PowerPoint Tip: Handling mistakes on slides Last week I made a mistake on a slide and someone noticed during the session. I had typed the 13th of the month instead of the 10th in a visual. How did they know I was wrong? Because the explanatory text on the slide and what I said were…
Category: Articles
Using Motion Path Animation; Issue #177 January 27 2009
PowerPoint Tip – Using Motion Paths One of the features of PowerPoint that has the potential to annoy the most is the animation feature, where you can make elements of the slide move. It is annoying when the animation does not add to the message being delivered. Having every bullet fly in may look “cool”…
Where to get PowerPoint help; Issue #171 October 28, 2008
PowerPoint Tip: Where to get PowerPoint help When I am giving workshops, participants will often ask me how to accomplish a specific task in PowerPoint. I’m not a technical expert in all the minute details of PowerPoint, but I can answer most of their questions. For those who haven’t been in a workshop yet, I’ve…
Create professional looking diagrams by using techniques that line up things perfectly; Issue #164 July 22, 2008
PowerPoint Tip: Align & Distribute for consistency On one of the makeover slides I created for a workshop I am giving tomorrow, I created a Gantt chart to show the implementation timeline for the service that was being sold. When you are creating a timeline by hand, it is important to space out the time…
Designing and Delivering Non-Linear Presentations; Issue #156 April 1, 2008
PowerPoint Tip: Designing Non-Linear Presentations Yesterday I posted a new article on the site that gives best practices for designing sales presentations to be delivered over the web. Web delivery of presentations is growing rapidly and these tips will help your next web presentation be a success. At http://www.ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com/articles/designwebsalespresentation.htm you can read the full article.…
How to determine if the font on your slides is big enough; Issue #152 February 5, 2008
PowerPoint Tip: Is Your Font Big Enough? One of the questions that comes up often in my workshops is “How big of a font should I use?” The answer is … It depends. You certainly don’t want to do what I have seen twice in the past 18 months. These two presentations have set the…
How to make slides that are accessible for those with hearing or sight impairments; Issue #151 January 22, 2008
PowerPoint Tip: Making Accessible Slides Last year I worked on a project for my publisher, Prentice Hall, that was interesting and highly informative. The topic was how to make PowerPoint presentations accessible to those who have hearing or sight impairments. It is a requirement on some college campuses and we would all do well to…
Starting with a standard set of slides speeds presentation creation; Issue #144 October 2, 2007
PowerPoint Tip: Standard Set of Slides One of the ways to spend far less time creating PowerPoint presentations is to create a standard set of slides to draw on when creating your presentations. Why is this such a good idea? Let me share why I use this technique to drastically cut down on the time…
Use a map to show geographic relationships; Issue #138 July 10, 2007
PowerPoint Tip – Why Not Use a Map? If you have geographic based data to present, it is important to organize it into a logical manner for the audience. Usually this means organizing it left to right in west to east order so that the data on the slide is the same order as the…
Four tips to make it easier when collaborating on the creation of a presentation; Issue #136 June 12, 2007
PowerPoint Tip – Collaborating on Presentations In my consulting work, I get a chance to collaborate on developing presentations with people in many different geographic locations. Sometimes it is face-to-face and other times it is done virtually. Collaborating on presentations instead of doing it yourself is becoming more common. Today I have some tips for…