Author: Dave Paradi

1. Buying a Slide Remote One of the things that sets polished presenters apart is the use of a remote control to advance slides. With the right remote control, it can seem like the slides are changing magically because the audience doesn’t see the remote. I have used one for years and highly recommend it.…

1. Picking Slide Colors In the Oct 8, 2002 issue of this newsletter I gave some information on how to pick colors for your presentation slides. My suggested color scheme is a dark navy or purple background with yellow and white text. This color scheme has a high contrast between the background and the text…

1. Rate Your Presentation Slides Audit One of the things many people have asked me is: “How do I know if my presentation slides are any good?” We have all seen the bad slides – and some are truly worthy of the Hall of Shame. How do you make sure that yours are not in that…

1. Best Tips of the Year Here are the tips that I got the most comments on during the year (if the links listed don’t work when you click on them, just paste them into your browser): * PowerPoint shortcut keys Issue 1, Feb 26, 2002 http://www.communicateusingtechnology.com/newsletter/newsletter_feb_26_2002.htm * Controlling line breaks in PowerPoint Issue 5,…

1. Using Clip Art & Photos on Presentation Slides After text, the next most common element used on presentation slides are graphics – usually either clip art or photographs. When you use any graphic, make sure that you are using it because it adds to the point you are making, not just because you like…

1. The Cost of Bad PowerPoint Recently I calculated the cost of the time that is wasted due to bad PowerPoint presentations and I was stunned to find out it was $252 million each day! How do I arrive at this figure? The New Yorker magazine reported a Microsoft estimate of 30 million PowerPoint presentations…

1. Selecting Fonts for Presentation Slides Your choice of fonts on your presentation slides can make a big difference in how easy it is to understand your message. I suggest you use a serif font (one that has the extra tails on each character, Times Roman is an example) for titles because it helps the…

1. Outlook vs. Outlook Express Many new PC’s come with Microsoft’s Outlook Express as the default e-mail program so many people start using it because it is there and it does the basic e-mail functions. But when you add Microsoft Office, as many do, for Word, Excel and PowerPoint, it asks you if you want…

1. Advanced Usage of E-mail Signatures Recently while doing some consulting with one of the subscribers of this e-zine, I developed a new strategy for using signatures on e-mail. Usually we have one signature that we use on each e-mail (you are using a signature to build your profile, aren’t you? – if not, check…

1. Finding e-mails Most of you have get more e-mails than I do, and One of the frustration we all have is that when we have a large number of e-mails in a folder, it gets hard to find the one we are looking for. Fortunately, most e-mail programs have an advanced find feature that…