Latest posts

Below are the most recent articles or resources I’ve published. If you are looking for help on a specific topics, it would best to look at the topics in my Articles archive as I have grouped my recent and best articles by topic there.

  • 2017 Gift ideas for presenters; Issue #402 November 14, 2017

    The holidays are just around the corner and if you are looking for a great gift for a presenter in your life, I have some suggestions for you. I regularly get asked what equipment I use, so I’ve put together a list of the items I have found most useful when presenting. With Black Friday,…… Continue reading

  • Significant trends over the last 10 years of the Annoying PowerPoint Survey

    After I released the results of the latest survey on what annoys audiences about PowerPoint presentations, I was asked if there were more insights from a deeper examination of the results. I had already reported on all the results from the latest survey, so I looked back over the last ten years to see if…… Continue reading

  • Showing breakeven analysis; Slide Makeover #89

    Show the breakeven analysis on an investment visually instead of a spreadsheet or table of numbers. Continue reading

  • Creating a Gantt chart with Milestones using a Stacked Bar Chart in Excel or PowerPoint

    When you need an accurate Gantt chart, you can use a stacked bar graph in Excel to create it Continue reading

  • Document or Presentation? How to choose; Issue #401 October 31, 2017

    One of the key results from my latest survey on annoying PowerPoint presentations was that too often professionals are presenting a document on the screen as a presentation. This overwhelms the audience, leaving them confused and upset. Professionals feel they need to include more and more content in their presentations to satisfy the requests of…… Continue reading

  • Another option for diverging bar charts; Issue #400 October 17, 2017

    Use a diverging bar chart to compare two data series that are related Continue reading

  • 2017 Annoying PowerPoint survey results; Issue #399 October 3, 2017

    In this newsletter I summarized a few of the results from the 2017 Annoying PowerPoint survey. You can read the full report here. Continue reading

  • 3 Alternatives to axis breaks; Issue #398 September 19, 2017

    Twice in the past few months I have seen column charts with axis breaks. Some software makes it easy to create these types of charts. In this article I want to recommend against using this type of chart and offer some alternatives. To start with, what is an axis break chart and why would it…… Continue reading

  • Total on stacked columns/bars; Issue #397 September 5, 2017

    Recently I wrote about how I think presenters should replace stacked column or bar graphs with better visuals (see the entire article here). In my customized workshops I have participants who need to create a stacked graph because the boss wants it or the audience expects to see the data presented that way. Often they…… Continue reading

  • Focus by using an All Others category; Issue #396 August 22, 2017

    Use an All Others category when showing ranked data to focus on the most important categories Continue reading