Powerpoint

Introduction

Communication is frequently identified as the primary key to the success of any business. All businesses must continually communicate with employees, customers, shareholders, prospects, vendors, etc. Given this premise, one should naturally ask “what tools exist to help our organization communicate better?” The answer is Microsoft PowerPoint. PowerPoint is designed to help you convey information, and it does so in a surprisingly wide variety of ways. This article will broaden your perception of PowerPoint and inform you about some of the simple but powerful features that can help you use this product more efficiently.

The “Projection System Required” Myth

Many people are under the wrong impression that you must use a computer and projection system to deliver a PowerPoint presentation- this is not the case. While PowerPoint is ideally suited for a computer projection system, there are many ways in which you can deliver a PowerPoint slide show without the use of a projection system, as follows:

Printed Pages – PowerPoint slide shows can be printed to paper with your choice of 1, 2, 4, 6 or 9 slides per page. If desired, you can suppress the slide show background to make the slides more readable, especially when printed on a black and white printer. Assuming duplex printing (2-sided page printing), you could print a 36-page PowerPoint slide show on just 2 pieces of paper (using 9 slides per page). This would allow you to provide handouts to all meeting participants, hence they will not have to frantically take notes to capture the content of your slide show.

Printing 9 slides per page

Transparencies - PowerPoint slide shows can be printed to transparencies, which can then be used on an overhead projector. Of course transparencies can be printed in black and white or color. This approach allows you to use a simple overhead projector to deliver your presentation, a low tech approach that may offer less risk compared to using a laptop and computer projection system. Such a solution might be preferable for travelers who prefer to leave their laptop computers at the home or for use as a backup delivery method.

Publish As a Web Page – PowerPoint slide shows can be published to the web instantly using the built-in web publishing wizard. This option allows you to make your PowerPoint slide show instantly available to your meeting group, as well as the rest of the world. A key benefit of this approach is that your complete slide show, including animations and sound will automatically work on the published web site.

Publishing PowerPoint slide shows to the web

Pack and Go - The Pack and Go wizard will package your PowerPoint presentation to run on another computer, including linked files, animations, TrueType fonts, etc. You can also choose to include the Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer which will allow the Pack and Go file to run on a computer that doesn't have Microsoft PowerPoint installed.

The Pack and Go Wizard

E-Mail – Of course we should not overlook the fact that PowerPoint slide shows can be e-mailed directly to a recipient, or group of recipients. PowerPoint provides this capability from the File menu as shown below.

PowerPoint’s Mail Recipient Feature

Five Important PowerPoint Features

Presented below are five powerful PowerPoint features which are often overlooked, but are definitely worth your time to learn.

1. Popup Menu On Right Mouse Click – When delivering a PowerPoint presentation, you already know that the left mouse button will advance the slide show with each left mouse click. However, as a default, the right mouse button pops up a menu, rather than displaying the previous slide. This can result in an awkward moment in the presentation when the presenter truly wants to slip back to the previous slide. Instead of fumbling with this popup menu, I find it is better to set PowerPoint to display the previous screen on right mouse click. To do this, choose Tools, Options, and uncheck the “Popup” box as shown below: 

 Use Tools Options to Uncheck Popup Menu on Right Mouse Click

2. Slide Master – PowerPoint provides a slide master page which allows you to set up the background, fonts, and formats to be used for every page throughout your slide show. Setting up the slide master page first makes it easier to then position your text and objects in an attractive manner as you create your presentation. The slide master page is accessed under the View menu. In the sample screen below you can see that I have inserted a washed out image of myself as part of the background – this image will now appear on all slides.

The Master Slide in PowerPoint

3. Motion Paths – You can create motion paths that cause text and pictures to move across the screen. However, a rather professional effect can be achieved by using a motion path on an object (such as a photograph) that is larger than your slide. In the example presented below, I have inserted a picture of clouds which is larger than the slide, and applied an animation in which this image crawls slowly across the screen. When displayed, the text remains stationary as the background image seems to slowly float by. This illusion makes this slide play more like a movie, and results in an interesting affect that you like.

Using motion paths and oversized pictures in PowerPoint

4. Recording Narration – Once you have completed your PowerPoint presentation, you can run the slide show on your computer and use a microphone to record your comments, advancing the slides as you speak. The resulting product is a self-running PowerPoint slide show, complete with your voice embedded in the presentation. This file can then be sent to others who can view the slide show and hear your voice walk them through the various slides. This feature is located under the View Slide Show menu, and is surprisingly easy to use. As you speak, your voice is saved as a sound clip which is associated with each slide - you can re-record any individual slide’s narration as needed.

Adding narration to your slide show

5. Custom Shows – You can create different versions of your PowerPoint presentation, and save them as “Custom Shows”.  For example, the screen below shows how I pared down my primary PowerPoint presentation which runs 90 minutes in length to create a custom 10-minute version of this presentation using only five slides. With this approach, I can maintain multiple versions of my presentation, but I need only update a given slide once to have those updates automatically reflected in all of my custom shows.

Create multiple versions of your slide show

More Power Point Tips

Following is a link to a well written article by Ellen Finkelstein which provides 44 small, but useful tips on using Power Point. If you use Power Point, it is worth a read:

http://www.presentations.com/presentations/technology/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2056785

Conclusion

PowerPoint can help you develop, organize and present information. I find that developing materials in PowerPoint can be five times faster than developing materials in my word processor. Why? Because PowerPoint invites you to develop your material using bullets, lists, charts, and pictures whereas your word processor begs for complete paragraphs including introductory and conclusion sentences. With a word processor you end up writing more, reviewing more, and then summarizing more in order to deliver your presentation.

PowerPoint also helps you organize your presentation. Once the data is assembled, you can reorganize slides by simply clicking and dragging them to a new position. You can even lasso multiple slides and move them with one drag of the mouse. This type of organization is much more difficult to accomplish in a word processing environment.

PowerPoint also helps you deliver a presentation because the slides act as your lecture notes. These notes keep you on course. Audience participants whose minds naturally drift away can use the slides to catch up to you in your presentation. Presenters who have a natural fear of speaking in public are comforted somewhat because PowerPoint draws the audience’s eyes more toward the screen, and away from the presenter. In this manner, the reluctant presenter does not feel quite as nervous. PowerPoint is also a great platform for presenting pictures and charts which plays into the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Of course, death by PowerPoint is an all-too-frequent occurrence at many conferences, and presenters should be mindful to avoid boring their audience to tears with dozens of slides. Presenters should also avoid building slides which contain complete sentences because this often results in the presenter simply “reading” the slides to the audience – a situation which always comes across negatively. As a general rule, use one PowerPoint slide for every five minutes of lecture.

In conclusion, PowerPoint is a great tool which helps you deliver information. As we have learned, PowerPoint is not only good for live presentations, but it also is useful for developing and delivering presentations through e-mail, the web and even the printed page.

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