PowerPoint

Three Ways to Spark PowerPoint Creativity

It’s really easy to get in a rut with PowerPoint, especially if you have to make presentations often. And if you don’t work with PowerPoint very much, it may be equally challenging to find a creative approach, instead of just getting some slides made as best you can.

Either way, it helps to be prepared! Don’t wait until deadline pressure is on top of you — keep some inspirations stashed away for the moment of need. And practice some techniques that can produce quick breakthroughs when you need a creativity boost.

Here are three sample sparks: Read more

PowerPoint

Working with Background Graphics in PowerPoint

Why does one PowerPoint presentation grab attention while another one puts viewers to sleep? Content counts, of course—but really, the whole reason for developing a Powerpoint presentation rather than writing a plain Word document is (usually) to incorporate visual interest. If there’s nothing interesting to look at, the audience is likely to wonder why they should bother watching!

Fortunately, there are several easy ways to create visual variety in PowerPoint. One way is to tweak the theme so that it is more effective and doesn’t look like “just another” PPT. How to Customize a PowerPoint Template provided some basic information and easy techniques for altering background styles and color schemes. Now let’s go a step further, and see how to change the graphic elements that are part of the theme. Read more

PowerPoint

Three Steps to Building a BIG PowerPoint Presentation

Need to create a large presentation—say, more than 60 slides? PowerPoints for live presentation can run past 100 slides, and in some instances you may need to connect multiple presentations for longer workshops. Training manuals and sales presentations can also require a lot of slides.

It may be tempting to fire up the slide machine and just get started, especially if a deadline is looming. But time spent on planning and preparation is the key to success with a big presentation.  So make the process easier and the product better with the following strategy. Read more

PowerPoint

Dynamic Duo: SnagIt and PowerPoint

Amazing but true—once upon a time screenshots on the PC were made with the PrtScn key, which just takes a picture of whatever is on the monitor at that moment. Then along came several screen capture programs, and after a while, SnagIt became a standard tool for many of us. Now we can slice up the screen into segments or capture specific windows or snapshot menus, all with just a couple of clicks.

And the latest versions of SnagIt for PC provide such good editing tools that you can usually finish a shot (including everything from borders to balloons) without ever leaving the program. Since one requirement for great presentations is a strong visual component, SnagIt and PowerPoint make a terrific team — especially for creating courseware, tutorials, user manuals, and demos. Read more

PowerPoint

PowerPoint Distribution: How to Share a PowerPoint Presentation

PowerPoint is a fact of life for most folks trying to communicate ideas in a corporate environment. And it’s a pretty good tool for practical purposes. But there are a few areas where it fails miserably, and distribution is one of them. Sharing a PowerPoint presentation can be a real headache.

In a corporate setting, PowerPoints are typically made to support a meeting or a speaker, and the slides are printed for handout. If the presentation is sent to attendees or others, it’s usually emailed as a PowerPoint file or put on a server somewhere for access. Recipients will be known to have PowerPoint, so that’s not a bother. Plus the presentation is probably self-contained—i.e., everything in it (text, objects, charts) is made with PowerPoint or can be embedded in the PowerPoint file—so it can be sent as a single file.

But what if you want to Read more

PowerPoint

The Power of Three: Using PowerPoint with Word and Excel

PowerPoint is pretty robust on its own — but it also plays well with others! And the ability to integrate PPT with other programs can provide a lot of added value.

Here are some simple ways to turbo-charge productivity and jazz up presentations by “mixing and matching” three MS Office workhorses — Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Read more

PowerPoint

4 Tips for Great Presentations & Slide Composition

When it comes to creating awesome slideshows — whether you use PowerPoint, Keynote or other slideshow presentation software — there are some basic tips to keep in mind. Have a consistent overall template design. Animate with a purpose. Have excellent content and strong organization. Speak with bullet points and keep on message.

All these tips are great. But in the end, it’s important to remember that a well-designed slideshow presentation is the sum of its parts. So to make an good-looking presentation, start with a good slide.

Previous posts have offered tips for template design and basic slideshow animation. Now here are some considerations for creating well-composed slides. Read more

PowerPoint

How to Animate a PowerPoint Presentation

We all want to create more dynamic PowerPoint presentations. You know the kind, presentations that draw the audience in and hold their attention. One way to bring more life to your presentations is through the use of movement or animation.

Yes, it is definitely possible to make a PowerPoint presentation look impressively animated. All you have to do is spend MANY hours skillfully applying custom animation to every element on every slide, timing every animation exactly, then weaving the slides together with transitions. And actually, there are a few reasons why you might want to go to this much trouble — but I’ll save that for another post.

Meanwhile . . .  most of the time, most of us just want to add some tasteful, functional visual effects to a presentation. So let’s start with very simple steps that can introduce movement into your PowerPoint presentation — easily and quickly. Read more

PowerPoint

How to Customize a PowerPoint Template

It’s 4 PM, and out of the blue, you need to build a presentation. Fast. On the upside, PowerPoint’s standard themes will make it easy. On the downside—standard themes will make it look PowerPointy. And you may need to harmonize the presentation with other materials (say, for a particular campaign), but there’s no time to create something from scratch.

Fortunately, it’s easy to make quick changes that will freshen up a theme. And with the right approach, you can even give do a complete makeover in record time. Just start with this basic concept:

In PowerPoint 2007, design features are divided into several parts. If you put all of these parts together, you have a template. The template will manage elements that should appear on every slide, keeping the look consistent throughout the presentation and making it easier to do global changes. Your view of the template is called the slide master. Read more

PowerPoint

Five Great Resources for PowerPoint Tips and Tricks

I heard a good story this week about an astronaut who wanted to make a point with NASA bosses. So he created a YouTube video (it’s fun—take a look) because he didn’t want to do a “boring PowerPoint.” Which is yet another reminder that most of the many PPT presentations getting made every day are not interesting, not creative, and not very effective.

So how can you rise above the boring average and make great stuff with PowerPoint? How can you develop presentations faster/smarter? There’s actually a lot of potential in PowerPoint if you know how to find it and use it, so check out these five (very different) resources for ideas and inspiration: Read more