semantic models without being limited to data only in import mode.  

Utilizing OneDrive and SharePoint allows you to take advantage of built-in version control, always have your files available in the cloud, and utilize familiar and simplistic sharing.  

While you told us that you appreciate the ability to limit the image view to only those who have permission to view the report, you asked for changes for the “Public snapshot” mode.   

To address some of the feedback we got from you, we have made a few more changes in this area.  

• Add-ins that were saved as “Public snapshot” can be printed and will not require that you go over all the slides and load the add-ins for permission check before the public image is made visible. 
• You can use the “Show as saved image” on add-ins that were saved as “Public snapshot”. This will replace the entire add-in with an image representation of it, so the load time might be faster when you are presenting your presentation. 

Many of us keep presentations open for a long time, which might cause the data in the presentation to become outdated.  

To make sure you have in your slides the data you need, we added a new notification that tells you if more up to date data exists in Power BI and offers you the option to refresh and get the latest data from Power BI. 

Developers 

Direct Lake semantic models are now supported in Fabric Git Integration , enabling streamlined version control, enhanced collaboration among developers, and the establishment of CI/CD pipelines for your semantic models using Direct Lake. 

Learn more about version control, testing, and deployment of Power BI content in our Power BI implementation planning documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/power-bi/guidance/powerbi-implementation-planning-content-lifecycle-management-overview  

Visualizations 

Editor’s pick of the quarter .

– Animator for Power BI     Innofalls Charts     SuperTables     Sankey Diagram for Power BI by ChartExpo     Dynamic KPI Card by Sereviso     Shielded HTML Viewer     Text search slicer  

New visuals in AppSource 

Mapa Polski – Województwa, Powiaty, Gminy   Workstream   Income Statement Table  

Gas Detection Chart  

Seasonality Chart   PlanIn BI – Data Refresh Service  

Chart Flare  

PictoBar   ProgBar  

Counter Calendar   Donut Chart image  

Financial Reporting Matrix by Profitbase 

Making financial statements with a proper layout has just become easier with the latest version of the Financial Reporting Matrix. 

Users are now able to specify which rows should be classified as cost-rows, which will make it easier to get the conditional formatting of variances correctly: 

Selecting a row, and ticking “is cost” will tag the row as cost. This can be used in conditional formatting to make sure that positive variances on expenses are a bad for the result, while a positive variance on an income row is good for the result. 

The new version also includes more flexibility in measuring placement and column subtotals. 

Measures can be placed either: 

• Default (below column headers) 
• Above column headers 

• Conditionally hide columns 
• + much more 

Highlighted new features:  

• Measure placement – In rows  
• Select Column Subtotals  
• New Format Pane design 
• Row Options  

Get the visual from AppSource and find more videos here ! 

Horizon Chart by Powerviz  

A Horizon Chart is an advanced visual, for time-series data, revealing trends and anomalies. It displays stacked data layers, allowing users to compare multiple categories while maintaining data clarity. Horizon Charts are particularly useful to monitor and analyze complex data over time, making this a valuable visual for data analysis and decision-making. 

Key Features:  

• Horizon Styles: Choose Natural, Linear, or Step with adjustable scaling. 
• Layer: Layer data by range or custom criteria. Display positive and negative values together or separately on top. 
• Reference Line : Highlight patterns with X-axis lines and labels. 
• Colors: Apply 30+ color palettes and use FX rules for dynamic coloring. 
• Ranking: Filter Top/Bottom N values, with “Others”. 
• Gridline: Add gridlines to the X and Y axis.  
• Custom Tooltip: Add highest, lowest, mean, and median points without additional DAX. 
• Themes: Save designs and share seamlessly with JSON files. 

Other features included are ranking, annotation, grid view, show condition, and accessibility support.  

Business Use Cases: Time-Series Data Comparison, Environmental Monitoring, Anomaly Detection 

🔗 Try Horizon Chart for FREE from AppSource  

📊 Check out all features of the visual: Demo file  

📃 Step-by-step instructions: Documentation  

💡 YouTube Video: Video Link  

📍 Learn more about visuals: https://powerviz.ai/  

✅ Follow Powerviz : https://lnkd.in/gN_9Sa6U  

Exciting news! Thanks to your valuable feedback, we’ve enhanced our Milestone Trend Analysis Chart even further. We’re thrilled to announce that you can now switch between horizontal and vertical orientations, catering to your preferred visualization style.

The Milestone Trend Analysis (MTA) Chart remains your go-to tool for swiftly identifying deadline trends, empowering you to take timely corrective actions. With this update, we aim to enhance deadline awareness among project participants and stakeholders alike. 

In our latest version, we seamlessly navigate between horizontal and vertical views within the familiar Power BI interface. No need to adapt to a new user interface – enjoy the same ease of use with added flexibility. Plus, it benefits from supported features like themes, interactive selection, and tooltips. 

What’s more, ours is the only Microsoft Certified Milestone Trend Analysis Chart for Power BI, ensuring reliability and compatibility with the platform. 

Ready to experience the enhanced Milestone Trend Analysis Chart? Download it from AppSource today and explore its capabilities with your own data – try for free!  

We welcome any questions or feedback at our website: https://visuals.novasilva.com/ . Try it out and elevate your project management insights now! 

Sunburst Chart by Powerviz  

Powerviz’s Sunburst Chart is an interactive tool for hierarchical data visualization. With this chart, you can easily visualize multiple columns in a hierarchy and uncover valuable insights. The concentric circle design helps in displaying part-to-whole relationships. 

• Arc Customization: Customize shapes and patterns. 
• Color Scheme: Accessible palettes with 30+ options. 
• Centre Circle: Design an inner circle with layers. Add text, measure, icons, and images. 
• Conditional Formatting: Easily identify outliers based on measure or category rules. 
• Labels: Smart data labels for readability. 
• Image Labels: Add an image as an outer label. 
• Interactivity: Zoom, drill down, cross-filtering, and tooltip features. 

Other features included are annotation, grid view, show condition, and accessibility support.  

Business Use Cases:   

• Sales and Marketing: Market share analysis and customer segmentation. 
• Finance : Department budgets and expenditures distribution. 
• Operations : Supply chain management. 
• Education : Course structure, curriculum creation. 
• Human Resources : Organization structure, employee demographics.

🔗 Try Sunburst Chart for FREE from AppSource  

Stacked Bar Chart with Line by JTA  

Clustered bar chart with the possibility to stack one of the bars  

Stacked Bar Chart with Line by JTA seamlessly merges the simplicity of a traditional bar chart with the versatility of a stacked bar, revolutionizing the way you showcase multiple datasets in a single, cohesive display. 

Unlocking a new dimension of insight, our visual features a dynamic line that provides a snapshot of data trends at a glance. Navigate through your data effortlessly with multiple configurations, gaining a swift and comprehensive understanding of your information. 

Tailor your visual experience with an array of functionalities and customization options, enabling you to effortlessly compare a primary metric with the performance of an entire set. The flexibility to customize the visual according to your unique preferences empowers you to harness the full potential of your data. 

Features of Stacked Bar Chart with Line:  

• Stack the second bar 
• Format the Axis and Gridlines 
• Add a legend 
• Format the colors and text 
• Add a line chart 
• Format the line 
• Add marks to the line 
• Format the labels for bars and line 

If you liked what you saw, you can try it for yourself and find more information here . Also, if you want to download it, you can find the visual package on the AppSource . 

We have added an exciting new feature to our Combo PRO, Combo Bar PRO, and Timeline PRO visuals – Legend field support . The Legend field makes it easy to visually split series values into smaller segments, without the need to use measures or create separate series. Simply add a column with category names that are adjacent to the series values, and the visual will do the following:  

• Display separate segments as a stack or cluster, showing how each segment contributed to the total Series value. 
• Create legend items for each segment to quickly show/hide them without filtering.  
• Apply custom fill colors to each segment.  
• Show each segment value in the tooltip 

Read more about the Legend field on our blog article  

Drill Down Combo PRO is made for creators who want to build visually stunning and user-friendly reports. Cross-chart filtering and intuitive drill down interactions make data exploration easy and fun for any user. Furthermore, you can choose between three chart types – columns, lines, or areas; and feature up to 25 different series in the same visual and configure each series independently.  

📊 Get Drill Down Combo PRO on AppSource  

🌐 Visit Drill Down Combo PRO product page  

Documentation | ZoomCharts Website | Follow ZoomCharts on LinkedIn  

We are thrilled to announce that Fabric Core REST APIs are now generally available! This marks a significant milestone in the evolution of Microsoft Fabric, a platform that has been meticulously designed to empower developers and businesses alike with a comprehensive suite of tools and services. 

The Core REST APIs are the backbone of Microsoft Fabric, providing the essential building blocks for a myriad of functionalities within the platform. They are designed to improve efficiency, reduce manual effort, increase accuracy, and lead to faster processing times. These APIs help with scale operations more easily and efficiently as the volume of work grows, automate repeatable processes with consistency, and enable integration with other systems and applications, providing a streamlined and efficient data pipeline. 

The Microsoft Fabric Core APIs encompasses a range of functionalities, including: 

• Workspace management: APIs to manage workspaces, including permissions.  
• Item management: APIs for creating, reading, updating, and deleting items, with partial support for data source discovery and granular permissions management planned for the near future. 
• Job and tenant management: APIs to manage jobs, tenants, and users within the platform. 

These APIs adhere to industry standards and best practices, ensuring a unified developer experience that is both coherent and easy to use. 

For developers looking to dive into the details of the Microsoft Fabric Core APIs, comprehensive documentation is available. This includes guidelines on API usage, examples, and articles managed in a centralized repository for ease of access and discoverability. The documentation is continuously updated to reflect the latest features and improvements, ensuring that developers have the most current information at their fingertips. See Microsoft Fabric REST API documentation  

We’re excited to share an important update we made to the Fabric Admin APIs. This enhancement is designed to simplify your automation experience. Now, you can manage both Power BI and the new Fabric items (previously referred to as artifacts) using the same set of APIs. Before this enhancement, you had to navigate using two different APIs—one for Power BI items and another for new Fabric items. That’s no longer the case. 

The APIs we’ve updated include GetItem , ListItems , GetItemAccessDetails , and GetAccessEntities . These enhancements mean you can now query and manage all your items through a single API call, regardless of whether they’re Fabric types or Power BI types. We hope this update makes your work more straightforward and helps you accomplish your tasks more efficiently. 

We’re thrilled to announce the public preview of the Microsoft Fabric workload development kit. This feature now extends to additional workloads and offers a robust developer toolkit for designing, developing, and interoperating with Microsoft Fabric using frontend SDKs and backend REST APIs. Introducing the Microsoft Fabric Workload Development Kit . 

The Microsoft Fabric platform now provides a mechanism for ISVs and developers to integrate their new and existing applications natively into Fabric’s workload hub. This integration provides the ability to add net new capabilities to Fabric in a consistent experience without leaving their Fabric workspace, thereby accelerating data driven outcomes from Microsoft Fabric. 

By downloading and leveraging the development kit , ISVs and software developers can build and scale existing and new applications on Microsoft Fabric and offer them via the Azure Marketplace without the need to ever leave the Fabric environment. 

The development kit provides a comprehensive guide and sample code for creating custom item types that can be added to the Fabric workspace. These item types can leverage the Fabric frontend SDKs and backend REST APIs to interact with other Fabric capabilities, such as data ingestion, transformation, orchestration, visualization, and collaboration. You can also embed your own data application into the Fabric item editor using the Fabric native experience components, such as the header, toolbar, navigation pane, and status bar. This way, you can offer consistent and seamless user experience across different Fabric workloads. 

This is a call to action for ISVs, software developers, and system integrators. Let’s leverage this opportunity to create more integrated and seamless experiences for our users. 

We’re excited about this journey and look forward to seeing the innovative workloads from our developer community. 

We are proud to announce the public preview of external data sharing. Sharing data across organizations has become a standard part of day-to-day business for many of our customers. External data sharing, built on top of OneLake shortcuts, enables seamless, in-place sharing of data, allowing you to maintain a single copy of data even when sharing data across tenant boundaries. Whether you’re sharing data with customers, manufacturers, suppliers, consultants, or partners; the applications are endless. 

How external data sharing works  

Sharing data across tenants is as simple as any other share operation in Fabric. To share data, navigate to the item to be shared, click on the context menu, and then click on External data share . Select the folder or table you want to share and click Save and continue . Enter the email address and an optional message and then click Send . 

The data consumer will receive an email containing a share link. They can click on the link to accept the share and access the data within their own tenant. 

Click here for more details about external data sharing . 

Following the release of OneLake data access roles in public preview, the OneLake team is excited to announce the availability of APIs for managing data access roles. These APIs can be used to programmatically manage granular data access for your lakehouses. Manage all aspects of role management such as creating new roles, editing existing ones, or changing memberships in a programmatic way.  

Do you have data stored on-premises or behind a firewall that you want to access and analyze with Microsoft Fabric? With OneLake shortcuts, you can bring on-premises or network-restricted data into OneLake, without any data movement or duplication. Simply install the Fabric on-premises data gateway and create a shortcut to your S3 compatible, Amazon S3, or Google Cloud Storage data source. Then use any of Fabric’s powerful analytics engines and OneLake open APIs to explore, transform, and visualize your data in the cloud. 

Try it out today and unlock the full potential of your data with OneLake shortcuts! 

Data Warehouse 

We are excited to announce Copilot for Data Warehouse in public preview! Copilot for Data Warehouse is an AI assistant that helps developers generate insights through T-SQL exploratory analysis. Copilot is contextualized your warehouse’s schema. With this feature, data engineers and data analysts can use Copilot to: 

• Generate T-SQL queries for data analysis.  
• Explain and add in-line code comments for existing T-SQL queries. 
• Fix broken T-SQL code. 
• Receive answers regarding general data warehousing tasks and operations. 

There are 3 areas where Copilot is surfaced in the Data Warehouse SQL Query Editor: 

• Code completions when writing a T-SQL query. 
• Chat panel to interact with the Copilot in natural language. 
• Quick action buttons to fix and explain T-SQL queries. 

Learn more about Copilot for Data Warehouse: aka.ms/data-warehouse-copilot-docs. Copilot for Data Warehouse is currently only available in the Warehouse. Copilot in the SQL analytics endpoint is coming soon. 

Unlocking Insights through Time: Time travel in Data warehouse (public preview)

As data volumes continue to grow in today’s rapidly evolving world of Artificial Intelligence, it is crucial to reflect on historical data. It empowers businesses to derive valuable insights that aid in making well-informed decisions for the future. Preserving multiple historical data versions not only incurred significant costs but also presented challenges in upholding data integrity, resulting in a notable impact on query performance. So, we are thrilled to announce the ability to query the historical data through time travel at the T-SQL statement level which helps unlock the evolution of data over time. 

The Fabric warehouse retains historical versions of tables for seven calendar days. This retention allows for querying the tables as if they existed at any point within the retention timeframe. Time travel clause can be included in any top level SELECT statement. For complex queries that involve multiple tables, joins, stored procedures, or views, the timestamp is applied just once for the entire query instead of specifying the same timestamp for each table within the same query. This ensures the entire query is executed with reference to the specified timestamp, maintaining the data’s uniformity and integrity throughout the query execution. 

From historical trend analysis and forecasting to compliance management, stable reporting and real-time decision support, the benefits of time travel extend across multiple business operations. Embrace the capability of time travel to navigate the data-driven landscape and gain a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced world of Artificial Intelligence. 

We are excited to announce not one but two new enhancements to the Copy Into feature for Fabric Warehouse: Copy Into with Entra ID Authentication and Copy Into for Firewall-Enabled Storage!

Entra ID Authentication  

When authenticating storage accounts in your environment, the executing user’s Entra ID will now be used by default. This ensures that you can leverage A ccess C ontrol L ists and R ole – B ased a ccess c ontrol to authenticate to your storage accounts when using Copy Into. Currently, only organizational accounts are supported.  

How to Use Entra ID Authentication  

• Ensure your Entra ID organizational account has access to the underlying storage and can execute the Copy Into statement on your Fabric Warehouse.  
• Run your Copy Into statement without specifying any credentials; the Entra ID organizational account will be used as the default authentication mechanism.  

Copy into firewall-enabled storage

The Copy Into for firewall-enabled storage leverages the trusted workspace access functionality ( Trusted workspace access in Microsoft Fabric (preview) – Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn ) to establish a secure and seamless connection between Fabric and your storage accounts. Secure access can be enabled for both blob and ADLS Gen2 storage accounts. Secure access with Copy Into is available for warehouses in workspaces with Fabric Capacities (F64 or higher).  

To learn more about Copy into , please refer to COPY INTO (Transact-SQL) – Azure Synapse Analytics and Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn  

We are excited to announce the launch of our new feature, Just in Time Database Attachment, which will significantly enhance your first experience, such as when connecting to the Datawarehouse or SQL endpoint or simply opening an item. These actions trigger the workspace resource assignment process, where, among other actions, we attach all necessary metadata of your items, Data warehouses and SQL endpoints, which can be a long process, particularly for workspaces that have a high number of items.  

This feature is designed to attach your desired database during the activation process of your workspace, allowing you to execute queries immediately and avoid unnecessary delays. However, all other databases will be attached asynchronously in the background while you are able to execute queries, ensuring a smooth and efficient experience. 

Data Engineering 

We are advancing Fabric Runtime 1.3 from an Experimental Public Preview to a full Public Preview. Our Apache Spark-based big data execution engine, optimized for both data engineering and science workflows, has been updated and fully integrated into the Fabric platform. 

The enhancements in Fabric Runtime 1.3 include the incorporation of Delta Lake 3.1, compatibility with Python 3.11, support for Starter Pools, integration with Environment and library management capabilities. Additionally, Fabric Runtime now enriches the data science experience by supporting the R language and integrating Copilot. 

We are pleased to share that the Native Execution Engine for Fabric Runtime 1.2 is currently available in public preview. The Native Execution Engine can greatly enhance the performance for your Spark jobs and queries. The engine has been rewritten in C++ and operates in columnar mode and uses vectorized processing. The Native Execution Engine offers superior query performance – encompassing data processing, ETL, data science, and interactive queries – all directly on your data lake. Overall, Fabric Spark delivers a 4x speed-up on the sum of execution time of all 99 queries in the TPC-DS 1TB benchmark when compared against Apache Spark.  This engine is fully compatible with Apache Spark™ APIs (including Spark SQL API). 

It is seamless to use with no code changes – activate it and go. Enable it in your environment for your notebooks and your SJDs. 

This feature is in the public preview, at this stage of the preview, there is no additional cost associated with using it. 

We are excited to announce the Spark Monitoring Run Series Analysis features, which allow you to analyze the run duration trend and performance comparison for Pipeline Spark activity recurring run instances and repetitive Spark run activities from the same Notebook or Spark Job Definition.   

• Run Series Comparison: Users can compare the duration of a Notebook run with that of previous runs and evaluate the input and output data to understand the reasons behind prolonged run durations.  
• Outlier Detection and Analysis: The system can detect outliers in the run series and analyze them to pinpoint potential contributing factors. 
• Detailed Run Instance Analysis: Clicking on a specific run instance provides detailed information on time distribution, which can be used to identify performance enhancement opportunities. 
• Configuration Insights : Users can view the Spark configuration used for each run, including auto-tuned configurations for Spark SQL queries in auto-tune enabled Notebook runs. 

You can access the new feature from the item’s recent runs panel and Spark application monitoring page. 

We are excited to announce that Notebook now supports the ability to tag others in comments, just like the familiar functionality of using Office products!   

When you select a section of code in a cell, you can add a comment with your insights and tag one or more teammates to collaborate or brainstorm on the specifics. This intuitive enhancement is designed to amplify collaboration in your daily development work. 

Moreover, you can easily configure the permissions when tagging someone who doesn’t have the permission, to make sure your code asset is well managed. 

We are thrilled to unveil a significant enhancement to the Fabric notebook ribbon, designed to elevate your data science and engineering workflows. 

In the new version, you will find the new Session connect control on the Home tab, and now you can start a standard session without needing to run a code cell. 

You can also easily spin up a High concurrency session and share the session across multiple notebooks to improve the compute resource utilization. And you can easily attach/leave a high concurrency session with a single click. 

The “ View session information ” can navigate you to the session information dialog, where you can find a lot of useful detailed information, as well as configure the session timeout. The diagnostics info is essentially helpful when you need support for notebook issues. 

Now you can easily access the powerful “ Data Wrangler ” on Home tab with the new ribbon! You can explore your data with the fancy low-code experience of data wrangler, and the pandas DataFrames and Spark DataFrames are all supported.   

We recently made some changes to the Fabric notebook metadata to ensure compliance and consistency: 

Notebook file content: 

• The keyword “trident” has been replaced with “dependencies” in the notebook content. This adjustment ensures consistency and compliance. 
• Notebook Git format: 
• The preface of the notebook has been modified from “# Synapse Analytics notebook source” to “# Fabric notebook source”. 
• Additionally, the keyword “synapse” has been updated to “dependencies” in the Git repo. 

The above changes will be marked as ‘uncommitted’ for one time if your workspace is connected to Git. No action is needed in terms of these changes , and there won’t be any breaking scenario within the Fabric platform . If you have any further updates or questions, feel free to share with us. 

We are thrilled to announce that the environment is now a generally available item in Microsoft Fabric. During this GA timeframe, we have shipped a few new features of Environment. 

• Git support  

The environment is now Git supported. You can check-in the environment into your Git repo and manipulate the environment locally with its YAML representations and custom library files. After updating the changes from local to Fabric portal, you can publish them by manual action or through REST API. 

• Deployment pipeline  

Deploying environments from one workspace to another is supported.  Now, you can deploy the code items and their dependent environments together from development to test and even production. 

With the REST APIs, you can have the code-first experience with the same abilities through Fabric portal. We provide a set of powerful APIs to ensure you the efficiency in managing your environment. You can create new environments, update libraries and Spark compute, publish the changes, delete an environment, attach the environment to a notebook, etc., all actions can be done locally in the tools of your choice. The article – Best practice of managing environments with REST API could help you get started with several real-world scenarios.  

• Resources folder   

Resources folder enables managing small resources in the development cycle. The files uploaded in the environment can be accessed from notebooks once they’re attached to the same environment. The manipulation of the files and folders of resources happens in real-time. It could be super powerful, especially when you are collaborating with others. 

Sharing your environment with others is also available. We provide several sharing options. By default, the view permission is shared. If you want the recipient to have access to view and use the contents of the environment, sharing without permission customization is the best option. Furthermore, you can grant editing permission to allow recipients to update this environment or grant share permission to allow recipients to reshare this environment with their existing permissions. 

We are excited to announce the REST api support for Fabric Data Engineering/Science workspace settings.  Data Engineering/Science settings allows users to create/manage their Spark compute, select the default runtime/default environment, enable or disable high concurrency mode or ML autologging.  

Now with the REST api support for the Data Engineering/Science settings, you would be able to  

• Choose the default pool for a Fabric Workspace 
• Configure the max nodes for Starter pools 
• Create/Update/Delete the existing Custom Pools, Autoscale and Dynamic allocation properties  
• Choose Workspace Default Runtime and Environment  
• Select a default runtime 
• Select the default environment for the Fabric workspace  
• Enable or Disable High Concurrency Mode 
• Enable or Disable ML Auto logging.  

Learn more about the Workspace Spark Settings API in our API documentation Workspace Settings – REST API (Spark) | Microsoft Learn  

We are excited to give you a sneak peek at the preview of User Data Functions in Microsoft Fabric. User Data Functions gives developers and data engineers the ability to easily write and run applications that integrate with resources in the Fabric Platform. Data engineering often presents challenges with data quality or complex data analytics processing in data pipelines, and using ETL tools may present limited flexibility and ability to customize to your needs. This is where User data functions can be used to run data transformation tasks and perform complex business logic by connecting to your data sources and other workloads in Fabric.  

During preview, you will be able to use the following features:  

• Use the Fabric portal to create new User Data Functions, view and test them.  
• Write your functions using C#.   
• Use the Visual Studio Code extension to create and edit your functions.  
• Connect to the following Fabric-native data sources: Data Warehouse, Lakehouse and Mirrored Databases.   

You can now create a fully managed GraphQL API in Fabric to interact with your data in a simple, flexible, and powerful way. We’re excited to announce the public preview of API for GraphQL, a data access layer that allows us to query multiple data sources quickly and efficiently in Fabric by leveraging a widely adopted and familiar API technology that returns more data with less client requests.  With the new API for GraphQL in Fabric, data engineers and scientists can create data APIs to connect to different data sources, use the APIs in their workflows, or share the API endpoints with app development teams to speed up and streamline data analytics application development in your business. 

You can get started with the API for GraphQL in Fabric by creating an API, attaching a supported data source, then selecting specific data sets you want to expose through the API. Fabric builds the GraphQL schema automatically based on your data, you can test and prototype queries directly in our graphical in-browser GraphQL development environment (API editor), and applications are ready to connect in minutes. 

Currently, the following supported data sources can be exposed through the Fabric API for GraphQL: 

• Microsoft Fabric Data Warehouse 
• Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse via SQL Analytics Endpoint 
• Microsoft Fabric Mirrored Databases via SQL Analytics Endpoint 

Click here to learn more about how to get started. 

Data Science 

As you may know, Copilot in Microsoft Fabric requires your tenant administrator to enable the feature from the admin portal. Starting May 20th, 2024, Copilot in Microsoft Fabric will be enabled by default for all tenants. This update is part of our continuous efforts to enhance user experience and productivity within Microsoft Fabric. This new default activation means that AI features like Copilot will be automatically enabled for tenants who have not yet enabled the setting.  

We are introducing a new capability to enable Copilot on Capacity level in Fabric. A new option is being introduced in the tenant admin portal, to delegate the enablement of AI and Copilot features to Capacity administrators.  This AI and Copilot setting will be automatically delegated to capacity administrators and tenant administrators won’t be able to turn off the delegation.   

We also have a cross-geo setting for customers who want to use Copilot and AI features while their capacity is in a different geographic region than the EU data boundary or the US. By default, the cross-geo setting will stay off and will not be delegated to capacity administrators automatically.  Tenant administrators can choose whether to delegate this to capacity administrators or not. 

Figure 1.  Copilot in Microsoft Fabric will be auto enabled and auto delegated to capacity administrators. 

Capacity administrators will see the “Copilot and Azure OpenAI Service (preview)” settings under Capacity settings/ Fabric Capacity / <Capacity name> / Delegated tenant settings. By default, the capacity setting will inherit tenant level settings. Capacity administrators can decide whether to override the tenant administrator’s selection. This means that even if Copilot is not enabled on a tenant level, a capacity administrator can choose to enable Copilot for their capacity. With this level of control, we make it easier to control which Fabric workspaces can utilize AI features like Copilot in Microsoft Fabric. 

To enhance privacy and trust, we’ve updated our approach to abuse monitoring: previously, we retained data from Copilot in Fabric, including prompt inputs and outputs, for up to 30 days to check for misuse. Following customer feedback, we’ve eliminated this 30-day retention. Now, we no longer store prompt related data, demonstrating our unwavering commitment to your privacy and security. We value your input and take your concerns seriously. 

Real-Time Intelligence 

This month includes the announcement of Real-Time Intelligence, the next evolution of Real-Time Analytics and Data Activator. With Real-Time Intelligence, Fabric extends to the world of streaming and high granularity data, enabling all users in your organization to collect, analyze and act on this data in a timeline manner making faster and more informed business decisions. Read the full announcement from Build 2024. 

Real-Time Intelligence includes a wide range of capabilities across ingestion, processing, analysis, transformation, visualization and taking action. All of this is supported by the Real-Time hub, the central place to discover and manage streaming data and start all related tasks.  

Read on for more information on each capability and stay tuned for a series of blogs describing the features in more detail. All features are in Public Preview unless otherwise specified. Feedback on any of the features can be submitted at https://aka.ms/rtiidea    

Ingest & Process  

• Introducing the Real-Time hub 
• Get Events with new sources of streaming and event data 
• Source from Real-Time Hub in Enhanced Eventstream  
• Use Real-Time hub to Get Data in KQL Database in Eventhouse 
• Get data from Real-Time Hub within Reflexes 
• Eventstream Edit and Live modes 
• Default and derived streams 
• Route data streams based on content 

Analyze & Transform  

• Eventhouse GA 
• Eventhouse OneLake availability GA 
• Create a database shortcut to another KQL Database 
• Support for AI Anomaly Detector  
• Copilot for Real-Time Intelligence 
• Tenant-level private endpoints for Eventhouse 

Visualize & Act  

• Visualize data with Real-Time Dashboards  
• New experience for data exploration 
• Create triggers from Real-Time Hub 
• Set alert on Real-time Dashboards 
• Taking action through Fabric Items 

Ingest & Process 

Real-Time hub is the single place for all data-in-motion across your entire organization. Several key features are offered in Real-Time hub: 

1. Single place for data-in-motion for the entire organization  

Real-Time hub enables users to easily discover, ingest, manage, and consume data-in-motion from a wide variety of sources. It lists all the streams and KQL tables that customers can directly act on. 

2. Real-Time hub is never empty  

All data streams in Fabric automatically show up in the hub. Also, users can subscribe to events in Fabric gaining insights into the health and performance of their data ecosystem. 

3. Numerous connectors to simplify data ingestion from anywhere to Real-Time hub  

Real-Time hub makes it easy for you to ingest data into Fabric from a wide variety of sources like AWS Kinesis, Kafka clusters, Microsoft streaming sources, sample data and Fabric events using the Get Events experience.  

There are 3 tabs in the hub:  

• Data streams : This tab contains all streams that are actively running in Fabric that user has access to. This includes all streams from Eventstreams and all tables from KQL Databases. 
• Microsoft sources : This tab contains Microsoft sources (that user has access to) and can be connected to Fabric. 
• Fabric events : Fabric now has event-driven capabilities to support real-time notifications and data processing. Users can monitor and react to events including Fabric Workspace Item events and Azure Blob Storage events. These events can be used to trigger other actions or workflows, such as invoking a data pipeline or sending a notification via email. Users can also send these events to other destinations via Event Streams. 

Learn More  

You can now connect to data from both inside and outside of Fabric in a mere few steps.  Whether data is coming from new or existing sources, streams, or available events, the Get Events experience allows users to connect to a wide range of sources directly from Real-Time hub, Eventstreams, Eventhouse and Data Activator.  

This enhanced capability allows you to easily connect external data streams into Fabric with out-of-box experience, giving you more options and helping you to get real-time insights from various sources. This includes Camel Kafka connectors powered by Kafka connect to access popular data platforms, as well as the Debezium connectors for fetching the Change Data Capture (CDC) streams. 

Using Get Events, bring streaming data from Microsoft sources directly into Fabric with a first-class experience.  Connectivity to notification sources and discrete events is also included, this enables access to notification events from Azure and other clouds solutions including AWS and GCP.  The full set of sources which are currently supported are: 

• Microsoft sources : Azure Event Hubs, Azure IoT hub 
• External sources : Google Cloud Pub/Sub, Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, Confluent Cloud Kafka 
• Change data capture databases : Azure SQL DB (CDC), PostgreSQL DB (CDC), Azure Cosmos DB (CDC), MySQL DB (CDC)  
• Fabric events : Fabric Workspace Item events, Azure Blob Storage events  

Learn More   

With enhanced Eventstream, you can now stream data not only from Microsoft sources but also from other platforms like Google Cloud, Amazon Kinesis, Database change data capture streams, etc. using our new messaging connectors. The new Eventstream also lets you acquire and route real-time data not only from stream sources but also from discrete event sources, such as: Azure Blob Storage events, Fabric Workspace Item events. 

To use these new sources in Eventstream, simply create an eventstream with choosing “Enhanced Capabilities (preview)”. 

You will see the new Eventstream homepage that gives you some choices to begin with. By clicking on the “Add external source”, you will find these sources in the Get events wizard that helps you to set up the source in a few steps. After you add the source to your eventstream, you can publish it to stream the data into your eventstream.  

Using Eventstream with discrete sources to turn events into streams for more analysis. You can send the streams to different Fabric data destinations, like Lakehouse and KQL Database. After the events are converted, a default stream will appear in Real-Time Hub. To turn them, click Edit on ribbon, select “Stream events” on the source node, and publish your eventstream. 

To transform the stream data or route it to different Fabric destinations based on its content, you can click Edit in ribbon and enter the Edit mode. There you can add event processing operators and destinations. 

With Real-Time hub embedded in KQL Database experience, each user in the tenant can view and add streams which they have access to and directly ingest it to a KQL Database table in Eventhouse.  

This integration provides each user in the tenant with the ability to access and view data streams they are permitted to. They can now directly ingest these streams into a KQL Database table in Eventhouse. This simplifies the data discovery and ingestion process by allowing users to directly interact with the streams. Users can filter data based on the Owner, Parent and Location and provides additional information such as Endorsement and Sensitivity. 

You can access this by clicking on the Get Data button from the Database ribbon in Eventhouse. 

This will open the Get Data wizard with Real-Time hub embedded. 

You can use events from Real-Time hub directly in reflex items as well. From within the main reflex UI, click ‘Get data’ in the toolbar: 

This will open a wizard that allows you to connect to new event sources or browse Real-Time Hub to use existing streams or system events. 

Search new stream sources to connect to or select existing streams and tables to be ingested directly by Reflex. 

You then have access to the full reflex modeling experience to build properties and triggers over any events from Real-Time hub.  

Eventstream offers two distinct modes, Edit and Live, to provide flexibility and control over the development process of your eventstream. If you create a new Eventstream with Enhanced Capabilities enabled, you can modify it in an Edit mode. Here, you can design stream processing operations for your data streams using a no-code editor. Once you complete the editing, you can publish your Eventstream and visualize how it starts streaming and processing data in Live mode .   

In Edit mode, you can:   

• Make changes to an Eventstream without implementing them until you publish the Eventstream. This gives you full control over the development process.  
• Avoid test data being streamed to your Eventstream. This mode is designed to provide a secure environment for testing without affecting your actual data streams. 

For Live mode, you can :  

• Visualize how your Eventstream streams, transforms, and routes your data streams to various destinations after publishing the changes.  
• Pause the flow of data on selected sources and destinations, providing you with more control over your data streams being streamed into your Eventstream.  

When you create a new Eventstream with Enhanced Capabilities enabled, you can now create and manage multiple data streams within Eventstream, which can then be displayed in the Real-Time hub for others to consume and perform further analysis.  

There are two types of streams:   

• Default stream : Automatically generated when a streaming source is added to Eventstream. Default stream captures raw event data directly from the source, ready for transformation or analysis.  
• Derived stream : A specialized stream that users can create as a destination within Eventstream. Derived stream can be created after a series of operations such as filtering and aggregating, and then it’s ready for further consumption or analysis by other users in the organization through the Real-Time Hub.  

The following example shows that when creating a new Eventstream a default stream alex-es1-stream is automatically generated. Subsequently, a derived stream dstream1 is added after an Aggregate operation within the Eventstream. Both default and derived streams can be found in the Real-Time hub.  

Customers can now perform stream operations directly within Eventstream’s Edit mode, instead of embedding in a destination. This enhancement allows you to design stream processing logics and route data streams in the top-level canvas. Custom processing and routing can be applied to individual destinations using built-in operations, allowing for routing to distinct destinations within the Eventstream based on different stream content. 

These operations include:  

• Aggregate : Perform calculations such as SUM, AVG, MIN, and MAX on a column of values and return a single result. 
• Expand : Expand array values and create new rows for each element within the array.  
• Filter : Select or filter specific rows from the data stream based on a condition. 
• Group by : Aggregate event data within a certain time window, with the option to group one or more columns.  
• Manage Fields : Customize your data streams by adding, removing, or changing data type of a column.  
• Union : Merge two or more data streams with shared fields (same name and data type) into a unified data stream.  

Analyze & Transform 

Eventhouse, a cutting-edge database workspace meticulously crafted to manage and store event-based data, is now officially available for general use. Optimized for high granularity, velocity, and low latency streaming data, it incorporates indexing and partitioning for structured, semi-structured, and free text data. With Eventhouse, users can perform high-performance analysis of big data and real-time data querying, processing billions of events within seconds. The platform allows users to organize data into compartments (databases) within one logical item, facilitating efficient data management.  

Additionally, Eventhouse enables the sharing of compute and cache resources across databases, maximizing resource utilization. It also supports high-performance queries across databases and allows users to apply common policies seamlessly. Eventhouse offers content-based routing to multiple databases, full view lineage, and high granularity permission control, ensuring data security and compliance. Moreover, it provides a simple migration path from Azure Synapse Data Explorer and Azure Data Explorer, making adoption seamless for existing users. 

Engineered to handle data in motion, Eventhouse seamlessly integrates indexing and partitioning into its storing process, accommodating various data formats. This sophisticated design empowers high-performance analysis with minimal latency, facilitating lightning-fast ingestion and querying within seconds. Eventhouse is purpose-built to deliver exceptional performance and efficiency for managing event-based data across diverse applications and industries. Its intuitive features and seamless integration with existing Azure services make it an ideal choice for organizations looking to leverage real-time analytics for actionable insights. Whether it’s analyzing telemetry and log data, time series and IoT data, or financial records, Eventhouse provides the tools and capabilities needed to unlock the full potential of event-based data. 

We’re excited to announce that OneLake availability of Eventhouse in Delta Lake format is Generally Available. 

Delta Lake  is the unified data lake table format chosen to achieve seamless data access across all compute engines in Microsoft Fabric. 

The data streamed into Eventhouse is stored in an optimized columnar storage format with full text indexing and supports complex analytical queries at low latency on structured, semi-structured, and free text data. 

Enabling data availability of Eventhouse in OneLake means that customers can enjoy the best of both worlds: they can query the data with high performance and low latency in their  Eventhouse and query the same data in Delta Lake format via any other Fabric engines such as Power BI Direct Lake mode, Warehouse, Lakehouse, Notebooks, and more. 

To learn more, please visit https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/fabric/real-time-analytics/one-logical-copy 

A database shortcut in Eventhouse is an embedded reference to a source database. The source database can be one of the following: 

• (Now Available) A KQL Database in Real-Time Intelligence  
• An Azure Data Explorer database  

The behavior exhibited by the database shortcut is similar to that of a follower database  

The owner of the source database, the data provider, shares the database with the creator of the shortcut in Real-Time Intelligence, the data consumer. The owner and the creator can be the same person. The database shortcut is attached in read-only mode, making it possible to view and run queries on the data that was ingested into the source KQL Database without ingesting it.  

This helps with data sharing scenarios where you can share data in-place either within teams, or even with external customers.  

AI Anomaly Detector is an Azure service for high quality detection of multivariate and univariate anomalies in time series. While the standalone version is being retired October 2026, Microsoft open sourced the anomaly detection core algorithms and they are now supported in Microsoft Fabric. Users can leverage these capabilities in Data Science and Real-Time Intelligence workload. AI Anomaly Detector models can be trained in Spark Python notebooks in Data Science workload, while real time scoring can be done by KQL with inline Python in Real-Time Intelligence. 

We are excited to announce the Public Preview of Copilot for Real-Time Intelligence. This initial version includes a new capability that translates your natural language questions about your data to KQL queries that you can run and get insights.  

Your starting point is a KQL Queryset, that is connected to a KQL Database, or to a standalone Kusto database:  

Simply type the natural language question about what you want to accomplish, and Copilot will automatically translate it to a KQL query you can execute. This is extremely powerful for users who may be less familiar with writing KQL queries but still want to get the most from their time-series data stored in Eventhouse. 

Stay tuned for more capabilities from Copilot for Real-Time Intelligence!   

Customers can increase their network security by limiting access to Eventhouse at a tenant-level, from one or more virtual networks (VNets) via private links. This will prevent unauthorized access from public networks and only permit data plane operations from specific VNets.  

Visualize & Act 

Real-Time Dashboards have a user-friendly interface, allowing users to quickly explore and analyze their data without the need for extensive technical knowledge. They offer a high refresh frequency, support a range of customization options, and are designed to handle big data.  

The following visual types are supported, and can be customized with the dashboard’s user-friendly interface: 

You can also define conditional formatting rules to format the visual data points by their values using colors, tags, and icons. Conditional formatting can be applied to a specific set of cells in a predetermined column or to entire rows, and lets you easily identify interesting data points. 

Beyond the support visual, Real-Time Dashboards provide several capabilities to allow you to interact with your data by performing slice and dice operations for deeper analysis and gaining different viewpoints. 

• Parameters are used as building blocks for dashboard filters and can be added to queries to filter the data presented by visuals. Parameters can be used to slice and dice dashboard visuals either directly by selecting parameter values in the filter bar or by using cross-filters. 
• Cross filters allow you to select a value in one visual and filter all other visuals on that dashboard based on the selected data point. 
• Drillthrough capability allows you to select a value in a visual and use it to filter the visuals in a target page in the same dashboard. When the target page opens, the value is pushed to the relevant filters.    

Real-Time Dashboards can be shared broadly and allow multiple stakeholders to view dynamic, real time, fresh data while easily interacting with it to gain desired insights. 

Directly from a real-time dashboard, users can refine their exploration using a user-friendly, form-like interface. This intuitive and dynamic experience is tailored for insights explorers craving insights based on real-time data. Add filters, create aggregations, and switch visualization types without writing queries to easily uncover insights.  

With this new feature, insights explorers are no longer bound by the limitations of pre-defined dashboards. As independent explorers, they have the freedom for ad-hoc exploration, leveraging existing tiles to kickstart their journey. Moreover, they can selectively remove query segments, and expand their view of the data landscape.  

Dive deep, extract meaningful insights, and chart actionable paths forward, all with ease and efficiency, and without having to write complex KQL queries.  

Data Activator allows you to monitor streams of data for various conditions and set up actions to be taken in response. These triggers are available directly within the Real-Time hub and in other workloads in Fabric. When the condition is detected, an action will automatically be kicked off such as sending alerts via email or Teams or starting jobs in Fabric items.  

When you browse the Real-Time Hub, you’ll see options to set triggers in the detail pages for streams. 

Selecting this will open a side panel where you can configure the events you want to monitor, the conditions you want to look for in the events, and the action you want to take while in the Real-Time hub experience. 

Completing this pane creates a new reflex item with a trigger that monitors the selected events and condition for you. Reflexes need to be created in a workspace supported by a Fabric or Power BI Premium capacity – this can be a trial capacity so you can get started with it today! 

Data Activator has been able to monitor Power BI report data since it was launched, and we now support monitoring of Real-Time Dashboard visuals in the same way.

From real-time dashboard tiles you can click the ellipsis (…) button and select “Set alert”

This opens the embedded trigger pane, where you can specify what conditions, you are looking for. You can choose whether to send email or Teams messages as the alert when these conditions are met.

When creating a new reflex trigger, from Real-time Hub or within the reflex item itself, you’ll notice a new ‘Run a Fabric item’ option in the Action section. This will create a trigger that starts a new Fabric job whenever its condition is met, kicking off a pipeline or notebook computation in response to Fabric events. A common scenario would be monitoring Azure Blob storage events via Real-Time Hub, and running data pipeline jobs when Blog Created events are detected. 

This capability is extremely powerful and moves Fabric from a scheduled driven platform to an event driven platform.  

Pipelines, spark jobs, and notebooks are just the first Fabric items we’ll support here, and we’re keen to hear your feedback to help prioritize what else we support. Please leave ideas and votes on https://aka.ms/rtiidea and let us know! 

Real-Time Intelligence, along with the Real-Time hub, revolutionizes what’s possible with real-time streaming and event data within Microsoft Fabric.  

Learn more and try it today https://aka.ms/realtimeintelligence   

Data Factory 

Dataflow gen2 .

We are thrilled to announce that the Power Query SDK is now generally available in Visual Studio Code! This marks a significant milestone in our commitment to providing developers with powerful tools to enhance data connectivity and transformation. 

The Power Query SDK is a set of tools that allow you as the developer to create new connectors for Power Query experiences available in products such as Power BI Desktop, Semantic Models, Power BI Datamarts, Power BI Dataflows, Fabric Dataflow Gen2 and more. 

This new SDK has been in public preview since November of 2022, and we’ve been hard at work improving this experience which goes beyond what the previous Power Query SDK in Visual Studio had to offer.  

The latest of these biggest improvements was the introduction of the Test Framework in March of 2024 that solidifies the developer experience that you can have within Visual Studio Code and the Power Query SDK for creating a Power Query connector. 

The Power Query SDK extension for Visual Studio will be deprecated by June 30, 2024, so we encourage you to give this new Power Query SDK in Visual Studio Code today if you haven’t.  

To get started with the Power Query SDK in Visual Studio Code, simply install it from the Visual Studio Code Marketplace . Our comprehensive documentation and tutorials are available to help you harness the full potential of your data. 

Join our vibrant community of developers to share insights, ask questions, and collaborate on exciting projects. Our dedicated support team is always ready to assist you with any queries. 

We look forward to seeing the innovative solutions you’ll create with the Power Query SDK in Visual Studio Code. Happy coding! 

Introducing a convenient enhancement to the Dataflows Gen2 Refresh History experience! Now, alongside the familiar “X” button in the Refresh History screen, you’ll find a shiny new Refresh Button . This small but mighty addition empowers users to refresh the status of their dataflow refresh history status without the hassle of exiting the refresh history and reopening it. Simply click the Refresh Button , and voilà! Your dataflow’s refresh history status screen is updated, keeping you in the loop with minimal effort. Say goodbye to unnecessary clicks and hello to streamlined monitoring! 

• [New] OneStream : The OneStream Power Query Connector enables you to seamlessly connect Data Factory to your OneStream applications by simply logging in with your OneStream credentials. The connector uses your OneStream security, allowing you to access only the data you have based on your permissions within the OneStream application. Use the connector to pull cube and relational data along with metadata members, including all their properties. Visit OneStream Power BI Connector to learn more. Find this connector in the other category. 

Data workflows  

We are excited to announce the preview of ‘Data workflows’, a new feature within the Data Factory that revolutionizes the way you build and manage your code-based data pipelines. Powered by Apache Airflow, Data workflows offer seamless authoring, scheduling, and monitoring experience for Python-based data processes defined as Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). This feature brings a SaaS-like experience to running DAGs in a fully managed Apache Airflow environment, with support for autoscaling , auto-pause , and rapid cluster resumption to enhance cost-efficiency and performance.  

It also includes native cloud-based authoring capabilities and comprehensive support for Apache Airflow plugins and libraries. 

To begin using this feature: 

• Access the Microsoft Fabric Admin Portal. 
• Navigate to Tenant Settings. 

Under Microsoft Fabric options, locate and expand the ‘Users can create and use Data workflows (preview)’ section. Note: This action is necessary only during the preview phase of Data workflows. 

2. Create a new Data workflow within an existing or new workspace. 

3. Add a new Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) file via the user interface. 

4.  Save your DAG(s). 

5. Use Apache Airflow monitoring tools to observe your DAG executions. In the ribbon, click on Monitor in Apache Airflow. 

For additional information, please consult the product documentation .   If you’re not already using Fabric capacity, consider signing up for the Microsoft Fabric free trial to evaluate this feature. 

Data Pipelines 

We are excited to announce a new feature in Fabric that enables you to create data pipelines to access your firewall-enabled Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 (ADLS Gen2) accounts. This feature leverages the workspace identity to establish a secure and seamless connection between Fabric and your storage accounts. 

With trusted workspace access, you can create data pipelines to your storage accounts with just a few clicks. Then you can copy data into Fabric Lakehouse and start analyzing your data with Spark, SQL, and Power BI. Trusted workspace access is available for workspaces in Fabric capacities (F64 or higher). It supports organizational accounts or service principal authentication for storage accounts. 

How to use trusted workspace access in data pipelines  

Create a workspace identity for your Fabric workspace. You can follow the guidelines provided in Workspace identity in Fabric . 

Configure resource instance rules for the Storage account that you want to access from your Fabric workspace. Resource instance rules for Fabric workspaces can only be created through ARM templates. Follow the guidelines for configuring resource instance rules for Fabric workspaces here . 

Create a data pipeline to copy data from the firewall enabled ADLS gen2 account to a Fabric Lakehouse. 

To learn more about how to use trusted workspace access in data pipelines, please refer to Trusted workspace access in Fabric . 

We hope you enjoy this new feature for your data integration and analytics scenarios. Please share your feedback and suggestions with us by leaving a comment here. 

Introducing Blob Storage Event Triggers for Data Pipelines 

A very common use case among data pipeline users in a cloud analytics solution is to trigger your pipeline when a file arrives or is deleted. We have introduced Azure Blob storage event triggers as a public preview feature in Fabric Data Factory Data Pipelines. This utilizes the Fabric Reflex alerts capability that also leverages Event Streams in Fabric to create event subscriptions to your Azure storage accounts. 

Parent/Child pipeline pattern monitoring improvements

Today, in Fabric Data Factory Data Pipelines, when you call another pipeline using the Invoke Pipeline activity, the child pipeline is not visible in the monitoring view. We have made updates to the Invoke Pipeline activity so that you can view your child pipeline runs. This requires an upgrade to any pipelines that you have in Fabric that already use the current Invoke Pipeline activity. You will be prompted to upgrade when you edit your pipeline and then provide a connection to your workspace to authenticate. Another additional new feature that will light up with this invoke pipeline activity update is the ability to invoke pipeline across workspaces in Fabric. 

We are excited to announce the availability of the Fabric Spark job definition activity for data pipelines. With this new activity, you will be able to run a Fabric Spark Job definition directly in your pipeline. Detailed monitoring capabilities of your Spark Job definition will be coming soon!  

To learn more about this activity, read https://aka.ms/SparkJobDefinitionActivity  

We are excited to announce the availability of the Azure HDInsight activity for data pipelines. The Azure HDInsight activity allows you to execute Hive queries, invoke a MapReduce program, execute Pig queries, execute a Spark program, or a Hadoop Stream program. Invoking either of the 5 activities can be done in a singular Azure HDInsight activity, and you can invoke this activity using your own or on-demand HDInsight cluster. 

To learn more about this activity, read https://aka.ms/HDInsightsActivity  

We are thrilled to share the new Modern Get Data experience in Data Pipeline to empower users intuitively and efficiently discover the right data, right connection info and credentials.   

In the data destination, users can easily set destination by creating a new Fabric item or creating another destination or selecting existing Fabric item from OneLake data hub. 

In the source tab of Copy activity, users can conveniently choose recent used connections from drop down or create a new connection using “More” option to interact with Modern Get Data experience. 

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