Make Use Of PowerPoint

You may take several technical courses on how to use PowerPoint, but when utilized well, it can add a lot to our presentations.

The most crucial thing to remember, especially if you’re using PowerPoint to express your message, is to prepare your presentation with your audience in mind. Your audience expects a presentation that is relevant to them, not only aesthetically pleasing.

A typical error that presenters make when making PowerPoint presentations is being overly enthusiastic about it and putting everything they know into it. Presenters often employ sophisticated language and convey too much information in order to get their point through, leaving the audience perplexed about the aim of the presentation.

Leverage the powers of PowerPoint templates to eliminate the hassle of creating an impactful presentation from complete scratch!

Here are eight techniques based on years of experience producing and using presentation slides that can help you progress from being technically skilled to effectively using PowerPoint.

1) Build an Outline of Your Presentation

The content, not the visual attractiveness, is the most crucial aspect of any presentation. That is why, before settling on the design, you should first prepare your presentation’s content.

Create a strong presentation structure by pondering on the presentation’s aim, what your audience is dealing with right now, and what points you need to make to get the audience from where they have been to where you want them to be.

Make a paper outline or use sticky notes to move ideas around. By first constructing an outline, you guarantee that the material of your presentation is strong before focusing on the aesthetic components.

2) Use Contrasting Colors in Your Presentation

If you want your audience to notice what’s on the slide, there should be plenty of contrast between both the text and backdrop colors. We recommend a dark backdrop with light text – professionals typically choose a moderate to dark blue background with white or yellow characters.

Some people like a light backdrop with dark text, which will also work nicely – whatever you select is a personal choice. Don’t assume that since the writing appears well on your computer screen, it will look good when projected.

Most projectors make colors appear duller than they do on a screen, so examine how your colors appear when projected to ensure there is still adequate contrast.

3) Keep Your Font Size Noticeable

When picking on a font size for your presentation, make sure it is large enough for the audience to read. Professionals generally believe that font sizes fewer than 24 points are too tiny to be read comfortably in most presentation contexts. The majority of text should be 28 or 32 point size, with headers having 36 to 44 point size.

The only time an expert would use a font smaller than 24 points is when inserting textual content into a graph or diagram, where a 20 point font size would suffice.

If you are given a tiny screen in a large room, your text will appear smaller since the picture will be smaller than it should be. In this scenario, try if you can acquire a larger screen, project it onto a wall rather than a screen, relocate the seats closer to the screen, or eliminate the final few rows of chairs.

4) Avoid Putting Transition on Your Texts

When the text appears on the screen, you want to have the audience read it before returning their attention to the presenter to understand the message. If the text moves on the screen in any manner, such as flying in, swirling, or zooming, it makes it more difficult for members of the audience to read since they must wait for the text to stop before they can read it.

This causes the presenter to pause longer between points and draws the audience’s attention away from what is being stated and onto the movement. We recommend using the “Appear” effect, which simply makes the text appear and makes it easier for the audience to read.

5) Turn Off Your Pointer

It is really unpleasant to have the pointer (the small arrow) displayed on the screen while the presenter is presenting. It moves the screen and focuses the audience’s attention away from the presenter and toward the screen. When the cursor is moved during the presentation, the pointer appears.

To avoid this, after starting the Slide Show view, hit the Ctrl-H keyboard shortcut. This stops mouse movement from displaying the pointer. If you need to return the cursor to the screen, hit the A key.

If the pointer appears during your presentation, avoid the urge to press the Escape key; doing so will end the presentation and return you to the software. To remove the cursor, use the A key or Ctrl-H.

6) Be Able to Hop to Any Slide

PowerPoint offers a feature that enables you to jump to any slide in your presentation fast and flawlessly. You will need to know the slide numbers to do so. Go to the Outline View and collapse the information for each slide to generate a list of the slide numbers and related slide titles. The view can then be printed.

Simply input the slide number on the keypad and click the Enter key to go to the next slide. This will take you straight to that slide. This strategy is quite handy for transitioning to a prepared Q&A slide or skipping sections of your presentation if time is a problem.

7) Blank Your Screen

We sometimes want the picture on the screen to vanish so that the audience can concentrate solely on the presenter. There are two approaches to this. The first is to blank the screen with a black picture, akin to turning off the projector.

Simply hit the period button (.) on the keyboard to replace the picture with a dark image. When you press the period key again, the image is restored.

8) Draw on the Screen While Explaining Something Complex

It can be useful to be able to sketch on the screen during a presentation to explain a certain point or object. To display a pen on the screen, use the Ctrl-P key combination.

Then, using the left mouse button, draw whatever you want on the slide. Click the E key to delete what you’ve drawn. Hit the A key or the Ctrl-H key sequence to conceal the pen.

Wrapping It Up

When you apply these PowerPoint secrets successfully, you will considerably improve your audience’s grasp of your content and contribute to making your presentation the best it can be.

Author

Sumit is a Tech and Gadget freak and loves writing about Android and iOS, his favourite past time is playing video games.

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