powerpoint is a presentation software developed by

• Onsite training

3,000,000+ delegates

15,000+ clients

1,000+ locations

• KnowledgePass
• Log a ticket

01344203999 Available 24/7

What is PowerPoint: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

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

Exclusive 40% OFF

Training Outcomes Within Your Budget!

We ensure quality, budget-alignment, and timely delivery by our expert instructors.

Share this Resource

• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fundamentals (ERP) MB920
• Microsoft Access Training
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Fundamentals (CRM) MB910
• Microsoft Word Course
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing MB220

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

Table of contents       

1)  What is PowerPoint?  

2)  Understanding the PowerPoint Interface  

3)  Key Features of PowerPoint 

4)  How to use PowerPoint to create a presentation? 

5)  Benefits of PowerPoint  

6)  Tips for Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations 

7)  Conclusion      

What is PowerPoint?   

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

Evolution of PowerPoint   

Understanding the PowerPoint Interface   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key Features of PowerPoint  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to use PowerPoint to create a presentation?   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Benefits of PowerPoint   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tips for Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion      

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

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Upcoming office applications resources batches & dates.

Thu 16th May 2024

Thu 6th Jun 2024

Thu 4th Jul 2024

Thu 8th Aug 2024

Thu 5th Sep 2024

Thu 10th Oct 2024

Thu 7th Nov 2024

Thu 5th Dec 2024

Get A Quote

WHO WILL BE FUNDING THE COURSE?

My employer

By submitting your details you agree to be contacted in order to respond to your enquiry

• Business Analysis
• Lean Six Sigma Certification

Share this course

Our biggest spring sale.

We cannot process your enquiry without contacting you, please tick to confirm your consent to us for contacting you about your enquiry.

By submitting your details you agree to be contacted in order to respond to your enquiry.

We may not have the course you’re looking for. If you enquire or give us a call on 01344203999 and speak to our training experts, we may still be able to help with your training requirements.

Or select from our popular topics

• ITIL® Certification
• Scrum Certification
• Change Management Certification
• Business Analysis Courses
• Microsoft Azure Certification
• Microsoft Excel Courses
• Microsoft Project
• Explore more courses

Press esc to close

Fill out your  contact details  below and our training experts will be in touch.

Fill out your   contact details   below

Thank you for your enquiry!

One of our training experts will be in touch shortly to go over your training requirements.

Back to Course Information

Fill out your contact details below so we can get in touch with you regarding your training requirements.

* WHO WILL BE FUNDING THE COURSE?

Preferred Contact Method

No preference

Back to course information

Fill out your  training details  below

Fill out your training details below so we have a better idea of what your training requirements are.

HOW MANY DELEGATES NEED TRAINING?

HOW DO YOU WANT THE COURSE DELIVERED?

Online Instructor-led

Online Self-paced

WHEN WOULD YOU LIKE TO TAKE THIS COURSE?

Next 2 - 4 months

WHAT IS YOUR REASON FOR ENQUIRING?

Looking for some information

Looking for a discount

I want to book but have questions

One of our training experts will be in touch shortly to go overy your training requirements.

Your privacy & cookies!

Like many websites we use cookies. We care about your data and experience, so to give you the best possible experience using our site, we store a very limited amount of your data. Continuing to use this site or clicking “Accept & close” means that you agree to our use of cookies. Learn more about our privacy policy and cookie policy cookie policy .

We use cookies that are essential for our site to work. Please visit our cookie policy for more information. To accept all cookies click 'Accept & close'.

• Great Tech Gifts for Any Occasion
• The Best Gadgets for The Beach or Pool

What Is Microsoft PowerPoint?

Get to know Microsoft’s presentation software

• University of Texas

Microsoft PowerPoint is a slideshow presentation program first developed by Forethought, Inc. for the Macintosh computer in 1987 and purchased by Microsoft in 1990. Microsoft has released several updated versions, each offering more features and incorporating better technology than before. The most current version of Microsoft PowerPoint is available in Microsoft 365.

Do You Need PowerPoint?

Presentation software is the easiest way to create and show the kinds of slides you've likely seen in meetings or classroom situations.

There are several free options, including LibreOffice , Apache OpenOffice , and SlideDog . However, if you need to collaborate with others on a presentation, integrate with other Microsoft programs (like Microsoft Word), or create a presentation that's viewable by anyone, purchase Microsoft PowerPoint .

If integration with other Microsoft programs isn't important, Google Workspace has a presentation program called Slides that allows for excellent collaboration with others.

Microsoft PowerPoint comes with all the features you need to create presentations. You can start with a blank presentation or choose from various preconfigured presentations (called templates). A template is a file constructed with styles and designs applied. This option provides an easy way to begin a PowerPoint with a single click.

You can also insert pictures and videos from your computer and the internet, draw shapes, and create and insert all kinds of charts. PowerPoint offers many ways to transition between slides and animate the items on any slide.

What Is a PowerPoint Presentation?

A PowerPoint presentation is a group of slides that you create either from scratch or a template that contains information you want to share. Often, you show the presentation to others in an office setting, such as a sales meeting, but you can also create slide shows for weddings and birthdays.

When you display the presentation to your audience, the PowerPoint slides take up the entire presentation screen.

Do You Have Microsoft PowerPoint?

Lots of (but not all) Windows-based computers come with Microsoft Office installed. That means you might have a version of Microsoft PowerPoint.

To see if you have Microsoft PowerPoint installed on your Windows device:

From the  Search window on the taskbar (Windows 10), the  Start screen (Windows 8.1), or from the  Search window on the Start menu  (Windows 7), type PowerPoint  and press Enter .

Note the results.

To find out if you have a version of PowerPoint on your Mac, you can find it in a couple of ways.

Look for it in the  Finder sidebar, under  Applications by selecting Go > Applications .

Or select the magnifying glass in the upper-right corner of your Mac's screen and type PowerPoint in the search field that appears.

Where to Get Microsoft PowerPoint

The two ways you can purchase PowerPoint are by:

• Subscribing to Microsoft 365 .
• Buying the Microsoft Office suite outright from the Microsoft website.

Microsoft 365 is a monthly subscription, whereas you pay only once for the Office Suite.

If you don't want to create presentations but only want to view what others have created, use PowerPoint Online to view it for free.

Some employers, community colleges, and universities offer Microsoft 365 free to their employees and students.

The History of PowerPoint

Over the years, there have been many versions of the Microsoft Office suite. The lower-priced suites only included the basic apps (often Word , PowerPoint, and Excel ). The higher-priced suites included some or all of them (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook , OneNote, SharePoint, Exchange, Skype , and more). These suite editions had names like Home and Student, Personal, or Professional.

PowerPoint is included regardless of which version of the Microsoft Office suite you are looking at.

Here are the recent Microsoft Office Suites that also contain PowerPoint:

• PowerPoint Online and PowerPoint 365 are available and updated regularly in Microsoft 365.
• PowerPoint 2019 is available in Office 2019.
• PowerPoint 2016 was available in Office 2016.
• PowerPoint 2013 was available in Office 2013.
• PowerPoint 2010 was available in Office 2010.
• PowerPoint 2007 was included with Office 2007.
• PowerPoint 2003 was included with Office 2003.
• PowerPoint 2002 was included in Office XP.

PowerPoint is available for the Macintosh line of computers too, as well as smartphones and tablets.

The easiest way to start a new PowerPoint presentation is to use a template. Microsoft offers a variety of them in a range of casual and professional tones. Choose one and replace the placeholder text and images with your own.

Go to the Insert tab and select Audio > Audio on My PC to play music across slides in a presentation . Locate the music file you want to use, then choose Insert . Select the audio icon, go to the Playback tab , and select Play in Background .

To save your current presentation as a template, go to File > Save As . Click Browse , then choose PowerPoint template from the Save as type list options. Give your new template a file name and select Save .

If you want to make your presentations smaller, compress the pictures you use in them. Select an image so the Picture Format tab appears. Go to that tab and select Compress Pictures (it's in the Adjust group). Here you have a few options: Uncheck Apply only to this picture so that the changes apply to all images in the presentation. You can also choose Delete cropped areas of pictures , but you can't restore images to their original size. Finally, select Use default resolution in the Resolution section.

Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day

• Best Free Family Feud PowerPoint Templates
• What Is Microsoft Word?
• Microsoft's Best Free DIY Christmas Templates for 2024
• How to Use Microsoft's Free PowerPoint Viewers
• What Is Microsoft PowerPoint and How Do I Use It?
• How to Set up Microsoft 365 for iPad
• 10 Free PowerPoint Game Templates
• How to Create a Timeline in PowerPoint
• Create a Default Presentation Template in PowerPoint
• What Is a POTX File?
• A Complete Guide to Microsoft 365 (Formerly Microsoft Office)
• What Is a PPTX File?
• 5 Best Free Presentation Software Programs
• How to Copy a PowerPoint Design Template to Another Presentation
• The 10 Most Common PowerPoint Terms
• What's New in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010?

PowerPoint is a presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is included in the standard Office suite along with Microsoft Word and Excel . The software allows users to create anything from basic slide shows to complex presentations.

PowerPoint is often used to create business presentations, but can also be used for educational or informal purposes. The presentations are comprised of slides, which may contain text, images, and other media, such as audio clips and movies. Sound effects and animated transitions can also be included to add extra appeal to the presentation. However, overusing sound effects and transitions will probably do more to annoy your audience than draw their attention. (Yes, we have all heard the car screeching noise enough times for one lifetime.)

Most PowerPoint presentations are created from a template, which includes a background color or image, a standard font , and a choice of several slide layouts. Changes to the template can be saved to a "master slide," which stores the main slide theme used in the presentation. When changes are made to the master slide, such as choosing a new background image, the changes are propagated to all the other slides. This keeps a uniform look among all the slides in the presentation.

When presenting a PowerPoint presentation, the presenter may choose to have the slides change at preset intervals or may decide to control the flow manually. This can be done using the mouse , keyboard , or a remote control. The flow of the presentation can be further customized by having slides load completely or one bullet at a time. For example, if the presenter has several bullet points on a page, he might have individual points appear when he clicks the mouse. This allows more interactivity with the audience and brings greater focus to each point.

PowerPoint presentations can be created and viewed using Microsoft PowerPoint. They can also be imported and exported with Apple Keynote, Apple's presentation program for the Macintosh platform. Since most people prefer not to watch presentations on a laptop , PowerPoint presentations are often displayed using a projector. Therefore, if you are preparing a PowerPoint presentation for a room full of people, just make sure you have the correct video adapter.

Test Your Knowledge

What is a read-only document used as a starting point for new documents called?

Tech Factor

The tech terms computer dictionary.

The definition of PowerPoint on this page is an original definition written by the TechTerms.com team . If you would like to reference this page or cite this definition, please use the green citation links above.

The goal of TechTerms.com is to explain computer terminology in a way that is easy to understand. We strive for simplicity and accuracy with every definition we publish. If you have feedback about this definition or would like to suggest a new technical term, please contact us .

Sign up for the free TechTerms Newsletter

You can unsubscribe or change your frequency setting at any time using the links available in each email. Questions? Please contact us .

We just sent you an email to confirm your email address. Once you confirm your address, you will begin to receive the newsletter.

If you have any questions, please contact us .

Blog > The History and Evolution of PowerPoint

The History and Evolution of PowerPoint

04.20.20   •  #ppt #history #versions.

On April 20, 1987, the first version of PowerPoint was released. Because we love the software so much (and we know many of you readers do, too!), we wanted to celebrate PowerPoint’s 33rd birthday with a whole article dedicated to its origins, history, and use cases! 95% of presentations are created with PowerPoint, 30 Million PowerPoint presentations are given everyday, and 500 million people all over the world are using the software. So without further ado, let’s dive into the success story of PowerPoint - with the early beginnings and the development throughout the different versions (except for version 13, which was skipped due to triskaidekaphobia concerns ).

Timeline & Version History

5. july 1984: the idea was created.

Robert Gaskins was hired by Forethought Inc. as vice president of product development. His task was to create a new software for graphical personal computers like Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh. Already 1 month later, Gaskins came up with the idea of PowerPoint. Back then, the project description was labeled as "Presentation Graphics for Overhead Projection". For the next year they continued to work on the first specification of the software.

November 1984: Start of development

Development officially started under the name "Presenter". However, they started to work on the Macintosh version first. The first developer besides Gaskin was Thomas Rudkin, who joined after 6 months.

January 1987: Funding by Apple

To continue development, the team needed more money. Apple's Strategic Investment Group selected the company for its first investment. One month later, when they announced the software at the Personal Computer Forum in Phoenix, famous Apple CEO John Skully reportedly said "We see desktop presentation as potentially a bigger market for Apple than desktop publishing".

21. January 1987: The name PowerPoint was established

Originally, they chose to keep the name "Presenter" for the final software. However, to everyone's surprise, when they tried to register the trademark, their lawyers replied that the name was already used by another software product. The team had to find a new name quickly and thought about "SlideMaker" and "OverheadMaker". According to Gaskins, one night he came up with "Power point" randomly under the shower. Initially, nobody liked it, but when his colleague Glenn Hobin independently had the same idea (he saw a sign on an airport reading "POWER POINT"), they took it for an omen and stuck with the name. The reason why the name now is a single word with an upper-case P is that back then it was required in the naming of all Macintosh software applications. The common belief that PowerPoint got its name because it "empowers" people is therefore wrong.

20. April 1987: PowerPoint 1.0 (Macintosh)

The first 10.000 copies of the first version of PowerPoint for Macintosh shipped from manufacturing by Forethought Inc. The release was received quite well by the media, commenting it "People will buy a Macintosh just to get access to this product."

July 1987: Acquisition by Microsoft

In early 1987 Microsoft started an internal project to develop a software to "create presentations". Shortly after, they heard that a company called Forethought had nearly finished such a software. The successful release of PowerPoint 1.0 convinced Microsoft to buy the company entirely.

May 1988: PowerPoint 2.0 (Macintosh)

One year later, the second version of the software was introduces. It included color, more word processing features, find and replace, spell checking, color schemes for presentations, guide to color selection, ability to change color scheme retrospectively, shaded coloring for fills.

May 1990: First Windows version of PowerPoint

Almost 3 years later, the presentation software was finally released for Windows PCs. It was announced at the same time as Windows 3.0 and was using the same version number as the current Macintosh variant (2.0).

May & September 1990: PowerPoint 3.0

It was the first application designed exclusively for the new Windows 3.1 platform. New features were: full support for TrueType fonts (new in Windows 3.1), presentation templates, editing in outline view, new drawing, including freeform tool, flip, rotate, scale, align, and transforming imported pictures into their drawing primitives to make them editable, transitions between slides in slide show, incorporating sound and video.

February & October 1994: PowerPoint 4.0

The new version included among others: Word tables, rehearsal mode, hidden slides. Moreover, Microsoft first introduced a standard "Microsoft Office" look and feel (shared with Word and Excel), with status bar, toolbars and tooltips.

July 1995: PowerPoint 95 (new version naming)

To align PowerPoint with all other Office applications, Microsoft decided to skip versions 5 and 6 and instead call it PowerPoint 95.

October 2003: PowerPoint 2003

The 2003 version was the first to include the now called "Presenter View": tools visible to presenter during slide show (notes, thumbnails, time clock, re-order and edit slides). Furthermore, it included an option to "Package for CD" to write presentation and viewer app to a CD.

January 2007: PowerPoint 2007

It brought a new user interface (a changeable "ribbon" of tools across the top to replace menus and toolbars), SmartArt graphics, many graphical improvements in text and drawing, improved "Presenter View" and widescreen slide formats. Another major change was the transition from a binary file format, used from 1997 to 2003, to a new XML file format.

June 2010: PowerPoint 2010

This release added: sections within presentations, a reading view, save as video, insert video from web, embedding video and audio as well as enhanced editing for video and for pictures.

October 2012: PowerPoint for Web was released

The first time ever, the presentation software could be used in your web browser without any installation.

January 2013: PowerPoint 2013

Changes: online collaboration by multiple authors, user interface redesigned for multi-touch screens, improved audio, video, animations, and transitions, further changes to Presenter View. Clipart collections (and insertion tool) were removed, but were available online.

July 2013: First PowerPoint app for Android & iPhone

Finally the famous presentation software came on your mobile device with the first versions for Android and iOS. Giving presentations but as well basic editing of slides was already supported on the small screens. However, there wasn’t an iPad optimized version just yet.

September 2015: PowerPoint 2016

September 2018: PowerPoint 2019

New things in 2019: Morph transition, easily remove image backgrounds, inserting 3D models and SVG icons and a handy Zoom feature.

Are you interested in even more details on the story? You're lucky! Robert Gaskins gave an interview at the 25th anniversary of PowerPoint where he reveals even more on the history of the famous presentation software.

Modern use cases of PowerPoint

Most people use PowerPoint mainly for creating presentations, but did you know that there are many other ways of using the software? PowerPoint is not just for presenting plain slides to your audience - it can do much more - here are some interesting use cases you might not know about:

Games are a great way to lighten the mood during a presentation. Also, they engage the audience. Memory, Charades, or PowerPoint Karaoke - your options are endless! You can choose whatever suits your own presentation style and preference. If you don’t feel like thinking of games yourself, check out the best PowerPoint Games article , where you will get a lot of inspiration, creative game ideas and even a Memory template.

The times of boring, uninspired PowerPoint slides are long gone! Instead, we want to see interactive elements that engage the audience in new, exciting ways! Add Q&A sessions, get your audience’s feedback, share media and capture your audience with stories and unexpected elements! If you want to learn more about audience engagement and interaction, check out our blog post on 10 tools to boost Audience Engagement ! (Also, if you want to save time and energy, you can download SlideLizard , which allows you to create polls, do Q&A sessions, share media and slides and get audience feedback - all in one place!).

Quizzes are extremely popular, and you can create them easily with PowerPoint. We promise that your audience will love them! You can even take your quiz to the next level by matching the design of your quiz to popular quiz shows, like "Who wants to be a Millionaire" (actually, we designed a Who wants to be a Millionaire template with the original design and sound effects so you don’t have to do it yourself). Our advice for quizzes: Use a PowerPoint add-on that allows you to do live quizzes, like SlideLizard . That way you can easily let your audience vote via their smartphones or laptops.

Do you know the struggle of talking in front of a shy audience that doesn’t seem to open up? If you do, you’re definitely not alone: many presenters have to cope with this issue everyday. But there’s good news: By using some icebreaker questions at the beginning of your presentation, you can - well - break the ice. From "How are you feeling today" to "What would your superpower be" you could ask anything, really. Especially funny icebreaker questions (e.g. "Have you ever…?") are known to be very effective. You could even do more than one of these questions in the beginning (to be sure the ice is really broken). We've created a list of 20 great icebreaker questions , which you can use as inspiration.

Common struggles

PowerPoint is easy and intuitive to use - which is the reason why it has become the most used presentation software in the first place. However, there are several little struggles users sometimes have to deal with. They are all easy to solve though, and we will show you how.

Sometimes, the wrong language is set in the beginning, or you would simply like to add another language to your existing one. You can easily change that in the settings. In our blog post, you will get a detailed tutorial on how to install a new language pack and switch to your desired language .

Occasionally, PowerPoint files can get really big in file size. The reason for that are usually pictures or videos within the slides. To save a lot of storage space, you can compress your PowerPoint’s file size (without losing quality!). To learn how to do it, read this detailed step-by-step tutorial on reducing PPT file size .

This problem occurs often: You design a perfect presentation with custom fonts on your computer at home, but once you want to give that presentation on a different computer, all your beautiful custom fonts are gone and replaced with default fonts. That’s really annoying, but can be solved by embedding fonts into your .pptx file .

Templates are so useful, as they save so much time. The sad thing is that not that many people actually use them. We want to contribute to changing that by teaching you how to make your own custom design template for PowerPoint . And if you don’t feel like creating a template yourself, you can download one of ours for free:

• the wonderful Blue Alps template
• the simplistic Elegant Architecture template
• the fresh Caribbean template to get that summer holiday feeling

When was PowerPoint created?

The idea of PowerPoint came up in 1984. In the following years, development started under the name "Presenter". In 1987, the first version of PowerPoint for Macintosh was released. The first Windows release followed in 1990.

When did PowerPoint come out?

The first version of PowerPoint for Macintosh came out on April 20, 1987. The initial Windows version followed 3 years later, in May 1990.

Who created / invented / developed PowerPoint?

Robert Gaskins is one of the inventors of PowerPoint. He developed the first version with the help of his colleagues at Forethought Inc., Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin. Microsoft bought the company in 1987.

How old is PowerPoint?

The first version of PowerPoint was released on April 20, 1987, which means that PowerPoint celebrates its 33rd birthday in 2020. However, it was for Macintosh only, the Windows version was release in May 1990.

When did PowerPoint become popular?

According to Google Trends, PowerPoint had its peak in popularity in November 2009 (measured by number of searches). However, PowerPoint was already a popular presentation software in the 1990s.

Related articles

About the author.

Pia Lehner-Mittermaier

Pia works in Marketing as a graphic designer and writer at SlideLizard. She uses her vivid imagination and creativity to produce good content.

Get 1 Month for free!

Do you want to make your presentations more interactive.

With SlideLizard you can engage your audience with live polls, questions and feedback . Directly within your PowerPoint Presentation. Learn more

Top blog articles More posts

How to export high resolution images from PowerPoint

How to use the morph transition in PowerPoint

Get started with Live Polls, Q&A and slides

for your PowerPoint Presentations

The big SlideLizard presentation glossary

Title slide.

The title slide is the first slide of a presentation. It usually contains a title and a subtitle.

An e-lecture is a lecture that is held online. Many schools and universities offer e-lectures as technical opportunities improve.

Audience Response System (ARS)

Audience Response Systems (ARS) are technical solutions that are used in presentations in order to increase the interaction between the presenter and the audience. There are various forms of ARS that offer different features.

Hybrid Learning

Hybrid learning means that one group of students are in class at school. Another group of students takes part in class from home at the same time. They both get taught at the same time.

Be the first to know!

The latest SlideLizard news, articles, and resources, sent straight to your inbox.

- or follow us on -

We use cookies to personalize content and analyze traffic to our website. You can choose to accept only cookies that are necessary for the website to function or to also allow tracking cookies. For more information, please see our privacy policy .

Cookie Settings

Necessary cookies are required for the proper functioning of the website. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information about the number of visitors, etc.

• Collections
• Publications
• K-12 Students & Educators
• Families & Community Groups
• Plan Your Visit
• Public Tours & Group Reservations
• This Is CHM
• Ways to Give
• Donor Recognition
• Institutional Partnerships
• Buy Tickets
• Hours & Admission
• Upcoming Events

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A 2015 CHM oral history interview with David Solomont.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About The Author

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

Join the Discussion

Related articles, amplifying history, a computer for the rest of us, how old is your furby.

Hey there, human — the robots need you! Vote for IEEE’s Robots Guide in the Webby Awards.

For IEEE Members

Ieee spectrum, follow ieee spectrum, support ieee spectrum, enjoy more free content and benefits by creating an account, saving articles to read later requires an ieee spectrum account, the institute content is only available for members, downloading full pdf issues is exclusive for ieee members, downloading this e-book is exclusive for ieee members, access to spectrum 's digital edition is exclusive for ieee members, following topics is a feature exclusive for ieee members, adding your response to an article requires an ieee spectrum account, create an account to access more content and features on ieee spectrum , including the ability to save articles to read later, download spectrum collections, and participate in conversations with readers and editors. for more exclusive content and features, consider joining ieee ., join the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences and get access to all of spectrum’s articles, archives, pdf downloads, and other benefits. learn more →, join the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and applied sciences and get access to this e-book plus all of ieee spectrum’s articles, archives, pdf downloads, and other benefits. learn more →, access thousands of articles — completely free, create an account and get exclusive content and features: save articles, download collections, and talk to tech insiders — all free for full access and benefits, join ieee as a paying member., the improbable origins of powerpoint, here’s the surprising story behind the software that conquered the world, one slide at a time.

Walking into the hall to deliver the speech was a “ daunting experience ," the speaker later recalled, but “we had projectors and all sorts of technology to help us make the case." The technology in question was PowerPoint, the presentation software produced by Microsoft . The speaker was Colin Powell, then the U.S. Secretary of State.

Powell's 45 slides displayed snippets of text, and some were adorned with photos or maps. A few even had embedded video clips. During the 75-⁠minute speech , the tech worked perfectly. Years later, Powell would recall, “When I was through, I felt pretty good about it."

The aim of his speech, before the United Nations Security Council on 5 February 2003, was to argue the Bush administration's final case for war with Iraq in a “powerful way." In that, he succeeded. While the president had already decided to go to war, Powell's speech—inseparable from what would become one of the most famous PowerPoint presentations of all time—did nothing to derail the plan. The following month, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Poland launched their invasion .

Powell's speech dramatized how PowerPoint had become, by 2003, a nearly inescapable tool of communication and persuasion in much of the world. Since then, its domination has only become more complete. The same tool used by U.S. State Department and CIA officials to pivot an international coalition toward war is also used by schoolchildren to give classroom reports on planets, penguins, and poets. Microsoft rightly boasts of 1.2 billion copies of PowerPoint at large—one copy for every seven people on earth. In any given month, approximately 200 million of these copies are used, and although nobody's really counting, our cumulative generation of PowerPoint slides surely reaches well into the billions. So profound is PowerPoint's influence that prominent figures have decried the software's effects on thinking itself . Edward Tufte , the guru of information visualization, has famously railed against the “cognitive style" of PowerPoint, which he characterizes as having a “foreshortening of evidence and thought" and a “deeply hierarchical single-⁠path structure."

PowerPoint is so ingrained in modern life that the notion of it having a history at all may seem odd. But it does have a very definite lifetime as a commercial product that came onto the scene 30 years ago, in 1987. Remarkably, the founders of the Silicon Valley firm that created PowerPoint did not set out to make presentation software, let alone build a tool that would transform group communication throughout the world. Rather, PowerPoint was a recovery from dashed hopes that pulled a struggling startup back from the brink of failure—and succeeded beyond anything its creators could have imagined.

PowerPoint was not the first software for creating presentations on personal computers. Starting in 1982, roughly a half-dozen other programs [PDF] came on the market before PowerPoint's 1987 debut. Its eventual domination was not the result of first-mover advantage. What's more, some of its most familiar features—the central motif of a slide containing text and graphics; bulleted lists; the slideshow; the slide sorter; and even the animated transitions between slides—did not originate with PowerPoint. And yet it's become the Kleenex or Scotch Tape of presentation software, as a “PowerPoint" has come to mean any presentation created with software.

With PowerPoint as well as its predecessors, the motif of the slide was, of course, lifted directly from the world of photography. Some presentation programs actually generated 35-mm slides for display with a slide projector. In most cases, though, the early programs created slides that were printed on paper for incorporation into reports, transferred to transparencies for use on overhead projectors, or saved as digital files to be displayed on computer monitors.

The upshot was that personal computer users of the 1980s, especially business users, had many options, and the market for business software was undergoing hypergrowth, with programs for generating spreadsheets, documents, databases, and business graphics each constituting a multimillion-dollar category. At the time, commentators saw the proliferation of business software as a new phase in office automation, in which computer use was spreading beyond the accounting department and the typing pool to the office elites. Both the imagined and actual users of the new business software were white-collar workers, from midlevel managers to Mahogany Row executives.

PowerPoint thus emerged during a period in which personal computing was taking over the American office. A major accelerant was the IBM Personal Computer , which Big Blue unveiled in 1981. By then, bureaucratic America—corporate and government alike—was well habituated to buying its computers from IBM. This new breed of machine, soon known simply as the PC, spread through offices like wildfire.

The groundwork for that invasion had been laid the previous decade, in the 1970s technosocial vision of the “office of the future." It started, like so much of what we now take for granted in our contemporary world of networked personal computing, at Xerox's legendary Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) [PDF]. The site was established in 1970 to invent the computing systems that would equip the future's white-collar office, an arena the company hoped to dominate in the same way it did photocopying. Many of the bright young computer scientists and engineers recruited to work at PARC knew one another from the major computer science programs funded by the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, UC Berkeley, the University of Utah, and SRI.

In 1972, PARC researchers began to focus on a new personal computer they called the Alto. Led by Alan Kay , Butler Lampson , Bob Taylor , and Chuck Thacker , they were captivated by an extraordinary idea: that in the office of the future, every individual would have a dedicated computer like the Alto. Moreover, these computers would be networked to one another and to other, larger computers, both locally and far away. This networking would form a web of communication and computing resources well beyond the capacity of any single personal computer. In the pursuit of this vision, Ethernet emerged , as did the PARC Universal Packet protocol [PDF], or PUP, an important predecessor of the TCP/IP standard of today's Internet.

The Alto's creators emphasized the machine's graphics capabilities, dedicating much of the computer's hardware and software to rendering high-⁠resolution imagery onscreen, including typography, drawings, digital photographs, and animations. It was a huge step up from the mainstream computers of the day, which still used punch cards, paper printouts, teletypes, and “dumb" terminals. Alto users interacted with it through a graphical interface to access, generate, and manipulate information. Even the text was treated as an image. The computer was controlled through a standard keyboard and the then-novel mouse that had emerged from Doug Engelbart 's SRI laboratory.

This graphical turn in computing was perhaps most pronounced in one of the Alto's programming languages, called Smalltalk. Developed by Kay, Dan Ingalls , Adele Goldberg , and other collaborators, Smalltalk wasn't just a programming language; it was also a programming and user environment. It introduced the graphical user interface, or GUI, to personal computing, including a metaphorical desktop with overlapping windows, contextual and pop-up menus, file browsers, scroll bars, selection by mouse clicks, and even cut, copy, and paste.

While such innovations were ostensibly proprietary, by the end of the 1970s, Xerox managers and PARC staff were routinely discussing their findings with outsiders and publishing details of the Alto system in journals. PARC researchers were, after all, still part of the broader ARPA community of computer scientists and engineers. Many visitors who saw the Alto system considered it transformative.

One such visitor was Apple cofounder Steve Jobs . Following Xerox's investment in Apple in 1979, PARC researchers gave Apple engineers and management detailed demonstrations of Smalltalk and other programs previously reserved for Xerox insiders. Jobs was so enthralled by what he saw that he decided to reorient the Lisa, a business computer Apple was developing at the time, to fully embrace the PARC idiom. A few years later, when Jobs was transferred out of the Lisa project, he seized control of another effort aimed at creating a low-cost computer and pushed it, too, toward the PARC idiom. That computer became the Macintosh.

What does all this have to do with PowerPoint? Apple lavished resources—people and cash alike—to embrace the PARC paradigm with the Lisa and the Macintosh, but not everyone at Apple was happy about that. In particular, those working to maintain the existing Apple II and III lines felt that their efforts were being shortchanged. By 1982, the product marketing manager for the Apple III, Taylor Pohlman , and the software marketing manager for the Apple II and III, Rob Campbell, had had enough. They quit and went into business together, founding the company that would create PowerPoint.

But PowerPoint was not at all in their original plan.

One thing that united Pohlman and Campbell—but alienated them at Apple—was that they were cut from a different cloth than the computer-science types working on the Lisa and the Macintosh. Though both Pohlman and Campbell were technically minded, they were also oriented toward marketing and sales. Before Apple, Pohlman had worked in marketing at Hewlett-Packard, and Campbell had run a small accounting software company.

The pair left Apple late in 1982, and by early 1983, they had secured US $600,000 in venture capital to create a software company, which they called Forethought. Ironically, the startup's aim was to bring the PARC idiom to the IBM PC and its clones—in essence, to outplay Apple at its own game. That year, the Apple Lisa appeared , priced at nearly $10,000 (more than $25,000 in today's dollars). Two years earlier, Xerox had brought its own personal computer, the Xerox Star , to market, at an even higher price. Pohlman and Campbell's idea was to bring a graphical-software environment like the Xerox Alto's to the hugely popular but graphically challenged PC.

Forethought's founders intended to go beyond the Star and the Lisa by incorporating an important dimension of Alto's Smalltalk: object-oriented programming . In simple terms, traditional programming of the day treated data and the procedures for manipulating it separately. In object-oriented programming, data and procedures are combined in “objects" that interact with each other by passing messages between them. Proponents held that the modularity of object-oriented programming made for speedier development, flexibility, and dynamic change. For example, skilled Smalltalk programmers could quickly alter the GUI while the program was running. Object-oriented programming has since become the prevailing paradigm for the most widely used programming languages.

Pohlman and Campbell envisioned an object-oriented software platform called Foundation, which was centered around documents. Each Foundation document would act like an object in Smalltalk, which a business user would stitch together with other documents to create, say, a report containing a graph of recent sales, a statistical analysis of customer traits, drawings of proposed changes to a product, and a block of explanatory text. Each element would be live, malleable, and programmable. Spreadsheets, databases, drawings, word processing—Foundation would handle it all. Users would select a document with a mouse click, and contextual menus would then offer choices appropriate for that type of document. Foundation would be, in essence, Smalltalk for the office worker.

Forethought staffed up, bringing in software developers from Xerox PARC who were familiar with object-oriented programming and WYSIWYG applications, in which the text and graphics displayed on screen look very similar to the way they will appear in print. To create certain functions, the startup inked deals with outside suppliers; Forethought also purchased a powerful VAX computer from Digital Equipment Corp. for the software-development effort.

Within a year, the company ran into difficulties. For one, the developers grew deeply concerned about which personal computers, if any, would be powerful enough to run Foundation. The Apple Lisa had the horsepower, but it was already failing in the market, while the Macintosh was deemed too feeble. And the IBM PC was still far behind where Forethought had hoped and planned it would be.

Forethought, a Silicon Valley startup, brought PowerPoint 1.0 to market in April 1987.

More worrying was Oracle's announcement that it would need another year to deliver on its contract for the database code. This meant that the launch of Foundation would be intolerably delayed. Forethought was running perilously low on funds, and it didn't have the resources to develop a database on its own. The company was facing, literally, an existential crisis.

Rather than liquidate the firm, management and investors decided to “restart" Forethought—a “pivot" in today's Silicon Valley parlance. Work on Foundation was set aside, while the firm focused on software publishing—that is, manufacturing, marketing, and supporting computer programs written by others. Forethought's publishing arm produced software for the Apple Macintosh under the brand Macware. And it was a success. Its biggest hit, oddly enough, was a database program called FileMaker .

With brightening finances from sales of FileMaker, Forethought began to develop a new software product of its own. This new effort was the brainchild of Robert Gaskins , an accomplished computer scientist who'd been hired to lead Forethought's product development. Gaskins was a polymath who had simultaneously pursued Ph.D.s in English, linguistics, and computer science at UC Berkeley before joining industry. He in turn hired a bright young software developer named Dennis Austin , who had previously developed compilers at Burroughs and contributed to a GUI operating system at a laptop startup.

Gaskins and Austin worked closely to conceptualize, design, and specify Forethought's new product. Gaskins spotted an opportunity in presentation software and believed they could apply the PARC idiom to this application. He envisioned the user creating slides of text and graphics in a graphical, WYSIWYG environment, then outputting them to 35-mm slides, overhead transparencies, or video displays and projectors, and also sharing them electronically through networks and electronic mail. The presentation would spring directly from the mind of the business user, without having to first transit through the corporate art department.

While Gaskins's ultimate aim for this new product, called Presenter, was to get it onto IBM PCs and their clones, he and Austin soon realized that the Apple Macintosh was the more promising initial target. Designs for the first version of Presenter specified a program that would allow the user to print out slides on Apple's newly released laser printer, the LaserWriter, and photocopy the printouts onto transparencies for use with an overhead projector.

Austin quickly got to work programming Presenter in Apple Pascal on a Lisa computer, eventually switching to a Macintosh. He was joined in the effort by Tom Rudkin , an experienced developer, and the pair hewed as closely as possible to the Macintosh's user interface and modes of operation. Indeed, the source code for Presenter included Apple-provided code for handling text, which Apple used in its own word processor, MacWrite.

In April 1987, Forethought introduced its new presentation program to the market very much as it had been conceived, but with a different name. Presenter was now PowerPoint 1.0—there are conflicting accounts of the name change—and it was a proverbial overnight success with Macintosh users. In the first month, Forethought booked $1 million in sales of PowerPoint, at a net profit of $400,000, which was about what the company had spent developing it. And just over three months after PowerPoint's introduction, Microsoft purchased Forethought outright for $14 million in cash.

PowerPoint then became Microsoft's presentation software, first just for the Macintosh and later also for Windows. The Forethought team became Microsoft's Graphics Business Unit, which Gaskins led for five years, while Austin and Rudkin remained the principal developers of PowerPoint for about 10 years. Wisely, Microsoft chose to keep the Graphics Business Unit in Silicon Valley rather than move it to Redmond, Wash. The unit became Microsoft's first outpost in the region, and PowerPoint is still developed there to this day.

While PowerPoint was a success from the start, it nevertheless faced stiff competition, and for several years, Lotus Freelance and Software Publishing's Harvard Graphics commanded larger market shares. The tipping point for PowerPoint came in 1990, when Microsoft unleashed its bundling strategy and began selling Microsoft Office—which combined Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—as a $1,000 set. Previously, each part had been sold separately for about $500 apiece.

Because most users of personal computers required both a word processor and a spreadsheet program, Microsoft's price for Office proved compelling. PowerPoint's competitors, on the other hand, resented the tactic as giving away PowerPoint for free. And for more than a quarter century, Microsoft's competitive logic proved unassailable.

These days, the business software market is shifting again, and Microsoft Office must now compete with similar bundles that are entirely free, from the likes of Google , LibreOffice, and others. Productivity software resides more often than not in the cloud, rather than on the user's device. Meanwhile, the dominant mode of personal computing globally has firmly shifted from the desktop and laptop to the smartphone. As yet, no new vision of personal computing like the one that came from Xerox PARC in the 1970s has emerged. And so for the moment, it appears that PowerPoint, as we know it, is here to stay.

This article is for IEEE members only. Join IEEE to access our full archive.

Membership includes:.

• Get unlimited access to IEEE Spectrum content
• Follow your favorite topics to create a personalized feed of IEEE Spectrum content
• Save Spectrum articles to read later
• Network with other technology professionals
• Establish a professional profile
• Create a group to share and collaborate on projects
• Discover IEEE events and activities
• Join and participate in discussions

• What is PowerPoint? Video
• Create a presentation Video
• Choose the right view for the task Video
• Add and format text Video

What is PowerPoint?

Note:  Microsoft 365 Copliot coming soon in PowerPoint.

 With PowerPoint on your PC, Mac, or mobile device, you can:

Create presentations from scratch or a template.

Add text, images, art, and videos.

Select a professional design with PowerPoint Designer.

Add transitions, animations, and cinematic motion.

Save to OneDrive, to get to your presentations from your computer, tablet, or phone.

Share your work and work with others, wherever they are.

PowerPoint help

What's new in PowerPoint for Windows

Office Quick Start Guides

Get Microsoft presentation templates

Need more help?

Want more options.

Explore subscription benefits, browse training courses, learn how to secure your device, and more.

Microsoft 365 subscription benefits

Microsoft 365 training

Microsoft security

Accessibility center

Communities help you ask and answer questions, give feedback, and hear from experts with rich knowledge.

Ask the Microsoft Community

Microsoft Tech Community

Windows Insiders

Microsoft 365 Insiders

Was this information helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.

The Tech Edvocate

• Advertisement
• Home Page Five (No Sidebar)
• Home Page Four
• Home Page Three
• Home Page Two
• Icons [No Sidebar]
• Left Sidbear Page
• Lynch Educational Consulting
• My Speaking Page
• Newsletter Sign Up Confirmation
• Newsletter Unsubscription
• Page Example
• Privacy Policy
• Protected Content
• Request a Product Review
• Shortcodes Examples
• Terms and Conditions
• The Edvocate
• The Tech Edvocate Product Guide
• Write For Us
• Dr. Lynch’s Personal Website
• The Edvocate Podcast
• Assistive Technology
• Child Development Tech
• Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech
• EdTech Futures
• EdTech News
• EdTech Policy & Reform
• EdTech Startups & Businesses
• Higher Education EdTech
• Online Learning & eLearning
• Parent & Family Tech
• Personalized Learning
• Product Reviews
• Tech Edvocate Awards
• School Ratings

IEP Meetings And Parent-Teacher Conferences: Everything You Need to Know

College disability services and accommodations: everything you need to know, spam vs. phishing: how are these unwanted messages different, how to charge your iphone properly, encouraging your teenager to read: everything you need to know, 8 ways to service an air conditioner, 3 ways to stop a baby from vomiting, 3 ways to save instagram highlights, skills needed for reading comprehension: everything you need to know, how to change the language in android, what is microsoft powerpoint and how do i use it.

Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular presentation software developed by Microsoft Corporation. It allows users to create compelling slide presentations with well-designed templates, animations, videos, images, and charts. PowerPoint is widely used in academic, business, and educational settings, as it enables users to convey information effectively and efficiently.

In this article, we will discuss what Microsoft PowerPoint is and how to use it, so you can start creating professional presentations in no time.

What Is Microsoft PowerPoint?

Microsoft PowerPoint is part of the Microsoft Office Suite and can be downloaded on both Windows and Mac operating systems. It was first released in 1987 for Macintosh computers, and it has since then become a leading presentation software on the market.

PowerPoint allows users to create slide presentations for various purposes, including business pitches, educational lectures, and conference presentations. It features various tools and functionalities, including built-in templates, themes, animations, video and audio files, charts and graphs, and more.

How to Use Microsoft PowerPoint?

Using Microsoft PowerPoint is easy once you get the hang of it. Here’s how to use it:

1. Open PowerPoint: To start, launch PowerPoint either by clicking on the icon on your desktop or by searching for it in your applications folder.

2. Choose a template: Once you’ve opened PowerPoint, you’ll need to choose a template to start with. You can also start with a blank slide and customize it according to your needs.

3. Add slides: After selecting a template, you can add new slides by clicking on the “New Slide” button. Depending on the template you choose, you can add text, images, and other media formats to make your presentation unique.

4. Add text and media: In PowerPoint, you can add text by clicking on the text boxes and typing in what you want to say. You can also add media such as images and videos by clicking on the button and selecting the file from your computer. To add animations or transitions to your slides, you can use the Animations tab.

5. Edit your slides: Once you’ve added your text and media, you can adjust the appearance and order of your slides. You can also change the color scheme and font style to reflect your brand or personality.

6. Save and present: Finally, when you’re finished designing your presentation, save it by clicking “File> Save As.” You can present it by clicking on the “Slide Show” button on the toolbar to display your presentation in full screen.

Conclusion:

Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful software tool that allows users to create visually appealing and engaging presentations. By using the tips and instructions above, you can start creating effective presentations for various purposes. From saving time by using pre-designed templates to adding multimedia and animations, Microsoft PowerPoint has many tools and features to help you make your presentations stand out.

How to Customize the Design of Your ...

How to multiply in excel.

Matthew Lynch

Related articles more from author.

Reasons Why You Should Pick Android Over iPhone

The 22 Most Addictive Websites

How to Make a Folding Card on Microsoft Word

How to Crop a Picture on Your Mac

How to Block or Delete Google Update Files in Windows

How to Find and Manage the Windows Startup Folder for All Users

What Is Microsoft PowerPoint?

Published: September 11, 2023

Modified: October 11, 2023

• Slide Design
• Microsoft Office

History of Microsoft PowerPoint

The history of Microsoft PowerPoint can be traced back to 1984 when it was first developed by a software company called Forethought Inc. Originally known as “Presenter,” the software was designed for creating presentations to be displayed on overhead projectors. It quickly gained popularity due to its user-friendly interface and intuitive features.

In 1987, Microsoft acquired Forethought Inc., and Presenter was rebranded as “PowerPoint” as a part of the Microsoft Office suite. With the rise of personal computers, PowerPoint emerged as the go-to presentation software for both business and educational purposes.

Over the years, Microsoft regularly introduced updates and new versions of PowerPoint, each offering improved functionalities and enhanced design features. With the release of PowerPoint 2000, the software started incorporating features such as animation effects, pre-designed templates, and multimedia integration, making presentations more engaging and dynamic.

The launch of PowerPoint 2003 brought significant improvements, including a redesigned interface and enhanced collaboration features. With PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft introduced the Office Open XML format, allowing for easier sharing and compatibility with other software applications.

PowerPoint 2010 saw the introduction of features like video embedding, improved text formatting options, and the ability to broadcast presentations online. PowerPoint 2013 further enhanced the software by introducing support for touch devices, improved multimedia capabilities, and an enhanced Presenter View for more seamless presentations.

In recent years, Microsoft has continued to update PowerPoint with modern features. With PowerPoint 2016, real-time collaboration and cloud integration were introduced, enabling team members to work together on presentations simultaneously. PowerPoint 2019 offers even more advanced features like morph transitions and the ability to insert 3D models into slides.

Today, PowerPoint is a staple in offices, classrooms, and conference rooms worldwide. It has become the standard software for creating visually compelling and informative presentations. With its ever-evolving tools and functionalities, PowerPoint remains a vital tool for professionals and educators to communicate their ideas effectively.

What is Microsoft PowerPoint?

Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful presentation software developed by Microsoft Corporation. It is a part of the Microsoft Office suite and is widely used for creating visually appealing and informative presentations. PowerPoint allows users to combine text, images, graphics, and multimedia elements to convey ideas and showcase information in a dynamic and engaging way.

With PowerPoint, users have the flexibility to create slideshows for various purposes, including business presentations, educational lectures, training sessions, sales pitches, and more. The software provides a range of tools and features that make it easy to design professional-looking presentations with minimal effort.

One of the key advantages of PowerPoint is its user-friendly interface, which allows even those with limited design or technical skills to create captivating presentations. The software provides a wide selection of pre-designed templates and themes that make it easy to create cohesive and visually appealing slides. Users can also customize the appearance of their slides by changing the color schemes, fonts, background images, and more.

PowerPoint offers a range of formatting options to help users organize and structure their presentations. Users can create bullet point lists, numbered lists, and subheadings to break down information and make it easier to understand. The software also provides alignment and spacing tools to ensure that the content on each slide is neatly arranged.

In addition to adding static content, PowerPoint allows users to incorporate multimedia elements into their presentations. Users can insert images, videos, audio clips, and even animated GIFs to add visual interest and enhance the overall impact of their slides. Moreover, PowerPoint provides a variety of animation and transition effects that can be applied to individual elements or entire slides, making the presentation more engaging and interactive.

Another notable feature of PowerPoint is its presentation mode, which allows users to deliver their slideshows in a professional manner. The software offers a Presenter View that displays the current slide, speaker notes, and a timer, helping presenters stay organized and on track during their presentation. Additionally, PowerPoint allows presenters to annotate their slides, zoom in on specific content, and switch between different slides seamlessly.

PowerPoint also provides options for sharing and collaborating on presentations. Users can save their presentations in various formats, including PowerPoint files, PDFs, and video formats, making it easy to distribute and share with others. Furthermore, PowerPoint integrates with cloud storage services like OneDrive and SharePoint, allowing for real-time collaboration and simultaneous editing by multiple users.

Overall, Microsoft PowerPoint is a versatile presentation software that empowers users to create compelling, well-structured, and visually impressive presentations. With its wide range of features and intuitive interface, PowerPoint remains a popular choice for professionals, educators, and students looking to effectively communicate their ideas and information to a larger audience.

Importance of Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint has become an essential tool for effective communication and presentation delivery in various domains. Its significance stems from the numerous advantages and benefits it offers to users, making it a popular choice among professionals, educators, and students alike.

One of the primary reasons for the importance of PowerPoint is its ability to enhance the visual impact of presentations. With its wide range of design options, users can create visually appealing slides that capture the attention of the audience. The use of images, graphics, charts, and multimedia elements not only makes the presentation more engaging but also aids in conveying complex information in a more accessible manner.

PowerPoint also helps in organizing information and structuring it in a logical manner. Users can create bulleted lists, subheadings, and slide transitions to create a seamless flow of content. This helps the audience understand and follow along with the presentation more effectively.

The software’s ease of use is another significant factor contributing to its importance. PowerPoint provides a user-friendly interface that allows even those with limited technical skills to create professional-looking presentations. The availability of pre-designed templates, formatting options, and design elements further simplifies the process of creating visually appealing slides.

In addition to creating slideshows, PowerPoint’s presentation mode is another crucial aspect of its importance. Presenters can utilize features like slide transitions, animations, and the Presenter View to deliver their presentations in a polished and organized manner. This ensures that the intended message is effectively communicated to the audience, enhancing the overall impact and impression of the presentation.

PowerPoint also offers the convenience of sharing and collaborating on presentations. Users can save their presentations in various formats, allowing easy sharing with others. Moreover, the integration with cloud storage services facilitates real-time collaboration, enabling multiple users to work on the same presentation simultaneously, irrespective of their geographical locations.

The importance of PowerPoint extends beyond traditional presentations. The software is frequently used in educational settings, enabling teachers to create interactive and engaging lessons. Students can also harness the power of PowerPoint to deliver engaging projects, showcase research findings, and present their ideas effectively.

Furthermore, PowerPoint serves as a valuable tool in professional environments, where its use extends to business presentations, sales pitches, and marketing campaigns. It helps professionals communicate their ideas, present data, and persuade clients or stakeholders more effectively.

In summary, Microsoft PowerPoint’s importance lies in its ability to enhance presentation delivery, convey information more effectively, and engage the audience. Its user-friendly interface, design options, and collaboration features make it an indispensable tool for professionals, educators, and students, enabling them to create visually appealing, well-organized, and impactful presentations.

Features of Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint offers a wide range of features and tools that empower users to create visually stunning and impactful presentations. With its intuitive interface and extensive capabilities, PowerPoint provides the necessary tools to engage the audience and effectively communicate ideas. Here are some key features of Microsoft PowerPoint:

• Pre-designed Templates: PowerPoint offers a vast library of pre-designed templates that enable users to create professional-looking presentations quickly. These templates provide a consistent design scheme and layout, ensuring that the presentation appears polished and cohesive.
• Slide Layouts: PowerPoint allows users to choose from a variety of slide layouts, including title slide, content slide, section header, and more. This feature facilitates the organization and structure of information, making it easier for the audience to follow along.
• Multimedia Integration: PowerPoint supports the integration of multimedia elements, such as images, videos, audio clips, and animations. Users can embed media files directly into their slides, enhancing the visual appeal and interactivity of the presentation.
• Animation and Transition Effects: To make presentations more engaging, PowerPoint provides a wide range of animation and transition effects. Users can apply these effects to individual elements or entire slides, creating dynamic and visually captivating presentations.
• Data Visualization: PowerPoint offers various chart and graph options to represent data visually. Users can create bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, and more, helping to present complex information in a more understandable and visually appealing format.
• Collaboration and Sharing: PowerPoint allows users to collaborate on presentations in real-time, enabling multiple users to work on the same presentation simultaneously. This feature streamlines teamwork and simplifies the review and editing process. Additionally, PowerPoint supports various file formats, making it easy to share presentations with others.
• Presenter View: When delivering a presentation, PowerPoint’s Presenter View provides a dedicated display for the presenter. It shows the current slide, speaker notes, and a timer, allowing presenters to stay organized and deliver the presentation smoothly.
• Design and Formatting Options: PowerPoint offers a wide range of design and formatting options, allowing users to customize the visual appearance of their presentations. Users can modify colors, fonts, backgrounds, and more, ensuring that the presentation matches their desired style and branding.
• Slide Master: The Slide Master feature allows users to define consistent formatting and design elements throughout the presentation. It ensures uniformity and saves time by applying changes to multiple slides simultaneously.
• Speaker Notes: PowerPoint allows presenters to add speaker notes to their slides. These notes serve as a helpful guide during the presentation, providing additional information or reminders to the presenter without being visible to the audience.

These are just a few of the many features that Microsoft PowerPoint offers. The software’s extensive capabilities and customizable options make it a versatile tool for creating engaging, informative, and visually impressive presentations.

How to Create a PowerPoint Presentation

Creating a PowerPoint presentation is a straightforward process that allows you to showcase information in a visually appealing and structured manner. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to create a PowerPoint presentation:

• Open PowerPoint: Launch the PowerPoint application on your computer. You can find it in the Microsoft Office suite or by searching for “PowerPoint” in the Start menu.
• Select a Template: Upon opening PowerPoint, you will be presented with a variety of pre-designed templates to choose from. Browse through the available options or search for specific themes. Select a template that suits the purpose and style of your presentation.
• Add New Slides: The template you selected will typically come with a title slide. To add new slides, click on the “New Slide” button located in the Home tab. Choose a slide layout that best suits the content you want to present, such as title, content, or section header.
• Add Content: Start adding content to your slides. Double-click on the text boxes provided in the slide layout and enter your text. You can use bullet points, numbered lists, headers, and subheadings to organize and structure your information.
• Insert Images and Media: To enhance the visual appeal of your presentation, insert images, videos, audio clips, or other multimedia elements. Click on the “Insert” tab and select the appropriate option. Choose files from your computer or use online resources to find relevant media.
• Format and Design: Customize and format your slides as desired. Use the formatting tools in the PowerPoint ribbon to modify the font styles, colors, backgrounds, and alignment of your text. Experiment with different design options to create a visually cohesive and engaging presentation.
• Add Animations and Transitions: To make your slides more dynamic, add animations and transitions. Select the slide or element you want to animate, navigate to the “Animations” tab, and choose from various effects. You can also add slide transitions to create seamless transitions between slides.
• Review and Edit: Go through your presentation to review and edit the content, ensuring accuracy and clarity. Make any necessary revisions to improve the flow and coherence of your presentation.
• Save and Share: Once you are satisfied with your presentation, save your work by clicking on the “Save” button. Choose a location on your computer or cloud storage to store the file. You can share your presentation by sending it as an attachment, uploading it to a file-sharing platform, or presenting it directly from PowerPoint.

By following these steps, you can create an engaging and informative PowerPoint presentation that effectively conveys your message and captivates your audience.

Adding Content to a PowerPoint Slide

Adding content to a PowerPoint slide is a fundamental step in creating an effective presentation. Each slide should contain concise and well-organized information that supports your overall message. Here’s a guide on how to add content to a PowerPoint slide:

• Select the Slide: Open your PowerPoint presentation and choose the slide where you want to add content. You can navigate through the slides using the navigation pane on the left or the slide thumbnails at the bottom of the interface.
• Text Boxes: PowerPoint provides predefined text boxes on each slide layout where you can enter your content. Click inside the text box to activate it and start typing. You can resize and reposition the text box by clicking and dragging its borders.
• Formatting Text: To format text, select the desired text or text box, and use the formatting options in the PowerPoint ribbon. You can change the font type, size, color, alignment, and add emphasis, such as bold, italic, or underline. Use these formatting tools to make your content more visually appealing and readable.
• Bullet Points: When presenting information in a list format, use bullet points or numbered lists. Click on the “Bulleted List” or “Numbered List” button in the Home tab to create a bulleted or numbered list. You can add or remove items by pressing Enter or Backspace respectively.
• Headers and Subheadings: To highlight important points or create sections within a slide, use headers and subheadings. Increase the font size and choose a different font style to differentiate the headers. This helps structure your content and make it easier for the audience to follow along.
• Graphics and Images: PowerPoint allows you to insert images or graphics to enhance your slide content. Click on the “Insert” tab, choose “Picture” or “Clip Art,” and browse your computer or online resources to find the desired image. Resize and reposition the image to fit your slide layout.
• Charts and Graphs: When presenting numerical data or trends, use charts and graphs to visualize your information. Click on the “Insert” tab, select the desired chart type (e.g., bar chart, line graph), and enter your data in the Excel-like spreadsheet. PowerPoint will generate the chart or graph for you, which you can customize further if needed.
• Other Multimedia: PowerPoint provides options to add other multimedia elements to your slides. You can insert audio or video files, create hyperlinks to external content, or embed online videos. These multimedia elements can enhance the interactivity and engagement of your presentation.
• Review and Edit: After adding content to a slide, review and revise your text to ensure accuracy, coherence, and brevity. Make sure your content supports your overall message and is easy to understand by the audience. Edit for clarity, grammar, and spelling errors to maintain a professional and polished presentation.

By following these steps, you can effectively add content to your PowerPoint slides, ensuring that your presentation is informative, visually appealing, and engaging to your audience.

Formatting Options in PowerPoint

PowerPoint offers a wide range of formatting options that allow you to customize the appearance of your slides, making them visually appealing and professional. Here are some key formatting options available in PowerPoint:

• Font Styles: PowerPoint provides various font styles to choose from, allowing you to change the look and feel of your text. You can change the font type, size, color, and emphasis (bold, italic, underline) to suit your design preferences.
• Text Alignment: PowerPoint enables you to align your text either to the left, right, center, or justify it. This option helps to create a consistent and organized appearance on your slide.
• Line Spacing and Indentation: Adjust line spacing and indentation to improve readability and structure your text. PowerPoint allows you to increase or decrease line spacing, and you can also apply indentation to create hierarchical or bulleted lists, making it easier for the audience to follow along.
• Color Schemes: PowerPoint provides predefined color schemes that you can apply to your slides. These schemes consist of complementary colors that help create a visually cohesive and appealing presentation. You can choose a color scheme that matches your branding or create a custom color palette.
• Backgrounds: Customize the background of your slides to enhance their visual impact. PowerPoint offers a variety of background options, including solid colors, gradients, patterns, and images. You can also opt for a transparent background to overlay your content on other elements.
• Shapes and Lines: PowerPoint allows you to add shapes and lines to your slides. You can use these tools to highlight important information, create flowcharts, or simply add visual interest. Customize the shape fill, outline color, and line style to match your presentation’s overall design.
• SmartArt: SmartArt is a powerful feature in PowerPoint that allows you to create professional-looking diagrams and illustrations. It provides pre-designed templates for various categories, such as hierarchical charts, matrices, and processes. Customize the colors, shapes, and text to communicate your information effectively.
• Tables: PowerPoint offers table options that enable you to present tabular data in a clear and organized manner. Create tables with rows and columns, adjust cell size, and apply formatting to highlight specific data points. You can also add borders and shading to enhance the table’s visual appeal.
• Slide Layout: PowerPoint provides multiple slide layouts to choose from, allowing you to organize your content effectively. Each layout offers different arrangements of titles, content, and images. By selecting the appropriate layout, you can present your information in a clear and visually pleasing manner.
• Slide Transitions: PowerPoint enables you to apply slide transitions to create smooth and professional transitions between slides. Choose from a variety of effects, such as fade, slide, or dissolve, to add visual interest without distracting the audience.

These formatting options give you the flexibility to customize your presentation’s visual elements, making it more engaging and impactful. Experiment with different formatting techniques to create a professional and polished presentation that effectively communicates your message.

Using PowerPoint Templates and Themes

PowerPoint templates and themes provide a convenient and efficient way to create visually appealing and cohesive presentations. These pre-designed layouts and styles offer a consistent look and feel throughout your slides, saving you time and effort. Here’s how you can effectively use PowerPoint templates and themes:

Choosing a Template: When creating a new PowerPoint presentation, you will be presented with a variety of templates to choose from. Browse through the available options or search for specific themes. Templates can range from professional designs to creative and playful styles. Select a template that aligns with your presentation’s purpose, audience, and overall visual preferences.

Applying a Template: After selecting a template, PowerPoint will automatically apply it to your slides. However, if you want to apply a different template to your presentation, navigate to the “Design” tab and choose another template from the available options. PowerPoint will update your slides with the new template while retaining the content you have already added.

Customizing a Template: While templates provide a consistent design scheme, you can still customize them to match your branding or personal style. PowerPoint offers options to modify various elements within the template. For example, you can change the color scheme by selecting a different color variant or creating a custom color palette. You can also modify fonts, backgrounds, and layout options to suit your specific needs.

Adding Content to Template Slides: Once you have applied a template, you can start adding your content to the slides. Each slide in the template will have predefined placeholders for text, images, and other content elements. Simply click on the respective placeholders and enter your text or insert your images. Take advantage of the template’s layout and design to structure your content effectively.

Duplicating and Editing Slide Layouts: Sometimes, you may need to customize a specific slide layout within the template to better suit your content. PowerPoint allows you to duplicate and edit slide layouts. Right-click on a slide and choose “Duplicate Layout” to create a copy of the layout. You can then edit the duplicated layout by repositioning, resizing, or adding new content elements to better accommodate your specific information.

Creating Your Custom Template: If you have a certain design or layout that you frequently use, you can create your own custom template in PowerPoint. Start by designing a few slides with the desired layout, formatting, and content elements. Then, save the slides as a template by going to “File” > “Save As” > “PowerPoint Template”. This custom template can be used for future presentations, saving you time and ensuring consistency in your visual design.

Using PowerPoint templates and themes is a simple yet effective way to create visually appealing and consistent presentations. By choosing and customizing templates to fit your content and style, you can create professional-looking slideshows that engage your audience and effectively convey your information.

Adding Animations and Transitions in PowerPoint

Adding animations and transitions to your PowerPoint slides can bring them to life, making your presentation more engaging and visually appealing. Animations allow you to add movement and dynamic effects to individual slide elements, while transitions provide seamless visual connections between slides. Here’s how to effectively incorporate animations and transitions into your PowerPoint presentation:

Adding Animations: To add animations to your PowerPoint slide elements, follow these steps:

• Select the element you want to animate, such as text, images, shapes, or charts.
• Navigate to the “Animations” tab in the PowerPoint ribbon.
• Choose the desired animation effect from the available options. PowerPoint offers a wide range of entrance, exit, emphasis, and motion path effects.
• Customize the animation settings by selecting options like duration, start delay, and trigger events. This allows you to control when and how the animation occurs.
• Preview the animation to ensure it delivers the desired effect. Use the “Preview” button in the “Animations” tab to see how the animation will appear in your presentation.
• Repeat the process to add animations to other slide elements as needed.

Applying Transitions: Transitions help create smooth visual connections between slides, enhancing the overall flow of your presentation. Here’s how to apply transitions to your PowerPoint slides:

• Select the slide to which you want to apply a transition.
• Navigate to the “Transitions” tab in the PowerPoint ribbon.
• Choose the desired transition effect from the available options. PowerPoint provides a variety of transitions, such as fade, zoom, dissolve, and slide.
• Customize the transition settings by adjusting options like duration, sound effects, and direction. This allows you to tailor the transition to your desired timing and visual style.
• Preview the transition by selecting the slide and clicking the “Preview” button in the “Transitions” tab. This allows you to see how the transition will appear in your presentation.
• Repeat the process to apply transitions to other slides in your presentation.

Using Animation and Transition Combinations: PowerPoint allows you to combine different animations and transitions to create more engaging and dynamic presentations. Experiment with combining entrance animations with emphasis animations to draw attention to specific slide elements. Consider using appropriate transitions between slides to maintain a smooth and seamless flow throughout your presentation. However, remember to avoid excessive or distracting animations that can hinder the audience’s understanding or focus.

Timing and Sequence: While adding animations and transitions, it’s essential to consider the timing and sequence of their occurrence. Ensure that animations and transitions are synchronized with your content and pacing. You can adjust the timing of animations using options like “Start With Previous” or “Start After Previous” in the Animation Pane. Similarly, sequence the transitions between slides to maintain a logical and coherent progression.

By adding animations and transitions to your PowerPoint slides, you can create visually engaging presentations that captivate your audience and effectively convey your message. However, it’s important to use animations and transitions sparingly and purposefully, ensuring they enhance rather than distract from the content of your presentation.

Presenting a PowerPoint Slideshow

Presenting a PowerPoint slideshow is an opportunity to engage your audience and effectively deliver your message. By following these steps, you can deliver a polished and professional presentation:

Prepare and Rehearse: Before presenting, familiarize yourself with your slides and rehearse the delivery. Understand the flow of the presentation, practice your speaking points, and ensure that the timing of animations, transitions, and slide changes aligns with your content.

Set up the Presentation: Make sure the equipment and environment are properly set up before starting your slideshow. Check the projector, screen, and audio connections. Adjust the lighting and ensure that the room is conducive to a comfortable and focused audience experience.

Presenter View: Utilize PowerPoint’s Presenter View, which provides a dedicated screen for the presenter. This view displays the current slide, speaker notes, and a timer. It helps you stay organized, stay on track, and have an overview of your slides while presenting.

Engage the Audience: Maintain eye contact and speak clearly to captivate your audience. Use expressive gestures and body language to emphasize key points. Encourage audience participation through questions, interactions, or activities to keep them engaged and involved.

Use Speaker Notes: Take advantage of the speaker notes feature in PowerPoint. These notes can act as a guide and reminders to keep you on track during the presentation. Keep them concise and use them to prompt key points or additional information that might be beneficial to share with the audience.

Navigate Seamlessly: Familiarize yourself with the navigation options in PowerPoint. Use the spacebar, arrow keys, or clicker to move through the slides smoothly. Take note of the slide numbers or titles to easily jump to specific slides if needed.

Timing and Pacing: Maintain an appropriate pace throughout the presentation, giving the audience time to absorb the information. Ensure that animations, transitions, and slide changes are well-timed to enhance understanding and engagement. Be mindful of the allotted time and adjust your speed accordingly.

Visual Aids and Props: Enhance your presentation with visual aids, props, or handouts, if applicable. These can include printed materials, models, or physical objects that reinforce your message and help convey complex ideas or concepts.

Engage with Q&A: Allocate time for questions and answers at the end of your presentation. Encourage participants to ask questions or seek clarification on any points. Be prepared to answer inquiries confidently and with clarity.

Audience Follow-up: Consider providing additional resources or contact information for the audience to follow up with you after the presentation. This can be in the form of a handout, a slide at the end of your slideshow, or a shared link to relevant materials.

By following these guidelines, you can present your PowerPoint slideshow confidently and effectively. Engage your audience, deliver your message with clarity, and create a memorable and impactful experience for everyone involved.

Sharing and Collaborating on PowerPoint Presentations

Sharing and collaborating on PowerPoint presentations is made easy with the extensive features and sharing options provided by PowerPoint and other collaborative tools. Whether you need to work with colleagues, share your presentation with clients, or collaborate with classmates on a project, PowerPoint offers several methods to facilitate seamless collaboration. Here’s how you can share and collaborate on PowerPoint presentations effectively:

1. Save and Share: Save your PowerPoint presentation in a format that is suitable for sharing, such as .pptx or .pdf. You can save the file locally on your computer or on cloud storage platforms, such as OneDrive or Google Drive, to ensure easy access and collaboration from anywhere.

2. Email or File Sharing: The simplest way to share a PowerPoint presentation is by email or file sharing services. Attach the presentation file to an email and send it to your desired recipients. Alternatively, you can use file sharing platforms like Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive to share a link to the presentation file.

3. Collaboration Tools: Utilize online collaboration tools that integrate with PowerPoint, such as Microsoft Office 365’s PowerPoint Online or Google Slides. These platforms enable real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to work on the same presentation simultaneously. Changes are automatically saved and synced across all devices.

4. Co-Authoring: If you are using cloud storage platforms like OneDrive or Google Drive, you can enable co-authoring, which allows multiple users to edit the PowerPoint presentation simultaneously. Each person’s changes are updated in real-time, ensuring efficient collaboration and avoiding conflicting versions of the presentation.

5. Commenting and Reviewing: PowerPoint provides commenting and reviewing features that allow collaborators to provide feedback and suggestions. Users can insert comments on specific slides or elements, and others can reply, providing a structured way to discuss and address revisions in the presentation.

6. Version Control: When collaborating on a PowerPoint presentation, it’s essential to have version control to keep track of changes. If multiple users are working on the same file, it’s helpful to establish a clear version naming convention or use the built-in version control features of the collaboration platform.

7. Presentation Sharing: When you need to present your PowerPoint slides to an audience remotely, you can use screen sharing tools or web conferencing platforms. Share your screen with participants, and they will be able to see your presentation in real-time, even if they are not physically present.

8. Protecting and Restricting Access: If you need to limit access to your PowerPoint presentation, you can set permissions and restrict editing rights. This ensures that only authorized individuals can view and modify the content, maintaining confidentiality and control over your presentation.

9. Offline Collaboration: For situations where an internet connection may not be available, you can still collaborate offline by using features like “Track Changes” or sharing the presentation file through portable storage devices like USB drives.

10. Backup and Regular Saving: To avoid any potential loss of work, it is important to regularly save your PowerPoint presentation and maintain a backup copy. This ensures that in case of any unforeseen events or technical issues, you can recover your work without much disruption.

By leveraging these sharing and collaboration methods, you can work together effectively with others on PowerPoint presentations, whether it’s for business meetings, educational projects, or creative endeavors. Collaborative features enable a seamless exchange of ideas, feedback, and revisions, leading to a more cohesive and refined final presentation.

Tips and Tricks for Effective PowerPoint Presentations

Creating an effective PowerPoint presentation involves more than just adding text and images to slides. To deliver a compelling and impactful presentation, consider these tips and tricks:

• Keep it Simple: Avoid cluttered slides and dense text. Use concise bullet points and emphasize key messages to maintain audience engagement and readability.
• Limit text on each slide: Use the 6×6 rule, which suggests a maximum of six bullet points with six words per bullet point. This ensures that your audience can process the information quickly.
• Use visuals effectively: Incorporate relevant and high-quality visuals, such as images, graphs, and charts, to enhance understanding and engage the audience. Ensure that visuals support your message and are displayed clearly.
• Design for readability: Choose fonts that are easy to read, even from a distance. Use contrasting colors for text and background to ensure legibility.
• Use appropriate animations and transitions: Animate text and objects sparingly and purposefully to highlight key points and maintain audience interest. Choose transitions that are smooth and support the flow of your presentation.
• Practice your delivery: Rehearse your presentation in advance to ensure a smooth and confident delivery. Familiarize yourself with the slides, timing, and transitions to avoid pauses or fumbling during the presentation.
• Engage with the audience: Maintain eye contact, use gestures, and speak clearly and confidently. Involve the audience by asking questions, encouraging participation, and incorporating interactive elements when appropriate.
• Tell a story: Structure your presentation as a narrative to make it more memorable and engaging. Introduce a problem or challenge, provide solutions, and conclude with a strong call to action or key takeaway.
• Know your audience: Tailor your presentation to the needs and interests of your audience. Understand their level of knowledge and adjust the content and language accordingly.
• Practice visual consistency: Use consistent fonts, colors, and design elements throughout your presentation to create a cohesive and professional look. This helps maintain brand consistency and reinforces your message.
• Make use of white space: Use white space effectively to give your content room to breathe and make it easier for the audience to focus on the key elements of each slide.
• Consider accessibility: Use descriptive and alternative text for images to make your presentation accessible to individuals with visual impairments. Ensure that your content is easy to understand for all audience members.
• Manage time effectively: Stick to your allocated time frame and pace your presentation accordingly. Avoid rushing or speaking too slowly, and be mindful of the time while delivering your message and engaging with the audience.

By incorporating these tips and tricks into your PowerPoint presentations, you can create engaging, informative, and impactful slideshows that effectively communicate your message and leave a lasting impression on your audience.

Alternatives to Microsoft PowerPoint

While Microsoft PowerPoint is a widely used and highly capable presentation software, there are several alternatives available that offer unique features and functionalities. Here are some notable alternatives to Microsoft PowerPoint:

• Google Slides: As part of the Google Workspace suite, Google Slides provides a cloud-based platform for creating and collaborating on presentations. It offers many of the same features as PowerPoint, including templates, animations, and slide transitions. The real-time collaboration feature allows multiple users to work on the same presentation simultaneously.
• Prezi: Prezi offers a dynamic and non-linear approach to presentations. It allows users to create zooming and panning effects, creating an immersive and cinematic experience. Prezi offers a vast library of templates and the ability to collaborate with others in real-time.
• Keynote: Developed by Apple, Keynote is a presentation software specifically designed for Mac and iOS devices. It offers stunning templates, excellent graphics, and seamless integration with other Apple products. Keynote supports animations, transitions, and multimedia elements, allowing users to create visually impressive presentations.
• Canva: While Canva is primarily known as a graphic design tool, it also offers a presentation feature. Canva provides a wide range of professionally designed templates and an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. It allows users to create visually appealing presentations with ease, incorporating images, icons, charts, and other design elements.
• Slides.com: Slides.com is an online presentation tool that focuses on design and collaboration. It offers a comprehensive set of tools for creating beautiful presentations and supports real-time collaboration with teammates. Slides.com also includes advanced features like code embedding and interactive presentations.
• Powtoon: If you want to create animated and engaging presentations, Powtoon is an excellent choice. It allows users to create animated videos and presentations using a wide range of customizable templates, characters, and animations. Powtoon is ideal for storytelling and explaining complex concepts in a dynamic and visually appealing way.
• Haiku Deck: Haiku Deck specializes in simplicity and visual storytelling. It offers a minimalist design approach with beautiful templates, high-quality imagery, and limited text per slide. Haiku Deck is perfect for creating visually stunning presentations that focus on impactful images and concise messaging.

These alternative presentation software options provide flexibility, unique features, and varying levels of user-friendliness. Depending on your specific needs and preferences, these alternatives can offer a refreshing approach to creating captivating and effective presentations. Explore and experiment with different tools to find the one that best suits your presentation style and requirements.

Related Stories

PPS File (What It Is & How To Open One)

How To Update PowerPoint On Windows And Mac

How To Save LibreOffice Files In Microsoft Office Format

How To Get PowerPoint On A Mac

Hyperlinks, Bookmarks, And Cross-References In Microsoft Office

How To Use Microsoft’s Free PowerPoint Viewers

Link Data In Excel, Word, And PowerPoint With Paste Link

What Is A PPSX File?

The Brilliance of Smart Lighting: Residential to Commercial Benefits

Enhancing Employee Integration for Efficiency

Understanding SA Interest Rates

Revolutionizing Lead Generation: How Software Solutions Are Redefining Sales Strategies

The Benefits of E-Transfer Loans

Top 100 Christmas Songs for the Best Christmas Music

The Life and Career of Dean Haglund: A Journey from Canada to the Paranormal and Beyond

16 Best Ad Blocker For Every Browser and Device

Different Types of Aesthetics: 30 Outfit Ideas to Step Up Your OOTD Game

Monopoly Man Monocle and 10 Other Popular Examples of the Mandela Effect

5 reasons why PowerPoint is so popular

PowerPoint still the most popular presentation software tool

29 million over 16s in the UK have, at some stage, created a presentation. Whether it was on the topic of class divides in George Orwell’s Animal Farm that they read at school, a complex client pitch at a leading law firm or anything in between. This accounts for more than half of the UK population. So it’s no surprise that there’s high demand for good quality presentation software and training.

And the most popular presentation tool of all is… you guessed it - PowerPoint. Acuity Training’s recent survey found that 37% of Brits have used PowerPoint at some stage, making it by far the most popular presentation software package available.

But what are the benefits of Microsoft PowerPoint? Why is it so popular? And will it soon be replaced by the likes of Google Slides, Microsoft Sway, Visme and Keynote? Let’s get into it.

Ben Richardson is the owner and director of Acuity Training.

Compatibility

One of the biggest reasons why PowerPoint became and has remained so popular over the years is thanks to its seamless compatibility with a vast array of devices and operating systems . PowerPoint presentations can be created, accessed and edited on both Windows and Apple products. They can also be easily shared and on various devices and platforms without losing their formatting or functionality. Users can transfer their presentations to smartphones , tablets , and even web browsers , enabling them to deliver their presentations anytime, anywhere.

Ease of use

PowerPoint's user-friendly interface makes it exceptionally easy to use, catering to both technical and non-technical users alike. The software's intuitive design and features give users the freedom to craft professional-looking presentations effortlessly. One of PowerPoint's standout characteristics is its drag-and-drop functionality. Users can simply select elements such as text boxes, images, shapes, and multimedia files and easily position them on slides with a simple click and drag. This eliminates the need for complex coding or advanced technical skills, allowing users to focus on content creation rather than technical intricacies. Its pre-designed layouts and templates do all of the hard work for you, allowing you to create professional looking decks with ease.

Visual messaging capabilities

Gone are the days of stuffed slides filled with bullet pointed lists or large chunks of text. When used well, PowerPoint’s SmartArt graphics are your best friend when it comes to creating appealing diagrams and flowcharts to make content that’s slick and easy to understand. While the built-in spell check and grammar correction features help with readability and cohesion. Research has consistently found that the human brain processes and understands visual information more efficiently and effectively compared to text alone, so PowerPoint’s visual capabilities are likely to play a significant role in enhancing retention of information in presentations.

Collaboration

PowerPoint's real-time co-authoring feature has transformed the way teams collaborate when making presentations. It allows multiple users to work on the same presentation simultaneously, regardless of their physical location. Users can add comments, make edit suggestions, and chat with one another on the slides themselves, making teamwork and collaboration a breeze. This is now more important than ever, with so many remote and hybrid workers needing to work together on projects with as little distribution as possible.

Professional spheres

In today’s professional landscape, PowerPoint experience and/or qualifications tend to be a prerequisite in a multitude of industries. From marketing to finance, education to healthcare, and beyond, proficiency in the software allows you to quickly and easily use any new company’s existing templates and layouts and to work effectively within their teams, whilst also adhering to brand guidelines.

There’s little question as to why PowerPoint is the most popular presentation software in the UK. And its position as one of the best presentation software tools is very well-deserved. Other presentation tools such as Google Slides and Visme have gained traction in recent years, and do have growing user bases. But time and time again, PowerPoint remains the go-to for so many of us, and it’s no surprise given its rich set of features, user-friendly interface, and reputable presence across many industries.

PowerPoint’s latest features

So what’s new in PowerPoint? Here are some of my favorite new features.

Power BI Features 

In March this year, Microsoft launched a new PowerPoint add-in that enables seamless integration with Power BI reports. With this update, users can effortlessly incorporate individual visuals into their reports, leveraging the Smart Insights tool to enhance the informational value of presentations. This has reportedly had a major impact on productivity amongst users, helping them to make their presentations more informative and engaging in far less time.

Agenda Wizard

One of PowerPoint’s latest features is Agenda Wizard. This allows you to quickly and easily generate agendas or numbered content table slides, as well as synchronizing any updates and changes to these with just the click of a button. You can also save these format layouts to reuse in the future, or choose from a range of pre-existing options.

What’s in store for the future of PowerPoint?

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it's planning on bringing AI to PowerPoint via a new "Copilot" feature. This should enable users to use natural language to instruct PowerPoint to create full presentations on a topic of their choosing. They’ve said this feature will even be able to use other documents as a reference for information and inspiration, much like tools such as ChatGPT and AI art generators.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there have been some initial concerns about the role of AI in content creation. But Microsoft has emphasised that the Copilot feature has been specifically designed to collaborate with users, as opposed to replacing them. It’ll be fascinating to see how these features continue to complement our communication and content creation efforts going forward into 2024 and beyond, and to discover just what the future holds for presentation software tools as we know them.

We've featured the best productivity tool.

Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!

Ben Richardson is the owner and director of Acuity Training, which provides corporate IT application (Microsoft, Adobe, AutoCAD) training across the UK both online and in person.

WD launches enormous 4TB SD card for creative pros — smashes world record for largest removable memory card to smithereens at twice the capacity of biggest microSD cards

An incredible $100 billion bet to get rid of Nvidia dependence — tech experts reckon Microsoft will build a million-server strong data center that will primarily use critical inhouse components

Intel unveils flurry of new Arc GPUs — however serious graphics users will have to wait for more powerful models, as these focus on a completely different and more lucrative market

Most Popular

• 2 You took amazing smartphone eclipse photos, but reminded me why I didn't use Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra's 100x Space Zoom
• 3 Windows 11 users are getting fed up with the performance of the OS – including an ex-Microsoft senior engineer
• 4 One of the best OLED TVs you can buy drops to a stunning price of $996 at Amazon
• 5 Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial move in Windows 11 – having Copilot appear immediately after startup
• 2 I swapped my Apple Watch for a vintage Casio Chronograph – here are 8 surprising things I learned
• 3 5 must-have features to future-proof your first or next EV purchase
• 4 Android phones finally get their first AirTag-style trackers – here's how they work
• 5 7 new movies and TV shows to stream on Netflix, Prime Video, Max, and more this weekend (April 12)

All Formats

Microsoft Office

Microsoft powerpoint.

Microsoft PowerPoint software, since 1987, replaced the traditional old slide projectors with a high-end slideshow presentation program. This virtual presentation program coined by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin brings users the power to create and share presentations in multimedia, and eventually, became a staple graphic information presenter tool for any business, corporate enterprise, educational organization, group, or individual.

Download the Free Microsoft PowerPoint Article in PDF

What is microsoft powerpoint, microsoft powerpoint definition, features of microsoft powerpoint, design ideas, slide transitions, merge shapes, powerpoint notes, morph transition, removing image background, video editing, audio narration, slide comments.

Microsoft PowerPoint – Uses, Purposes, Importance

Custom slides, texts, and animations, premium designs, online or real-time access, accessible and shareable features, print presentations, presentations for any purpose, microsoft powerpoint parts, quick access toolbar, outline or slide tab, ppt help system, microsoft powerpoint vs. publisher.

Microsoft PowerPoint Tips and Tricks

Import a word file to powerpoint, make a poster in powerpoint, download microsoft powerpoint for free, add audio in microsoft powerpoint, access slide master view in microsoft powerpoint, update microsoft powerpoint, add bullet points in microsoft powerpoint, add fonts to microsoft powerpoint, cite microsoft powerpoint presentation, print microsoft powerpoint slides with notes, convert google slides to microsoft powerpoint, save microsoft powerpoint as pdf, update microsoft powerpoint on mac, create animations in microsoft powerpoint, recover deleted files from microsoft powerpoint, upload microsoft powerpoint to youtube, add gif to microsoft powerpoint, compress microsoft powerpoint file, draw in microsoft powerpoint, highlight text in microsoft powerpoint, do hanging indent on microsoft powerpoint, flip a picture in microsoft powerpoint, add a text box in microsoft powerpoint, loop microsoft powerpoint, make a booklet in microsoft powerpoint, change spacing between bullets microsoft powerpoint, build a brochure in microsoft powerpoint, color match in microsoft powerpoint, convert apple keynote to microsoft powerpoint, insert subscript in microsoft powerpoint, edit chart in microsoft powerpoint, email microsoft powerpoint, do a crossword puzzle in microsoft powerpoint, insert a link in microsoft powerpoint, use microsoft office powerpoint, what is a ribbon in powerpoint, what is powerpoint autosave, how many tabs are there in powerpoint, what is a powerpoint theme, which key is used to stop a powerpoint presentation, what is the powerpoint layout, what does the f5 key do in powerpoint, how many shortcuts are there in powerpoint, what are gridlines in powerpoint, what are the common effects of powerpoint, what are powerpoint transitions, more in microsoft office.

• Microsoft Word + ChatGPT
• Microsoft Teams + ChatGPT
• Microsoft Outlook + ChatGPT
• Microsoft PowerPoint + ChatGPT
• Microsoft Excel + ChatGPT
• Microsoft Copilot + ChatGPT
• How to Create a Microsoft Form in SharePoint
• How to Change Language in Microsoft SharePoint
• How to Connect Access with Microsoft SharePoint
• How to Extend Microsoft Visio 2010 Trial
• How To Create Fillable Forms in Microsoft Word
• How to Send Notifications to SharePoint User Group
• How Does Microsoft Visio Relate to Network Documentation
• How to Build/Publish in Microsoft SharePoint
• How to Check Microsoft Visio Product Key

File Formats

Word templates, google docs templates, excel templates, powerpoint templates, google sheets templates, google slides templates, pdf templates, publisher templates, psd templates, indesign templates, illustrator templates, pages templates, keynote templates, numbers templates, outlook templates.

Why Was PowerPoint Created? Exploring the Origins of This Presentation Software

PowerPoint has become a ubiquitous tool for creating presentations for both educational and business purposes.

Its hard to imagine a world without it, but it wasnt always that way.

In this article, well explore the history of this presentation software and how it revolutionized presentations, as well as the types of presentations created in PowerPoint, its impact on education and business, and its future.

Lets dive in and explore the origins of PowerPoint and its ongoing impact on the world.

Table of Contents

Short Answer

PowerPoint was created by Microsoft in 1987 as a way to help people create multimedia presentations.

It quickly became one of the most popular presentation tools and is now used to create everything from business presentations to academic projects.

PowerPoint provides a variety of tools such as text, graphics, sound, and video, allowing users to create dynamic presentations.

It is a great tool for making presentations more engaging and interactive.

The Rise of Microsoft Office

Microsoft PowerPoint wasnt created in a vacuum.

Its history is deeply intertwined with the development of the Microsoft Office suite.

Microsoft Office began in 1983 with the release of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Multiplan.

The Microsoft Office suite continued to grow over the years with the addition of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint.

The reason for the creation of Microsoft Office was to provide a comprehensive suite of software tools to enable users to more easily create powerful documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Microsoft PowerPoint was created in 1987 as a way to help users create dynamic visual presentations.

It was the last piece of the Microsoft Office puzzle, and it proved to be instrumental in revolutionizing the way people communicate ideas and information.

Since its release, Microsoft PowerPoint has become a staple in many educational and professional settings.

It has been used for lectures, demonstrations, and presentations, and is widely considered to be the most popular presentation software available.

The introduction of PowerPoint has made it easier than ever before for individuals to create professional-looking slideshows and presentations.

Microsoft PowerPoint was created with the intention of making it easier for users to communicate information visually.

It was a revolutionary step forward for presentation software, and it helped to usher in a new era of information sharing.

With its intuitive user interface and powerful features, PowerPoint has become one of the most popular presentation tools available.

The History of PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint was created in 1987 as part of the Microsoft Office suite as a presentation program to help users create dynamic visual presentations.

The program was initially developed by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin, two software engineers at Forethought, Inc.

who sought to create a way to easily create and display presentations.

The program was first released in 1987 and quickly became a popular tool for businesses and educational settings, as it allowed for the display of text, images, videos, and more in an organized and visually appealing way.

It was also seen as a more interesting alternative to the traditional chalkboard or overhead projector presentations.

PowerPoint quickly gained a reputation for being an easy-to-use and effective presentation tool, and over the years, its features have expanded and improved drastically.

It is now used by millions of people worldwide for lectures, demonstrations, and presentations.

Additionally, PowerPoint is often used as a creative tool for making art, and its features have been adapted for use in video editing, game design, and more.

Since its inception, PowerPoint has become a staple in the professional and educational worlds, and has revolutionized the way we communicate ideas and information.

Today, PowerPoint remains one of the most popular presentation programs on the market, and its impact on the world of communication is undeniable.

How PowerPoint Revolutionized Presentations

PowerPoint revolutionized presentations when it was first released in 1987 as part of the Microsoft Office suite.

It allowed users to create dynamic visual presentations with the aid of a computer, rather than using paper and pen.

It allowed users to display text, images, videos, and more in an organized and visually appealing way.

This opened up a whole new world of communication for both educational and professional settings, as it made it easier to present ideas and information in a more engaging way than ever before.

The software allowed users to add animations and transitions to slides, making presentations much more dynamic and engaging than traditional methods.

It also enabled users to create custom slide shows with multiple slides, allowing for much more detailed presentations.

PowerPoint was also one of the first programs to use hyperlinks, which allowed users to easily connect related ideas and expand their presentations.

Since its introduction, PowerPoint has become a staple of many classrooms and businesses around the world.

It is widely used for lectures, demonstrations, and presentations, and has become an invaluable tool for communicating ideas and information.

Its ease of use and wide range of features have made it one of the most popular presentation software programs on the market.

Types of Presentations Created in PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint has become a popular choice for creating presentations, both in the professional and educational spheres.

This program has revolutionized how we communicate ideas and information, as it allows users to create dynamic and visually appealing slideshows.

With PowerPoint, users can quickly and easily create slides that incorporate text, images, videos, and more.

PowerPoint presentations are used for a variety of purposes, ranging from lectures and demonstrations to marketing and sales presentations.

In the classroom, PowerPoint is often used to make lessons more engaging and easier to understand, while in the business world, it is used to convey detailed information to clients and colleagues.

It is also used to create professional-looking slideshows that can be used for webinars, videos, and other digital presentations.

PowerPoint also allows users to create dynamic presentations that can be used for product launches, conferences, and other events.

With the right design features, users can create slides that will capture the attention of their audience and keep them engaged.

PowerPoint also has a variety of templates and themes that can be used to make presentations look more professional and polished.

Overall, PowerPoint is an incredibly useful tool for creating presentations of any kind.

With its wide range of features, it is easy to create dynamic and visually appealing slideshows that will engage any audience.

Whether its for the classroom, the workplace, or a special event, PowerPoint is the go-to choice for creating visually stunning presentations.

The Impact of PowerPoint in Education

PowerPoint has been a game-changer in the world of education since its inception in 1987.

It has revolutionized how teachers and students share and present information, allowing them to create dynamic visuals and presentations that engage and inform.

As a result, PowerPoint has become an essential tool in the classroom, used for lectures, demonstrations, and presentations.

PowerPoint has made it easier for educators to illustrate complex concepts and ideas to students, allowing them to grasp difficult topics more easily.

It also allows teachers to bring their lessons to life by incorporating multimedia elements, such as videos, images, and audio clips, into their presentations.

Furthermore, PowerPoint has helped teachers keep track of their students’ progress with the use of quizzes and surveys, allowing them to tailor their lessons to the individual needs of their students.

The use of PowerPoint has also made it easier for students to prepare for exams and assignments.

With the ability to create slideshows and presentations, students can easily organize their notes and research into a visually appealing format.

This makes it easier for them to remember key concepts and topics, and also makes it easier for them to present their findings in a more organized and professional manner.

In addition, PowerPoint has become a great way for students to collaborate on projects.

With the ability to share presentations and collaborate in real-time, students can easily work together to create a comprehensive presentation.

This helps to foster collaboration and creativity in the classroom, and makes it easier for students to work together to come up with innovative solutions to problems.

Overall, PowerPoint has been a revolutionary tool in the world of education.

It has made it easier for teachers and students to communicate and share information, and has helped make learning more engaging and effective.

The Impact of PowerPoint in Business

The impact of PowerPoint in the business world has been immense since its creation.

From boardroom meetings to corporate presentations, PowerPoint has become an essential tool for conveying information and ideas.

The program’s ability to combine text, images, videos, and other multimedia elements into a cohesive visual presentation has made it easy for professionals to quickly and effectively communicate their message.

From PowerPoint slides to interactive presentations, the program has become an invaluable tool for businesses of all sizes.

The use of PowerPoint has enabled businesses to create presentations that are more engaging and interactive.

With its array of features, businesses have been able to create presentations that are more visually appealing and easier to understand.

This has allowed them to quickly and effectively convey their ideas and information to colleagues and clients.

PowerPoint has also become a powerful tool for training, as it allows businesses to create interactive tutorials that are easy to follow.

The impact of PowerPoint on the business world is undeniable.

It has revolutionized how people communicate ideas and information, and has become a staple in many educational and professional settings.

From boardroom meetings to presentations, PowerPoint has made it easier for businesses of all sizes to quickly and effectively convey their message.

With its array of features, businesses have been able to create presentations that are more engaging and interactive, enabling them to quickly and effectively communicate their ideas and information to colleagues and clients.

The Future of PowerPoint

The future of PowerPoint looks bright, with continued development and innovation from Microsoft.

With the introduction of the subscription-based Office 365, users now have access to new features and updates for their PowerPoint presentations, making it easier than ever to create dynamic and engaging presentations.

In addition, PowerPoint now has the capability to embed videos from YouTube and other video streaming services, allowing users to easily include multimedia content in their presentations.

Furthermore, PowerPoint also provides a wide range of themes and templates to make creating professional-looking presentations quick and easy.

As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, PowerPoint will continue to evolve and become even more powerful and user-friendly.

With the ever-growing popularity of virtual meetings and conferences, PowerPoint is the perfect tool to help users create engaging presentations that will capture the attention of their audiences.

Final Thoughts

The creation of Microsoft PowerPoint revolutionized how ideas and information are presented and shared.

From its beginnings as a part of the Microsoft Office suite in 1987, PowerPoint has become a staple in both education and business settings, allowing users to create dynamic and visually appealing presentations.

As PowerPoint continues to evolve, its impact on the way people communicate will only become more profound.

So, the next time you create a presentation in PowerPoint, remember the origins of this powerful presentation software and the ways it has changed the way we communicate.

James Wilson

James Wilson has extensive knowledge in the information technology industry.His second love, besides dealing with computers, is smart home technology. He is continually updating information to better comprehend this problem and has a deep understanding of the apartment’s support system.

Recent Posts

Can You Create a Poll in Microsoft Outlook Email? Here's How!

Do you want to get feedback from your contacts quickly and efficiently? If so, then creating a poll in Microsoft Outlook email is the perfect solution! Polls are a great way to quickly collect data...

How To Fix Microsoft Outlook Cannot Connect To Server? (Here's The Solution)

Have you ever experienced the frustration of not being able to connect to your Microsoft Outlook server? It can be a major inconvenience when you need access to your emails, and it can be hard to...

• Web Services
• Interview Q

PowerPoint Tutorial

Presentation basics, text basics, inserting picture, working with tables, working with charts, slide effects, shortcut keys.

• Send your Feedback to [email protected]

Help Others, Please Share

Learn Latest Tutorials

Transact-SQL

Reinforcement Learning

R Programming

React Native

Python Design Patterns

Python Pillow

Python Turtle

Preparation

Verbal Ability

Interview Questions

Company Questions

Trending Technologies

Artificial Intelligence

Cloud Computing

Data Science

Machine Learning

B.Tech / MCA

Data Structures

Operating System

Computer Network

Compiler Design

Computer Organization

Discrete Mathematics

Ethical Hacking

Computer Graphics

Software Engineering

Web Technology

Cyber Security

C Programming

Control System

Data Mining

Data Warehouse

What is powerpoint (PPT)

Pro Tier Benefits

Plus Tier Benefits

Elite Tier Benefits

Lenovo Pro  Business Store

Sign Up/ Log In >

About Lenovo Pro >

Lenovo Education

About Education Store >

option #1 for BUSINESS:

{{SalesNumber}}

option #2 for HOME:

{{SmallBusinessNumber}}

Chat Now >

Visit Sales Support Page >

Order Support:

Post Sales Support: 1-800-1601-0085

Order Lookup >

Visit Order Support Page >

Technical Support >

• Servers & Storage
• Services & Solutions
• About Lenovo
• Explore Sign Up/ Log In About Lenovo Pro for Business
• Shop Business Laptops Business Desktops Business Monitors Servers & Storage Software Essentials
• Explore Sign Up/ Log In About Lenovo Education
• Shop Laptops for University Laptops for Primary & Secondary Education Accessories Sign Up/ Log In to Explore Deals
• Explore NEW! Legion Go Lenovo Legion Customisable Gaming PCs
• Shop Gaming Laptops Gaming Accessories Gaming Deals

Sign in / Create Account Keep track of your wishlist, orders, and My Lenovo rewards, all in one place        

Access your orders, subscriptions, saved carts, rewards balance, and profile

Create a wishlist of your favorite products

View & track your orders

Product Registration

Register your product and/or update your warranty dates

• Great Deals Payday Flash sale Workstation Anniv Sale Thinkpad Sale AMD PC Deals Laptop Bundles View All Deals
• Best Selling Laptops ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 Legion 5i (16", Gen 9) ThinkPad T16 G2 Yoga Slim 7i (14", Gen 9) ThinkPad T14s G4 ThinkPad T16 G2 ThinkPad T14 G4 ThinkPad T14s G4
• For Home Use Legion 5i (15″, Gen 7) Yoga Slim 7i Carbon (13", Gen 8) Lenovo LOQ (15", Gen 8) IdeaPad Flex 5i (14", Gen 8) Legion Pro 5i (16", Gen 8) Legion Slim 7i (16", Gen 8) IdeaPad 5i (14", Gen 8) IdeaPad Slim 3 (14", Gen 8)
• For Business Use ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 ThinkPad T16 G2 ThinkPad T14s G4 ThinkPad T16 G2 ThinkPad T14 G4 ThinkPad T14s G4 ThinkPad T14s G4 ThinkBook ThinkBook 15 G5 ABP
• Explore Laptops 2-in-1 Laptops Gaming Laptops Mobile Workstations View all Laptops Windows 11
• By Brand ThinkPad ThinkBook LOQ Legion Yoga IdeaPad
• Best Selling Laptops ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 Legion 5i (15″, Gen 7) ThinkPad T16 G2 Yoga Slim 7i Carbon (13", Gen 8) ThinkPad Z13 G1 63% OFF ThinkPad Z16 Gen 1 60% OFF ThinkPad T14 G4
• Explore Desktops Desktop Deals Gaming Desktops Workstations Tiny Desktops Shop All Desktops
• By Brand ThinkCentre Legion Gaming IdeaCentre ThinkStation Workstations
• Best Selling Desktops ThinkCentre M70s Gen 3 ThinkCentre M75q Gen 2 ThinkCentre ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3 Mobile Workstation P14s G4 ThinkCentre M70s Gen 3 ThinkCentre M75q Gen 2 ThinkCentre ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3 ThinkStation P920 ideacentre AIO 3 22IAP7
• Explore Gaming Gaming Deals Build Your Own Gaming Laptops Gaming Desktops Gaming Monitor Gaming Accessories Best Gaming Gifts Legion Laptops and Desktops Legion Go
• Trending Now Legion 9i (16'', Gen 9) Legion Pro 5i (16'', Gen 9) Legion Pro 7i (16'', Gen 9) Legion 7i (16'', Gen 9) Legion Slim 5 (16", Gen 9) Legion 5i (16'', Gen 9) Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9I Lenovo LOQ 15IRX9 Lenovo LOQ 15IAX9 Lenovo LOQ Tower 17IRR9
• Explore Workstations Mobile Workstations View all Workstations Customized Workstation Deals
• Best Selling WorkStations Mobile Workstation P14s G4 Mobile Workstation P14s G4 Mobile Workstation P14s G4 Mobile Workstation P16s G2 ThinkStation P3 Tiny ThinkStation P358 ThinkStation P5 ThinkStation P920
• Explore Tablets Android Tablets Tablet Accessories Tablet Deals Shop All Tablets
• Find My Tablet Tablets for Kids Tablets for Gaming Business Tablets
• Best Selling Tablets Lenovo Tab M9 (9″ MTK) Lenovo Tab M11 (11″ MTK) Lenovo Tab P12 Tablet
• Accessories Docks Chargers & Batteries Mice & Keyboards Cables & Adapters Cases & Bags View all Accessories
• Quick Links Accessory Deals Lenovo Go Accessories PC Gaming Accessories Find Compatible Accessories
• Monitors by Use Monitors for Gaming Monitors for Home Monitors for Office Monitors for Professional
• Monitors by Size Monitors Less than 23" 27" - 28" Monitors
• Monitors by Resolution & Shape​ 4K Monitors Curved & Ultrawide Monitors
• Quick Links Monitor Deals Shop All Monitors Monitor Accessories​ Tiny-in-One Monitors
• Customer Support Sales Update drivers Search solutions Download manuals
• Customer Support Email Support Order Visibility Portal Online Chat Premier Support Call Me Back PremiumCare
• Technical Support PC Technical Support Premier Support Warranty Lookup Check Repair Status Forums Contact Us
• Industry Trends AI for all Cloud Computing Data Management Edge Computing Infrastructure Service
• Partners/Alliances AMD Solutions Intel Solutions Microsoft Solutions NVIDIA Solutions Red Hat Solutions SAP Solutions VMware Solutions
• Resources Smarter infrastructure stories Lenovo Press Lenovo Xperience Newsroom
• Explore Solutions Backup & Disaster Recovery Big Data & Analytics Business Applications Client Virtualization & Infrastructure Cloud Service Provider
• More Solutions Database DevOps Edge-AI High-Performance Computing Hybrid Cloud Lenovo Value Recovery OEM
• Business Solutions SAP Small and Medium Business Storage Solutions Telco Infrastructure Services Shop All Solutions
• Resources Smarter infrastructure stories Lenovo Partner Hub
• Explore by Processor AMD Servers Intel Servers
• Explore Servers Rack Servers Tower Servers Edge Servers High-Density Servers Mission Critical Servers Options & Accessories
• Explore Storage Unified Storage Storage-Area Network Direct-Attached Storage Tape Storage
• Resources Options & Accessories
• Hyperconverged ThinkAgile HX Series (with Nutanix) ThinkAgile MX and SXM Series (with Microsoft) ThinkAgile VX Series (with VMware) Shop All Software-Defined Infrastructure
• Explore Software Infrastructure Management Cloud Marketplace
• Warranty Lookup
• Support Services Premier Support Plus Premier Support Premium Care Plus Premium Care Legion Ultimate Support Replacement Parts Store Lifecycle Warranty & Protection CO2 Offset Services Lenovo Live Assistant
• Deployment Services Planning & Optimization Asset Management Customization Post Deployment
• Managed Services Device as a Service (DaaS) Smart Lock Sustainability Services Asset Recovery CO2 Offset Services
• Explore Services Solution Services Implementation Services Support Services TruScale Infrastructure Services
• Product Solutions AR/VR Smart Edge Workplace Solutions OEM Solutions Smart Collaboration Digital Workplace Solutions Lenovo Certified Refurbished Explore More
• Solutions by Topic Big Data Cloud Employee Experience Productivity Remote Working Explore More
• Solutions by Industry Education Financial Services Public Administration Explore More
• Customer Support Help Placing an Order Warranty Extensions Order Replacement Parts Shopping Help
• Order Support Existing Order Help Check Order Status Lenovo Return Policy
• Technical Support PC Support Data Center Support Smart Devices Support Motorola Mobile Support Forums All Technical Support
• Our Leaders
• Diversity & Inclusion
• Sustainability
• Lenovo News
• Investor Relations

Payday Perks! Enjoy EXTRA Savings. PCs up to 33% OFF! Across ThinkPad, Legion & more!  Call 1800-1601-0084 up to additional 8% off  All Deals      Payday PRICEOFF Deals

Join Lenovo Pro for up to 10% Welcome Discount.

Call 1800-1601-0084.         JOIN FOR FREE

Join Lenovo Edu and enjoy up to PHP5,800 Welcome Discount 

Call 1800-1601-0084.      JOIN FOR FREE

Ready, set, grab your PC in  with Free shipping sitewide, no minimum Spend. 

Call 1800-1601-0084.       Shop now

The all-new ThinkPad X1. Early Bird Offer till 19th April! ThinkVision M15 Mobile Monitor for only PHP2,400 + PHP1 Bag & Mouse. Call our Toll Free # 1800-1601-0084    Shop Now

ppt what is it?

Power Point (PPT) is a popular presentation software developed by Microsoft that helps businesses and educational establishments create effective multimedia presentations for various topics. The program enables users to design, edit, and share their PowerPoint slides with others online or offline in a secure environment. It allows users to add text, images, sound clips, animations and objects while easily customizing the look of each slide. With PPT, it’s possible to create engaging presentations that can be used to influence audiences and get your message across effectively. Furthermore, it also provides features such as transitions, formatting tools and spell checker which ensure hassle-free experience when creating beautiful presentations.

powerpoint what is it used for?

PowerPoint is an incredibly versatile presentation software developed by Microsoft that is used in educational, business and personal settings to share ideas, information and messages with others. It can be used to create engaging multimedia presentations for any purpose such as marketing products and services, teaching classes or delivering speeches. PowerPoint also includes features such as text boxes, animations, sound clips, images and shapes which allow users to customize their slides from the graphic design to the font of the text. Furthermore, it also supports collaboration so presenters can co-author their files with other users in real time. In addition, PowerPoint provides a wide range of transitions between slides making it perfect for creating unique and captivating presentations that will influence audiences.

What does ppt mean in powerpoint?

The acronym 'PPT' stands for PowerPoint, the popular presentation software developed by Microsoft. It is widely used in educational and business settings to create engaging multimedia presentations for a range of topics. With its wide range of features such as text boxes, formatting tools, animations, sound clips, images and shapes it allows users to customize the appearance of their slides from graphic design to fonts. Additionally, PowerPoint also supports collaboration so presenters can co-author their files with other users in real time. It also includes a variety of transition effects between slides which makes it perfect for creating dynamic and captivating presentations that will influence your audience.

What is ppt and pptx?

PowerPoint is a presentation software developed by Microsoft that is used for creating engaging multimedia presentations. It supports file types including PPT and PPTX. The PPT file format is the original PowerPoint file format which was initially released in 1987. It is supported on almost all versions of Microsoft Windows operating system as well as legacy versions of Mac OS. The later version, PPTX, uses an XML-based structure and ZIP compression to reduce the size of the presentation file. It was introduced in 2007 with the release of Microsoft Office 2007 and it is backward compatible with earlier versions of PowerPoint. Both PPT and PPTX formats allow user to customize the slides by adding text boxes, animations, sound clips, images and shapes from graphic design to font selection.

What is powerpoint called now?

PowerPoint is now officially known as Microsoft PowerPoint, a powerful presentation software built by the tech giant Microsoft. It's widely used in educational and business settings not only to create engaging multimedia presentations but also to collaborate with other users and author files together in real time. PowerPoint has a variety of features like text boxes, formatting tools, animations, sound clips, images, shapes and more that make it perfect for creating captivating visuals. In addition to its presentation purposes, organizations use PowerPoint for designing storyboards and user interface designs. Its flexibility has led it to become one of the most popular presentation programs around the world.

What is powerpoint and why is it so useful?

Microsoft PowerPoint is a widely used presentation software that allows users to create captivating and engaging multimedia presentations with ease. Its wide range of features such as text boxes, formatting tools, animations, sound clips, images, shapes and more make it incredibly versatile in its applications. Not only can users create spectacular slideshows that are perfect for communicating ideas in business or academic settings but they can also use PowerPoint to design storyboards and user interface designs. With so many functions packed into one program, PowerPoint has become the go-to choice for creating dynamic slide decks. Its ability to be used for both presentation and development purposes makes it highly useful across multiple industries.

What is the difference between powerpoint ppt/pptx and pps/ppsx files?

PowerPoint files come in two different formats: ppt/pptx and pps/ppsx. PPT or PPTX files are the standard format for creating and editing presentations while PPS or PPSX are meant to be used in a view-only mode. This means that when opening a presentation in the PPS or PPSX format, it will automatically start the presentation with slides set to transition already. The viewer will not have access to any editing tools, however, they can still interact with the content of the presentation. With PPT or PPTX files, users have complete control over their presentations and can edit every aspect of their deck from transitions to formatting. Therefore, if you want full creative freedom then you should use the standard PowerPoint file format (PPT or PPTX).

What is powerpoint format?

Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful presentation software that allows users to create captivating and engaging multimedia presentations. This program offers an array of features and formatting tools that enable users to customize their multimedia presentations whether for professional or personal use. PowerPoint's format is extremely versatile, enabling users to lay out slides with text, images, charts and graphs, audio clips, animations, videos, and more. There are two main file types associated with this program: PPT or PPTX which is the standard format used for creating and editing presentations while PPS or PPSX files are meant to be viewed only. With so many functions packed into one program, it's easy to see why Microsoft PowerPoint has become the go-to tool for creating dynamic slide decks that actively engage viewers in professional or academic settings.

powerpoint is what kind of software?

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation software used to create multimedia presentations. PowerPoint's software offers powerful tools and formats to customize your multimedia presentations for various uses. It lets users include text, images, charts and graphs, audio clips, animations, videos and more in their slides. It also has two standard file types associated with it: PPT or PPTX which is used for creating and editing presentations while PPS or PPSX files are use for view-only mode. With its many features and options, Microsoft PowerPoint has become the go-to tool for engaging viewers in professional or personal settings. It makes presenting information at school or work easy and can be used on most devices like computers and tablets.

ppt is powerpoint

PowerPoint is a widely used presentation software developed by Microsoft to help users create interactive and engaging multimedia presentations for various topics. It enables users to easily design, edit, and share their slides with others online or offline. The program comes with plenty of features such as text boxes, formatting tools, animations, sound clips, images and shapes that allow users to customize the look of the presentation from graphics to the text font. PowerPoint also provides transition effects between slides which can be used to make the presentation visually appealing. It also supports collaboration so presenters can co-author their files with other users in real time. All these features make PowerPoint an essential tool for any kind of business or educational setting.

This glossary  is provided for reference purposes only. It serves as a helpful resource to understand commonly used terms and concepts. However, if you require specific support or assistance regarding our products, we encourage you to visit our dedicated support site . Our support team is ready to help address any questions or concerns you may have.

Signup for Lenovo email notifications to receive valuable updates on products, sales, events, and more...

Join for free to start saving today. Unlock exclusive pricing,rewards & free expedited delivery*.Our Small Business Specialists are ready to help you succeed!

• ABOUT LENOVO
• Legal information
• Jobs at Lenovo
• Product Security
• Laptops & Ultrabooks
• Desktops & All-in-Ones
• Workstations
• Product Recalls
• ThinkPad Battery Recall
• Contact Lenovo
• Order Status
• Online Terms of Sale
• Where to Buy
• Blogs & Forums
• ThinkPad X Series
• ThinkPad T Series
• ThinkPad E Series
• ThinkPad L Series
• ThinkPad P Series
• IdeaPad Laptops
• Yoga Laptops
• Lenovo Tablets

Got any suggestions?

We want to hear from you! Send us a message and help improve Slidesgo

Top searches

Trending searches

solar eclipse

25 templates

12 templates

north korea

7 templates

21 templates

48 templates

Software Presentation templates

Software refers to a set of instructions or programs that tell a computer what tasks to perform. it includes all of the programs, applications, and operating systems that run on computers, smartphones, and other electronic devices. do you have a console that uses discs alright, those discs are software (and the console would be hardware). if you wish to give a presentation about software development, for example, these google slides themes and powerpoint templates might come in handy.

Software Development Through AI Pitch Deck

Download the Software Development Through AI Pitch Deck presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking for funding or a sales professional trying to close a deal, a great pitch deck can be the difference-maker that sets you apart from the competition. Let your talent shine out...

Software Development Business Plan

People in the IT sector will be glad to know that Slidesgo has created a new template especially for them! Describe in these slides your software development business plan and try to convince possible partners of the viability of your idea. The palette is composed of cool colors, which are...

Software Development School Center

Every day for years the range of things you can do with computers has expanded continuously and is continuing to do so, making software developers among the most sought-after employees just about everywhere. So yes, it’s the perfect timing to open a software development school and help people achieve their...

Premium template

Unlock this template and gain unlimited access

Design Software Interface CV

Do you need to renew the design of your CV? Check out this proposal from Slidesgo. It has a modern design, in green color, with gradients, and is very visual. We have included icons and text boxes with white background to make it stand out even more against the background....

Procurement Software Consulting Toolkit

A presentation is a very useful tool to make information more visual. You already know that! If it's about preparing the consulting tools you need or are going to apply in your company, at Slidesgo we have sensational templates for that, like this one here. Focused on the topic of...

Software Packages Marketing Plan

If you or your company invented wonderful software systems, why don't you make packages and provide them to your clients? To do that, first you need to make a nice marketing plan so that you can attract new customers and clients. Take this marketing template that is full with illustrations...

Software Developer Engineer Job Description

“Hello world”. We know that we are living in a world where we use a bunch of applications on the phone or computer everyday. However, who made them? Yes, software developers. Make a job description of their roles and responsibilities for your company with this dark colored template with purple...

Engineering Software Marketing Plan

We heard you have a software for engineering and that you need to present it. Is it for a marketing plan? Then you need something especially visual! Marketing plans need to be eye-catching and very representative of the theme. This is why this template fits a software vibe so well!...

Software Development Agency

Software development sounds super dark and complex, like a hacker in a hood from a movie typing neon numbers on a black screen really fast. But we’re sure it has nothing to do with that vision and it can be seen as very approachable and interesting for everyone! Present your...

Software Engineer Portfolio

Software engineers are the magicians behind the scenes who keep our apps, websites, and video games running smoothly. They're the brainiacs who love to tinker with code and solve complex puzzles. Try to solve this one—what we mean is editing our new template for portfolios! However, that puzzle is quite...

Software Engineering Business Plan

Download the Software Engineering Business Plan presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. Conveying your business plan accurately and effectively is the cornerstone of any successful venture. This template allows you to pinpoint essential elements of your operation while your audience will appreciate the clear and concise presentation, eliminating any potential...

Engineering Software Pitch Deck

With so many tools and apps on the market, it can be difficult to convince investors or potential clients that your software is worth investing in. It's clear to us that the software market, especially that intended for engineering, is a difficult one. This customizable template is designed to help...

Multimedia Software Pitch Deck

Download the Multimedia Software Pitch Deck presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking for funding or a sales professional trying to close a deal, a great pitch deck can be the difference-maker that sets you apart from the competition. Let your talent shine out thanks to...

Senior Frontend Developer Portfolio

Download the Senior Frontend Developer Portfolio presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. When a potential client or employer flips through the pages of your portfolio, they're not just looking at your work; they're trying to get a sense of who you are as a person. That's why it's crucial to...

Contract Management Software Pitch Deck

Download the Contract Management Software Pitch Deck presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. Whether you're an entrepreneur looking for funding or a sales professional trying to close a deal, a great pitch deck can be the difference-maker that sets you apart from the competition. Let your talent shine out thanks...

Software Company Consulting

Download the Software Company Consulting presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. Your business demands smart solutions, and this consulting toolkit template is just that! This versatile and ingenious toolkit will provide you with the essential tools you need to shape your strategies and make informed decisions. Whether you are devising...

Software Testing Types Minitheme

A good piece of software should run like a well-oiled machine—and that means thorough testing is absolutely necessary. Different types of testing can identify anything from bugs to usability issues, making them essential pieces of any robust development process. Many future testers may benefit from an informative slideshow about software...

Hardware and Software Systems Optimization Consulting

Download the Hardware and Software Systems Optimization Consulting presentation for PowerPoint or Google Slides. Your business demands smart solutions, and this consulting toolkit template is just that! This versatile and ingenious toolkit will provide you with the essential tools you need to shape your strategies and make informed decisions. Whether...

• Page 1 of 4

New! Make quick presentations with AI

Slidesgo AI presentation maker puts the power of design and creativity in your hands, so you can effortlessly craft stunning slideshows in minutes.

Register for free and start editing online

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

• Guy Kawasaki

Remember: Less is more.

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

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

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

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

Partner Center