Creating a groovy PowerPoint presentation is a skill that whatever professional person can benefit from. The problem? It'due south actually easy to get it wrong. From poor colour choices to confusing slides, a bad PowerPoint slideshow can distract from the fantastic content y'all're sharing with stakeholders on your squad.

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That's why it's and then important to learn how to create a PowerPoint presentation from the basis up, starting with your slides. Fifty-fifty if y'all're familiar with PowerPoint, a refresher will help you brand a more bonny, professional slideshow. Let's get started.

I similar to recall of Microsoft PowerPoint as a test of basic professional person skills. To create a passing presentation, I need to demonstrate pattern skills, technical literacy, and a sense of personal style.

If the presentation has a problem (similar an unintended font, a cleaved link, or unreadable text), then I've probably failed the exam. Fifty-fifty if my spoken presentation is well rehearsed, a bad visual feel can ruin it for the audience.

Expertise means nil without a good PowerPoint presentation to back information technology up. For starters, grab your collection of free PowerPoint templates below.

No affair your topic, successful PowerPoints depend on three main factors: your command of PowerPoint'due south pattern tools, your attention to presentation processes, and your devotion to consequent way. Hither are some simple tips to help you start mastering each of those factors, and don't forget to cheque out the additional resources at the bottom of this post.

How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation

A presentation is made upwards of multiple slides, and at present that you lot know how to make ane, you can delve deeper into PowerPoint's capabilities.

1. Open up a blank presentation again or kickoff from i yous've already created.

If yous've already created a presentation, double-click the icon to open the existing file. Otherwise, open up Microsoft PowerPoint, click File in the top left corner, and click New Presentation. From there, yous can follow the prompts to prepare a new presentation.

2. Choose a theme or create your own.

Microsoft offers born themes and color variations to assist y'all design your slides with a cohesive look. To cull from these pre-congenital themes, cull the File tab again, select New, cull one of the options, and click Create.

Otherwise, you tin utilise PowerPoint elements, your design sense, and your brand's colour palette to make your own "theme."

3. Create a variety of slides for unlike purposes.

You don't want to present the same exact slide, only with unlike content on it. This would bore your audience. Ensure that you create multiple variations, accommodating some of the mutual uses for slides. At minimum, you lot'll need:

  • A title slide
  • An calendar or table of contents slide
  • A slide that introduces the speaker
  • Various content slides (create unlike layouts considering what kind of multimedia y'all'll use)

four. Use the Duplicate Slides feature to relieve yous time.

There's no reason to create these designs over and over once again. Now that you have a few to draw from, you tin can only duplicate them before inputting your content. Hither'due south how to do that:

  • On the left pane, correct-click the thumbnail of the slide you want to duplicate.
  • Choose Duplicate Slide from the pop-up card.

This will automatically add a re-create of this slide to the presentation. From in that location, y'all can customize it for your needs.

5. Add transitions to your slides (optional).

Washed well, transitions can add a little chip of move and showmanship to your presentation. PowerPoint has several transitions built in for you to choose from.

To admission them, select the Transitions tab from the height ribbon. From there, you can select a transition for information technology to preview on your screen. To customize it farther, click Outcome Options and play with the features to find something that suits your liking. To remove a transition, select Transitions and click None.

6. Add animations to your slides (optional).

Like transitions, animations tin add together movement, reveal information, and help you underscore the points you desire to hit during your speech. To animate an element, follow these steps:

  • Select the chemical element y'all desire animated by clicking on it.
  • Choose Animations from the peak ribbon.
  • You'll have the choice to choose from several furnishings displayed in the ribbon.
  • Clicking on one will give y'all a preview.
  • To customize the animation, select Effect Options.
  • To remove an animation, click None in the ribbon.

Some of the ways to customize animations include:

  • On Click
  • With Previous
  • After Previous
  • Elapsing
  • Filibuster

These draw how yous want the effect to behave, and so play around with them until you find an effect that suits your liking.

You'll also accept the choice to movement animations around every bit you edit your slides by clicking on the Blitheness Pane push, and then reordering the animations in the list that pops upwardly.

7. Salve your presentation.

Click File and Relieve, making sure to specify which folder or destination you want your PowerPoint to exist stored.

8. Run your presentation.

It's e'er adept to exercise a trial run to ensure that your slides are prepare properly and your animations burn down the fashion you expect them to.

To nowadays your PowerPoint, get to the Slide Testify tab and click Play from Start. The slide will comprehend your whole screen, blocking out your desktop and PowerPoint software. This is so your audience (in this instance, you for the trial run) is solely focused on the visual elements of your presentation.

9. Advance the slides.

When y'all're washed with one slide and want to prove the next in your sequence, click your mouse in presentation mode. This will advance the slide.

PowerPoint Style

1. Don't let PowerPoint decide how you use PowerPoint.

Microsoft wanted to provide PowerPoint users with a lot of tools. But this does not mean you should utilise them all. Here are some key things to look out for:

  • Make sure that the preset PPT themes complement your needs before you adopt them.
  • Try to get away from using Microsoft Office's default fonts, Calibri and Cambria. Using these two typefaces can make the presentation seem underwhelming.
  • Professionals should never use PPT's action sounds. (Please consider your audience above personal preference).
  • PowerPoint makes bulleting automatic, just ask yourself: Are bullets actually appropriate for what you demand to do? Sometimes they are, but non always.
  • Recent PPT defaults include a small shadow on all shapes. Remove this shadow if it'due south not actually needed. Also, don't go out shapes in their default blue.

2. Create custom slide sizes.

While you ordinarily can get away with the default slide size for nearly presentations, you may need to adjust it for larger presentations on weirdly sized displays. If y'all need to exercise that, hither'southward how.

  • In the meridian-left corner, choose File.
  • Select Page Setup.
  • Type the height and width of the background you'd similar, and click OK.
  • A dialogue box volition appear. Click Scale if yous want to also resize your content, or Don't Scale if y'all don't. Nosotros recommend clicking Don't Scale, then manually adjusting minor layout issues.

Tip: You can avoid a headache with the last step if you resize your slides before you add whatever objects to them. Otherwise, the dimensions of your objects will become skewed.

powerpoint presentation: resize slide

3. Edit your slide template design.

Frequently, it'south much easier to edit your PowerPoint template before yous outset — this way, you don't take to pattern each slide by hand. Hither's how you do that.

  • Select View in the pinnacle navigation.
  • Click Master.
  • In the driblet-downward, click Slide Master.
  • Make any changes you like, and then click Shut Primary in the elevation ribbon. All electric current and future slides in that presentation volition employ that template.

powerpoint presentation: editing the master

4. Write text with your audience in heed.

A significant part of a PowerPoint's content is text. Great copy tin can make or break your presentation, then evaluating your written piece of work from a few different angles could make you seem more persuasive. Thinking virtually how your text is received differentiates skilful presenters from the best.

Typography:

Many people underestimate the influence of typeface, only choosing the right font is important — the perception of your font type could influence your audition'due south impression of you. The right font is an opportunity to convey consistent brand personality and professionalism.

Some fonts are seen equally clean and professional, but this doesn't mean they're tiresome. A mutual error is thinking your font isn't "exciting" plenty, which could lead you to choose a font that distracts from your overall message. We recommend sticking to simple serif and sans-serif fonts. Avert script fonts considering of potential readability issues.

powerpoint presentation: types of fonts

That said, y'all tin can still use fun and eccentric fonts — in moderation. Offsetting a fun font or big messages with something more than professional can create an engaging presentation.

Above all, be sure you're consistent so your presentation looks the same throughout each slide. That way, your audience doesn't become distracted by besides many disparate fonts. Check out this case from HubSpot'south visitor profile templates:

powerpoint presentation: consistent slides

Interested in this presentation template? Download information technology for free here.

5. Brand certain all of your objects are properly aligned.

Having properly aligned objects on your slide is the key to making it look polished and professional. You can manually endeavor to line upwardly your images ... merely we all know how that typically works out. Yous're trying to make sure all of your objects hang out in the middle of your slide, but when you drag them at that place, it nonetheless doesn't look quite right. Get rid of your guessing game and let PowerPoint work its magic with this trick.

Here's how to align multiple objects:
  • Select all objects past belongings downwardly Shift and clicking on all of them.
  • Select Arrange in the pinnacle options bar, then cull Align or Distribute.
  • Choose the blazon of alignment you'd like.

powerpoint presentation: aligning objects

Here's how to align objects to the slide:
  • Select all objects past holding downward Shift and clicking on all of them.
  • Select Conform in the top options bar, then choose Align or Distribute.
  • Select Align to Slide.
  • Select Adapt in the elevation options bar again, then choose Align or Distribute.
  • Choose the type of alignment you'd like.

powerpoint presentation: aligning objects

PowerPoint Design

6. Use "Format Object" to improve control your objects' designs.

Format menus let you to practice fine adjustments that otherwise seem incommunicable. To exercise this, right-click on an object and select the Format Object option. Here, yous can fine-tune shadows, adjust shape measurements, create reflections, and much more. The bill of fare that volition pop up looks like this:

powerpoint presentation: format object pane

Although the primary options can be plant on PowerPoint'south format toolbars, await for consummate control in the format window menu. Other examples of options bachelor include:

  • Adjusting text inside a shape.
  • Creating a natural perspective shadow behind an object.
  • Recoloring photos manually and with automatic options.

7. Have advantage of PowerPoint's shapes.

Many users don't realize how flexible PowerPoint'due south shape tools have get. In combination with the expanded format options released by Microsoft, the potential for skillful pattern with shapes is readily bachelor. PowerPoint provides the user with a agglomeration of great shape options beyond the traditional rectangle, oval, and rounded rectangle patterns.

Today's shapes include a highly functional Smart Shapes role, which enables you lot to create diagrams and flow charts in no time. These tools are specially valuable when you consider that PowerPoint is a visual medium. Paragraphing and bullet lists are boring — you can use shapes to help express your message more than clearly.

8. Create custom shapes.

When yous create a shape, correct click and press Edit Points. Past editing points, you can create custom shapes that fit your specific need. For case, yous can reshape arrows to fit the dimensions y'all like.

powerpoint presentation: editing points

Some other choice is to combine ii shapes together. To do so, select the two shapes y'all'd like to piece of work with, then click Shape Format in the top ribbon. Tap Merge Shapes.

You'll encounter a variety of options.

  • Combine creates a custom shape that has overlapping portions of the two previous shapes cut out.
  • Union makes one completely merged shape.
  • Intersect builds a shape of only the overlapping sections of the two previous shapes.
  • Subtract cuts out the overlapping portion of one shape from the other.
  • Fragment volition split up your shape into different parts depending on where they overlap.

By using these tools rather than trying to edit points precisely, you can create accurately measured custom shapes.

9. Crop images into custom shapes.

Besides creating custom shapes in your presentation, you can too use PowerPoint to crop existing images into new shapes. Here's how you practise that:

  • Click on the image and select Moving picture Format in the options bar.
  • Choose Ingather, then Ingather to Shape, and then choose your desired shape. Ta-da! Custom-shaped photos.

powerpoint presentation: cropping an image into a custom shape

10. Present websites within PowerPoint.

Tradition says that if y'all want to show a website in a PowerPoint, yous should merely create a link to the page and prompt a browser to open up. For PC users, at that place'southward a better option.

Third party software that integrates fully into PowerPoint's developer tab can exist used to embed a website straight into your PowerPoint using a normal HTML iframe. 1 of the all-time tools is LiveWeb, a third-party software that you can install on your PowerPoint program.

By using LiveWeb, you don't have to interrupt your PowerPoint, and your presentation will remain fluid and natural. Whether you embed a whole webpage or just a YouTube video, this tin can be a high-quality tertiary party improvement. To install the add-on, simple caput to the LiveWeb website and follow the instructions.

Unfortunately, Mac users don't have a similar option. A skilful second option is to take screenshots of the website, link in through a browser, or embed media (such every bit a YouTube video) by downloading it directly to your figurer.

11. Try Using GIFs.

GIFs are looped animated images used to communicate a mood, idea, information, and much more. Users add GIFs to PowerPoints to exist funny or quickly demo a process. Information technology's easy to add together GIFs to your slides. To do so, simply follow these steps:

  • Download and save the GIF you lot want.
  • Go to the slide you desire the GIF on.
  • Become to the Home tab, and click either Insert or Picture.
  • From the Picture driblet-down menu, choose Picture from File.
  • Navigate to where you saved your GIF and select it. Then, choose Insert.
  • It will play automatically the moment you insert information technology.

PowerPoint Process

12. Keep it simple.

PowerPoint is an splendid tool to back up your presentation with visual data, graphics, and supplemental points. This means that your PowerPoint should not exist your unabridged presentation. Your slides — no thing how artistic and cute — shouldn't exist the star of the show. Keep your text and images articulate and curtailed, using them only to supplement your message and authority.

If your slides accept dense and cluttered information, it will both distract your audition and brand it much more likely that you will lose their attention. Nothing in your slides should be superfluous! Continue your presentation persuasive by keeping it clean. There are a few ways to do this:

  • Limit bullet points and text.
  • Avoid paragraphs and long quotes.
  • Maintain "white space" or "negative space".
  • Go on percentages, graphs, and data super basic.

thirteen. Embed your font files.

One constant problem presenters have with PowerPoint is that fonts seem to alter when presenters move from 1 computer to another. In reality, the fonts are not changing — the presentation computer simply doesn't take the aforementioned font files installed. If you lot're using a PC and presenting on a PC, then there is a smoothen workaround for this issue.

Here'southward the trick: When you save your PowerPoint file (only on a PC), you should click File, then Options, then open upward the Save tab. Then, select the Embed fonts in the file bank check box under Preserve fidelity when sharing this presentation. Now, your presentation volition keep the font file and your fonts will not alter when yous move computers.

The macOS PowerPoint version has a like function. To embed your fonts on a Mac, do the following:

  • Open upwardly your presentation.
  • On the summit bar, click PowerPoint, then click Preferences.
  • Under Output and Sharing, click Save.
  • Under Font Embedding, click Embed fonts in the file.

14. Save your slides as a PDF file for backup purposes.

If you're nevertheless scared of your presentation showing upwardly differently when it's time to present, yous should create a PDF version just in instance. This is a proficient option if y'all'll be presenting on a unlike reckoner. If yous also run into an issue where the presenting computer doesn't have PowerPoint installed, yous tin can besides utilise the system viewer to open up the PDF. No laptop volition ever give yous trouble with this file blazon.

The just caveat is that your GIFs, animations, and transitions won't transfer over. But since the PDF will only piece of work as a backup, not equally your primary copy, this should be okay.

To salvage your presentation every bit a PDF file, take the following steps:

  • Become to File, and then click Save every bit …
  • In the pop-upwardly window, click File Format.
  • A drop-down carte will announced. Select PDF.
  • Click Consign.

You lot tin also get to File, then Export, so select PDF from the file format menu.

fifteen. Embed multimedia.

PowerPoint allows y'all to either link to video/audio files externally or to embed the media directly in your presentation. You should embed these files if y'all can, merely if you use a Mac, you cannot really embed the video (run across note below). For PCs, ii slap-up reasons for embedding are:

  • Embedding allows you lot to play media straight in your presentation. It will look much more professional than switching between windows.
  • Embedding also ways that the file stays within the PowerPoint presentation, so information technology should play normally without extra work (except on a Mac).

Note: macOS users of PowerPoint should be extra careful about using multimedia files.

If you utilise PowerPoint for Mac, and then you volition always need to bring the video and/or audio file with you in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentation. It'southward best to only insert video or audio files once the presentation and the containing folder accept been saved on a portable drive in their permanent folder. Likewise, if the presentation will be played on a Windows calculator, then Mac users need to make certain their multimedia files are in WMV format. This tip gets a fleck complicated, so if you want to use PowerPoint finer, consider using the same operating system for designing and presenting, no matter what.

16. Bring your own hardware.

Between operating systems, PowerPoint is still a flake jumpy. Even between differing PPT versions, things can modify. One fashion to set these issues is to brand sure that you have the right hardware — so only bring forth your own laptop when you lot're presenting.

If you're super concerned about the different systems you lot might have to use, then upload your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides equally a backup option. Google Slides is a cloud-based presentation software that will prove upwardly the same way on all operating systems. The but thing yous need is an internet connection and a browser.

To import your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides, accept the following steps:

  • Navigate to slides.google.com. Make sure you lot're signed in to a Google account, preferably your own.
  • Nether Commencement a new presentation, click the empty box with a plus sign. This will open a blank presentation.
  • Go to File, and then Import slides.
  • A dialog box will come up. Tap Upload, so click Select a file from your device.
  • Select your presentation and click Open.
  • Select the slides you'd like to import. If you want to import all of them, click All in the upper correct-hand corner of the dialog box.
  • Click Import slides.

powerpoint presentation: importing slides into google slides

When I tested this out, Google Slides imported everything perfectly, including a shape whose points I had manipulated. This is a good backup option to have if y'all'll be presenting beyond different operating systems.

17. Utilize Presenter View.

In most presentation situations, there will exist both a presenter'south screen and the chief projected display for your presentation. PowerPoint has a slap-up tool called Presenter View, which tin be institute in the Slide Show tab of PowerPoint. Included in the Presenter View is an surface area for notes, a timer/clock, and a presentation display.

powerpoint presentation: using presenter view

For many presenters, this tool can help unify their spoken presentation and their visual aid. You never want to make the PowerPoint seem like a stack of notes that you lot're reading off of. Utilize the Presenter View option to help create a more natural presentation.

Pro Tip: At the start of the presentation, you should also hit CTRL + H to make the cursor disappear. Hitting the "A" central will bring it back if yous need it!

Your Side by side Great PowerPoint Presentation Starts Here

With fashion, design, and presentation processes nether your chugalug, you can do a lot more with PowerPoint than merely presentations for your clients. PowerPoint and similar slide applications are flexible tools that should not be forgotten. With a neat template, you can be on your way to creating presentations that wow your audience.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in September 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Originally published Mar 18, 2022 7:00:00 AM, updated March 18 2022