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What is PowerPoint: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners

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

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

Table of contents       

1)  What is PowerPoint?  

2)  Understanding the PowerPoint Interface  

3)  Key Features of PowerPoint 

4)  How to use PowerPoint to create a presentation? 

5)  Benefits of PowerPoint  

6)  Tips for Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations 

7)  Conclusion      

What is PowerPoint?   

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

Evolution of PowerPoint   

Understanding the PowerPoint Interface   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Key Features of PowerPoint  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to use PowerPoint to create a presentation?   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Benefits of PowerPoint   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tips for Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion      

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

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

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What are the Main Features of Microsoft PowerPoint?

By: Author Shrot Katewa

There are a lot of presentation programs out there. With all the options available, it can become rather tough to choose which is best for you. That is why the features of any software are so important. It can determine whether or not you use the software. With that being said, what are the features of Microsoft PowerPoint?

The most popular features of Microsoft PowerPoint are as follows: Animations, designs, being able to add images and videos, and also editing those images and videos. With PowerPoint, you can use all the features available to make presentations that really stand out and could help you boost your career or sign a client.

In this article, we are going to not only mention the main features of PowerPoint, but we are also going to share with you some of the most useful features of PowerPoint. Plus, we are going to talk a little bit about each of them.

So, if you have ever wondered what features PowerPoint has or what certain features are meant for and what they do, you have come to the right place. For everything that you need to know, keep reading.

A Quick Note Before We Begin – if you want to make jaw-dropping presentations, I would recommend using one of these Presentation Designs . The best part is – it is only $16.5 a month, but you get to download and use as many presentation designs as you like! I personally use it from time-to-time, and it makes my task of making beautiful presentations really quick and easy!

1. PowerPoint Design Ideas

First on this list and one of my favorite features of PowerPoint is the “ Design Ideas “. It can be found in the “ Design ” tab in PowerPoint. Once you are there you will see two separate sections. One section will be a theme and the other will be a different variant of that theme. These themes are for each slide.

PowerPoint’s Design Ideas automatically and instantly provides you will several design options for a particular slide based on the content that is present on the slide.

Design Ideas can help you save a good amount of time and make your slides look good. It is a great feature for those who perhaps want to improve the design of the slides but are not really great at creating designs.

It doesn’t always give the perfect design option, and sometimes you do need to play around with it a little bit to get a good design. But, most of the time, it doesn’t get the job done.

Design Ideas is a great feature that is unique to Microsoft PowerPoint and something that most other presentation programs do not have. But, other unique features presented in this article give a great advantage when using PowerPoint !

2. Animations

Microsoft PowerPoint animations allow you to emphasize certain points of your current slide. There are primarily 3 categories of animations in PowerPoint. You can select any object in your slide and animate it with these animations:

• Entrance Animation
• Emphasis Animation
• Exit Animations

Each animation category provides you with a huge list of additional options to choose from.

As the name suggests, entrance animation is a type of animation that will make a shape, text or any other element appear on a slide. Likewise, an exit animation can be applied when you want a certain element to disappear from the slide.

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

Emphasis animation can be used when you want to highlight or bring the attention of the audience members to a particular element on the slide.

Once you choose and apply the animations, you also get other options. You can select how long you want animations to last, when you want them to start, and when you want them to end. Microsoft was not shy when they gave us the number of features that they did regarding animations.

3. Slide Transitions

I have seen a lot of people confuse slide transitions with animations and vice versa. It is important to remember that they are completely different things.

Also Read – Difference Between Animations and Slide Transitions in PowerPoint!

While animation gives you the ability to animate elements within your slide, transitions give you the ability to change how slides change from one to another. This can have a significant impact on a slide’s first impressions.

Some of the most notable transitions are:

Other options include the ability to set the speed of your transition, change the dynamic of the transition, and much more. Again, Microsoft has added a lot of customizability over the last few years when it comes to transitions.

When using transitions, you can alter the entire feel of a presentation without changing its theme. I recommend taking your time and making sure that each transition doesn’t feel forced but feels natural to the presentation.

Sometimes an image can say a thousand words. With that in mind, it is easy to understand why adding images to your presentation can help you say more than you could while using words. Well, at least this is true in some cases.

If your presentation feels slightly boring, don’t be afraid to throw in an image every now and then. To be honest, most presentations require images anyway. Not only are they necessary, in some cases, they can also spice up your presentation.

When it comes to adding images, there are two main ways of doing this. You could either add an image via your PC or you can embed an image from somewhere else on the internet. Whatever best suits you, PowerPoint has you covered.

5. Merge Shapes

Microsoft PowerPoint allows you to merge shapes. This is because they understand that they might not always have the exact shape that you are looking for.

So, hopefully, merging shapes can help give you a uniform shape. I say “uniform” because if you cannot find a shape that you want to use, you could draw one. The problem is, this might not be the best option because freehand drawing can be difficult.

If merging shapes is still not giving you what you want, there is another option that you can use. These are known as “smart-art”. It can help you transform your presentation into something phenomenal.

Another great way of spicing up a presentation is to add videos to certain slides. As we discussed with images, a video can say a lot without having to use words. In fact, there are so many applications for using videos in your presentation. I guess the only limit would be your imagination.

Videos can be easily added from the storage on your PC. This might make the size of your presentation quite large. So, you might want to double-check the size of the video before inserting it into your presentation.

Again, this is one of my favorite features of PowerPoint. You can easily add videos to your presentation from Youtube. We are trying to keep each section brief so I can’t go into too much detail about the importance of being able to add videos from YouTube. However, there are a lot of reasons.

So, if you don’t have the video on your PC and you cannot find it on YouTube but you know where it is on another website, all you need to do is get the embed code for that video. This can often be done just by right-clicking on the video, copying the embed code, and then you can embed it into your presentation.

With the ability to add icons to your presentations, it just gives you some freedom to add a personal touch to the presentation. It is important to note that some versions do not come with the icons feature. However, if you have Office 365 you should always have the icons option.

If you do not have the option to use icons, you could technically use shapes and with some clever aligning skills, they could be turned into icons or at least used as such. You could also use icons found on the web. They would need to be saved to your PC as an image and then again, with some clever aligning skills, nobody would know the difference.

8. PowerPoint Notes for Presentation

When you are giving a presentation it is often difficult to constantly remember what you have to say. This is true even though you have the slide right in front of you. That is where the notes feature comes in. They can help you remember what to say for each slide which is a great way to stay on topic.

Your presentation can be set up in a way that the notes do not appear on the presentation but they still appear on your PC or Mac. Remember, most of the time the people who are viewing the presentation cannot see this. Otherwise, you can also hide your notes

The notes feature is not just there for you to remember what to say and a lot of people tend to overlook this. If you are working in a team, then using notes can help other employees or other people who are working on the presentation understand what’s happening on each slide.

9. Morph Transition

We have already talked about transitions earlier in the article. However, “Morph Transition” is by far one of the best ways to you make your slides give a great first impression. In fact, this creates a lasting impression as well!

By using Morph Transition, you can make actually make elements move between slides – a feature that gives a video-like feel to your PowerPoint slides!

It is important to remember that the slides where Morph Transition is used, need to have at least one element that has something in common between both the slides.

I shall soon be making a video to help you understand how the Morph Transition works in PowerPoint and how you can leverage this feature to take your PowerPoint presentations up a notch! (I will update it here once the video is created).

This is one of the most used features of PowerPoint. It is also one of the best features in terms of what you can do with it. Using charts in your presentations can help you illustrate data in an easy-to-understand way for your audience.

You can also link charts to external data sources. Most notably, you can link to excel sheets. The chart’s functionality in PowerPoint is so versatile you can even get your chart to be updated automatically in PowerPoint when the data gets edited in excel.

It is actually a rather simple process. All you have to do is link a chart to an external data set. This can be done from within PowerPoint so it is pretty much hassle-free.

11. Removing Background from Images

When you upload an image to your presentation, what if that image needs to be edited? What is the first thing that you would normally think you would do? You would probably go to an image editing program such as Photoshop, right?

With Microsoft PowerPoint, there is no need for that in most cases. Well, at least if you want to remove a background from your image , you could just use PowerPoint.

All you have to do is click on the drawing format ribbon and select “remove background”. It then works almost the exact same way as all other photo editing software. You will draw around the piece you want to keep or the piece you want to get rid of.

12. Video Editing (Basic)

Again, what if you upload a video to your PowerPoint presentation but you don’t want to show the whole video. maybe you just want to show some parts or cut some pieces out. What is the first thing you would do? Open up a video editing software right? Well, with PowerPoint you might not have to.

While PowerPoint is not the next Adobe premier, it does allow you to trim the video, cut portions of a video out, and finally add sound. It is a basic video editor.

Being able to use PowerPoint as a quick video editor adds to the convenience of PowerPoint. It also adds to your overall productivity because you don’t have to open and close program after program to get everything done.

13. Export PowerPoint as Video

Microsoft PowerPoint allows you to export entire presentations as videos. I know that you might be thinking why would this even be useful. Well, I alone can think of so many reasons why you would want to use this feature.

Not all presentations are designed to be given by a speaker. Actually, the main reason for a PowerPoint presentation is to get a point across to somebody. This could be your employer, colleague, client, or even the classroom.

If you don’t want to send somebody a presentation that they could edit or see the notes for and you just want them to watch it, this feature is for you. Why not export it as a video and give whoever you send the video to the ability to watch it at their own time, pause it at their own time, and take notes.

14. Add Audio Narration to your PowerPoint Presentation

This feature kind of feeds off of the previous one. You are not always going to be there to give a presentation as a speaker but you still want to iterate a lot of the points made in your slides. So, why not add audio narration to your presentation?

Doing this will allow you to send the presentation as a video to somebody and have the narration over it. So, technically, you would still be the speaker if it is you narrating the presentation.

This feature is Great for teachers who just want to give the classroom information in the most efficient way possible. In fact, with online learning becoming more relevant than ever in 2020, this feature has picked up in popularity.

This feature is also great for presentations that are designed to be given as instructional videos.

15. Adding Comments to Slides

The feature to add comments in PowerPoint is more about the person who reviews a presentation rather than the person who creates it. Some people get comments mixed up with notes but they are two different features that have two different applications.

If you need to review somebody else’s presentation, you can add comments to certain sections or slides of the presentation. This is so that they can understand your criticisms.

Also, if you are the person creating it and you want to add a comment, this can help the person who is reviewing the presentation to fully understand why you did what you did in certain slides.

Final Thoughts

The features mentioned in this article show why PowerPoint is still the leading presentation software. There is so much that you can do and honestly, it all makes every presentation different from the other.

If you take time to learn what each feature does, you could use them to make presentations that have a higher chance of captivating your audience, your classroom or even getting you one step closer to signing a contract with the new clients.

We have covered a lot of the features mentioned in this article. So, I highly recommend taking a little bit of time out of your day to read those articles.

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Understanding What is PowerPoint: A Comprehensive Guide

Table of Contents

In this comprehensive guide, we will delve into the world of PowerPoint, uncovering what it is and exploring its vast array of features and capabilities. PowerPoint is a presentation software that allows users to create visually engaging slideshows, making it an essential tool for professionals looking to effectively convey their ideas and engage their audience.

Key Takeaways:

• PowerPoint is a presentation software that enables users to create visually engaging slideshows.
• It offers a wide range of features, including templates, text formatting, visual enhancements, and transitions and animations.
• PowerPoint’s Slide Master feature ensures consistency and efficiency in creating presentation templates.
• Planning and practicing are vital steps in creating a successful PowerPoint presentation.
• Proper formatting and design can greatly enhance the visual appeal and clarity of PowerPoint slides.

Defining Powerpoint: An Overview of the Presentation Software

Powerpoint is a powerful presentation software that enables users to create visually appealing slideshows to effectively convey information. With its wide range of features and tools, Powerpoint is widely used in various professional settings, including business meetings, educational institutions, and conferences.

One of the key features of Powerpoint is its ability to create stunning slides through customizable templates, text formatting options, and visual enhancements. Users can choose from a variety of pre-designed templates or customize their slides according to their specific needs. Additionally, Powerpoint allows for easy incorporation of images, charts, and graphs to visually support the content.

Transitions and animations are another significant aspect of Powerpoint, enabling users to add movement and interactivity to their presentations. Users can create smooth transitions between slides, as well as animate individual elements within a slide to capture the audience’s attention and enhance engagement.

Furthermore, Powerpoint offers speaker notes functionality, allowing presenters to add notes and reminders for each slide. This feature aids in ensuring a smooth delivery and helps presenters stay on track during their presentation.

In summary, Powerpoint is a versatile presentation software that empowers users to create visually captivating slideshows. Whether it’s designing professional presentations from scratch, incorporating engaging transitions and animations, or leveraging speaker notes for a flawless delivery, Powerpoint provides a comprehensive suite of tools and features that make it an essential tool for effective communication.

Exploring Powerpoint Features: Enhancing Your Presentations

With an extensive range of features, Powerpoint empowers users to create captivating presentations through its diverse set of tools and functionalities. Whether you want to deliver a professional business pitch, showcase your creative portfolio, or educate and engage your audience, Powerpoint has got you covered.

One of the key features of Powerpoint is its extensive library of pre-designed templates. These templates provide a solid foundation for your presentation, saving you time and effort in creating a visually appealing layout. You can choose from a variety of themes, color schemes, and slide designs to match your content and create a cohesive visual experience for your audience.

In addition to templates, Powerpoint offers various text formatting options to help you make your content stand out. You can customize fonts, sizes, colors, and styles to ensure that your text is easily readable and visually impactful. With the ability to add bullet points, numbered lists, and even tables, you can effectively organize and present complex information with clarity.

To further enhance your slides, Powerpoint provides a range of visual elements and graphics. You can add images, shapes, icons, and charts to bring your content to life and make it more visually engaging. These visual enhancements help capture the attention of your audience and reinforce key messages in your presentation.

Table: Powerpoint Features

With all these features at your disposal, Powerpoint allows you to create dynamic presentations that leave a lasting impression. Whether you’re a student, professional, or entrepreneur, mastering Powerpoint can greatly enhance your communication skills and help you effectively convey your ideas to your audience.

Getting Started with Powerpoint: A Beginner’s Guide

If you are new to Powerpoint, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered with this beginner’s guide that will walk you through the process of creating your first presentation. Powerpoint is a widely used presentation software that allows users to create visually engaging slideshows to effectively convey their ideas and engage their audience.

To start using Powerpoint, you’ll need to have the software installed on your computer. Once you have Powerpoint open, you’ll be presented with a blank slide. This is where you can begin creating your presentation. You can choose from various templates, or start from scratch by selecting a blank slide.

Powerpoint provides a user-friendly interface with a toolbar at the top that contains all the tools you’ll need to create your presentation. You can easily insert text, images, shapes, charts, and more to customize your slides. To add text, simply click on the text box and begin typing. You can format the text, change fonts, colors, and sizes to suit your preferences.

To enhance your presentation, Powerpoint offers a range of features such as visual enhancements, transitions, and animations. These can be added to your slides to make them more dynamic and engaging. You can also utilize the speaker notes feature to add additional details or reminders for your presentation.

Table: Powerpoint Tutorials

By following this beginner’s guide and exploring Powerpoint’s features, you’ll soon become proficient in creating stunning presentations. Whether you’re a student, business professional, or public speaker, Powerpoint can help you effectively communicate your ideas and engage your audience. Now, let’s dive into the tutorial section to learn more about using Powerpoint.

Designing Stunning Slides: Formatting and Visual Enhancements

To create stunning presentations, it is crucial to master the art of designing slides that are visually engaging and effectively convey your message. PowerPoint provides a range of formatting and visual enhancement options that can elevate the impact of your slides.

One key aspect to consider is the layout and formatting of your text. Utilize different font styles and sizes to create hierarchy and emphasize important points. Use bullet points and numbering to organize information and make it easier for your audience to follow along. Remember to keep your text concise, using short phrases or keywords instead of lengthy sentences.

In addition to text formatting, PowerPoint offers a variety of visual enhancements. You can insert high-quality images, graphics, and icons to complement your content and make it more visually appealing. Consider using charts and graphs to present data in a clear and concise manner. These visual elements not only add visual interest but also help your audience understand complex information more easily.

Another way to enhance your slides is by using animations and transitions. PowerPoint allows you to add movement and visual effects to individual elements or entire slides. This can help grab your audience’s attention and guide them through your presentation. However, use animations and transitions sparingly and purposefully. Too many effects can distract from your message and make your presentation appear unprofessional.

By mastering the design and formatting features in PowerPoint, you can create slides that are not only visually stunning but also effectively communicate your ideas. Experiment with different layouts, color schemes, and visual elements to find a style that aligns with your content and engages your audience. Remember, the goal is to create a visually appealing presentation that enhances the impact of your message.

Adding Life to Your Presentation: Transitions and Animations

Dynamically engage your audience by incorporating seamless transitions and captivating animations into your Powerpoint presentations. These features not only enhance the visual appeal of your slides but also help to convey information effectively and maintain audience interest throughout the presentation.

Powerpoint offers a wide range of transition effects, allowing you to smoothly move from one slide to the next. Whether you prefer subtle fade-ins or more dynamic slide flips, Powerpoint has the perfect transition effect to suit your presentation style. By strategically adding transitions between slides, you can create a seamless storyline flow that keeps your audience engaged and focused.

Animations, on the other hand, bring your content to life by adding movement and interactivity to individual elements within your slides. From simple entrance animations that gradually reveal text or images, to more complex motion paths that guide the viewer’s attention, Powerpoint animations allow you to highlight key points and make your presentation more engaging.

Utilizing Transitions and Animations Effectively

• Keep it subtle: While transitions and animations can add flair to your presentation, it’s important not to overdo it. Use them sparingly and choose effects that complement the content rather than distract from it.
• Be consistent: Stick to a consistent transition or animation style throughout your presentation to maintain a professional and polished look. Inconsistent use of effects can be jarring for the audience.
• Practice timing: Make sure your transitions and animations are timed appropriately to ensure a smooth and seamless delivery. Practice your presentation to ensure that the timing aligns with your speaking points.

By incorporating transitions and animations into your Powerpoint presentations, you can captivate your audience and create a memorable visual experience. Remember to use these features strategically and in moderation to enhance your content and engage your viewers.

Perfecting Your Delivery: Speaker Notes and Presentation Tips

A polished delivery is key to a successful presentation. To engage and captivate your audience, it’s essential to leverage PowerPoint’s speaker notes and other valuable tips. Speaker notes serve as your guide, providing cues and reminders throughout your presentation. Here are some tips to make the most of this powerful feature:

• Keep it concise: Your speaker notes should contain key points and reminders, not a full script. Use bullet points or short phrases to keep them concise and easy to follow.
• Practice, practice, practice: Familiarize yourself with your slides and speaker notes by rehearsing your presentation multiple times. This will build your confidence and ensure a smooth delivery.
• Use visual cues: Incorporate images or icons in your speaker notes to prompt specific actions or emphasize important points. Visual cues can help you stay on track and engage your audience.
• Highlight transitions: Note any transitions or animations in your speaker notes. This will help you remember to pause or adjust your tone when these visual effects occur, creating a seamless and impactful presentation.

Remember, effective delivery goes beyond speaker notes. Here are a few additional tips to enhance your presentation:

• Speak clearly and confidently: Project your voice, maintain eye contact, and use appropriate gestures to engage your audience and convey your message with confidence.
• Utilize visual aids: Incorporate high-quality visuals, such as images, graphs, or videos, to support your key points and make your presentation more visually appealing.
• Engage the audience: Encourage audience participation through interactive elements, questions, or discussion points. This fosters engagement and keeps your audience actively involved throughout the presentation.

In summary, perfecting your delivery is crucial for a successful PowerPoint presentation. Leverage the speaker notes feature, practice your presentation, and follow these tips to captivate your audience, convey your message effectively, and leave a lasting impression.

Mastering Powerpoint: Understanding the Slide Master Feature

Discover the power of the Slide Master feature in Powerpoint, allowing you to effortlessly apply consistent formatting and design across all slides. The Slide Master acts as a template for your presentation, providing a centralized location to make global changes to the layout, font styles, color schemes, and other visual elements. By leveraging the Slide Master feature, you can save time and maintain a professional and cohesive look throughout your presentation.

One of the key benefits of using the Slide Master is the ability to create a unified theme for your slides. Rather than manually formatting each individual slide, you can make changes on the Slide Master, and those changes will be automatically applied to all slides. This ensures a consistent appearance and saves you the hassle of manually adjusting the design elements on every slide.

In addition to formatting, the Slide Master also allows you to insert placeholders for text, images, charts, and other content types. These placeholders act as pre-defined areas on each slide where you can easily add and update content. By utilizing placeholders, you can maintain a consistent layout throughout your presentation while still customizing the content on each slide.

Example of Slide Master Format in Powerpoint:

By mastering the Slide Master feature in Powerpoint, you can streamline the design process and maintain a consistent and professional look for your presentations. With its ability to apply global changes, insert placeholders, and define slide layouts, the Slide Master empowers you to create visually impactful presentations while saving time and effort.

Exploring Powerpoint Alternatives: Finding the Right Fit for You

While Powerpoint is widely used and trusted, there are other presentation software options available that might better suit your preferences and requirements. Whether you’re looking for more advanced features, a simplified user interface, or a specific focus on collaboration, exploring alternative options can help you find the perfect fit for your presentation needs.

One popular alternative to Powerpoint is Google Slides. As part of the Google Workspace suite, Google Slides offers seamless integration with other Google products, making it a convenient choice for those already using Gmail, Google Drive , and Google Docs. It also allows for real-time collaboration, enabling multiple users to work on a presentation simultaneously. With a wide range of templates and easy-to-use design tools, Google Slides is a user-friendly option for creating visually appealing slideshows.

If you’re looking for a more professional and polished presentation software, Adobe Spark might be the right choice for you. This software offers a selection of stunning templates and allows for easy customization of fonts, colors, and layouts. In addition, Adobe Spark provides access to a vast library of high-quality images and icons to enhance your slides. With its focus on creating visually captivating presentations, Adobe Spark is a great option for users who want to make a lasting impression.

Another popular alternative is Prezi, which offers a unique approach to presentations with its zooming and panning features. Instead of traditional slide transitions, Prezi allows you to create dynamic and interactive visual journeys. This can be particularly effective for storytelling or when presenting complex information. Prezi also offers a library of templates and a user-friendly interface, making it suitable for both beginners and experienced presenters.

Ultimately, the choice of presentation software depends on your specific needs and preferences. By exploring alternative options such as Google Slides, Adobe Spark, and Prezi, you can find a software that not only meets your requirements but also enhances your ability to create engaging and impactful presentations.

Planning Your Presentation: An Essential Step for Success

The success of a PowerPoint presentation heavily relies on proper planning – learn valuable tips and strategies to ensure your content is well-organized and impactful.

When it comes to planning your PowerPoint presentation, it’s crucial to start with a clear understanding of your goals and objectives. Define the purpose of your presentation and identify the key messages you want to convey to your audience. This will help you structure your content and keep your presentation focused.

Next, outline the main points or topics you want to cover in your presentation. Use bullet points or numbered lists to organize your ideas and create a logical flow. This will make it easier for your audience to follow along and understand your message.

By following these planning tips and strategies, you can create a well-organized and impactful PowerPoint presentation. Remember, proper planning sets the foundation for a successful presentation and enables you to effectively engage your audience.

Creating Engaging Slides: Tips for Content Creation

Effective content creation is crucial to capture and retain your audience’s attention throughout your PowerPoint presentation – discover valuable tips to achieve this goal.

1. Understand your audience: Before creating your PowerPoint slides, take the time to understand your target audience. Consider their level of knowledge, interests, and expectations. Tailor your content to resonate with them and address their needs.

2. Keep it concise: Avoid overwhelming your audience with excessive text on your slides. Use bullet points, short phrases, and impactful visuals to convey your message concisely. This approach helps your audience focus on key points and makes your presentation more visually appealing.

3. Use visuals strategically: Visuals play a vital role in engaging your audience and enhancing their understanding of your content. Incorporate relevant images, charts, graphs, and diagrams to support your message. Ensure that the visuals are clear, high-quality, and directly aligned with the information you are presenting.

4. Tell a story: Engage your audience by structuring your PowerPoint presentation like a captivating story. Start with a compelling introduction, build up the content systematically, and end with a memorable conclusion. This narrative approach helps create an emotional connection with your audience and keeps them engaged throughout.

Remember, effective content creation in PowerPoint is about delivering information in a visually appealing and engaging manner. By understanding your audience, keeping your content concise, using visuals strategically, and telling a story, you can create impactful slides that captivate your audience from start to finish.

Formatting and Design Best Practices for Powerpoint Slides

Adopting proper formatting and design practices is key to delivering a visually appealing and professional-looking PowerPoint presentation. In this section, we will explore best practices and design tips to help you create slides that captivate your audience and effectively convey your message.

1. Use consistent fonts and colors

When selecting fonts for your slides, choose a font that is easy to read and maintain consistency throughout the presentation. Stick to two or three fonts at most to maintain a cohesive look. Similarly, use a consistent color scheme that complements your content and enhances readability. Avoid using too many colors that may distract or overwhelm your audience.

2. Keep slide layouts clean and uncluttered

Avoid overcrowding your slides with excessive text or graphics. Use whitespace strategically to give your content room to breathe and create a visually pleasing balance. Break up text into bullet points or short sentences to make it easier to read and understand. Utilize visuals, such as images or icons, to augment your message and engage your audience visually.

3. Choose appropriate slide transitions and animations

Slide transitions and animations can add interest and engagement to your presentation, but it’s important to use them judiciously. Select transitions that are seamless and complement your content, rather than distracting from it. Use animations sparingly to highlight key points or to reveal information gradually, ensuring they enhance rather than overshadow your message.

Remember, the goal of formatting and design in PowerPoint is to support and enhance your content, not overshadow it. By following these best practices and design tips, you can create visually stunning slides that effectively communicate your message and leave a lasting impact on your audience.

Reviewing and Practicing: Fine-Tuning Your Presentation

Reviewing and practicing your PowerPoint presentation are essential steps to identify any areas for improvement and gain confidence in delivering your content. Taking the time to review your slides, content, and overall flow allows you to ensure that your message is clear, concise, and impactful. Practicing your presentation helps you become familiar with the material, allowing you to deliver it smoothly and confidently.

One effective way to review your presentation is to go through each slide systematically, checking for any errors or inconsistencies in your content. Pay attention to the visuals, ensuring they are visually appealing and support your message effectively. Additionally, review your transitions and animations to make sure they enhance rather than distract from your presentation.

Practicing your presentation is just as crucial as reviewing it. Start by rehearsing your content out loud, paying attention to your tone of voice, pace, and overall delivery. Consider recording yourself and watching the playback to identify any areas for improvement. You can also practice in front of a mirror or with a small audience to get valuable feedback and make necessary adjustments.

By dedicating time to reviewing and practicing your PowerPoint presentation, you can fine-tune your content, identify any areas for improvement, and deliver a polished and engaging presentation that leaves a lasting impression on your audience.

Delivering Your Presentation: Tips for a Professional Performance

Learn valuable tips and techniques to deliver a memorable and impactful PowerPoint presentation, leaving a lasting impression on your audience. A successful presentation goes beyond just the content on your slides. It involves effective delivery and engagement with your audience. Here are some key tips to help you deliver a professional and polished performance:

• Practice, practice, practice: Rehearse your presentation multiple times to ensure you are well-prepared and confident. Practice will help you become familiar with your content and delivery, allowing you to deliver a smooth and fluent presentation.
• Utilize visual aids: PowerPoint offers a range of visual enhancements, such as charts, images, and videos, to support your presentation. Use these visual aids strategically to amplify your message and engage your audience visually.
• Speak clearly and confidently: Pay attention to your tone of voice, volume, and pace when delivering your presentation. Speak clearly and project your voice to ensure everyone in the room can hear you. Maintain a confident demeanor to establish credibility.
• Connect with your audience: Engage your audience by making eye contact, using gestures, and involving them in your presentation. Encourage questions, and actively listen and respond to feedback. Creating a connection with your audience will help keep them engaged and interested in your message.
• Use effective body language: Be mindful of your body language during your presentation. Stand tall, maintain good posture, and use open and confident gestures. Avoid fidgeting or crossing your arms, as these can create barriers between you and your audience.

By incorporating these tips into your presentation delivery, you can ensure a professional and impactful performance that resonates with your audience. Remember, delivering a successful PowerPoint presentation is not just about the slides; it’s about how you deliver the content and connect with your audience.

In conclusion, Powerpoint is a versatile presentation software that offers a wide range of features and capabilities, empowering professionals to create visually engaging and impactful presentations. With its user-friendly interface and extensive tools, Powerpoint allows users to plan, create, and deliver presentations with ease and confidence.

From defining what Powerpoint is to exploring its various features, this comprehensive guide has provided valuable insights and tips to help users make the most of this powerful software. By understanding how to design stunning slides, add transitions and animations, and utilize the Slide Master feature, users can enhance their presentations and captivate their audience.

Furthermore, this guide has emphasized the importance of planning, practicing, and reviewing presentations for a seamless and professional delivery. By following best practices for content creation, formatting, and design, users can create visually appealing slides that effectively convey their message.

Powerpoint is not just a presentation tool, but a platform that enables professionals to showcase their ideas and engage their audience. Whether you are a beginner or an experienced user, mastering Powerpoint can greatly enhance your communication skills and elevate your presentations to the next level.

Is PowerPoint Included in Office365?

Yes, PowerPoint is indeed included in Office365. One of the notable advantages of using office365 is the comprehensive suite of applications it provides, including the widely-used presentation software, PowerPoint. With Office365, users can access and utilize PowerPoint’s features seamlessly, making it a valuable tool for creating and delivering impactful presentations.

Q: What is Powerpoint?

A: Powerpoint is a presentation software that allows users to create visually engaging slideshows.

Q: What features does Powerpoint offer?

A: Powerpoint includes various features such as templates, text formatting, visual enhancements, transitions and animations, speaker notes, and the Slide Master feature.

Q: What is the workflow for creating a Powerpoint presentation?

A: The workflow typically involves planning, creating slides, formatting and design, adding transitions and animations, reviewing and practicing, and delivering the presentation.

Q: How can Powerpoint help professionals?

A: Powerpoint is a powerful tool that helps professionals effectively convey their ideas and engage their audience.

• About the Author
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Mark is a senior content editor at Text-Center.com and has more than 20 years of experience with linux and windows operating systems. He also writes for Biteno.com

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PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 cheat sheet

Are you getting the most from powerpoint for microsoft 365/office 365 in windows learn about the key new features in microsoft’s powerful presentation app..

Need to create and share a presentation? If so, you probably turn to the most popular presentation application in the world, Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows.

Microsoft sells Office under two models: Individuals and businesses can pay for the software license up front and own it forever (what the company calls the “perpetual” version of the suite), or they can purchase a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 subscription, which means they have access to the software for only as long as they keep paying the subscription fee.

When you purchase a perpetual version of the suite — say, Office 2019 or Office 2021 — its applications will never get new features, whereas apps in the “365” subscriptions are continually updated with new features. For more details, see “Microsoft Office 2021 vs. Microsoft 365: How to choose ” Confusing matters even more, Microsoft has renamed most, but not all, of its Office 365 subscriptions under the “Microsoft 365” moniker, which generally means the plan includes everything from the old Office 365 plans plus some additional features and apps.

This cheat sheet gets you up to speed on the features that have been introduced in the Windows desktop client for PowerPoint in Office 365 and Microsoft 365 since 2015. We’ll periodically update this story as new features roll out. (If you’re using the perpetual-license PowerPoint 2016 or 2019, see our separate PowerPoint 2016 and 2019 cheat sheet .)

Use the Ribbon

The Ribbon interface that you came to know and love (or perhaps hate) in earlier versions of PowerPoint hasn’t changed much in Microsoft 365/Office 365. Because the Ribbon has been included in Office suite applications since Office 2007, we assume you’re familiar with how it works. If you need a refresher, see our PowerPoint 2010 cheat sheet.

Over the years, Microsoft has tweaked the way the Ribbon looks several times, including a recent facelift that aligns with the look of Windows 11. It has a flattened look that’s cleaner and less cluttered than in previous versions of PowerPoint, and its high-contrast colors make the icons and text easier to see. But it still works in the same way, and you’ll find most of the commands in the same locations as in earlier versions.

The Ribbon in PowerPoint for Microsoft 365/Office 365 has been cleaned up, with text and icons that are easier to see. (Click image to enlarge it.)

To find out which commands live on which tabs on the Ribbon, download our PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 Ribbon quick reference. Also note that you can use the search bar on the Ribbon to find commands.

As in previous versions of PowerPoint, if you want the Ribbon commands to go away, press Ctrl-F1. (Note that the tabs above the Ribbon — File, Home, Insert, and so on — stay visible.) To make them appear again, press Ctrl-F1. You can also make the commands on the Ribbon go away by clicking the name of the tab you’re currently on. To make the commands reappear, click any tab.

You’ve got other options for displaying the Ribbon as well. To get to them, click the down arrow at the bottom right of the Ribbon. A drop-down menu appears with these four options:

• Full-screen mode: This maximizes the content portion of PowerPoint, which now takes up the entire screen, eliminating the entire Ribbon as well as the Quick Access toolbar. To show the Ribbon again, click at the top of PowerPoint.
• Show tabs only: This shows the tabs but hides the commands underneath them. It’s the same as pressing Ctrl-F1. To display the commands underneath the tabs when they’re hidden, press Ctrl-F1 or click a tab.
• Always show Ribbon: Selecting this shows both the tabs and the commands.
• Hide/Show Quick Access toolbar: This hides or shows the Quick Access toolbar, which gives you fast access to PowerPoint features you want to have always available, such as New, Undo, Repeat, and so on. It can appear above or below the Ribbon. To customize the toolbar, click the small down arrow at its right, and from the drop-down menu that appears, choose which features to put on it. If you don’t see a command you want, click More Commands , find the command you want on the left, and click Add .

To customize the title bar above the Ribbon, select File > Options > General . In the “Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office” section, click the down arrow next to Office Theme and select Dark Gray , Black , or White from the drop-down menu. To make the title bar red again, instead choose the Colorful option from the drop-down list. Just above the Office Theme menu is an Office Background drop-down menu — here you can choose to display a pattern such as a circuit board in the title bar.

When you click the File tab on the Ribbon, you get sent to a useful area that Microsoft calls backstage. If you click Open , Save a Copy , or Save As from the menu on the left, you can see the cloud-based services you’ve connected to your Office account, such as SharePoint and OneDrive. Each location now displays its associated email address underneath it. This is quite helpful if you use a cloud service with more than one account, such as if you have one OneDrive account for personal use and another one for business. You’ll be able to see at a glance which is which.

The backstage area (under the File tab) shows which cloud-based services you’ve connected to your Office account and lets you connect to additional ones. (Click image to enlarge it.)

You can also easily add new cloud-based services. From the screen that shows you your online locations, click Add a Place and choose which service to add. Note, though, that you’re limited to SharePoint and OneDrive.

Possibly in the works: A simplified Ribbon

Microsoft has been working for some time on a simplified version of the Ribbon for all Office applications. Like the existing Ribbon, it will have tabs across the top, and each tab will have commands on it. But it’s more streamlined and uses less space than the existing Ribbon.

For now, only Outlook for Windows is the only Microsoft 365 desktop app that uses the simplified Ribbon. However, you can get a preview of what it will look like in PowerPoint by going to the online version of PowerPoint. Click the down arrow at the bottom right of the Ribbon and choose Single Line Ribbon . To revert to the regular Ribbon, choose Classic Ribbon .

A cleaner, simpler Ribbon will be available in PowerPoint at some point. To try it now, head to the online version of PowerPoint, pictured here. (Click image to enlarge it.)

In the simplified Ribbon, all the commands are still there for each tab, but only the most commonly used are visible. Click the three-dot icon at the far right end of the Ribbon to show the rest of the commands in a drop-down menu.

All that said, the simplified version of the Ribbon has been in the works for years and still hasn’t made an appearance in the desktop app. We’re eagerly awaiting its appearance but are beginning to lose faith that it will ever arrive.

Use the Search bar to accomplish tasks quickly

PowerPoint is so chock-full of powerful features that it can be tough to remember where to find them all. Microsoft 365/Office 365 has made it easier via the Search bar, which can put even buried tools or those you rarely use in easy reach. (Note that at one point, the feature was called Tell Me.)

To use it, click in the Search bar — it’s above the Ribbon in the title area. (Keyboard fans can instead press Alt-Q to go to the Search box.) Type in a task you want to do, such as change handout orientation . You’ll get a menu showing potential matches for the task.

In this instance, the top result is a Handout Orientation listing that when clicked gives you two options — one to set the orientation to horizontal and the other to vertical. Just click the one you want to use. If you’d like more information about your task, the last items that appear in the menu let you select from related Help topics or display additional search results.

The Search bar gives advice on changing the handout orientation (or any other task you query). (Click image to enlarge it.)

Even if you consider yourself a PowerPoint pro, give Search a try. It’ll save you lots of time and is much more efficient than hunting through the Ribbon to find a command. It also remembers the features you’ve previously clicked on in the box, so when you click in it, you first see a list of previous tasks you’ve searched for. That makes sure that tasks that you frequently perform are always within easy reach, while at the same time making tasks you rarely do easily accessible.

Search is gaining more capabilities, too. Some users of enterprise and education editions of the subscription version of Office are now able to use the Search box to find people in their organization, SharePoint resources, and other personalized results from within PowerPoint. (These features are being rolled out in stages, so you might not have them yet.)

Get a jump-start on your presentations

QuickStarter is a great tool for anyone who hates being confronted with a blank slate when starting a presentation. It jump-starts your presentation by helping you with research and outline creation.

To use it, when you create a new presentation, select QuickStarter, type in the topic of your presentation, and then choose from a list of subtopics. QuickStarter suggests a set of slides you might want to use, based on Bing searches and information from Wikipedia. Choose which slide(s) to keep, and then select a look for your slides, including a theme complete with background graphics. You’ve now got a good start on your presentation.

QuickStarter recommends slides you might want to use for your presentation, based on Bing searches and information from Wikipedia. (Click image to enlarge it.)

When Microsoft releases its AI assistant Microsoft 365 Copilot this fall, you may get a far more powerful tool than QuickStarter to help create presentations. Microsoft claims that Copilot will be able create entire presentations from scratch, using your existing documents. It says you’ll be able to “create beautiful presentations with a simple prompt, adding relevant content from a document you made last week or last year.”

Try Smart Lookup for online research

If you do research to gather information for presentations, you’ll want to check out another useful feature, Smart Lookup. It lets you do online research from right within PowerPoint while you’re working on a presentation, so there’s no need to fire up your browser, search the web, and then copy the information to your presentation.

To use Smart Lookup, right-click a word or group of words and select Search xxx (where xxx is the word or words you’ve highlighted) from the menu that appears. PowerPoint then uses Bing to do a web search on the word or phrase and displays definitions, any related Wikipedia entries, related media, and other results from the web in the pane that appears on the right.

You can do web research from right within PowerPoint. (Click image to enlarge it.)

Smart Lookup has been getting smarter over time. When the feature first launched, it wasn’t very good at finding specific, timely information such as the current inflation rate in the United States. It was much better at finding more general information, such as a biography of the artificial intelligence pioneer Arthur Samuel. But Microsoft has done a lot of work on it, and it now works well when finding granular information as well.

Keep in mind that in order to use Smart Lookup in PowerPoint or any other Microsoft 365/Office 365 app, you might first need to enable Microsoft’s intelligent services feature, which collects your search terms and some content from your presentations and other documents. (If you’re concerned about privacy, you’ll need to decide whether the privacy hit is worth the convenience of doing research from right within the app.) If you haven’t enabled it, you’ll see a screen when you click Smart Lookup asking you to turn it on. Once you do so, it will be turned on across all your Microsoft 365/Office 365 applications.

Also note that there’s a reasonably high likelihood that Smart Lookup (and all search functions in Office and Windows) will get a serious makeover when Microsoft 365 Copilot is released. Microsoft has indicated that Copilot’s features will generally live in the right pane of its apps and Windows itself. We’ll keep you updated when that happens and include all the details you need to know about how to use it.

Tap Designer for slide design ideas

PowerPoint’s Designer feature makes it easy to quickly create high-quality slides without you doing much work. When you insert an image into a slide, the Designer panel opens on the right side of the screen, offering you a choice of multiple layouts for the slide. Choose the layout you want and take it from there.

Microsoft claims the feature was built with the help of graphic designers and takes into account the content of the image. A Microsoft blog post about Designer claims that “if the visual contains a natural scene, Designer can zoom, crop and frame it. But if the image contains a chart, it focuses in on the relevant region to ensure the important data is highlighted.”

When you insert an image into a slide, the Designer panel offers suggestions for the best layouts to use. (Click image to enlarge it.)

To make sure your version of PowerPoint has enabled Designer, click File > Options , and at the bottom of the screen in the PowerPoint Designer section, click the box next to Automatically show me design ideas , then click OK .

Add new types of charts

In PowerPoint (as well as Excel and Word) for Microsoft 365/Office 365, you get eight new types of charts you can add to documents: Treemap, Sunburst, Waterfall, Histogram, Pareto, Box & Whisker, Funnel, and Map. Each provides a unique way to display data visually. See our Excel for Microsoft 365 cheat sheet for details about the new chart types, including what each one looks like and what type of data it’s best suited for.

To insert any of the new chart types (or any other chart) in a document, select Insert > Chart from the Ribbon or click the chart icon in the area that appears when you create a new slide — it’s in the box that also lets you add text, tables, graphics, and other content. Either way, you’ll be shown the full gallery of charts you can insert. Make a selection and click OK, and it appears in your document with placeholder data; at the same time a pop-up window appears that looks like a mini Excel spreadsheet. Enter or edit the data, or else click the Edit in Excel button to open it up in Excel and edit it there.

When you insert a chart, a window where you can edit the data pops up. (Click image to enlarge it.)

Note that the Pareto chart does not show up in the main list of chart types. To insert one, you’ll have to first select Histogram from the list of chart types, and at the top of the screen that appears, select the option to the right, Pareto .

Morph from one slide to the next

This feature lets you show motion in transitions and inside slides, but without having to use the Animations tab. To use it, duplicate an existing slide: Select the slide, then, on the Home tab, click the down arrow next to New Slide and select Duplicate Selected Slides .

Then make changes to that duplicate, such as shrinking an element or elements in it, making them bigger, moving them to new locations, and/or rotating them. Now select Morph from the Transitions tab, and PowerPoint automatically creates an animated transition between the slides. Onscreen, they look like a single slide morphing.

Collaborate in real time

An important feature in PowerPoint Microsoft 365/Office 365 for those who work with others is real-time collaboration that lets people work on presentations together from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. Microsoft calls this “co-authoring.”

Note that in order to use co-authoring, the presentation must be stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online, and you must be logged into your Microsoft 365/Office 365 account. Also, co-authoring works in PowerPoint only if you have AutoSave turned on. To do it, move the AutoSave slider at the top left of the screen to On.

To collaborate on a document, open it, then click the Share button in the upper-right part of the screen and select Share . The “Send link” window opens. Enter the email addresses of the people with whom you want to collaborate and type in a message if you want.

Here’s how you invite others to collaborate in PowerPoint.

By default, the people you share the document with can edit the document, but you can give them read-only access by clicking Anyone with the link can edit just above the input box, and on the “Share settings” screen that appears, select Can edit in the “More settings” area.  From that screen you can also set an expiration date for the sharing link and set a password that people to whom you’ve send the link will need to access the spreadsheet. (If you use a business, enterprise, or education edition of Office, your IT department may have set up different default sharing permissions and options.)

In the “Send link” window, you can alternatively copy a link to the file and send that yourself instead of having PowerPoint send it for you, or send the link through Outlook. A final option is to send a copy of the presentation instead of the link, either as a PowerPoint presentation or as a PDF, but that option doesn’t allow live collaboration.

When you’re done, click the Send button.

To begin collaboration: When the email recipient gets your invitation to collaborate, they click a button or link to open the document, which opens in PowerPoint Online in a web browser, rather than in the PowerPoint desktop client. They can either edit or read it in PowerPoint Online, depending on the permissions you granted, or click Open in Desktop App and use it from the PowerPoint desktop client.

Different colored icons identify the different people working on the document. You’ll see all their comments, they’ll see yours, and you can see the changes everyone makes.

Collaborating on a presentation. (Click image to enlarge it.)

You can do more than see each other’s work. Everyone can make comments, and others can respond to them, live. To make a comment, right-click an area and select Comment from the menu that appears. The Comments pane appears. Type in your comment and click the arrow at the bottom of the comment, and everyone can see it. They can then respond, so that comments are threaded, making it easy to follow conversations.

You can open and close the Comments pane by clicking the Comments button towards the top right of the screen. From the pane, you can review people’s comments and make comments of your own.

If you want a co-worker who isn’t actively collaborating on the presentation to know you need their input on one of your comments, in the comment type @ and the first few letters of the person’s name, then choose their name from the list that appears. When you click the arrow to post the comment, they’ll get an email telling them they were @mentioned and linking to the comment in the presentation.

Be aware that how well real-time collaboration works depends on the strength of your internet connection. On slow or flaky connections, you won’t immediately see edits that other people make and they won’t see yours immediately — there will be a lag. So it’s always best, when possible, to have the strongest connection possible when collaborating.

Use AutoSave as a safety net while you work

Worried about losing your work on a presentation because you forgot to constantly save it? Worry no more. AutoSave automatically saves your files for you, so you won’t have to worry about system crashes, power outages, PowerPoint crashes, and similar problems. Be aware, though, that it works only on documents that are stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online.

You may think you’re already protected against these problems because of the AutoRecover feature built into earlier versions of Office. But AutoSave is significantly different and better than AutoRecover. AutoRecover doesn’t save your files in real time, so it’s easy for you to lose work. Instead, every several minutes it saves an AutoRecover file that you can try to recover after a crash. But this feature doesn’t always work — for example, if you don’t properly open Office after the crash, or if the crash doesn’t meet Microsoft’s definition of a crash. And Microsoft notes, “AutoRecover is only effective for unplanned disruptions, such as a power outage or a crash. AutoRecover files are not designed to be saved when a logoff is scheduled or an orderly shutdown occurs.” And the files aren’t saved in real time, so you’ll lose several minutes of work even if all goes as planned.

AutoSave is turned on by default in PowerPoint for Microsoft 365/Office 365 for .pptx files stored in OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, or SharePoint Online. To turn it off (or back on again), use the AutoSave button on the top left of the screen.

Using AutoSave may require some rethinking of your workflow. Many people are used to creating new presentations based on existing ones by opening the existing file, making changes to it, and then using Save As to save the new version under a different name, leaving the original file intact. Be warned that doing this with AutoSave enabled will save your changes in the original file. Instead, Microsoft suggests opening the original file and immediately selecting File > Save a Copy (which replaces Save As when AutoSave is enabled) to create a new version.

If AutoSave does save unwanted changes to a file, you can always use the Version History feature described next to roll back to an earlier version.

Review or restore earlier versions of a presentation

Another useful feature you should know about is Version History, which lets you go back to previous versions of a file, review them, and copy and paste from an older file to your existing one. You can also restore an entire old version.

To use it, with a file open, click the file name at the top of the screen. A drop-down menu appears with the location of the file and a Version History section. Click Version History, and the Version History pane appears on the right side of the screen with a list of the previous versions of the file, including the time and date they were saved.

Scrolling through previous versions of a presentation. (Click image to enlarge it.)

Click any older version, and that version appears in a new window. Scroll through the version and copy any content you want. You can also overwrite your existing presentation with the earlier version or save the earlier version in a separate file.

Version History works best when used in conjunction with AutoSave. You can use it without AutoSave, but it’s not as useful because you don’t get as many saved versions to go back to.

Use Zoom to present nonsequentially

Ever wish you could jump around in your presentation, showing your slides in nonsequential order? The Zoom feature does this by creating a kind of visual shortcuts table that lets you quickly zoom from one section to another — handy in case you want to go back to a previous slide or skip over a section of your presentation.

When you’re in a presentation, select Insert > Zoom . You get a choice of three different kinds of Zoom:

• Summary Zoom: This lets you create a visual summary of your presentation. You select the slides you want included in the summary. Each of those slides becomes the beginning of a section of the presentation. When you’re giving a presentation, you can click a thumbnail on the Summary Zoom slide to go to the beginning slide of a section.
• Section Zoom: If you’ve already created sections in your presentation, when you choose Section Zoom you’ll see those sections. Choose which you want to put on your Section Zoom slide. Then when you’re giving a presentation, click any thumbnail to jump to that section.
• Slide Zoom: This lets you jump from a slide to any other slide in the presentation. It’s generally best used for short presentations without many sections. After you click Slide Zoom , you select which slides you want to be able to jump to, and they’ll show up in a Slide Zoom slide. Click any slide to jump to it.

Here’s how to insert a Summary Zoom slide, with thumbnails of your entire presentation. (Click image to enlarge it.)

Other useful PowerPoint for Microsoft 365/Office 365 features

PowerPoint for Microsoft 365/Office 365 has several more useful features. Although they’re not as significant as the other features we’ve covered here, they’re worth knowing about.

Insert 3D models: This visual trick lets you show full three-dimensional details of an object. Select Insert > 3D Models and choose the 3D model you want to insert, either from your computer or from an online Microsoft library. Once it’s inserted, you can tilt or rotate the model any way you want during your presentation.

Text highlighter: Here’s a simple way to draw people’s attention to specific pieces of text: Use the new text highlighter to choose different colors to emphasize different portions of your presentation. It’s the same highlighter that Word has had for some time. To do it, select the text you want to highlight, then choose Home > Text Highlight Color .

Easier background removal: After inserting a picture, you can remove its background as a way to focus more on the photo’s subject or a detail. In earlier versions of PowerPoint you could remove backgrounds but had to use the drawing tools to select and fine-tune the item you wanted to keep; now the process is more automated. To do it, select the picture whose background you want to remove, then select Picture Format > Remove Background .

Royalty-free images: To get access to thousands of royalty-free images, icons, and stickers, go to Insert > Pictures > Stock Images , select the type of image you’re looking for from the top of the screen, and scroll though the images. You can also do a search for images as well.

Use a Bluetooth-enabled pen to control a presentation : If you’ve got a Bluetooth pen like the one that comes with a Surface device, you can use its button as a clicker to move to the next slide or a previous one. First pair the pen with your computer. Then go to the Windows Settings app and select Bluetooth and devices > Pen & Windows Ink . Under Pen Shortcuts, check the box next to Allow apps to override the shortcut button behavior . A single click will now move to the next slide in a presentation, and holding down the button will move one slide backward in the presentation.

Record a presentation: You can record your presentation ahead of time and then share it with others. Click the Record button toward the top right of PowerPoint, then select either From beginning or From Current slide . You can choose from three views: Teleprompter, Presenter, and Slide. You can pause and retake the video as many times as you want. When you’re satisfied, click Export . You can then share the video with anyone you want. See Microsoft’s video recording blog post for details.

Check for the Microsoft 365 Copilot launch

Microsoft has been building generative AI capabilities, called Copilot, into its entire product line. Microsoft 365 Copilot is currently being tested in private trials at 600 enterprises and is scheduled to be launched generally on Nov. 1. Here’s how Microsoft describes what Copilot will do in PowerPoint :

Copilot in PowerPoint helps you turn your ideas into stunning presentations. As your storytelling partner, Copilot can transform existing written documents into decks complete with speaker notes and sources or start a new presentation from a simple prompt or outline. Condense lengthy presentations at the click of a button and use natural language commands to adjust layouts, reformat text, and perfectly time animations.

Note that not everyone will have access to Copilot. The service will be available to Microsoft 365 corporate customers as an add-on , for $30 per user per month.

Use keyboard shortcuts

Using keyboard shortcuts is one of the best ways to accomplish tasks quickly in any version of PowerPoint. See “ Handy PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts for Windows and Mac ” for our favorites.

And don’t forget to download our PowerPoint for Microsoft 365 Ribbon quick reference guide, which explores the most useful commands on each Ribbon tab and provides keyboard shortcuts for each.

This story was originally published in February 2021 and updated in October 2023.

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Preston Gralla is a contributing editor for Computerworld , a blogger for ITworld, and the author of more than 45 books, including NOOK Tablet: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly 2012) and How the Internet Works (Que, 2006).

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How-To Geek

8 tips to make the best powerpoint presentations.

Want to make your PowerPoint presentations really shine? Here's how to impress and engage your audience.

Quick Links

Table of contents, start with a goal, less is more, consider your typeface, make bullet points count, limit the use of transitions, skip text where possible, think in color, take a look from the top down, bonus: start with templates.

Slideshows are an intuitive way to share complex ideas with an audience, although they're dull and frustrating when poorly executed. Here are some tips to make your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations sing while avoiding common pitfalls.

It all starts with identifying what we're trying to achieve with the presentation. Is it informative, a showcase of data in an easy-to-understand medium? Or is it more of a pitch, something meant to persuade and convince an audience and lead them to a particular outcome?

It's here where the majority of these presentations go wrong with the inability to identify the talking points that best support our goal. Always start with a goal in mind: to entertain, to inform, or to share data in a way that's easy to understand. Use facts, figures, and images to support your conclusion while keeping structure in mind (Where are we now and where are we going?).

I've found that it's helpful to start with the ending. Once I know how to end a presentation, I know how best to get to that point. I start by identifying the takeaway---that one nugget that I want to implant before thanking everyone for their time---and I work in reverse to figure out how best to get there.

Your mileage, of course, may vary. But it's always going to be a good idea to put in the time in the beginning stages so that you aren't reworking large portions of the presentation later. And that starts with a defined goal.

A slideshow isn't supposed to include everything. It's an introduction to a topic, one that we can elaborate on with speech. Anything unnecessary is a distraction. It makes the presentation less visually appealing and less interesting, and it makes you look bad as a presenter.

This goes for text as well as images. There's nothing worse, in fact, than a series of slides where the presenter just reads them as they appear. Your audience is capable of reading, and chances are they'll be done with the slide, and browsing Reddit, long before you finish. Avoid putting the literal text on the screen, and your audience will thank you.

Related: How to Burn Your PowerPoint to DVD

Right off the bat, we're just going to come out and say that Papyrus and Comic Sans should be banned from all PowerPoint presentations, permanently. Beyond that, it's worth considering the typeface you're using and what it's saying about you, the presenter, and the presentation itself.

Consider choosing readability over aesthetics, and avoid fancy fonts that could prove to be more of a distraction than anything else. A good presentation needs two fonts: a serif and sans-serif. Use one for the headlines and one for body text, lists, and the like. Keep it simple. Veranda, Helvetica, Arial, and even Times New Roman are safe choices. Stick with the classics and it's hard to botch this one too badly.

There reaches a point where bullet points become less of a visual aid and more of a visual examination.

Bullet points should support the speaker, not overwhelm his audience. The best slides have little or no text at all, in fact. As a presenter, it's our job to talk through complex issues, but that doesn't mean that we need to highlight every talking point.

Instead, think about how you can break up large lists into three or four bullet points. Carefully consider whether you need to use more bullet points, or if you can combine multiple topics into a single point instead. And if you can't, remember that there's no one limiting the number of slides you can have in a presentation. It's always possible to break a list of 12 points down into three pages of four points each.

Animation, when used correctly, is a good idea. It breaks up slow-moving parts of a presentation and adds action to elements that require it. But it should be used judiciously.

Adding a transition that wipes left to right between every slide or that animates each bullet point in a list, for example, starts to grow taxing on those forced to endure the presentation. Viewers get bored quickly, and animations that are meant to highlight specific elements quickly become taxing.

That's not to say that you can't use animations and transitions, just that you need to pick your spots. Aim for no more than a handful of these transitions for each presentation. And use them in spots where they'll add to the demonstration, not detract from it.

Sometimes images tell a better story than text can. And as a presenter, your goal is to describe points in detail without making users do a lot of reading. In these cases, a well-designed visual, like a chart, might better convey the information you're trying to share.

The right image adds visual appeal and serves to break up longer, text-heavy sections of the presentation---but only if you're using the right images. A single high-quality image can make all the difference between a success and a dud when you're driving a specific point home.

When considering text, don't think solely in terms of bullet points and paragraphs. Tables, for example, are often unnecessary. Ask yourself whether you could present the same data in a bar or line chart instead.

Color is interesting. It evokes certain feelings and adds visual appeal to your presentation as a whole. Studies show that color also improves interest, comprehension, and retention. It should be a careful consideration, not an afterthought.

You don't have to be a graphic designer to use color well in a presentation. What I do is look for palettes I like, and then find ways to use them in the presentation. There are a number of tools for this, like Adobe Color , Coolors , and ColorHunt , just to name a few. After finding a palette you enjoy, consider how it works with the presentation you're about to give. Pastels, for example, evoke feelings of freedom and light, so they probably aren't the best choice when you're presenting quarterly earnings that missed the mark.

It's also worth mentioning that you don't need to use every color in the palette. Often, you can get by with just two or three, though you should really think through how they all work together and how readable they'll be when layered. A simple rule of thumb here is that contrast is your friend. Dark colors work well on light backgrounds, and light colors work best on dark backgrounds.

Spend some time in the Slide Sorter before you finish your presentation. By clicking the four squares at the bottom left of the presentation, you can take a look at multiple slides at once and consider how each works together. Alternatively, you can click "View" on the ribbon and select "Slide Sorter."

Are you presenting too much text at once? Move an image in. Could a series of slides benefit from a chart or summary before you move on to another point?

It's here that we have the opportunity to view the presentation from beyond the single-slide viewpoint and think in terms of how each slide fits, or if it fits at all. From this view, you can rearrange slides, add additional ones, or delete them entirely if you find that they don't advance the presentation.

The difference between a good presentation and a bad one is really all about preparation and execution. Those that respect the process and plan carefully---not only the presentation as a whole, but each slide within it---are the ones who will succeed.

This brings me to my last (half) point: When in doubt, just buy a template and use it. You can find these all over the web, though Creative Market and GraphicRiver are probably the two most popular marketplaces for this kind of thing. Not all of us are blessed with the skills needed to design and deliver an effective presentation. And while a pre-made PowerPoint template isn't going to make you a better presenter, it will ease the anxiety of creating a visually appealing slide deck.

Critical PowerPoint Shortcuts – Claim Your FREE Training Module and Get Your Time Back!

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

• PowerPoint Tutorials
• Presentation Design
• January 22, 2024

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

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

Table of Contents

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

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

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

Ready to start learning how to make a PowerPoint presentation?

Take your PPT skills to the next level

Start with a blank presentation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The PowerPoint interface

Here is how the program is laid out:

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

The Slide Area

The notes pane.

• The Status Bar (including the View Buttons)

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

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

The PowerPoint Ribbon

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

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

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

• Online Pictures
• Screenshots
• Screen Recording

The Slides Pane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adding Content to Your PowerPoint Presentation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Insert More Slides into Your Presentation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adding Content to Your Slides

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• A picture from the web

To insert a picture into the picture placeholder, simply:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Using Designer to generate more layouts ideas

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

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

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

Change the Overall Design (optional)

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

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

A. Picking your PowerPoint slide size

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

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

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

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

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

 B. Selecting a PowerPoint theme

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

C. How to change a slide background in PowerPoint

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D. How to change your color palette in PowerPoint

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

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

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

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

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

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

E. How to change your fonts in PowerPoint

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adding Animations & Transitions (optional)

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

A. Adding PowerPoint animations

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

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

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

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

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

B. How to preview a PowerPoint animation

There are three ways to preview a PowerPoint animation:

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

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

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

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

C. How to manage your animations in PowerPoint

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

• Navigate to the  Animations tab
• Select the  Animation Pane

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

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

D. How to add transitions to your PowerPoint presentation

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

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

To add a transition to a PowerPoint slide, simply:

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

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

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

E. How to preview a transition in PowerPoint

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

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

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

Save Your PowerPoint Presentation

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

To save a PowerPoint presentation using your Ribbon, simply:

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

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

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

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

How to save your PowerPoint presentation as a template

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

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

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

Printing Your PowerPoint Presentation

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

To open the Print dialog box, you can either:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Compare PowerPoint features on different platforms

The following feature list isn’t comprehensive, but it gives you an idea of how PowerPoint compares across the Windows, Mac, Online, and mobile platforms.

Updated: April 19th, 2022

Audio features

Bi-directional text features, collaboration features, design and layout features, keyboard features, object insertion features, picture features, print features, slide features, slide show features, text-formatting features, video features.

● Feature is supported ◌ Feature is not supported

*Supported on phone; not supported on tablet.

¹Supported on OneDrive for work or school and SharePoint in Microsoft 365, but not on OneDrive.

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*Not supported on Windows Phone or Android Phones.

* In PowerPoint 2010, a third-party add-in is needed.

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9 Advanced Microsoft PowerPoint Features You Must Know

Are you a PowerPoint user? Here are some advanced features that can take your presentations to the next level and impress your audience.

Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most popular tools for creating presentations and slide shows. While PowerPoint dominates the presentation software category, you may not know its most valuable features yet.

Let's look at the most notable Microsoft PowerPoint features that you might not be using but definitely should.

1. Co-Authoring

As its name suggests, co-authoring allows you and your colleagues to work on a PowerPoint presentation collectively. It comes in handy when you're part of a team and want to collaborate on a PowerPoint presentation. Here are the detailed steps to use co-authoring in PowerPoint:

• Click the Share button in the top right corner of Microsoft PowerPoint.
• If you have your team member's email, enter that in the Send Link box.
• Once you are ready to share, click the Send button.

That's all you need to do. The next time someone joins the presentation, you'll see their changes in real time.

Microsoft offers you endless opportunities to customize the PPT sharing settings. You can click the pencil icon and then Sharing settings to access them.

2. PowerPoint Designer

The PowerPoint's AI-driven feature, called PowerPoint Designer, helps you transform your PPT's appearance. When you add a new slide or change the content of an existing slide, the Designer analyzes the content. It then starts suggesting design ideas that match the content of your PPT.

If you often lack design inspirations, you should learn to use PowerPoint's Designer feature for help. Follow these steps to get started with PowerPoint Designer:

• Create a new slide in PowerPoint.
• You can click on any design ideas that will apply to your current slide.

Want to see the real magic? Create some more slides and add enough content to them. Open the Designer sidebar again to see some related designs (applicable to all of your slides).

3. PowerPoint Add-Ins

You may not know that PowerPoint allows you to install third-party add-ins in one click. There are many different PowerPoint add-ins to transform your presentations completely. Once you know which add-ins to install, you can follow these steps to install them:

• On your presentation screen, go to the Insert tab.
• This will open the Office Add-ins window. You can search for and install your favorite add-ons for PowerPoint.

4. Presenter Coach

If enhancing your presentation skills is your goal, then Presenter Coach is the perfect option for you. It provides you with real-time feedback on your presentation skills.

It first analyzes all the words you speak. Then, by using artificial intelligence, it suggests how you can improve further. Here is how you can enable Presenter Coach in Microsoft PowerPoint:

• Click Start Rehearsing to start the AI coach. Now you can start presenting, and the Presenter Coach will provide feedback on your pacing, tone, and language.
• If you want to stop, you can click the mute icon and resume the session by clicking it again.

But how can you view the feedback or results of the Presenter Coach? To view your results, you have to exit the slide first. A popup will appear then, reflecting your rehearsal report and summary of your performance. If you're a beginner, you must read our guide on using Presenter Coach for help.

5. 3D Models

Everything in 3D looks much better than in 2D, right? This is why you can make your presentations much better than others by using 3D models.

Microsoft PowerPoint has a vast collection of 3D models in various categories. The major categories for 3D models include animals, emojis, avatars, shapes, electronics, and gadgets.

To start, click the Insert tab at the top and select the 3D Models option. You can open any category you want and then click on any 3D model you wish to insert into your slide. Once you are ready, click the Insert button.

The best thing that sets this feature apart is that you can even import your self-made 3D models. Once you insert a 3D model into your slide, you can adjust its position, size, and rotation. You can also use 3D models to showcase products, visualize concepts, or add a creative element to your PPT.

6. Morph Transition

By adding Morph transitions, you can animate different aspects of your slides. You can animate different objects, slides, and even texts as you like.

We will demonstrate the use of Morph transitions with the help of the 3D models discussed above.

To use a Morph transition, follow these steps:

• Insert any 3D model in your first slide. We are going to use a laptop model for this tutorial.
• You have to duplicate the object you selected in the first slide, or you can re-insert the same in the next slide.
• Run or present your slides to experience a smooth transition between the two slides.

That's it. You will see that your object will transition between two positions.

If you're finding it difficult, there are many websites for animated PowerPoint slides to make your work much easier. You can download a pre-designed template and start customizing it.

7. Remove the Photo Background

From PowerPoint 2016 onwards, you can remove photo backgrounds with one click in PowerPoint. You don't need to go to another website or install a third-party application to do this simple task.

To start with it, insert any image into your slide and then click Remove Background from the Format tab. PowerPoint will then detect the background and remove it.

If you want more control, you can adjust the selection by clicking on the parts of the image you want to keep or remove. So now that you know the steps, you can create custom images that blend with your presentation's design.

8. Insert Object

By inserting Office files, such as Word or Excel, your slides can get the benefits of both applications. You can add charts, tables, or even Word documents without the headache of copy-pasting. The below steps will guide you on inserting an object in PowerPoint:

• Go to the Insert tab, and under the Text group, click on Object .
• But, if you're looking to insert a saved file, click Create from File .
• Select the required object you want to insert under Object type. It may be an Excel file, chart, or anything else.

Once inserted, you can customize the object's appearance and position on the slide. If you want to edit the object's content, double-click on it to open and edit it in its native application.

9. Slide Master

While preparing a presentation, sometimes the flow or consistency breaks for any reason. For example, you may use a bigger font on the first slide and a different font for the rest.

Whatever the situation is, it makes your presentation look unstructured. In such cases, Slide Master comes into play. Slide Master is a helpful feature that helps you master your slides' "consistency" element. It lets you set the same font, heading size, design, and much more for all your slides.

Follow these steps to enable and start using Slide Master:

• Go to the View tab and click on Slide Master .
• Once you've made your changes, click the Close Master View button. This will apply the defined template to all the slides in your presentation.

The best thing about using it is that you don't need to open every slide and waste your precious time tweaking them. You can create a template using Slide Master that includes font choices, color schemes, and other elements. Then, let the Slide Master handle your presentations.

Take Your Presentations to the Next Level

No one likes a plain presentation nowadays. So, you should be one step ahead and add creativity and modern looks to your slides. While the Designer will help you with designs, transitions, and 3D models, they will help you with other visual aspects.

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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An Introduction To MS PowerPoint

MS PowerPoint is a program that is included in the Microsoft Office suite. It is used to make presentations for personal and professional purposes.

In this article, we shall discuss in detail the functions and features of a PowerPoint presentation, followed by some sample questions based on this topic for the upcoming competitive exams. 

To learn more about the different programs under Microsoft Office , visit the linked article. 

Given below are a few important things that one must know about the development and introduction of Microsoft PowerPoint:

• The program was created in a software company named Forethought, Inc. by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin. 
• It was released on April 20, 1987, and after 3 months of its creation, it was acquired by Microsoft.
• The first version of this program, when introduced by Microsoft was MS PowerPoint 2.0 (1990).
• It is a presentation-based program that uses graphics, videos, etc. to make a presentation more interactive and interesting.
• The file extension of a saved Powerpoint presentation is “.ppt”.
• A PowerPoint presentation comprising slides and other features is also known as PPT.

Gradually, with each version, the program was more creative and more interactive. Various other features were added in PowerPoint which massively increased the requirement and use of this MS Office program.

From the examination point of view, MS PowerPoint happens to be a very important topic. Candidates who are preparing for the various Government exams can visit the Computer Knowledge page and get a list of topics included in the syllabus and prepare themselves accordingly. 

Basics of MS PowerPoint

Discussed below are a few questions that one must be aware of while discussing the basics of MS PowerPoint. Once this is understood, using the program and analysing how to use it more creatively shall become easier.

Question: What is MS PowerPoint?

Answer: PowerPoint (PPT) is a powerful, easy-to-use presentation graphics software  program that allows you to create professional-looking electronic slide  shows. 

The image given below shows the main page of MS PowerPoint, where a person lands when the program is opened on a computer system:

Question: How to open MS PowerPoint on a personal computer?

Answer: Follow the steps below to open MS PowerPoint on a personal computer:

• Click on the start button
• Then choose “All Programs”
• Next step is to select “MS Office”
• Under MS Office, click on the “MS PowerPoint” 

A blank presentation is open on the screen. According to the requirement, a person can modify the template for a presentation and start using the program.

Question: What is a PowerPoint presentation or PPT?

Answer: A combination of various slides depicting a graphical and visual interpretation of data, to present information in a more creative and interactive manner is called a PowerPoint presentation or PPT.

Question: What is a slide show in a PowerPoint presentation?

Answer: When all the slides of a PowerPoint presentation are set in series and then presented to a group of people, where each slide appears one after the other, is a set pattern, this is known as a PowerPoint slide show. 

Question: What all elements can be added to a slide?

Answer: The following elements can be added to a Powerpoint slide:

• Photographs
• Media Clips

All these elements are mainly used to enhance presentation skills and make the slide more interactive.

To learn more about the Fundamentals of Computer , visit the linked article. 

For a better understanding of the Microsoft PowerPoint and its operations, functions and usage, refer to the video given below:

Features of MS PowerPoint

There are multiple features that are available in MS PowerPoint which can customise and optimise a presentation. The same have been discussed below.

• Slide Layout

Multiple options and layouts are available based on which a presentation can be created. This option is available under the “Home” section and one can select from the multiple layout options provided.

The image below shows the different slide layout options which are available for use:

• Insert – Clipart, Video, Audio, etc.

Under the “Insert” category, multiple options are available where one can choose what feature they want to insert in their presentation. This may include images, audio, video, header, footer, symbols, shapes, etc. 

The image below shows the features which can be inserted:

• Slide Design

MS PowerPoint has various themes using which background colour and designs or textures can be added to a slide. This makes the presentation more colourful and attracts the attention of the people looking at it.

This feature can be added using the “Design” category mentioned on the homepage of MS PowerPoint. Although there are existing design templates available, in case someone wants to add some new texture or colour, the option to customise the design is also available. Apart from this, slide designs can also be downloaded online.

Refer to the below for slide design:

During the slide show, the slides appear on the screen one after the other. In case, one wants to add some animations to the way in which a slide presents itself, they can refer to the “Animations” category. 

The different animation styles available on PowerPoint are:

Apart from all these options; font size, font style, font colour, word art, date and time, etc. can also be added to a PPT.

Also, there are various other subjects that are included in the exam syllabus for various competitive exams. Candidates can check the detailed section-wise syllabus in the links given below:

Uses of PowerPoint Presentation

PowerPoint presentations are useful for both personal and professional usage. Given below are a few of the major fields where PPT is extremely useful:

• Education – With e-learning and smart classes being chosen as a common mode of education today, PowerPoint presentations can help in making education more interactive and attract students towards the modified version of studying
• Marketing – In the field of marketing, PowerPoint presentations can be extremely important. Using graphs and charts, numbers can be shown more evidently and clearly which may be ignored by the viewer if being read
• Business – To invite investors or to show the increase or decrease in profits, MS PowerPoint can be used
• Creating Resumes – Digital resumes can be formed using MS PowerPoint. Different patterns, photograph, etc. can be added to the resume
• Depicting Growth – Since both graphics and text can be added in a presentation, depicting the growth of a company, business, student’s marks, etc. is easier using PPT

Government exam aspirants can upgrade their preparation with the help of the links given below:

Sample MS PowerPoint Questions and Answers

As discussed earlier in this article, Computer Awareness is included in the syllabus for many competitive exams. Thus, to understand the program from the examination point of view is also a must. 

Given below are a few sample questions based on MS PowerPoint.

Q 1. How many maximum slides can be added to a PowerPoint presentation?

• No fixed number

Answer: (3) No fixed number

Q 2. Slide Sorter view can be selected under which of the following categories?

Answer: (4) View

Q 3. The combination of which keyboard keys can be used as a shortcut to add a new slide in MS PowerPoint?

Answer: (3) ctrl+M

Q 4. Header and Footer option is available under which of the following categories?

Answer: (1) Insert

Q 5. Which of the following is not included in the “Insert” category in MS PowerPoint?

Answer: (4) Animation

Similar types of MS PowerPoint Questions may be asked based on the features or usage of the program. Thus, one must carefully go through the elements and aspects of PPT. 

For any further assistance related to the upcoming Government exams, candidates can check the Preparation Strategy for Competitive Exams page. 

Get the latest exam information, study material and other information related to the major Government exams conducted in the country, at BYJU’S.

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