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.

  • 5 steps to better presentations in 2015; Issue #328 January 6, 2015

    At the start of the year we see many lists of predictions, trends, and resolutions for the upcoming year. In this article I want to share five steps you can take right away to improve your presentations this year. You don’t need to be a designer or an artist. Anyone can follow these five steps.…… Continue reading

  • The correct use of a pie chart; Issue #327 December 23, 2014

    The correct use of a pie chart is to show one segment compared to the whole; Use bar charts for ranked values Continue reading

  • Updates to the PowerPoint Document Inspector may save your job

    One of the big issues with copying cells or graphs from Excel into PowerPoint is that some of the common methods actually embed the Excel workbook into the PowerPoint file. This is a concern for two reasons. First, it makes your PowerPoint file larger, and second, it exposes all the data in the entire workbook,…… Continue reading

  • Why SmartArt is often misused; Issue #326 December 9, 2014

    At my workshops I suggest that people not use the SmartArt feature of PowerPoint. Example slides I reviewed at a recent workshop reinforced how this feature is often misused. The big issue is that most people pick SmartArt based on how nice it looks vs. whether it effectively communicates the correct message. Let’s start with…… Continue reading

  • Rad Presenters interview

    I was interviewed by Jon Schwabish and Stephanie Evergreen on their Rad Presenters podcast. It was a lot of fun and we cover a wide range of topics, including what it means to be a PowerPoint MVP, dealing with data and numbers on slides, my surveys, my page on how to solve setup problems, and…… Continue reading

  • Finding and Using Vector icons in PowerPoint; Issue #325 November 25, 2014

    Today’s article was inspired by a topic that fellow PowerPoint MVP Nolan Haims covered in one of his sessions at the recent Presentation Summit. When he was speaking about using icons, he stressed how vector icons are better than image icons. Today I want to explore this topic in some depth and give you resources…… Continue reading

  • Sway is not replacing PowerPoint: The real story

    There has been a lot of misinformation about the Sway service from Microsoft being a replacement for PowerPoint. This is simply not true. After spending time with the lead of the Sway team at the recent Microsoft MVP Summit, I came away with a much clearer understanding of how Sway differs from PowerPoint and when…… Continue reading

  • A presenter’s most important resource; Issue #324 November 11, 2014

    What is the most important resource for a presenter? Some may say it is time. Time to prepare and the time spent delivering the presentation. Some may say it is knowledge. The knowledge of the topic and knowing how to communicate that message. And others would have different answers. I would say there is one…… Continue reading

  • Shifting breakdown of segments totalling 100%; Slide Makeover #80

    Use a diverging stacked bar chart to make the changes in two groups of segments easier for the audience to understand Continue reading

  • Best of the Presentation Summit 2014; Issue #323 October 28, 2014

    Two weeks ago I attended and presented two sessions at the Presentation Summit, the annual presentation design conference hosted by Rick Altman. As I usually do the first newsletter after the conference, here are a few of the best ideas from the conference. My first session was on creating visuals for financial presentations instead of…… Continue reading