17 PowerPoint Presentation Suggestions From Professional Presenters [+ Templates]

PowerPoint displays could 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 ideas from professional presenters, the steps you’ll want to construct an enticing deck, and templates that can assist you nail nice slide design.

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Buckle up for quite a lot of step-by-step explanations in addition to ideas and tips that can assist you begin mastering this program. There are extra sources woven in, and also you’ll discover professional views from different HubSpotters alongside the best way.

Desk of Contents

How you can Make a PowerPoint Presentation

Microsoft PowerPoint is like a test of basic professional skills, and each PowerPoint is basically a presentation made of multiple slides.

Successful PowerPoints depend on three main factors: your command of PowerPoint’s design tools, your attention to presentation processes, and being consistent with your style.

Keep those in mind as we jump into PowerPoint’s capabilities.

Getting Started

1. Open PowerPoint and click ‘New.’

A page with templates will usually open automatically, but if not, go to the top left pane of your screen and click New. If you’ve already created a presentation, select Open and then double-click the icon to open the existing file.

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2. Select a theme or create your individual.

Microsoft affords built-in themes and shade variations that can assist 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 may be additionally an choice to pick a clean presentation should you desire to start out from scratch. With this feature you need to use PowerPoint components, your design sense, and your model’s shade palette to make your individual theme.

Creating PowerPoint Slides

3. Insert a slide.

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

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4. Create quite a lot of slides for various functions.

You don’t need to current the identical actual slide every time, simply with completely different content material on it. This is able to 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 just a few to attract from, merely duplicate them earlier than inputting your content material:

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

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

6. Add images to your slide.

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Add photos by clicking Insert and clicking the Footage icon. You’ll be able to add different components by utilizing options within the Dwelling and Insert tabs on the highest ribbon. Discover your structure by dragging components round.

7. Add transitions to your slides (elective).

When completed nicely, 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 (elective).

Like transitions, animations can add motion, reveal data, and enable you underscore the factors you need to hit throughout your speech. To animate a component, comply with these steps:

Choose the component 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 gives you 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 useful to convert your presentation to an online course.

10. Run your presentation.

At all times do a trial run to make sure that your slides are arrange correctly and your animations hearth the best way you anticipate 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 centered on the visible components of your presentation.

11. Advance the slides.

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

PowerPoint Presentation Suggestions

Do not let PowerPoint determine how you utilize PowerPoint.
Create customized slide sizes.
Edit your slide template design.
Write textual content along with your viewers in thoughts.
Be certain your entire objects are correctly aligned.
Use ‘Format Object’ to raised management your objects’ designs.
Benefit from PowerPoint’s shapes.
Create customized shapes.
Crop photos into customized shapes.
Current web sites inside PowerPoint.
Attempt utilizing GIFs.
Preserve it easy.
Embed your font information.
Save your slides as a PDF file for backup functions.
Embed multimedia.
Carry your individual {hardware}.
Use ‘Presenter View.’

PowerPoint Model

1. Don’t let PowerPoint determine how you utilize PowerPoint.

Microsoft wished to offer PowerPoint customers with a whole lot of instruments, however this doesn’t imply you must use all of them. You don’t need it wanting like your tweenage Geocities web site and taking part in undesirable midi-files.

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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 automated. Bullets are sometimes applicable, however not at all times.
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 option to know you’re getting it proper is to obtain some templates. We offer 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 finest design practices.

2. Create customized slide sizes.

Default slide sizes work for many displays, however it’s possible you’ll 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’ll be able to keep away from a headache should you resize your slides earlier than you add any objects to them. In any other case, the size of your objects will develop into skewed.

3. Edit your slide template design.

It‘s a lot simpler to edit your underlying PowerPoint template earlier than you begin — this fashion, 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 adjustments 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 along with your viewers in thoughts.

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

A major 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 just a few completely different angles so your complete viewers can see and perceive it.

Preserve the quantity of textual content underneath 6-8 traces (or 30 phrases max). Use a minimal of measurement 24 pt. How your textual content is obtained differentiates good presenters from the most effective.

Typography

Selecting the best font is vital — the notion of your font sort may affect your viewers’s impression of you. The proper 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 typical mistake is pondering 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 stated, you possibly can nonetheless use enjoyable and eccentric fonts moderately. Offsetting a enjoyable font or giant letters with one thing extra skilled can create an enticing presentation.

Above all, make certain you are constant so your presentation seems to be cohesive all through every slide. Take a look at this instance from HubSpot’s firm profile templates:

Interested in this presentation template? Download it for free here.

5. Be certain your entire objects are correctly aligned.

Having correctly aligned objects in your slide is the important thing to creating it look polished {and professional}. You’ll be able to manually attempt to line up your photos, however everyone knows how that usually 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 the right way 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 raised management your objects’ designs.

Format menus help you do wonderful changes that in any other case appear unattainable.

To do that, right-click on an object and choose the Format Object choice. Right here, you possibly can fine-tune shadows, regulate form measurements, create reflections, and far more. The menu seems to be like this:

Though the principle choices could 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 automated choices.

7. Benefit from PowerPoint’s shapes.

PowerPoint’s form instruments have come a good distance. At this time’s shapes embody a extremely useful Good Shapes perform, which allows you to create diagrams and movement charts very quickly.

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

8. Create customized shapes.

If you create a form, proper click on and press Edit Factors to create customized shapes that suit your particular want. As an illustration, you possibly can reshape arrows to suit the size you want:

An alternative 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 minimize out.
Union makes one fully 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 cut up your form into completely different components relying on the place they overlap.

9. Crop photos into customized shapes.

You too can 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 ways which have labored previously that could be useful relying on which model of PowerPoint you’ve got:

Historically, to indicate an internet site in a PowerPoint slide you’ll simply create a hyperlink to the web page and immediate a separate browser to open.
Attempt including the third-party program LiveWeb that you just set up in your PowerPoint program. Head to the LiveWeb website and comply with the directions. Sadly, Mac customers don’t have the same choice.
Take screenshots of an internet site, insert the picture in your slide, and hyperlink in by means of a browser. You’ll be able to embed media (reminiscent of a YouTube video) by downloading it on to your pc.
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.

Install ClassPoint, which primarily places an web window on high of your slide to be used till you’re completed with it, then you possibly can simply transfer to the following slide. You’ll be able to 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 Reside is a brand new device that allows you to do extra seamless displays throughout video calls and could also be a greater general match for doing displays remotely. Take a look at this video:

11. Attempt Utilizing GIFs.

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

Customers add GIFs to PowerPoints to be humorous or shortly demo a course of. They’re very talked-about 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 Dwelling 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 is going to play routinely the second you insert it.

PowerPoint Course of

12. Preserve it easy.

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PowerPoint is a wonderful device to help your presentation with visible data, graphics, and supplemental factors.

Your PowerPoint shouldn’t be your complete 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 develop into the take-away of your speak irrespective of how well-spoken the presentation.

Slam-dunking the fundamentals by protecting it easy is the best way to go. In case your slides have dense and cluttered data, it can distract your viewers and you may lose their consideration.

Briefly? Preserve your presentation persuasive by protecting it clear:

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

13. Embed your font information.

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

The fonts are usually not really altering — the presentation pc simply doesn’t have the identical font information 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 test field underneath Protect constancy when sharing this presentation.

Now, your presentation will preserve the font file and your fonts is not going to 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 exhibiting up in another way when it’s time to current, you possibly can create a PDF model simply in case.

This can be a good choice should you’ll be presenting on a unique pc as a result of if it doesn’t have Powerpoint put in, you possibly can nonetheless use the system viewer to open a PDF.

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

To save lots of 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 too can go to File, then Export, then choose PDF from the file format menu.

15. Embed multimedia.

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

Embedding means that you can play media straight in your presentation. It is going to 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 difficult, however it may be completed:

At all times deliver the video and/or audio file with you in the identical folder because the PowerPoint presentation.
Solely insert video or audio information 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 pc, then Mac customers want to ensure their multimedia information 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 deliver 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 choice — simply be sure that there’s a good web connection and a browser accessible the place you propose to current.

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

To import your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides:

Navigate to slides.google.com. Be sure to’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. It will 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 system.
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.

Once I examined this out, Google Slides imported the whole lot completely, together with a form whose factors I had manipulated. This can be 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 principle projected show on your presentation.

PowerPoint has an awesome device known as Presenter View, which could 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 device will help unify their spoken presentation and their visible support. You by no means need to make the PowerPoint appear to be a stack of notes that you just’re studying off of.

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

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

Your Subsequent Nice PowerPoint Presentation Begins Right here

Now that you’ve these type, design, and presentation ideas underneath your belt, you must really feel assured to create your PowerPoint presentation.

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

With a number of templates to select from — each in PowerPoint and accessible free of charge obtain — you possibly can swiftly be in your option to creating displays that wow your audiences.

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