17 PowerPoint Presentation Suggestions From Professional Presenters [+ Templates]

PowerPoint displays will be skilled, enticing, and actually assist your viewers keep in mind your message.

If you happen to don’t have a lot expertise, that’s okay — I’m going to arm you with PowerPoint design suggestions from professional presenters, the steps it’s essential construct an enticing deck, and templates that will help you nail nice slide design.

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Buckle up for a wide range of step-by-step explanations in addition to suggestions and tips that will help you begin mastering this program. There are extra sources woven in, and also you’ll discover knowledgeable views from different HubSpotters alongside the way in which.

Desk of Contents

Make a PowerPoint Presentation

Microsoft PowerPoint is sort of a take a look at of primary skilled expertise, and every PowerPoint is principally a presentation product of a number of slides.

Profitable PowerPoints depend upon three predominant elements: your command of PowerPoint’s design instruments, your consideration to presentation processes, and being constant together with your model.

Hold these in thoughts as we soar into PowerPoint’s capabilities.

Getting Began

1. Open PowerPoint and click on ‘New.’

A web page with templates will often open routinely, but when not, go to the highest left pane of your display screen and click on New. If you happen to’ve already created a presentation, choose Open and then double-click the icon to open the present file.

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2. Select a theme or create your individual.

Microsoft presents built-in themes and coloration variations that will help you design your slides with a cohesive look. To select from these pre-built themes, select the File tab once more, choose New, select one of many choices, and click on Create.

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There’s additionally an possibility to pick a clean presentation should you want to begin from scratch. With this feature you should utilize PowerPoint parts, your design sense, and your model’s coloration palette to make your individual theme.

Creating PowerPoint Slides

3. Insert a slide.

Insert a brand new slide by clicking on the House tab after which the New Slide button. Contemplate what content material you wish to placed on the slide, together with heading, textual content, and imagery.

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4. Create a wide range of slides for various functions.

You don’t wish to current the identical precise slide every time, simply with completely different content material on it. This may bore your viewers, so just remember to create a number of variations.

Contemplate what sort of multimedia you’ll be utilizing, and select or create completely different layouts accordingly. At minimal, you’ll want:

• A title slide
• An agenda or desk of contents slide
• A slide that introduces the speaker
• Varied content material slides

5. Use the Duplicate function to avoid wasting you time.

There’s no have to create these designs time and again. Now that you’ve a number of to attract from, merely duplicate them earlier than inputting your content material:

• On the left pane, right-click the thumbnail of the slide you wish to duplicate.
• Select Duplicate Slide from the pop-up menu.

This can routinely add a duplicate of this slide to the presentation. From there, you may customise it on your wants.

6. Add images to your slide.

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Add photos by clicking Insert and clicking the Photos icon. You possibly can add different parts through the use of options within the House and Insert tabs on the highest ribbon. Discover your structure by dragging parts round.

7. Add transitions to your slides (non-obligatory).

When performed effectively, transitions can add a bit little bit of motion and showmanship to your presentation. PowerPoint has a number of transitions inbuilt so that you can select from.

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Choose the Transitions tab from the highest ribbon. Choose a transition for it to preview in your display screen. To customise it additional, click on Impact Choices and play with the options to search out one thing that fits your liking. To take away a transition, choose Transitions and click on None.

8. Add animations to your slides (non-obligatory).

Like transitions, animations can add motion, reveal info, and show you how to underscore the factors you wish to hit throughout your speech. To animate a component, observe these steps:

• Choose the aspect you need animated by clicking on it.
• Select Animations from the highest ribbon.
• You will have the choice to select from a number of results displayed within the ribbon.
• Clicking on one provides you with a preview.
• To customise the animation, choose Impact Choices.
• To take away an animation, click on None within the ribbon.

You will even have the choice to maneuver animations round as you edit your slides by clicking on the Animation Pane button, then reordering the animations within the pop-up record.

Ending Up Your Presentation

9. Save your presentation.

Click on File and Save, ensuring to specify the place you need your PowerPoint to be saved. If you happen to’re utilizing your slides for schooling or educating, it might be helpful to convert your presentation to a web based course.

10. Run your presentation.

At all times do a trial run to make sure that your slides are arrange correctly and your animations fireplace the way in which you count on them to.

To current your PowerPoint, go to the Slide Present tab and click on Play from Begin. The slide will cowl your entire display screen in order that your viewers (on this case, you) is solely targeted on the visible parts of your presentation.

11. Advance the slides.

Everytime you’re in presentation mode and also you’re performed with one slide, click on your mouse to advance to the subsequent slide.

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To maintain it skilled, listed here are some key issues to look out for:

• Be sure that any preset themes complement your wants earlier than you undertake them.
• Keep away from Microsoft Workplace’s default fonts, Calibri and Cambria — they’ll make the presentation really feel underwhelming.
• Professionals ought to by no means use PowerPoint’s motion sounds.
• PowerPoint makes bulleting computerized. Bullets are sometimes applicable, however not all the time.
• All shapes begin blue with a small shadow. Take away this shadow if it is not wanted, and don’t depart shapes default blue — it reads as a mistake to different PowerPoint customers.

The best approach to know you’re getting it proper is to obtain some templates. We provide 10 free templates that you just’re welcome to check out. Even should you don’t find yourself utilizing them, you’ll get a way for greatest design practices.

2. Create customized slide sizes.

Default slide sizes work for many displays, however you could want to regulate it for bigger displays and/or weirdly-sized shows. This is how:

• Within the top-left nook, select File.
• Choose Web page Setup.
• Kind the peak and width of the background you want, and click on OK.
• A dialogue field will seem. Click on Scale if you wish to additionally resize your content material, or Don’t Scale if not. We suggest clicking Don’t Scale, then manually adjusting minor structure points.

Professional Tip: You possibly can keep away from a headache should you resize your slides earlier than you add any objects to them. In any other case, the scale of your objects will change into skewed.

3. Edit your slide template design.

It‘s a lot simpler to edit your underlying PowerPoint template earlier than you begin — this manner, you don’t need to design every slide by hand. This is how:

• Choose View within the high navigation.
• Click on Grasp.
• Within the drop-down, click on Slide Grasp.
• Make any modifications you want, then click on Shut Grasp within the high ribbon. All present and future slides in that presentation will use that template.

4. Write textual content together with your viewers in thoughts.

Keep in mind that no matter else your PowerPoint presentation does, it must assist the implausible content material you’re sharing with stakeholders.

A big a part of a PowerPoint’s content material is textual content, and nice copy could make or break your presentation.

Consider your written work from a number of completely different angles so you realize your total viewers can see and perceive it.

Hold the quantity of textual content underneath 6-8 strains (or 30 phrases max). Use a minimal of dimension 24 pt. How your textual content is acquired differentiates good presenters from the very best.

Typography

Choosing the proper font is necessary — the notion of your font sort may affect your viewers’s impression of you. The best typeface is a chance to convey constant model character and professionalism.

Some fonts are seen as clear {and professional}, however this doesn‘t imply they’re boring. A standard mistake is considering your font is not thrilling sufficient, which may lead you to decide on a font that distracts out of your message.

I like to recommend sticking to easy serif and sans-serif fonts. Keep away from script fonts due to potential readability points.

That mentioned, you may nonetheless use enjoyable and eccentric fonts carefully. Offsetting a enjoyable font or massive letters with one thing extra skilled can create an enticing presentation.

Above all, ensure you are constant so your presentation seems cohesive all through every slide. Try this instance from HubSpot’s firm profile templates:

on this presentation template? Obtain it totally free right here.

5. Be sure all your objects are correctly aligned.

Having correctly aligned objects in your slide is the important thing to creating it look polished {and professional}. You possibly can manually attempt to line up your photos, however everyone knows how that sometimes works out.

Do away with the guessing recreation and let PowerPoint work its magic to align a number of objects:

• Choose all objects by holding down Shift and clicking on all of them.
• Choose Organize within the high choices bar, then select Align or Distribute.
• Select the kind of alignment you want.

Right here’s find out how to align objects to the slide:

• Choose all objects by holding down Shift and clicking on all of them.
• Choose Organize within the high choices bar, then select Align or Distribute.
• Choose Align to Slide.
• Choose Organize within the high choices bar once more, then select Align or Distribute.
• Select the kind of alignment you want.

PowerPoint Design Instruments

6. Use “Format Object” to higher management your objects’ designs.

Format menus help you do positive changes that in any other case appear unimaginable.

To do that, right-click on an object and choose the Format Object possibility. Right here, you may fine-tune shadows, modify form measurements, create reflections, and far more. The menu seems like this:

Though the primary choices will be discovered on PowerPoint’s format toolbars, search for full management within the format window menu. Different choices embody:

• Adjusting textual content inside a form.
• Making a pure perspective shadow behind an object.
• Recoloring images manually and with computerized choices.

7. Make the most of PowerPoint’s shapes.

PowerPoint’s form instruments have come a good distance. Immediately’s shapes embody a extremely practical Good Shapes perform, which lets you create diagrams and movement charts very quickly.

These instruments are particularly invaluable as a result of paragraphing and bullet lists are boring to take a look at — you should utilize shapes to assist categorical your message extra clearly.

8. Create customized shapes.

Whenever you create a form, proper click on and press Edit Factors to create customized shapes that suit your particular want. For example, you may reshape arrows to suit the scale you want:

Another choice is to mix two shapes collectively. Choose the 2 shapes you’d prefer to work with, then click on Form Format within the high ribbon. Faucet Merge Shapes. There are a number of choices to create customized shapes:

• Mix creates a customized form that has overlapping parts of the 2 earlier shapes lower out.
• Union makes one utterly merged form.
• Intersect builds a form of solely the overlapping sections of the 2 earlier shapes.
• Subtract cuts out the overlapping portion of 1 form from the opposite.
• Fragment will break up your form into completely different elements relying on the place they overlap.

9. Crop photos into customized shapes.

You may as well use PowerPoint to crop present photos into new shapes:

• Click on on the picture and choose Image Format within the choices bar.
• Select Crop, then Crop to Form, after which select your required form.

10. Current web sites inside PowerPoint.

Imagine it or not, presenting web sites inside PowerPoint is one thing we’re nonetheless having to search out work-arounds for.

From my expertise, these are some techniques which have labored previously which may be useful relying on which model of PowerPoint you’ve:

• Historically, to point out a web site in a PowerPoint slide you’ll simply create a hyperlink to the web page and immediate a separate browser to open.
• Strive including the third-party program LiveWeb that you just set up in your PowerPoint program. Head to the LiveWeb web site and observe the directions. Sadly, Mac customers don’t have an identical possibility.
• Take screenshots of a web site, insert the picture in your slide, and hyperlink in via a browser. You possibly can embed media (comparable to a YouTube video) by downloading it on to your laptop.
• Some variations allowed a Internet Viewer Add-on till Microsoft determined that was a safety threat. Insert>Get Add-ons, seek for Internet Viewer, then click on on the Add button.

• Set up ClassPoint, which primarily places an web window on high of your slide to be used till you’re performed with it, then you may simply transfer to the subsequent slide. You possibly can even bookmark the webpage you need forward of time to leap straight to it. Utilizing this does introduce a brand new navigation bar alongside the underside of your presentation. Right here’s a video Introduction to ClassPoint:

• Lastly, PowerPoint Dwell is a brand new instrument that lets you do extra seamless displays throughout video calls and could also be a greater total match for doing displays remotely. Try this video:

11. Strive Utilizing GIFs.

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GIFs are looped animated photos used to speak a temper, concept, info, and far more.

Customers add GIFs to PowerPoints to be humorous or shortly demo a course of. They’re highly regarded with and simply acknowledged by Millenials and Gen Z, and it’s straightforward so as to add GIFs to your slides:

• Obtain and save the GIF you need.
• Go to the slide you need the GIF on.
• Go to the House tab, and click on both Insert or Image.
• From the Image drop-down menu, select Image from File.
• Navigate to the place you saved your GIF and choose it. Then, select Insert.
• It can play routinely the second you insert it.

PowerPoint Course of

12. Hold it easy.

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PowerPoint is a wonderful instrument to assist your presentation with visible info, graphics, and supplemental factors.

Your PowerPoint shouldn’t be your total presentation, and the weather you do introduce have to perform correctly.

If the presentation merely repeats your phrases, has damaged hyperlinks, or reveals unreadable textual content, the hiccups can change into the take-away of your discuss regardless of how well-spoken the presentation.

Slam-dunking the fundamentals by retaining it easy is the way in which to go. In case your slides have dense and cluttered info, it would distract your viewers and you might lose their consideration.

Briefly? Hold your presentation persuasive by retaining it clear:

• Restrict bullet factors and textual content.
• Keep away from paragraphs and lengthy quotes.
• Preserve “white area” or “destructive area.”
• Hold percentages, graphs, and information tremendous primary.

13. Embed your font recordsdata.

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One fixed downside presenters have with PowerPoint is that fonts appear to alter when presenters transfer from one laptop to a different.

The fonts aren’t really altering — the presentation laptop simply doesn’t have the similar font recordsdata put in.

To embed your fonts on a PC:

• Click on File then Choices.
• Open up the Save tab.
• Choose the Embed fonts within the file examine field underneath Protect constancy when sharing this presentation.

Now, your presentation will preserve the font file and your fonts won’t change while you transfer computer systems.

To embed your fonts on a Mac:

• On the highest bar, click on PowerPoint, then click on Preferences.
• Beneath Output and Sharing, click on Save.
• Beneath Font Embedding, click on Embed fonts within the file.

14. Save your slides as a PDF file for backup functions.

If you happen to’re nonetheless afraid of your presentation displaying up in a different way when it’s time to current, you may create a PDF model simply in case.

It is a good possibility should you’ll be presenting on a unique laptop as a result of if it doesn’t have Powerpoint put in, you may nonetheless use the system viewer to open a PDF.

The one caveat is that your GIFs, animations, and transitions received’t switch over.

To avoid wasting your presentation as a PDF file:

• Go to File, then click on Save as…
• Within the pop-up window, click on File Format.
• A drop-down menu will seem. Choose PDF.
• Click on Export.

You may as well go to File, then Export, then choose PDF from the file format menu.

15. Embed multimedia.

PowerPoint permits you to both hyperlink to video/audio recordsdata externally or to embed the media straight in your presentation. For PCs, two nice causes for embedding are:

• Embedding permits you to play media straight in your presentation. It can look far more skilled than switching between home windows.
• Embedding additionally signifies that the file stays inside the PowerPoint presentation, so it ought to play usually with out further work (besides on a Mac).

If you happen to use PowerPoint for Mac it will get a bit sophisticated, however it may be performed:

• At all times carry the video and/or audio file with you in the identical folder because the PowerPoint presentation.
• Solely insert video or audio recordsdata as soon as the presentation and the containing folder have been saved on a conveyable drive of their everlasting folder.
• If the presentation will probably be performed on a Home windows laptop, then Mac customers want to verify their multimedia recordsdata are in WMV format.
• Think about using the identical working system for designing and presenting, it doesn’t matter what.

16. Carry your individual {hardware}.

Between working methods, PowerPoint remains to be a bit jumpy. Even between differing PPT variations, issues can change. The best repair? Simply carry alongside your individual laptop computer while you’re presenting.

The following best repair is to add your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides as a backup possibility — simply be certain that there’s a good web connection and a browser out there the place you intend to current.

Google Slides is a cloud-based presentation software program that can present up the identical method on all working methods.

To import your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides:

• Navigate to slides.google.com. Ensure you’re signed in to a Google account (ideally your individual).
• Beneath Begin a brand new presentation, click on the empty field with a plus signal. This can open up a clean presentation.
• Go to File, then Import slides.
• A dialog field will come up. Faucet Add.
• Click on Choose a file out of your machine.
• Choose your presentation and click on Open.
• Choose the slides you’d prefer to import. If you wish to import all of them, click on All within the higher right-hand nook of the dialog field.
• Click on Import slides.

After I examined this out, Google Slides imported every part completely, together with a form whose factors I had manipulated. It is a good backup choice to have should you’ll be presenting throughout completely different working methods.

17. Use Presenter View.

In most presentation conditions, there will probably be each a presenter’s display screen and the primary projected show on your presentation.

PowerPoint has an important instrument known as Presenter View, which will be discovered within the Slide Present tab of PowerPoint. Included within the Presenter View is an space for notes, a timer/clock, and a presentation show.

For a lot of presenters, this instrument might help unify their spoken presentation and their visible assist. You by no means wish to make the PowerPoint seem to be a stack of notes that you just’re studying off of.

Use the Presenter View possibility to assist create a extra pure presentation.

Professional Tip: Initially of the presentation, you must also hit CTRL + H to make the cursor disappear. Hitting the “A” key will carry it again should you want it.

Your Subsequent Nice PowerPoint Presentation Begins Right here

Now that you’ve these model, design, and presentation suggestions underneath your belt, it’s best to really feel assured to create your PowerPoint presentation.

However should you can discover different sources to verify your content material hits the mark. In spite of everything, you want a powerful presentation to land your level and make an impression.

With a number of templates to select from — each in PowerPoint and out there for free obtain — you may swiftly be in your approach to creating displays that wow your audiences.

Editor’s word: This submit was initially printed in September 2013 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.