how to make advanced powerpoint presentation

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Advanced PowerPoint Presentation Tips and Hacks

Many have a love-hate relationship with Microsoft’s PowerPoint. While super flexible, the tool can also be manual, tedious, and all-consuming, especially for the uninitiated. Authored by a former management consultant and finance expert, this article will help every user—from the beginner to the advanced operator—smooth out some of their points of friction and become an expert-level user of the application.

By Melissa Lin

Melissa has worked in ECM, tech startups, and management consulting, advising Fortune 500 companies across multiple sectors.

Key Highlights

Keep Your Presentations Simple: Minimize cluttered, distracting slide-decks that are overly saturated with content; they will lose or confuse your audience more often than not.
Seek to Communicate One Takeaway per Slide: Streamline your message and its supporting content to one key takeaway per slide. Much more tends to reduce engagement, comprehension, and retention by your audience (think "diminishing economies of content").
Leverage Illustrations in Place of Text: Prose-heavy presentations tend to induce content fatigue, which again induces a loss of engagement on the part of your audience. Relevant, high-quality images have proven themselves useful in maintaining engagement, especially for longer presentations.
Understand That Formatting Is King: Clean, simple and consistent formatting, complete with discernible themes, colors, fonts, shapes and sizes perform wonders where creating a polished, professional, and finished product is concerned.
Customize Your Quick Access Toolbar: The Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) is a customizable toolbar that sits above the PowerPoint ribbon, and where one can add frequently used commands. Effective use of the toolbar is a PowerPoint trick that eases friction for power users and saves hours in the long run.
Use PowerPoint Shortcuts in Place of Your Mouse: Understand the functions that you use most frequently and memorize their keyboard shortcuts. This PowerPoint hack will cut hours of manual work from your PowerPoint experience.
Create Your Own Go-to Templates: Using the "Slide Master" view in PowerPoint, you can create personal, pre-formatted, and pre-fabricated templates, complete with font choices, font sizes, color schemes, and more, that will minimize your formatting load in the "polishing" phase of your presentation.
Work alongside you as a thought partner to design, create, and deliver a polished and professional PowerPoint presentation/pitch ahead of your meeting.
Draft and clean up the content (literary) that will be featured in your slide deck, including your personal speaking points and audience takeaways.
Create the financials, models, infographics, and outputs that will be featured in your slide deck.
Assist you with dry-runs, rehearsals, and other preparation assistance ahead of the presentation date, with expert feedback and tips regarding performance.

Love It or Hate It…

Love it or hate it, PowerPoint is ubiquitous when it comes to formal presentations. Perhaps you are pitching a new proposal. Or perhaps you’ve spent weeks number-crunching or conducting intensive research and it’s time to communicate your findings to the relevant stakeholders. Whatever your purpose, PowerPoint is arguably one of the most important components of your success.

When I was a management consultant I lived in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, toggling between the two programs every day. I loved that PowerPoint’s flexibility allowed me to illuminate and transform data into a story—a story of financials, an industry’s growth trajectory, or recommendations for restructuring a business process. However, especially as I was just starting out, this flexibility often proved to be a double-edged sword. It was frustrating how tedious slide design could be, and how long it took to aesthetically perfect a slide. I often found myself choosing between effective slides that took hours to create and a more basic deck that was quick to produce but less effective in communicating the data and the message. It wasn’t until I mastered some essential PowerPoint tips and tricks that I no longer experienced this dilemma.

This article showcases a selection of advanced PowerPoint hacks and presentation tips and tricks that will enable you to use the tool with ease. It will hopefully also prevent you from sacrificing effective messaging in an effort to save time. While many PowerPoint articles provide qualitative advice around effectively delivering a message, this piece focuses on the technical components of how to make an advanced PowerPoint presentation. It utilizes functionalities and commands in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2016 and 365 for PC. Let’s get started.

The Basics of Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations

Though this article is designed for users with more advanced PowerPoint skills, it may be useful to kick off with a refresher of some basic do’s and don’ts for creating effective PowerPoint presentations. Subsequently, we may then delve into some of the nitty-gritty of PowerPoint’s more advanced features. Throughout my career, the following four rules have served me well:

Rule 1 - Keep Your Deck as Simple as Possible: Likely the most important PowerPoint rule, “less is always more” with great presentations. Avoid clutter; minimize flashy, complex slides with distracting clipart in motion; and always focus on delivering a clear and succinct message.

Rule 2 - Keep Each Slide to Just One Key Takeaway: Resist the temptation to throw the kitchen sink at your audience, in general, but especially on a per-slide basis. You will hold your audience’s attention far more easily and leave them with more tangible, digestible takeaways simply by limiting the scope of your content to just one key point per slide.

Rule 3 - Use Simple, High-Quality Graphics Often and in Place of Words: As an addendum to Rule 1, too many words on a page tend to be both tedious and a bore for your audience, often resulting in a loss of focus, or “content fatigue,” during your presentation. GIFs, graphs, charts, and other informative and relevant illustrations tend to be great ways to break up tedium and add dimension to your flow.

Rule 4 - Clean and Simple Formatting Will Take You Far: Clean bullet points, consistent color themes, soft font styles, and legible font sizes all go the distance in leaving a great, professional impression on your audience as you present a polished finished product. Calibri (font), in metallic grey (primary color), punctuated by sky-blues (secondary color) have worked wonders for me over my career. Feel free to adopt them.

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar

The first step to becoming a PowerPoint expert is building your Quick Access Toolbar. It’s a customizable toolbar sitting above the ribbon, where you can add your favorite and most frequently used commands. Invest five minutes to set it up, and you won’t regret it—it’ll pay dividends each time you use PowerPoint thereafter. Here’s a quick lay of the land before we delve into the logistics:

Components of Your PowerPoint Home Screen

To customize your toolbar’s functionality and ordering according to your preference, simply click the white downwards-facing arrow above your ribbon. Then click “More Commands” → Choose Commands from “All Commands” → Select and add your favorite commands. If you want to remove any commands, simply select the command and hit “Remove.”

My “must-haves” for the ultimate quick access toolbar (QAT):

Align: The alignment tool is hands-down my favorite tool in PowerPoint. Bypass the futile, manual effort and instead highlight the shapes you want to align, and choose which direction to align them. You can align objects to the middle, right, left, top, and bottom of each other. Keep in mind that the positions of the objects are all relative to each other.

If you want to use this tool outside of your QAT: Highlight your desired objects → Format tab in the ribbon → Click Align → Select your preferred alignment direction → The objects will be aligned.

Distribute: If you have multiple objects or shapes that you want to make equidistant from each other, this tool will be your new best friend. Before distributing objects, it’s best to first align them. Then, to distribute, simply highlight the objects you want to distribute, and select “distribute horizontally” or “distribute vertically.”

If you want to use this tool outside of your QAT: Highlight your desired objects → Format tab in the ribbon → Click Align → Select Distribute Horizontally or Distribute Vertically → The objects will be distributed.

Format painter: Allows you to copy the formatting from one object and apply it to another one. It is essentially copying and pasting , but for formatting and not content.

One click on format painter: Applies the formatting from the original object to the next object you select/click on.
Two clicks on format painter: Locks in the format painter. After double-clicking, any object you select will convert to the formatting of the first object. To unlock format painter, click on any white space on the slide (not an object).

If you want to use this tool outside of your QAT: Select the object you want to mimic → Click Format Painter once or twice in the Home tab in the ribbon → Click on the object you want to change → The formatting changes will be applied.

Rotate: As the name implies, this feature enables you to rotate objects, in increments of 90 or 180 degrees. You can rotate a text box, shape, WordArt, or picture. This includes rotations to the right 90 degrees, to the left 90 degrees, vertically, and horizontally.

If you want to use this tool outside of your QAT: Highlight your desired object(s) → Format tab in the ribbon → Click Rotate → Select your preferred rotation option → The objects will be rotated.

Life-changing PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts

You might think I’m exaggerating, but once you realize you don’t have to manually perform these actions, you won’t look back. Generally, utilizing PowerPoint does not require memorizing as many hot keys as Excel does , but there are a few that you should be aware of.

Easily change the order and indent level of bulleted text in text boxes:

Change the order of bulleted text in text boxes: ALT + SHIFT + Up/Down Arrow Key
Change the indent level of bulleted text in text boxes: ALT + SHIFT + Right/Left Arrow Key

Resize an object while keeping them regular and in proportion:

Hold SHIFT while you’re resizing an object with your pointer/mouse

Micro-nudges (small nudges for your objects):

Select the object and hold CTRL + Up/Down/Right/Left Arrow Key to move it

Duplicate your shape or object without copy & paste:

CTRL + Drag the shape with your pointer/mouse

Ensure that your lines are actually straight:

For vertical lines: Insert the shape → Right click → Format Shape → Size & Properties → Set “Height” to “0” → Perfectly straight line
For horizontal lines: Insert the shape → Right click → Format Shape → Size & Properties → Set “Width” to “0” → Perfectly straight line

Transform a number into a footnote superscript:

Type in the number of the footnote (e.g., 1, 2, 3) → Highlight the number → Hold CTRL + SHIFT + the equal sign (=) → Your number will now be a footnote superscript

Adjust the case of your text by toggling between text cases (lowercase, title case and all caps):

Highlight the desired words and use the SHIFT + F3 shortcut. Each time you hit F3, the highlighted text will change to all lowercase, all caps, or title-style where only the first letter of a word is capitalized.

PowerPoint Design Tips for Common, Frustrating Situations

If you’ve worked in PowerPoint consistently, you’ve likely encountered the following conundrums. Instead of spending an unnecessary 15-30 minutes Googling the issue for a workaround, here’s how to navigate the situation every time:

How to convert text to SmartArt

Example Situation: I’ve got a list of boring bullets and I need inspiration to make them more polished.

Solution: Leverage the “Convert to SmartArt” tool.

Select the text box with the bullets → Under “Home” in the ribbon, Select “Convert to SmartArt” → Hover over different SmartArt options to see your bullets transformed → Select whichever SmartArt strikes your fancy, and continue to edit from there

How to Resize Multiple Objects/Shapes at Once

Example Situation: I used multiple shapes/images in the slide and I want to change their collective size without messing up the proportions.

First, group all the objects together. To group, highlight all objects and either right click → Group, or highlight and hit ALT + G.

Then, adjust the size with your mouse while holding SHIFT to keep the proportion. This will help you resize and fit multiple objects without distorting the original proportions and shapes.

How to Identify and Match Exact Colors

Example Situation: You need to utilize a specific, custom color but you can’t seem to find it in the color palette.

Solution: The eyedropper tool quickly identifies the exact color you are looking to match, and applies it to the text or object you are trying to change. While format painter can be helpful for applying the exact same formatting (size, coloring, etc.) from one object to another, sometimes you might only be looking to apply the same color. In these cases, the eyedropper tool is very helpful.

A common use case for this tool is for pitch decks. If you are looking to match the theme of the deck to the potential client/partner’s logo, the eyedropper tool can prove invaluable.

Select the text box you want to change → Click on the coloring format → Select the eyedropper tool → Using the eyedropper tool, hover over the color you want to mimic → When the color’s identification appears, click the color you want

How to Leverage Arrows with Elbow Connectors

Example Situation: I’m trying to draw arrows from one shape to another, but the arrows are crooked and look unprofessional.

Solution: Use the arrows with an elbow connector (90-degree angles). They automatically snap to the center of an object and can be formatted in different colors and sizes. These are especially helpful when building organizational charts.

Go to the Insert ribbon → Insert a shape → Under the “Lines” category, select the arrows with elbow connectors → Once selected, use the arrow to connect the center of one shape to the center of another shape → Repeat until completion

How to Fit Text into a Shape

Example Situation: I’m typing a text label into a shape, but the text doesn’t fit and breaks the word into two lines.

Solution: There are two ways to go about it:

Option 1: Right-click the shape → “format the shape” → Change the text margins to “0” from the left, and “0” from the right. Nine times out of ten, this will solve your issue.
Option 2: Forget about dealing with the original shape. Instead, insert a text box over the original shape (text box should use a transparent background) and type directly into the text box. The text will show up over the shape, but nobody will know it was a manual workaround.

How to Remove the Background of a Picture

Example Situation: I used an image from the web in a slide and I want to change the background image color but can’t figure out how to do it.

Solution: This technique is most effective when used on images with high contrast.

First, you must remove the original background color of the image. Click on the image you want to change → Select the “Format” tab in the ribbon → Click “Remove Background” → Fix any portions that were not perfectly removed → Click outside the image when you’re ready
Next, you will want to add in the new background color of the image. As you can see, the perfect execution of this does require a steady hand (that I clearly do not quite have). Still, it’s a helpful trick to have in your back pocket.

How to Convert a Table to Text Boxes

Example Situation: You want to convert a datatable into different formatting on another slide, but you don’t want to manually type the numbers in and risk a mistake.

Solution: Break your table into multiple text boxes and objects, which saves you the trouble of retyping the data and will be easier to manipulate

Copy the entire table → Paste special (paste as picture enhanced metafile) → Ungroup it → Answer “yes” to the dialog box → Ungroup it again → Answer “yes” again.
Voila, now your table has been broken into text boxes and shapes. You can now copy and paste the data you need into another slide and re-format as you like.

How to Make a Table’s Rows or Columns the Same Size

Example Situation: You’ve created and filled a table with data, but the size of some rows or columns do not match the others. Your OCD starts to kick in but you can’t figure out how to get them to match perfectly.

Solution: Use the “Distribute Rows” and “Distribute Columns” tools.

Select the entire data table → “Layout” tab in the Ribbon → Click “Distribute Rows” and “Distribute columns.”

Other PowerPoint Features and Best Practices

Create custom deck templates using Slide Master, which can be found under the “View” tab in the ribbon. Slide Master allows you to quickly modify the slide design in your presentation. You can either customize the slide master, which will affect every slide in the presentation, or you can modify individual slide layouts, which will change any slides using those layouts.

Rely less on your eyesight when moving objects around with the Guides or Gridlines view. First, you should adjust your settings to utilize the “Snap-to-Grid” function. Here’s how to do so: “View” tab → Click on the “Grid Settings” next to the word “Show” → Enable “Snap objects to grid. If you’d like to view the actual guides or gridlines, you can select these options under the “View” tab in the ribbon; they can easily be turned on and off. Please note that you can move guides around, while gridlines are set.

Link a chart from your Excel workbook to your PowerPoint presentation to enable dynamic updating of numbers.

When your chart is ready in Excel, copy the chart → Toggle to PowerPoint → In the “Home” tab in the ribbon, click “Paste” → Select “Paste Special” → Select “Paste Link” and “Microsoft Excel Chart Object” → Now when you update the numbers in Excel, the chart in PowerPoint will update dynamically. This feature works best when both programs are open in tandem.
If you close the Excel document and then update the figures in the table, remember to go back to your PowerPoint chart, right-click the chart, and select “Update link” to ensure that the data is refreshed.

On busy slides crowded with data, visually highlight your main takeaway at the bottom. A rectangular box (as shown below) is common.

Help the Audience Navigate Complexity by Driving Your Point Home

Remember to include keys with your graphs and charts to help orient your audience.

Slide Templates and Presentation Graphics for Common Concepts

Have you ever felt déjà vu when designing a new PowerPoint deck? It’s probably because we often create new slides to convey similar concepts, even if the content is different—be it a process, progress, or an organizational chart. At the end of the day, it makes sense to reuse a slide structure even if the actual content refreshes. To communicate these common concepts, many of the largest consulting firms repeatedly utilize the following slide components:

Project Schedule: Gantt Chart

Organizational Structure: Organizational chart

Process: Arrows leading into one another

Indicating the degree to which a particular item meets a criterion: Harvey Balls

Final Thoughts

Thus, As I began, so shall I finish. PowerPoint presentations don’t have to be painful. Like most personal and professional skills, practice, consistency, and attention will get you most of the way there. Once you become familiar with the application as a powerful productivity and storytelling tool, gain comfort with its nuances and logic/flow, and, dare I say, begin to leverage this article as a how-to companion, you might actually find yourself beginning to enjoy building PowerPoint presentations as you transition toward mastering them.

In the interim, if you are interested in reviewing some top consulting presentations that put a lot of my content into practice, feel free to browse 30 McKinsey presentations and a mix of Mckinsey, Boston Consulting Group and The Parthenon Group decks .

With that, happy building!

Understanding the basics

How do i customize the quick access toolbar in powerpoint.

Click the white downward-facing arrow above your ribbon; 2. Click “More Commands”; 3. Choose Commands from “All Commands”; 4. Select and add your favorite commands; 5. If you want to remove any commands, simply select the command and hit “Remove.”

What makes for an effective PowerPoint presentation?

Adhere to the following: (1) Err toward simplicity, in message and illustration; (2) Limit the use of prose (bullets are more succinct); (3) Use high-quality illustrations in place of text; (4) Use video or audio; and (5) Be sure you have a clear objective, point, and/or use-case for the end output.

How do I link an Excel chart to PowerPoint?

Copy your Excel chart; 2. In PowerPoint’s “Home” tab, click “Paste”; 3. Select “Paste Special”; 4. Select “Paste Link” and “Microsoft Excel Chart Object” → The numbers are dynamic; 5. If you close Excel and then update the raw data, right click the PowerPoint chart, and select “Update link” to refresh the data.
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8 tips to make the best powerpoint presentations.

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Lexar’s New Portable SSD Is for Your iPhone’s Camera

Consider these 6 things before installing smart security cameras, 7 windows settings you should always keep enabled (and why), quick links, table of contents, start with a goal, less is more, consider your typeface, make bullet points count, limit the use of transitions, skip text where possible, think in color, take a look from the top down, bonus: start with templates.

Slideshows are an intuitive way to share complex ideas with an audience, although they're dull and frustrating when poorly executed. Here are some tips to make your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations sing while avoiding common pitfalls.

It all starts with identifying what we're trying to achieve with the presentation. Is it informative, a showcase of data in an easy-to-understand medium? Or is it more of a pitch, something meant to persuade and convince an audience and lead them to a particular outcome?

It's here where the majority of these presentations go wrong with the inability to identify the talking points that best support our goal. Always start with a goal in mind: to entertain, to inform, or to share data in a way that's easy to understand. Use facts, figures, and images to support your conclusion while keeping structure in mind (Where are we now and where are we going?).

I've found that it's helpful to start with the ending. Once I know how to end a presentation, I know how best to get to that point. I start by identifying the takeaway---that one nugget that I want to implant before thanking everyone for their time---and I work in reverse to figure out how best to get there.

Your mileage, of course, may vary. But it's always going to be a good idea to put in the time in the beginning stages so that you aren't reworking large portions of the presentation later. And that starts with a defined goal.

A slideshow isn't supposed to include everything. It's an introduction to a topic, one that we can elaborate on with speech. Anything unnecessary is a distraction. It makes the presentation less visually appealing and less interesting, and it makes you look bad as a presenter.

This goes for text as well as images. There's nothing worse, in fact, than a series of slides where the presenter just reads them as they appear. Your audience is capable of reading, and chances are they'll be done with the slide, and browsing Reddit, long before you finish. Avoid putting the literal text on the screen, and your audience will thank you.

Related: How to Burn Your PowerPoint to DVD

Right off the bat, we're just going to come out and say that Papyrus and Comic Sans should be banned from all PowerPoint presentations, permanently. Beyond that, it's worth considering the typeface you're using and what it's saying about you, the presenter, and the presentation itself.

Consider choosing readability over aesthetics, and avoid fancy fonts that could prove to be more of a distraction than anything else. A good presentation needs two fonts: a serif and sans-serif. Use one for the headlines and one for body text, lists, and the like. Keep it simple. Veranda, Helvetica, Arial, and even Times New Roman are safe choices. Stick with the classics and it's hard to botch this one too badly.

There reaches a point where bullet points become less of a visual aid and more of a visual examination.

Bullet points should support the speaker, not overwhelm his audience. The best slides have little or no text at all, in fact. As a presenter, it's our job to talk through complex issues, but that doesn't mean that we need to highlight every talking point.

Instead, think about how you can break up large lists into three or four bullet points. Carefully consider whether you need to use more bullet points, or if you can combine multiple topics into a single point instead. And if you can't, remember that there's no one limiting the number of slides you can have in a presentation. It's always possible to break a list of 12 points down into three pages of four points each.

Animation, when used correctly, is a good idea. It breaks up slow-moving parts of a presentation and adds action to elements that require it. But it should be used judiciously.

Adding a transition that wipes left to right between every slide or that animates each bullet point in a list, for example, starts to grow taxing on those forced to endure the presentation. Viewers get bored quickly, and animations that are meant to highlight specific elements quickly become taxing.

That's not to say that you can't use animations and transitions, just that you need to pick your spots. Aim for no more than a handful of these transitions for each presentation. And use them in spots where they'll add to the demonstration, not detract from it.

Sometimes images tell a better story than text can. And as a presenter, your goal is to describe points in detail without making users do a lot of reading. In these cases, a well-designed visual, like a chart, might better convey the information you're trying to share.

The right image adds visual appeal and serves to break up longer, text-heavy sections of the presentation---but only if you're using the right images. A single high-quality image can make all the difference between a success and a dud when you're driving a specific point home.

When considering text, don't think solely in terms of bullet points and paragraphs. Tables, for example, are often unnecessary. Ask yourself whether you could present the same data in a bar or line chart instead.

Color is interesting. It evokes certain feelings and adds visual appeal to your presentation as a whole. Studies show that color also improves interest, comprehension, and retention. It should be a careful consideration, not an afterthought.

You don't have to be a graphic designer to use color well in a presentation. What I do is look for palettes I like, and then find ways to use them in the presentation. There are a number of tools for this, like Adobe Color , Coolors , and ColorHunt , just to name a few. After finding a palette you enjoy, consider how it works with the presentation you're about to give. Pastels, for example, evoke feelings of freedom and light, so they probably aren't the best choice when you're presenting quarterly earnings that missed the mark.

It's also worth mentioning that you don't need to use every color in the palette. Often, you can get by with just two or three, though you should really think through how they all work together and how readable they'll be when layered. A simple rule of thumb here is that contrast is your friend. Dark colors work well on light backgrounds, and light colors work best on dark backgrounds.

Spend some time in the Slide Sorter before you finish your presentation. By clicking the four squares at the bottom left of the presentation, you can take a look at multiple slides at once and consider how each works together. Alternatively, you can click "View" on the ribbon and select "Slide Sorter."

Are you presenting too much text at once? Move an image in. Could a series of slides benefit from a chart or summary before you move on to another point?

It's here that we have the opportunity to view the presentation from beyond the single-slide viewpoint and think in terms of how each slide fits, or if it fits at all. From this view, you can rearrange slides, add additional ones, or delete them entirely if you find that they don't advance the presentation.

The difference between a good presentation and a bad one is really all about preparation and execution. Those that respect the process and plan carefully---not only the presentation as a whole, but each slide within it---are the ones who will succeed.

This brings me to my last (half) point: When in doubt, just buy a template and use it. You can find these all over the web, though Creative Market and GraphicRiver are probably the two most popular marketplaces for this kind of thing. Not all of us are blessed with the skills needed to design and deliver an effective presentation. And while a pre-made PowerPoint template isn't going to make you a better presenter, it will ease the anxiety of creating a visually appealing slide deck.

Microsoft Office

15 PowerPoint Tutorials to Help You Master PowerPoint

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10 PowerPoint Tutorials to master PowerPoint

Need PowerPoint Backgrounds? Read The Best Places to Find PowerPoint Backgrounds [+ Freebies]

PowerPoint is software for presentations that offers many opportunities for creativity. If you want to create visually appealing and engaging presentations, check out this collection of 15 beginner PowerPoint tutorials that will help you step up your game, no matter if you are a regular presenter or a beginner in the software.

In this selection of PowerPoint tutorials, we’ve included tutorials for beginners, intermediate and advanced users. Some are incredibly impressive and will teach you hacks that you never thought were possible in PowerPoint. Let’s begin!

*Last updated July 1st, 2022

2. Tips and Tricks for working with PowerPoint

Level: Intermediate / Advanced

A one-hour web session with PowerPoint guru Tess Ausman. In the video tutorial, she shares advanced tips and techniques for PowerPoint which will take your presentations to the next level. Animations, screencasts, and everything you need to know in order to use and master PowerPoint’s superpowers.

You may also want to check out these amazing 12 PowerPoint Presentation Tips .

3. How to add audio in PowerPoint?

Level: Beginners

PowerPoint is perfect for newbies and experienced presenters and it allows a lot of audio customization. Our guide shows you how to add audio to PowerPoint in a quick step-by-step guide. You will also see how to record yourself, to get the best results. All steps are explained with images, to ensure you understand the concept well. Adding audio is one of the first things you need to do to attract customers’ attention.

4. How to make photos 3D in PowerPoint?

It’s always a good idea to come up with interesting concepts. In this PowerPoint tutorial, you will learn how to use separate images and then add them to PowerPoint, to achieve a smooth 3D look. The video is quite long, so if you want to watch only the PowerPoint part, you can skip to 15:31.

5. How to collaborate in PowerPoint?

Level: Beginner / Intermediate

Learning how to collaborate with your team is crucial. Fortunately, PowerPoint has advanced a lot over the years and nowadays it’s not hard to work together with your peers. There are many collaboration tutorials for PowerPoint but this one is extremely easy to apply.

6. How to Insert a GIF in PowerPoint?

Level: Beginner

GIFs are a very powerful method to deliver a message. They represent information in a more visual way. Our guide on how to insert GIFs into PowerPoint will help you insert simple animations and attract attention. On top of that, you will learn where you can find resources for inspiration. All steps are visualized for easy access.

7. How to Add Speaker Notes in PowerPoint?

Level: Intermediate

Speaker notes are crucial for all presenters. They let you memorize key phrases during the slides, and avoid any mishaps. In this PowerPoint video tutorial, you’ll learn not only how to add and show speaker notes, but also some of the reasons why people use them.

8. Microsoft PowerPoint Tutorial for Beginners Level 1

If you are a complete beginner to the software, we recommend to start off with a tutorial that covers the basics of working with PowerPoint. Jamie K. from Teacher’s Tech explains the basic functions and the interface options of the software and takes you through the process of creating a basic presentation.

9. Ten Powerful PowerPoint Tips

Level: Beginners / Intermediate

A video of PowerPoint hacks and tricks that will help you create a more appealing presentation design. Again created by Jamie K. from Teacher’s Tech, this video presents you to handy features in PowerPoint that reveal how to craft visually pleasing presentations more easily and quickly.

10. PowerPoint Slide Master tutorial – Placeholders & Basics

Working with Slide Master in PowerPoint requires you to be at least an intermediate user of the software, so we recommend you to check out the PowerPoint tutorials for beginners first. This great tutorial by Andrzej Pach introduces you to the Slide Master tool which will be really useful to you if you’d like to create custom presentation templates. His channel is full of useful videos, so we highly recommend you to check it out.

11. Three PowerPoint Hacks for Instant Improvement

Level: Advanced

A very insightful video tutorial by Leila Gharani who shares advanced hacks on how to instantly improve your presentations in PowerPoint. She talks about working with smart shapes, morph transitions, and advanced morph available in the newest version of PowerPoint. Every step is explained and the final result for your presentation is super impressive.

Need an amazing resume template? Take a look at these Top Resume Powerpoint Templates to Help You Stand Out .

12. How To Make Videos in PowerPoint?

A tutorial by Michael Kinney who will teach you how to turn your PowerPoint slideshow into a narrated video. The tutorial assumes you are already familiar with the software and explains how to set up your mic, use the recording features in PowerPoint, and later on, export your presentation into a video.

13. Animated 3D Models in PowerPoint – Part 1, The Basics

Thanks to the evolving technologies, incorporation 3D objects in your PowerPoint presentation is now completely possible. The following video will introduce you to the basics of using 3D models in PowerPoint and is a part of a sequence, so if you feel impressed, you can check out the second video which will show you advanced tricks with 3D models in PowerPoint. The video tutorial is made by Lia from Spicy Presentations and for doing it, you will need to have the latest Microsoft Office 365.

You may also be interested in How to Add Audio to PowerPoint: The Quick Step-by-Step Guide

14. How To Create Parallax Effect PowerPoint Step-by-Step?

A video tutorial by One Skill who shows how to create a parallax effect in your PowerPoint presentation. The tutorial is suitable for users who are already familiar with the software and want to make their presentations more attractive and modern. This step-by-step narrated tutorial will help you get there easily!

15. 40 Best Animation Tutorials for PowerPoint

There are so many animation effects you can achieve with PowerPoint that they cannot possibly be gathered into one video tutorial. The YouTube channel The Teacher regularly uploads great PowePoint tutorials which can be achieved by users with at least intermediate knowledge of the software. In the video below, you will see previews of 40 great animation effects. If you like any, just look for it in the description of the video and head over the tutorial itself.

To wrap up,

PowerPoint is a software that offers a lot as long as you know how to use it right. We hope this collection of 15 PowerPoint tutorials was useful to you and helped you learn new tricks and tips. It certainly was useful to us! If you want to recommend PowerPoint tutorials that helped you master your skills, you are welcome to share them in the comments below.

You may also be interested in these related articles:

The Best Free PowerPoint Templates to Download in 2022
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TECHNOLOGY Q&A

5 advanced PowerPoint tips for awesome presentations

Q. I've been using Microsoft PowerPoint for years, but I feel like there's so much more I could be doing with it. Do you have any tips that could help even an experienced PowerPoint user?

A. Almost 35 years after it was first released, the application known today as Microsoft PowerPoint continues to be a go - to presentation software for accountants worldwide. Yet many of those users, even ones who regularly make presentations, haven't scratched the surface of PowerPoint's real power.

Think of PowerPoint as a guide companion. You are sharing your expertise on a certain subject, and PowerPoint is there to help you drill home the details. Keep in mind that your attendees need to pay attention to what you're saying, not to flashy images or extensive text on the screen.

For the greatest success, keep your presentations clean and consistent and follow these general best practices that even the best and brightest among us still ignore:

Use a theme to ensure consistency.
Limit the on - screen content.
Avoid excessive animations.

With the proper principles in place, you can make the most of PowerPoint's many features. The following five tips may help in that process. To watch them in action, download this sample PowerPoint file with short, non - narrated videos of each tip.

1. Create a master slide

Some of us, myself included, have been guilty of building one decent slide and simply duplicating it over and over to create an entire presentation. This creates a lot of extra work when you want to go back and change the font or adjust your logo positioning on all the slides. We've got to stop doing this.

Using PowerPoint's master slide section allows you to be consistent throughout your entire presentation. Apply your logo, set your font sizes and colors, and create background styles all in one place. If you need to make a change later, one simple edit to the master slide will update your entire deck. This is much better than the old copy/paste route.

Master slide can be accessed by going to Master Views > Slide Master , which will take you to the Ribbon shown in the screenshot below.

As you get comfortable with the master slide, you can build out a fully personalized template of master slides for all layout options.

2. Use the Selection Pane to manage multiple boxes

Even if you follow my advice and keep your presentations minimal, you'll still probably have some trouble with items overlapping on your slide. This can make editing a pain. The Selection Pane tool is much easier to use than trying to click at just the right angle to get to that object box.

To access the Selection Pane, click any item on your slide, then select the Picture Format (or Shape Format ) Ribbon on the top menu. From there, you can choose Selection Pane from the Arrange group, as shown in the screenshot below.

This tool is great for testing animations and hiding elements you don't need at the moment. By clicking the small eyeball on the right side, you can temporarily hide an object from view. You can also rename objects by double - clicking the name on the right, or simply use the pane to easily select the item that you need.

3. Make super smooth transitions with the Morph tool

OK, I know I've preached simplicity and minimalism already, but some animations and transitions are acceptable and can even improve your delivery and your audience's attention span.

Morph transitions are more than just a "slide in from right" option. They allow you to dynamically move individual objects on the slide in whatever way you'd like, and even animate multiple objects simultaneously.

To get started, create a slide containing the objects you want to "morph" and duplicate it. After that, select the second (duplicate) slide, click Transitions , then Morph , as shown in the screenshot below. Select Effect Options and choose the words, characters, or objects that you would like to animate. Move the items you want to animate to where you'd like them to end up, and you're done.

Be sure to check your slideshow after doing this, to ensure the morph effect has worked as you expected. If done correctly, this can really add something special to your presentation. It takes some time to fully grasp, but once you give it a shot, you'll be hooked on the Morph.

4. Dive deeper with the Zoom option

Much like the Morph transition, the Zoom tool adds awesome dynamics to your presentation if used properly. I tend to use the Slide Zoom option and think of it as a "learn more" button. This method allows me to have a slide that acts as an overview slide with multiple subjects. As slides advance, PowerPoint will zoom into the slide thumbnail as if zooming into a deeper layer of the slide.

To use the Zoom tool (not to be confused with the videoconferencing application), select a slide you would like to use to add slide thumbnails. Under the Insert ribbon, select Zoom and then choose Slide Zoom , as shown in the screenshot below.

On the ensuing prompt, select the slides you would like to embed a thumbnail of into the main slide and then arrange as desired.

If you are familiar with using Sections in PowerPoint, the Section Zoom option is a simple way to approach using this feature. This can really help a slideshow feel like a fluid learning experience.

5. Fine-tune your presentation with Presenter Coach

No one around to provide feedback on your presentation? The Presenter Coach is available in the online version of PowerPoint, provided you are using a compatible browser (i.e., Microsoft Edge version 15 or later, Chrome version 52 or later, or Firefox version 52 or later). Once you have access to the Presenter Coach, it can help you with everything from your delivery to your timing.

Each time you rehearse, you'll get a report with your summary information about your presentation and suggestions to help you improve for the next time. These can include things like "try to avoid using filler words," or "try adding more context to your slide rather than reading the screen."

To access the Presenter Coach, go to the Slide Show ribbon and select Rehearse with Coach , as shown in the screenshot below.

My advice is to practice your presentation once alone and then rehearse it again with the Presenter Coach turned on. After you read the Presenter Coach report and make adjustments to your presentation as needed, go through it one more time. Odds are you'll notice a great improvement over when you started.

As an additional tip, if you are like me and like to stand up and pace the room, use Presenter Coach on the Office mobile app, as shown in the screenshot below. This will give you the freedom to walk around and ensure the coach hears you loud and clear.

I hope these tips help you to get more out of PowerPoint. Remember to keep your slide decks precise and clean.

Byron Patrick, CPA/CITP, CGMA , is general manager at Botkeeper.

Submit a question Do you have technology questions for this column? Or, after reading an answer, do you have a better solution? Send them to [email protected] . We regret being unable to individually answer all submitted questions.

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9 Advanced Microsoft PowerPoint Features You Must Know

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Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most popular tools for creating presentations and slide shows. While PowerPoint dominates the presentation software category, you may not know its most valuable features yet.

Let's look at the most notable Microsoft PowerPoint features that you might not be using but definitely should.

1. Co-Authoring

As its name suggests, co-authoring allows you and your colleagues to work on a PowerPoint presentation collectively. It comes in handy when you're part of a team and want to collaborate on a PowerPoint presentation. Here are the detailed steps to use co-authoring in PowerPoint:

Click the Share button in the top right corner of Microsoft PowerPoint.

If you have your team member's email, enter that in the Send Link box.
Once you are ready to share, click the Send button.

That's all you need to do. The next time someone joins the presentation, you'll see their changes in real time.

Microsoft offers you endless opportunities to customize the PPT sharing settings. You can click the pencil icon and then Sharing settings to access them.

2. PowerPoint Designer

The PowerPoint's AI-driven feature, called PowerPoint Designer, helps you transform your PPT's appearance. When you add a new slide or change the content of an existing slide, the Designer analyzes the content. It then starts suggesting design ideas that match the content of your PPT.

If you often lack design inspirations, you should learn to use PowerPoint's Designer feature for help. Follow these steps to get started with PowerPoint Designer:

Create a new slide in PowerPoint.

You can click on any design ideas that will apply to your current slide.

Want to see the real magic? Create some more slides and add enough content to them. Open the Designer sidebar again to see some related designs (applicable to all of your slides).

3. PowerPoint Add-Ins

You may not know that PowerPoint allows you to install third-party add-ins in one click. There are many different PowerPoint add-ins to transform your presentations completely. Once you know which add-ins to install, you can follow these steps to install them:

On your presentation screen, go to the Insert tab.

This will open the Office Add-ins window. You can search for and install your favorite add-ons for PowerPoint.

4. Presenter Coach

If enhancing your presentation skills is your goal, then Presenter Coach is the perfect option for you. It provides you with real-time feedback on your presentation skills.

It first analyzes all the words you speak. Then, by using artificial intelligence, it suggests how you can improve further. Here is how you can enable Presenter Coach in Microsoft PowerPoint:

Click Start Rehearsing to start the AI coach. Now you can start presenting, and the Presenter Coach will provide feedback on your pacing, tone, and language.
If you want to stop, you can click the mute icon and resume the session by clicking it again.

But how can you view the feedback or results of the Presenter Coach? To view your results, you have to exit the slide first. A popup will appear then, reflecting your rehearsal report and summary of your performance. If you're a beginner, you must read our guide on using Presenter Coach for help.

5. 3D Models

Everything in 3D looks much better than in 2D, right? This is why you can make your presentations much better than others by using 3D models.

Microsoft PowerPoint has a vast collection of 3D models in various categories. The major categories for 3D models include animals, emojis, avatars, shapes, electronics, and gadgets.

To start, click the Insert tab at the top and select the 3D Models option. You can open any category you want and then click on any 3D model you wish to insert into your slide. Once you are ready, click the Insert button.

The best thing that sets this feature apart is that you can even import your self-made 3D models. Once you insert a 3D model into your slide, you can adjust its position, size, and rotation. You can also use 3D models to showcase products, visualize concepts, or add a creative element to your PPT.

6. Morph Transition

By adding Morph transitions, you can animate different aspects of your slides. You can animate different objects, slides, and even texts as you like.

We will demonstrate the use of Morph transitions with the help of the 3D models discussed above.

To use a Morph transition, follow these steps:

Insert any 3D model in your first slide. We are going to use a laptop model for this tutorial.
You have to duplicate the object you selected in the first slide, or you can re-insert the same in the next slide.

Run or present your slides to experience a smooth transition between the two slides.

That's it. You will see that your object will transition between two positions.

If you're finding it difficult, there are many websites for animated PowerPoint slides to make your work much easier. You can download a pre-designed template and start customizing it.

7. Remove the Photo Background

From PowerPoint 2016 onwards, you can remove photo backgrounds with one click in PowerPoint. You don't need to go to another website or install a third-party application to do this simple task.

To start with it, insert any image into your slide and then click Remove Background from the Format tab. PowerPoint will then detect the background and remove it.

If you want more control, you can adjust the selection by clicking on the parts of the image you want to keep or remove. So now that you know the steps, you can create custom images that blend with your presentation's design.

8. Insert Object

By inserting Office files, such as Word or Excel, your slides can get the benefits of both applications. You can add charts, tables, or even Word documents without the headache of copy-pasting. The below steps will guide you on inserting an object in PowerPoint:

Go to the Insert tab, and under the Text group, click on Object .

But, if you're looking to insert a saved file, click Create from File .
Select the required object you want to insert under Object type. It may be an Excel file, chart, or anything else.

Once inserted, you can customize the object's appearance and position on the slide. If you want to edit the object's content, double-click on it to open and edit it in its native application.

9. Slide Master

While preparing a presentation, sometimes the flow or consistency breaks for any reason. For example, you may use a bigger font on the first slide and a different font for the rest.

Whatever the situation is, it makes your presentation look unstructured. In such cases, Slide Master comes into play. Slide Master is a helpful feature that helps you master your slides' "consistency" element. It lets you set the same font, heading size, design, and much more for all your slides.

Follow these steps to enable and start using Slide Master:

Go to the View tab and click on Slide Master .

Once you've made your changes, click the Close Master View button. This will apply the defined template to all the slides in your presentation.

The best thing about using it is that you don't need to open every slide and waste your precious time tweaking them. You can create a template using Slide Master that includes font choices, color schemes, and other elements. Then, let the Slide Master handle your presentations.

Take Your Presentations to the Next Level

No one likes a plain presentation nowadays. So, you should be one step ahead and add creativity and modern looks to your slides. While the Designer will help you with designs, transitions, and 3D models, they will help you with other visual aspects.

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17 PowerPoint Presentation Tips From Pro Presenters [+ Templates]

Published: April 26, 2024

PowerPoint presentations can be professional, attractive, and really help your audience remember your message.

If you don’t have much experience, that’s okay — I’m going to arm you with PowerPoint design tips from pro presenters, the steps you need to build an engaging deck, and templates to help you nail great slide design.

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Buckle up for a variety of step-by-step explanations as well as tips and tricks to help you start mastering this program. There are additional resources woven in, and you’ll find expert perspectives from other HubSpotters along the way.

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How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation

Powerpoint presentation tips.

Microsoft PowerPoint is like a test of basic professional skills, and each PowerPoint is basically a presentation made of multiple slides.

Successful PowerPoints depend on three main factors: your command of PowerPoint's design tools, your attention to presentation processes, and being consistent with your style.

Keep those in mind as we jump into PowerPoint's capabilities.

Getting Started

1. open powerpoint and click ‘new.’.

A page with templates will usually open automatically, but if not, go to the top left pane of your screen and click New . If you’ve already created a presentation, select Open and then double-click the icon to open the existing file.

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Creating PowerPoint Slides

3. insert a slide..

Insert a new slide by clicking on the Home tab and then the New Slide button. Consider what content you want to put on the slide, including heading, text, and imagery.

10. Present websites within PowerPoint.

Believe it or not, presenting websites within PowerPoint is something we’re still having to find work-arounds for.

From my experience, these are some tactics that have worked in the past that may be helpful depending on which version of PowerPoint you have:

Traditionally, to show a website in a PowerPoint slide you would just create a link to the page and prompt a separate browser to open.
Try adding the third-party program LiveWeb that you install on your PowerPoint program. Head to the LiveWeb website and follow the instructions. Unfortunately, Mac users don’t have a similar option.
Take screenshots of a website, insert the image on your slide, and link in through a browser. You can embed media (such as a YouTube video) by downloading it directly to your computer.
Some versions allowed a Web Viewer Add-on until Microsoft decided that was a security risk. Insert>Get Add-ons , search for Web Viewer , then click on the Add button.
Install ClassPoint , which essentially puts an internet window on top of your slide for use until you’re done with it, then you can just move to the next slide. You can even bookmark the webpage you want ahead of time to jump straight to it. Using this does introduce a new navigation bar along the bottom of your presentation. Here’s a video Introduction to ClassPoint:

Finally, PowerPoint Live is a new tool that enables you to do more seamless presentations during video calls and may be a better overall match for doing presentations remotely. Check out this video:

11. Try Using GIFs.

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15. Embed multimedia.

PowerPoint allows you to either link to video/audio files externally or to embed the media directly in your presentation. For PCs, two great reasons for embedding are:

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

If you use PowerPoint for Mac it gets a bit complicated, but it can be done:

Always bring the video and/or audio file with you in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentation.
Only insert video or audio files once the presentation and the containing folder have been saved on a portable drive in their permanent folder.
If the presentation will be played on a Windows computer, then Mac users need to make sure their multimedia files are in WMV format.
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 bit jumpy. Even between differing PPT versions, things can change. The easiest fix? Just bring along your own laptop when you're presenting.

The next easiest fix is to upload your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides as a backup option — just make sure there is a good internet connection and a browser available where you plan to present.

Google Slides is a cloud-based presentation software that will show up the same way on all operating systems.

To import your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides:

Navigate to slides.google.com . Make sure you’re signed in to a Google account (preferably your own).
Under Start a new presentation , click the empty box with a plus sign. This will open up a blank presentation.
Go to File , then Import slides .
A dialog box will come up. Tap Upload.
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 right-hand corner of the dialog box.
Click Import 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 you’ll be presenting across different operating systems.

17. Use Presenter View.

In most presentation situations, there will be both a presenter’s screen and the main projected display for your presentation.

PowerPoint has a great tool called Presenter View, which can be found in the Slide Show tab of PowerPoint. Included in the Presenter View is an area for notes, a timer/clock, and a presentation display.

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’re reading off of.

Use 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” key will bring it back if you need it.

Your Next Great PowerPoint Presentation Starts Here

Now that you have these style, design, and presentation tips under your belt, you should feel confident to create your PowerPoint presentation.

But if you can explore other resources to make sure your content hits the mark. After all, you need a strong presentation to land your point and make an impression.

With several templates to choose from — both in PowerPoint and available for free download — you can swiftly be on your way to creating presentations that wow your audiences.

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

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How to Make Good PowerPoint Slide Designs Even Better in 2024

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Want to learn how to design PowerPoint slides? Great presentations are supported by a good PowerPoint layout. Most PowerPoint graphic design you see is rather invisible. When something is wrong with a slide design, you'll notice.

In this PowerPoint design tutorial, we cover the basics of presentation design. It's a strong way to approach how to make a good PowerPoint presentation design. As you'll notice, subtle details go a long way. You'll learn:

Visual Hierarchy . We'll look at visual hierarchy and how you can use it effectively.
Slide Layout . Turning the design principles of visual hierarchy into effective PowerPoint slide designs.
Typography . Choosing the right typefaces.
Color . The basics of color theory.
Details . The extras that make your presentation great.

We'll look at how you can apply all these techniques to your designer PowerPoint ideas.

5 Principles of Presentation Design

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Are you looking to use ready-made presentation slide designs to shorten the process? I recommend checking out the trending PowerPoint templates on Envato Elements. It can save valuable time when you need to get a beautiful presentation, done quickly. It also takes some of the guess work out of how to design PowerPoint slides.

Ciri PowerPoint Template on Envato Elements

We're going to talk about PowerPoint graphic design, but first we need to understand what that means. After all, it's not enough to open PowerPoint and start clicking. If you want to know how to design PowerPoint slides, you've got to understand the principles.

We'll look at how important structure and slide layouts are to content. You can also learn how the fonts and colors you choose affect the whole presentation. We'll also look at any details you can add to improve design.

We're going to dive deeper into these principles of design. They're behind a great PowerPoint presentation:

1. Visual Hierarchy

Any type of design starts with visual hierarchy. What exactly is visual hierarchy? This refers to the arrangement of elements in a way that it implies importance. You can influence how we perceive what we see with contrast.

The theory of visual hierarchy helps you define the structure of your PPT design slides. Good visual hierarchy assures that the right elements are catching your attention.

You can achieve visual hierarchy through several PowerPoint graphic design techniques:

Use contrasting colors to make certain elements stand out more.
Play with the size of text or photos to make something stand out more than something else.

The above concepts are known as adding visual weight to an element. How does this work in practice? How does this help us learn how to design PowerPoint slides?

Below, you see two slides with the same copy. One's got no visual hierarchy applied. The other one uses simple color and typography. You'll learn more about later. It's used to apply visual weight.

The original slide without any visual hierarchy applied

For Example

You're giving a financial presentation. You want your audience to recall that the third quarter performed poorly and why.

It's unrealistic is to believe your audience will recall exact data. A presentation gives a lot of information in a short time span. Unfortunately, the attention of people is quite brief. Focus on key messages and use visual hierarchy to make those ideas stick out. It will help people digest your objective and key takeaways slides in PowerPoint.

2. Slide Layout Design

You can apply visual hierarchy to create effective PowerPoint presentation slide designs. It's one of the corner stones of how to make a good PowerPoint design.

The trick is to understand what the most important message is. Through PowerPoint design principles, that this will be the content that people remember.

This goes further than just designing one simple slide background. For example, you might have a few slides in a row about the same topic. But the final slide with the conclusion could be the slide to add that extra visual weight. For example, by adding an image for the first time or making the text bigger as usual. This is applying visual hierarchy to your slide layouts as well.

Effective PowerPoint Conclusion Slide Design with Clear Hierarchy Applied

One of the most effective PowerPoint graphic design tricks to apply is that less is more , in most cases. When you've got key statistics, the following method helps:

First, display the graph (or all the statistics) that display the context of the key number.
Display the key percentage on a single slide. Try this without any further elements. Use this as a follow-up to make people pay attention to this number.

This is known as letting your design (and content) breathe. The idea you should keep in mind is that you should try and give your content (and thus your design) a hidden order.

Repetition is another trick to help you emphasize a key message. For example, try displaying a graph. Then try an individual statistic on two separate slides. This is a good example of effective repetition. It will also help your designer PowerPoint ideas stick with an audience.

If you're looking for some inspiration for slide layouts, dive into this curated selection of trending PPT presentation designs:

3. Typography

We can't discuss how to design PowerPoint slides without talking about type. The right choice of typography goes a long way as a PowerPoint designer. It can really improve the design of your PowerPoint presentation.

For example, if your whole presentation has Comic Sans as a font choice, people will notice. When you notice a font, it's often because the legibility of the font is quite poor. If something is difficult to read, it requires much more attention from your audience.

Poor Font Choice in PowerPoint Presentation Design Slide

Traditional font choices are often the best to use for PowerPoint presentation slide design. Stick to Helvetica, Arial or Gill Sans, for example. Use the regular version for your body text and use the bold version for your title. Make your font size big enough to ensure readability (around 18pt) and make titles bigger (around 34pt).

Best Fonts for Good PowerPoint Presentation Design

It's also possible to mix fonts as a PowerPoint designer. When you're just starting out, I'd recommend keeping things simple. If you're curious, you could always try to search for good font combinations.

If you're intrigued by typography, there are plenty online resources to help you. I personally enjoy Typewolf , for example.

Of course, typography is a way to customize a design and make presentations much more unique. But, when starting out, I recommend sticking to the basics.

Something else to think about is how much text you use on your slides. It's rarely useful to write down full sentences in presentations. It's much better to use bullet lists of key facts. Make sure that people are paying attention to you while you're giving your presentation. Remember our ' Improving our marketing ' slide? Let's clean that one up so you'll notice the difference.

Shortening Text in Our PowerPoint Slide Design

As you can see, this marketing key takeaways slide looks better straight away. Apply this principle to your objective slide, and all other slides, in PowerPoint.

Color is an essential part of how to design PowerPoint slides. But color is a complex topic. A good understanding of the basics goes a long way. Understand that colors express a certain feeling, much like photography. Brighter, more vibrant colors often come across more playful. Darker colors often feel a little cooler (and more professional).

Notice the playful colors in this PowerPoint template's simple slide backgrounds. If you dig further into the PPT download, there are some simple minimal slides and a darker set to work with as well.

Hornette PowerPoint presentation design template

The colors you use in your PowerPoint graphic design depend on the context. If you're making a professional presentation, you'll likely work with the colors of your brand. That makes presentation design much easier. I recommend sticking to brand colors instead of experimenting.

In other cases, you might have to choose colors from scratch. In that case, don't panic yet. You can still make a palette that works with your designer PowerPoint ideas.

If you're a little more daring, you can learn more about color theory. You could try complementary and contrasting colors, for example.

An easy way to get started with color is to use a resource such as Adobe Color . By browsing the 'Explore' section, you can discover wonderful color palettes. Another way to see some nice palettes is to use design sites as Dribbble or Behance . See what colors are being used as inspiration.

Adobe Color is an excellent resource to find good combinations of colors

You'd be surprised how some subtle elements can pack a lot of punch. They can really improve your presentation visually. Think about these important details:

Photography

A presentation wouldn't be complete without the use of photography. Photography is the easiest way to improve your PowerPoint presentation. A simple trick to improve the design of your presentation is to use high-quality stock photography. You can find thousands of gorgeous professional stock photos on Envato Elements.

Using premium stock photos such as those found on Envato Elements means your presentation will be unique. You won't be using the same old stock photography everyone else is using. You can find photos that match your brand. You can also find photos of landscapes, city or coffee vibes, office settings, and much more.

Another simple way to visually enhance your presentation is to use icons. Icons are great to use when you've got little text in your presentation and don't want to use photography.

Ideally as a PowerPoint designer, you use icons from a single icon kit. This assures that all icons do have the same style. What's excellent is that a lot of PowerPoint themes you can buy include an icon kit. If not, you can find icon kits online on marketplaces like Envato Elements.

A simple slide using icons in order to improve the design

When working with data, adding some type of chart can help in your presentation.

Charts as a design element are something to pay attention to, as it's easy to overwhelm your audience with a bunch of data. Here are some thoughts about using charts to your advantage:

Don't use too many charts. Rather use them sparingly and only when they add value to what you've got to say.
Make sure that the data is easily legible. This, by avoiding fancy animations or unnecessary 3D design for example.
Have a follow-up slide explaining the key takeaway of your chart.

Learn more about how to create charts in this PowerPoint design tutorial:

Discover more helpful infographic and data-driven PowerPoint presentation design templates :

If possible, adding some multimedia to your presentation can help in many ways. First, it makes your presentation feel interactive. An interactive element can help you explain your designer PowerPoint ideas in a way that words and pictures can't.

But don't forget what we've learned about how to make a good PowerPoint design. Fundamentals come before distracting extras.

Let's use a mobile app as an example. Displaying a video demo might be an intriguing option. You could show off features that way.

Transitions and Animations

When thinking on how to design a PPT slide, you might consider animations. Transitions are often added to PowerPoint design elements.

The above is a little tricky. It's very easy to overdo animations and transitions. It can distract your audience. A good rule is that 80% of your presentation doesn't really need a transition or animation.

Only use transitions and animations where it matters. Use them to help your audience remember what you're saying. The principles of visual hierarchy apply here as well.

Want to learn more about how to use animations in your PowerPoint presentation slide designs? Check out this PowerPoint design tutorial:

So, let's use what we learned about how to design PowerPoint slides. We'll dive into how you can apply all the lessons above while working on a PowerPoint presentation design:

Step 1. Plan Your Content Before the Design

Content First Not Presentation Design First

I know that as a PowerPoint designer you want to dive straight into your work. But before you start working on the design of your PPT slides, think about your content. Consider your key messages . Ask yourself what your audience should remember after seeing your presentation. That's a big part of effective PowerPoint design.

Optimize your objective and key takeaways slides in PowerPoint to support those messages. Make sure that your content and your key message stands out. That's where all the above PowerPoint graphic design advice kicks in.

In summary, start with your key message. The opportunity to design will follow. Learn more about the presentation writing process in this PowerPoint design tutorial:

Step 2. Now Begin With Presentation Design Basics

Once you've got your content figured out, next you should define what the foundations of your slide design should be. Remember, this is a big part of how to make a good PowerPoint presentation design.

This is defined by your selection of color and typography . Pick a primary color and a font you'd like to work with and you're off for a good start.

Step 3. Collect Your Photography

You'll likely use some sort of photography (or other imagery) in your presentation. Start collecting images you like. Select them for your PowerPoint presentation once you start designing.

After you're all set with the above, start with the actual design.

Step 4. Define Your Slide Layout(s)

Finally, it's time to work on the layout of each individual slide. It's not necessary to create a unique layout for each slide, but some variety helps. Good PowerPoint design finds a balance. For a presentation of about 20 slides, I work on about six to eight layouts. I'll use them throughout my PowerPoint presentation design. For this presentation, for example, I've designed three layouts. You can see them below for some inspiration:

PowerPoint presentation slide design layout 1

A layout can be quite simple with its slide backgrounds and foreground elements. For example, a simple title with a subtitle or a slide containing a photo. Or a layout can be complex. For example, combining some bullet points and a graph. A well-designed PowerPoint is strategically designed.

The trick is to create enough layouts. Pay attention to the design of the slide layout individually.

Once you've designed all layouts, put your PowerPoint design together and see how your presentation flows. Make sure to practice your presentation at least once! Then, fine-tune your design and finish your presentation!

Let’s work with a basic presentation with nice PowerPoint graphic design. We can quickly turn it into a standout PowerPoint graphic design example. We'll use the help of a professional PPT template.

I’ve designed a very basic presentation in PowerPoint that consists of five slides:

title slide
about slide
product slide
picture and text slide

I’ll be using this PowerPoint template to share these designer PowerPoint ideas. We'll customize the design of the basic presentation.

Download the template above or follow along with your favorite premium template. These PowerPoint graphic design concepts will apply to any design. Let's get started:

Step 1. Find Slides You Want To Use

You don't need to be an all-star PowerPoint designer for the first step in the process. Just find the slides you want to use to customize the template. The easiest way to do this is to switch to the Slide Sorter view. Delete any slides you don’t want by clicking to select them. Then, right-click on those slides and select Delete .

Step 2. Customize Your Title Slide

The title slide is one of the most important slides in your presentation. When done right, it can pique the interest of your audience so it’s a good idea to make sure it captures their attention. My original slide uses a simple underlined title for the slide background.

I’ve customized the title slide, so it includes a full-width photo. I’ve also changed the fonts. The result makes the slide title look more polished and professional.

Step 3. Layer Text and Images

Your presentation will have a variety of different slides. Some slides might be purely text based. Others might have a combination of text and images. Get creative and experiment with layering text over images.

This template makes it easy to experiment with designer PowerPoint ideas. I’ve made it more visually interesting by playing with the text layout. I've also layered text over images in the simple slide backgrounds.

Step 4. Break Away From the Grid

Chances are, you might use many photos on one slide. But that doesn’t mean you've got to place them side by side.

Break away from the grid and place images in different positions. You can also break them apart with text. Your slides will be more interesting this way. That means your audience will be more engaged throughout the presentation.

As you can see, I had a basic, grid-based slide with two images side by side.

Here, I’ve made the product slide more interesting and engaging. Simply add some text between the images. Try it for your own objective and key takeaways slide in PowerPoint.

Step 5. Spice Up Text With Icons

Another way to spice up your text-based slides is to use icons. Icons are great visual cues that help us visualize important points. In the example below, I’ve used a text-based slide with a simple title and a plain bulleted list.

I’ve made this slide more engaging by adding icons instead of bullet points. I've also tried rearranging the text to fit more points onto one slide.

A premade PowerPoint template is a great time saver, even for PowerPoint designers. You can find plenty of PowerPoint templates over on Envato Elements.

Each of the PowerPoint templates features an attractive design. They come with premade slides. Many also include extra elements such as charts, icons, and graphs. It'll be an invaluable resource and help you make an effective slide design.

Look at some of the best PowerPoint presentation design templates from Envato Elements:

1. Nextar - Multipurpose PowerPoint Presentation Design Template

The Nextar template has a modern and trendy graphic design for PowerPoint. It comes with 30 unique slides and three premade color schemes. That's plenty of options for your key takeaways slides. The template is versatile enough to be used in business or corporate presentations as well as webinars, pitch decks, and more. On top of that, the template's got image placeholders so all you've got to do is drag and drop in your images.

2. Brusher - Trendy PowerPoint Presentation

The Brusher template is a trendy PowerPoint template. It’s a great choice if you’re looking to enhance your PowerPoint presentations with graphics. The template features bold brush strokes. You'll also get 120+ slides and five premade color schemes. It also includes image placeholders and creative illustrations.

3. Native - Minimalist PowerPoint Presentation Design Template

Try this template if you like a minimalist design style. This template is perfect for small businesses that want a clean presentation look. The template includes over 20 premade color schemes and 84 individual slides. The slides are animated, and you'll also get custom icons that you can use to improve your PowerPoint presentation.

4. Mild - PowerPoint Presentation Template

Consider this template if you want to use photos in your presentation design. The template includes image placeholders. You can easily replace them with your own photos. The template comes with a custom icon pack. It also has 35 premade slides as well as over 50 color schemes.

5. Sprint - Bold PowerPoint Template

This template features a bold and modern design. It's perfect for startups as well as established corporations. The template comes with 20 master slides. They'll let you quickly customize your objective and other slides in PowerPoint. You'll also get matching charts, diagrams, tables, and other data visualization elements. This template is a perfect choice if you want to quickly design a PowerPoint presentation.

Find more great PowerPoint presentation design templates in this article:

The templates above are just a small sample of what’s available on our marketplaces in terms of PowerPoint templates. To see even more great PowerPoint designs, check out the articles below:

As you explore how to design in PowerPoint, you might wonder which aesthetic is best. PowerPoint design principles are in this article. But good PowerPoint design also requires sensitivity to your objectives. PowerPoint design elements should make sense. A good PowerPoint layout that looks great but doesn't relate won't succeed.

A well-designed PowerPoint uses design principles to communicate. That's what makes an effective PowerPoint design. It looks good. It works well. It connects to the material. Consider how to design a PowerPoint presentation from this perspective.

Check out these design trends. They each use PowerPoint design principles in their own, strategic way.

1. Use Color as a Consistent, Anchoring Element

It's a great idea to have variety, from slide to slide. This keeps things interesting. But too much variety can look chaotic. Color can act as a consistent element in our presentation.

Look at this premium PowerPoint template, below. Its use of color shows excellent PowerPoint graphic design. Each slide layout varies quite a bit. One of the elements they all have in common is this bright, yellow color. It helps keep them looking like one, related presentation.

2. Visually Communicate Ideas With Infographics

Infographics are both trendy and a smart choice. It's one thing to hear facts. It's another to actually see them. Conveying data in more than one way can help with retention rates. It can also help further communicate the overall message behind the data.

There are so many creative ways you can use infographics too. Use them for statistics. Try infographics for timelines and progress reports. And put them against simple slide backgrounds that aren't distracting.

3. Experiment With Abstract Shapes

Abstract shapes have been quite trendy in PowerPoint template design. They work well in many different aesthetics too. This premium PowerPoint template uses bouncy, playful shapes. When paired with these muted colors, it makes for a friendly design.

Abstract shapes also lend to make for a versatile aesthetic. The neutrality of abstract backgrounds and designs can work in so many scenarios.

4. Let Beautiful Photography Do the Talking

Visuals are part of every PowerPoint designer's toolkit. Large, high-quality photos can be really communicative. This is particularly effective if you're sharing product photos or a portfolio. If your presentation or business is heavily reliant on visuals, consider pushing the photography.

Keep in mind that your PowerPoint design elements shouldn't fight for attention. If the photo is the emphasis, then the other elements should support that. This means a large photo might warrant smaller text, for example.

5. Try a Dark, High Contrast Aesthetic

Dark PowerPoint themes can be really trendy too. Doesn't this premium PowerPoint presentation look cool? Themes like this could be particularly well received in technology industries. There's a lot of potential for high energy and high contrast in an aesthetic like this one too.

Make sure to keep an eye out for readability in this aesthetic. Too much contrast can be hard on the eyes. Check to make sure your content is easily legible for your audience.

As you explore how to design PowerPoint slides, questions may arise. Take a look at these answers to commonly asked design questions:

1. What's the Best Look for My PowerPoint Design?

This is a great question with a complicated answer. An effective PowerPoint design has a look that relates to the topic. Make sure your PowerPoint design elements relate. Visuals are very communicative. You can use them to support your narrative.

Want to learn more about visual communication and storytelling? Check out this free tutorial:

2. How Can I Get Better at Typography? How Do I Choose Fonts?

Typography can be a complicated subject. It's a good idea to get yourself comfortable with the basics. But here are some quick tips to get you started. Think of it like a cheat sheet that you can rely on:

Avoid using too many different fonts. This can look distracting.
Make sure your fonts are legible. Display fonts are not for things like body copy.
When pairing fonts together, go for fonts that contrast. This means two fonts that are visually different. Choose one for emphasis and one to complement.

Want to learn more about typography? Check out this free guide:

3. How Can I Design Good PowerPoint Layouts?

We covered some great tips and tricks on layout design in this article. But there's plenty more to discover. If you feel stuck, remember these essential basics:

Hierarchy matters. Draw attention to key points, like headlines. Supplemental content should have less contrast or scale.
Remember not to "stuff" your layouts. Sometimes, less is more. It is often better to be reserved than to overdo it.
Be selective with your content. Too much variety can look chaotic. Don't overdo it with things like colors, fonts, or imagery.

Learn more about great layout design in this free tutorial:

4. How Can I Come Up With Creative PowerPoint Design Ideas?

Ideas can be one of the trickiest parts of the design process. When in doubt, try some visual research. This can be as simple as looking at other designs. Note what works well in them. Think about what you can learn from them and try in your own designs.

If you're looking for design inspiration, check out these collections from Envato Tuts+. There's plenty to see and download. Besides, there's design tips you can try too.

5. How Can I Learn More about Design Principles?

There's even more to learn about the principles of design. The best part is that these principles can apply to almost all types of design too. So, you can use this in your PowerPoint slide designs, business cards, stationery, and more.

While the official list can vary, the principles of design generally include:

Check out these Microsoft PowerPoint tutorials from Envato Tuts+. There are many resources to help take your PowerPoint skills further:

Take the tips you learned in this article further with our eBook: The Complete Guide to Making Great Presentations ( grab it now for FREE ) .

It'll help walk you through the complete presentation process. Learn how to write your presentation, design it like a pro, and prepare it to present powerfully.

Learn How to Make Great Presentations free PDF download

That's it! We covered the basics of effective PowerPoint presentation design. You've just learned how design PowerPoint (PPT) slides. As a key takeaway, remember that good design is often subtle. The best design is typically invisible.

Instead of trying to design everything, keep it simple and focus on a process that works for you. For example, design a few layouts you could use. Only use animations where it makes sense. Keep your colors simple.

If you lack time, I recommend starting from a professional PPT template and customizing it to your needs.

Here are some excellent PowerPoint templates to look at on Envato Elements. Download unlimited presentation designs. Download web templates, and graphic assets for a single monthly fee.

Designing is much easier if you don't make it unnecessarily difficult for yourself.

Editorial Note: The tutorial was originally published in March of 2017. It's been comprehensively revised to include new information—with special help from Brenda Barron , Daisy Ein , and Nathan Umoh .

27 Super Hidden PowerPoint Tips and Tricks Only The Pros Know!

Ausbert Generoso

27 Super Hidden PowerPoint Tips and Tricks Only The Pros Know!

Ever felt like your PowerPoint presentations could use a little magic? You’re not alone. Whether you’re a seasoned presenter or just getting started, there’s a world of PowerPoint tips and tricks waiting for you. In this guide, we’re diving into the nitty-gritty of Microsoft PowerPoint to uncover 30 hidden gems that’ll transform the way you create and deliver slides.

From making your designs pop to streamlining your workflow, these PowerPoint hacks are designed for real-world impact. No jargon, just practical insights that’ll have you presenting like a pro in no time.

Let’s cut through the noise and get straight to the good stuff – your next presentation is about to level up. Ready? Let’s get started.

27 PowerPoint Tips and Tricks That Put The Power in PowerPoint

1. Morph Transition for Seamless Animation

What’s it for: Elevate your presentation by seamlessly animating objects and creating smooth transitions between slides. Morph transition is your key to a dynamic and visually engaging storytelling experience, allowing you to captivate your audience effortlessly.

How to do it:

Position the same object in different parts on multiple slides
Select all slides, and go to the Transitions tab.
Choose “Morph” as the transition effect.

2. SVG Image Integration

What’s it for: Did you think SVG’s only work for websites and professional photo editing tools? They do, too, in PowerPoint! Import high-quality Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Maintain image clarity, resize without loss, and enhance your presentations with crisp logos and icons.

Save your chosen SVG on your device.
Click on the Insert tab.
Choose “Pictures” and select your SVG file.
Adjust the size without compromising image quality.

3. Designer Feature for Quick Layouts

What’s it for: Effortlessly create professional-looking slides with the Designer feature. Receive instant layout suggestions based on your content, saving time and ensuring your presentation looks polished.

Select a slide.
Go to the Design tab and click Designer on the far right along the ribbon.
Select through ready-made slide designs for instant layouts.

4. Insert 3D Models

What’s it for: Amp up your presentations with manipulable 3D models, adding a dynamic dimension. Whether it’s showcasing products or visualizing data, 3D models bring your slides to life.

Click on the “3D Models” dropdown and proceed to Stock 3D Models.
Search for a 3D model of your choice and insert.
Manipulate and customize as needed.

5. SmartArt Graphics for Visual Hierarchy

What’s it for: Convey complex ideas with visual hierarchy using SmartArt graphics. These graphics offer a structured and visually appealing way to organize information, making your content more digestible.

Go to the Insert tab.
Select “SmartArt” and navigate through the available categories.
Select a graphic template that fits your presentation needs.
Enter your content and customize as needed.

6. Eyedropper Tool for Color Matching

What’s it for: Maintain a cohesive design by using the Eyedropper tool to pick colors from images or elements within your presentation. Ensure consistency and professional aesthetics in every slide.

Select the editable, native PowerPoint object you wish to customize.
Go to the Shape Format tab and click on the Shape Fill dropdown.
Select “More Fill Colors…” and click the eyedropper icon to begin color appropriating.

7. Record and Insert Audio

What’s it for: Infuse personality into your presentation by recording audio directly within PowerPoint. Ideal for adding voiceovers, explanations, or personal touches that enhance audience engagement.

Click on “Audio” and choose “Record Audio.”
Record your audio and insert it into the slide.

8. Presenter Coach for Rehearsing

What’s it for: Elevate your presentation skills with Presenter Coach. Receive valuable feedback on pacing, filler words, and more, refining your delivery for a confident and impactful performance.

Click on the Slide Show tab.
Choose “Rehearse with Coach” to start practicing.

9. Hyperlink Navigation for Seamless Transitions

What’s it for: Streamline your presentation flow by implementing Hyperlink Navigation. This trick allows you to create clickable links within your slides, enabling effortless transitions between related content or external resources, enhancing the overall navigational experience.

Select the text or object you want to hyperlink.
Right-click and choose “Hyperlink” or use the Ctrl+K shortcut.
Specify the destination, whether it’s another slide, a website, or a file, to create a seamless navigational experience.

10. Alt Text for Accessibility

What’s it for: Improve accessibility by adding descriptive alternative text to images and objects. Ensure inclusivity for visually impaired individuals, making your presentation accessible to a wider audience.

Right-click on the image or object.
Choose “Edit Alt Text” and enter a descriptive text.

11. Slide Zoom for Dynamic Navigation

What’s it for: Elevate your presentation’s navigation with Slide Zoom, offering the flexibility to jump to specific slides during a presentation without adhering to a linear sequence. This dynamic feature ensures a more engaging and tailored audience experience.

Set a master slide where you’d like to put your “mini slides” altogether.
Navigate to the Insert tab > Zoom dropdown > Slide Zoom.
Select the slides you want to link onto your master slide and insert.

12. Live Captions and Subtitles

What’s it for: Foster inclusivity by enabling live captions and subtitles in multiple languages. This feature enhances accessibility, making your presentation more engaging and comprehensible for a diverse global audience.

Go to the Slide Show tab.
Select “Always Use Subtitles” and choose your language.

13. Password Protection for Security

What’s it for: Safeguard your presentation’s sensitive content by adding a password. This security measure ensures that only authorized individuals can access and view the information, adding an extra layer of protection.

Navigate to the File tab.
Select “Info” and click on “Protect Presentation.”
Choose “Encrypt with Password” and set your password.

14. Animation Painter for Consistent Animations

What’s it for: Maintain a polished and consistent look throughout your presentation by using the Animation Painter. Copy and apply animations across different objects with ease, ensuring a cohesive visual experience.

Select the object with the same, desired animation as the others.
Go to the Animation tab.
Click on “Animation Painter” and apply to other objects.

15. Linked Excel Charts for Real-Time Updates

What’s it for: Integrate linked Excel charts for real-time updates in your PowerPoint presentation. Any modifications made to the linked Excel file automatically reflect in your slides, ensuring data accuracy.

Copy your Excel chart.
In PowerPoint, use “Paste Special” and choose “Microsoft Excel Worksheet Object.”

16. Custom Slide Sizes

What’s it for: Tailor your presentation to various screen dimensions by customizing slide sizes. This feature, accessible through the Design tab, ensures your content fits seamlessly across different display settings.

Navigate to the Design tab.
Click on the “Slide Size” dropdown and choose “Page Setup”.
Change “Slide sized for” to Custom.

17. Grid and Guidelines for Precision

What’s it for: Achieve precise object alignment with gridlines and guides. This feature, essential for creating visually polished and organized presentations, ensures your content is visually appealing and professionally structured.

Go to the View tab.
Check the “Grids” and “Guidelines” toggles for display options and customization.

18. Slide Master for Consistent Design

What’s it for: Establish a cohesive presentation design by utilizing the Slide Master. This time-saving feature enables you to set consistent layouts, fonts, and colors throughout your presentation.

Click on “Slide Master” to access and customize master slides.

19. Quick Access Toolbar Customization

What’s it for: Streamline your workflow by personalizing the Quick Access Toolbar with your most-used commands. This customization ensures quick access to essential tools, enhancing efficiency during presentation creation.

Click on the dropdown arrow on the Quick Access Toolbar.
Select “More Commands” to customize your toolbar.

20. Ink Annotations for Handwriting

What’s it for: Personalize your presentations with a touch-enabled device using ink annotations. This feature allows you to draw or write directly on slides, adding a unique and handwritten touch to your content.

Go to the Draw tab and click on Draw to begin drawing.
Choose “Ink to Text” or “Ink to Shape” for handwriting annotations.

21. Crop to Shape for Image Customization

What’s it for: Unleash your creativity by utilizing the Crop to Shape feature, allowing you to create custom image shapes. This adds a distinctive flair to your presentation, providing a visually dynamic and engaging experience.

Select the image.
Navigate to the Picture Format tab.
Click on “Crop” and choose “Crop to Shape.”
Select the shape you want your image to have as frame.

22. Slide Show Recording with Narration

PowerPoint slide show recording with narration

What’s it for: Capture your entire presentation, including narration and animations, by recording a self-running slideshow. This feature is invaluable for sharing presentations with a wider audience, ensuring a consistent and engaging delivery.

Click on “Record Slide Show” and choose recording options.

23. Dynamic Color Scheme Switch for Vibrant Slides

What’s it for: Infuse energy into your presentation by dynamically switching color schemes. This handy trick allows you to quickly experiment with various color palettes, giving your slides a vibrant and fresh appearance in just a few clicks.

Explore different color options by selecting “Colors” and experimenting with the available palettes. Instantly transform the look of your presentation to match your desired mood and style.

24. Smart Alignment and Distribution for Pixel-Perfect Precision

What’s it for: Attain pixel-perfect precision in your presentation design with the Smart Alignment and Distribution trick. This technique allows you to not only align objects with accuracy but also evenly distribute them horizontally, ensuring a polished and visually appealing layout.

Select the objects you want to align.
Navigate to the Format tab.
Click on “Align” to access options like Align Left, Center, or Right for precise alignment.
Further refine your layout by choosing “Distribute Horizontally,” ensuring equal spacing between objects and achieving a professional design.

25. Insert Online Videos

What’s it for: Seamlessly integrate online videos directly into your presentation. This feature eliminates the need for external players, offering a smooth and immersive viewing experience for your audience.

Click on the “Video” dropdown and select Online Movie.
Paste the video link and your video should be embedded onto your PowerPoint slide.

26. Embed Fonts for Portability

What’s it for: Ensure consistent visual appeal on any device by embedding fonts in your presentation. This is particularly useful when sharing your work with others who may not have the same fonts installed, enhancing portability.

Go to the File tab.
Select “Options” and go to the Save tab from the window popup.
Check “Embed fonts in the file” as well as “Embed all characters”.

27. Text Transformation

What’s it for: Uncover the elegance of text transformation with the Shape Format trick. This hack allows you to access a myriad of text transformation designs, offering a swift and sophisticated way to elevate the visual appeal of your presentation.

Select the text you want to transform.
Navigate to the Shape Format tab.
Click on “Text Effects” and explore the “Transform” options for a variety of stylish text designs. Instantly apply a transformation that suits the tone and style of your presentation.

5 Critical Best Practices to Implement These Pro PowerPoint Tips and Tricks for a Technically Proficient Presentation

Enhance the technical brilliance of your presentation by focusing on these crucial best practices:

1. Streamlined Font Selection

Practice: Limit your font styles to a maximum of three per slide.
Why: Simplifying fonts enhances readability, maintains visual consistency, and prevents distraction, ensuring your message is clear and impactful.

2. High-Resolution Images

Practice: Source HD images from reputable free resource websites like Freepik or Unsplash .
Why: High-resolution images prevent pixelation, ensuring clarity and professionalism. Crisp visuals contribute to a visually appealing presentation.

3. Cohesive Color Palette

Practice: Stick to a consistent color palette throughout your slides; use the eyedropper tool for precise color matching.
Why: A unified color scheme enhances visual harmony, reinforces brand identity, and elevates the overall aesthetics of your presentation.

4. Efficient Data Visualization

Practice: Use charts and graphs for data-driven slides, choosing appropriate chart types for different data sets.
Why: Visualizing data through charts improves comprehension, making complex information more accessible and engaging for your audience.

5. Transitions with Purpose

Practice: Apply slide transitions judiciously. Choose transitions that complement the content and avoid excessive animations.
Why: Subtle transitions maintain audience focus, while excessive animations may distract from the core message.

Final Thoughts

In presentation-making, technical practices harmonized with thoughtful design is the key to delivering an impactful message. Whether it may be as simple as considering font choices, to incorporating high-resolution visuals, you do not only get to enhance the aesthetics but also ensure your audience’s undivided attention.

Remember, a technically proficient presentation is not just a showcase of information, but also one that leaves a rather immersive experience for those who will see. But at the end of the day, it comes down to your delivery. So, no sweat! You’re doing amazing, rockstar!

Find them useful? Save them, or share these PowerPoint tips and tricks with others to make their day!

About Ausbert Generoso

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A step-by-step guide to captivating PowerPoint presentation design

november 20, 2023

by Corporate PowerPoint Girl

Do you often find yourself stuck with a lackluster PowerPoint presentation, desperately seeking ways to make it more engaging and visually appealing? If your boss has ever told you to "please fix" a presentation and you didn't know where to start, you're not alone. In this article, we'll walk you through a straightforward method to transform your PowerPoint slides into a visually captivating masterpiece.

Let's dive right in!

Clean up your slides

The first step in this journey to presentation excellence is all about decluttering your slides and elevating their impact. Say goodbye to those uninspiring bullet points that often dominate presentations. Instead, focus on what truly matters – the key call-out numbers. By increasing the font size of these numbers, you ensure they take center stage, immediately drawing your audience's attention.

To make those numbers pop, consider breaking the text after the numbers into the next line and adding a touch of color. The contrast created by pairing a dark color with a lighter shade, like dark teal and light teal or burnt orange with peach, can work wonders. This simple adjustment makes your data more engaging , enhancing the overall impact of your presentation.

Add dimension with boxes

Now, let's introduce an element of depth and organization to your slides. By adding boxes, you'll create a visually pleasing structure that guides your audience through the content. In the "Insert" menu, select "Table" and opt for a one-by-one table. Change the table color to a light gray shade, elongate it, and position it neatly to the left of your text.

To improve readability and aesthetics, increase the spacing between text phrases. A small adjustment in the before spacing setting (setting it to 48) significantly enhances the visual appeal of your slides.

Insert circles

To further enhance the visual appeal and engagement of your slides, let's introduce circles. In the Insert menu, navigate to Shapes and choose the circle. Adjust the circle's height and width to 1.2, ensuring it complements your content seamlessly. Match the circle's shape fill color with the corresponding text color for a harmonious look.

Avoid using colored outlines for the circles, as they may distract from the overall aesthetic. This simple addition of circles adds an element of visual interest to your presentation, making it more captivating.

Choose icons

Now, it's time for a touch of creativity. Selecting icons to complement your text can elevate the clarity and appeal of your slides. In the "Insert" menu, you can search for relevant keywords to find the perfect icon from PowerPoint's extensive library .

For instance, if your text discusses investment portfolio yield, search for "growth" and choose an upward arrow growth icon. These icons add an extra layer of visual appeal and clarity to your content, making it more engaging and informative.

Final touches

To wrap up the transformation process, we come to the final touches that give your presentation a polished, professional finish. Align your icons with their corresponding circles and change the shape fill color to white. This simple adjustment creates a crisp, cohesive look that ties everything together seamlessly.

In conclusion, by following these steps, you've embarked on a journey to enhance your PowerPoint presentation . These initial steps are just the beginning of your exploration into the world of design elements and styles that can cater to your specific presentation needs. The key to a stunning PowerPoint presentation lies in the details. By following these steps, you can turn a lackluster set of slides into a visually engaging and dynamic presentation that will captivate your audience. So, the next time your boss says, "Please fix," you'll know exactly where to start. Happy presenting!

How to Make a Beautiful PowerPoint Presentation: A Simple Guide

Ready to craft a beautiful and attention-grabbing powerpoint presentation we’ll walk you through slideshow design tips, show you some tricks to maximize your powerpoint skills, and give you everything you need to look really good next time you’re up in front of a crowd..

In this post, we’ll cover:

Key Elements of Winning PowerPoints

Illustrative, not generic, supportive, not distracting, inspiring and engaging, other considerations when creating a slideshow.

How many times have you sat through a poorly designed business presentation that was dull, cluttered, and distracting? Probably way too many. Even though we all loathe a boring presentation, when it comes time to make our own, do we really do any better?

The good news is you don’t have to be a professional designer to make professional presentations. We’ve put together a few simple guidelines you can follow to create a beautifully assembled deck.

We’ll walk you through some slide design tips, show you tricks to maximize your PowerPoint skills, and give you everything you need to look really good next time you’re up in front of a crowd.

And, while PowerPoint remains one of the biggest names in presentation software, many of these design elements and principles work in Google Slides, as well.

Let’s dive right in.

1. Use Layout to Your Advantage

Layout is one of the most powerful visual elements in design, and it’s a simple, effective way to control the flow and visual hierarchy of information. It’s also one of the most important elements to consider when thinking about how to make your PowerPoint look better.

For example, most Western languages read left to right, top to bottom. Knowing this natural reading order, you can direct people’s eyes in a deliberate way to certain key parts of a slide that you want to emphasize.

You can also guide your audience with simple tweaks to the layout. Use text size and alternating fonts or colors to distinguish headlines from body text.

Placement also matters. There are many unorthodox ways to structure a slide, but most audience members will have to take a few beats to organize the information in their head—that’s precious time better spent listening to your delivery and retaining information.

Try to structure your slides more like this:

Presentation slide with headline template and beach images on the right

And not like this:

Presentation slide with headline template and beach images on the left

Layout is one of the trickier PowerPoint design concepts to master, which is why we have these free PowerPoint templates already laid out for you. Use them as a jumping off point for your own presentation, or use them wholesale!

Presentation templates can give you a huge leg up as you start working on your design.

2. No Sentences

This is one of the most critical slide design tips. Slides are simplified, visual notecards that capture and reinforce main ideas, not complete thoughts.

As the speaker, you should be delivering most of the content and information, not putting it all on the slides for everyone to read (and probably ignore). If your audience is reading your presentation instead of listening to you deliver it, your message has lost its effectiveness.

Pare down your core message and use keywords to convey it. Try to avoid complete sentences unless you’re quoting someone or something.

Stick with this:

Presentation template with bullet points

And avoid this:

3. Follow the 6×6 Rule

One of the cardinal sins of a bad PowerPoint is cramming too many details and ideas on one slide, which makes it difficult for people to retain information. Leaving lots of “white space” on a slide helps people focus on your key points.

Try using the 6×6 rule to keep your content concise and clean looking. The 6×6 rule means a maximum of six bullet points per slide and six words per bullet. In fact, some people even say you should never have more than six words per slide!

Just watch out for “orphans” (when the last word of a sentence/phrase spills over to the next line). This looks cluttered. Either fit it onto one line or add another word to the second line.

Red presentation slide with white text stating less is more

Slides should never have this much information:

Presentation slide with paragraphs and images

4. Keep the Colors Simple

Stick to simple light and dark colors and a defined color palette for visual consistency. Exceptionally bright text can cause eye fatigue, so use those colors sparingly. Dark text on a light background or light text on a dark background will work well. Also avoid intense gradients, which can make text hard to read.

If you’re presenting on behalf of your brand, check what your company’s brand guidelines are. Companies often have a primary brand color and a secondary brand color , and it’s a good idea to use them in your presentation to align with your company’s brand identity and style.

If you’re looking for color inspiration for your next presentation, check out our 101 Color Combinations , where you can browse tons of eye-catching color palettes curated by a pro. When you find the one you like, just type the corresponding color code into your presentation formatting tools.

Here are more of our favorite free color palettes for presentations:

10 Color Palettes to Nail Your Next Presentation
10 Energizing Sports Color Palettes for Branding and Marketing
10 Vintage Color Palettes Inspired by the Decades

No matter what color palette or combination you choose, you want to keep the colors of your PowerPoint presentation simple and easy to read, like this:

Red presentation slide with white text stating keep the colors simple

Stay away from color combinations like this:

Gray presentation slide with black and neon green text examples

5. Use Sans-Serif Fonts

Traditionally, serif fonts (Times New Roman, Garamond, Bookman) are best for printed pages, and sans-serif fonts (Helvetica, Tahoma, Verdana) are easier to read on screens.

These are always safe choices, but if you’d like to add some more typographic personality , try exploring our roundup of the internet’s best free fonts . You’ll find everything from classic serifs and sans serifs to sophisticated modern fonts and splashy display fonts. Just keep legibility top of mind when you’re making your pick.

Try to stick with one font, or choose two at the most. Fonts have very different personalities and emotional impacts, so make sure your font matches the tone, purpose, and content of your presentation.

Presentation slide with various examples of fonts

6. Stick to 30pt Font or Larger

Many experts agree that your font size for a PowerPoint presentation should be at least 30pt. Sticking to this guideline ensures your text is readable. It also forces you, due to space limitations, to explain your message efficiently and include only the most important points. .

Red presentation slide with 30 point white text

7. Avoid Overstyling the Text

Three of the easiest and most effective ways to draw attention to text are:

A change in color

Our eyes are naturally drawn to things that stand out, but use these changes sparingly. Overstyling can make the slide look busy and distracting.

White presentation slide with black text and aerial view of a pool

8. Choose the Right Images

The images you choose for your presentation are perhaps as important as the message. You want images that not only support the message, but also elevate it—a rare accomplishment in the often dry world of PowerPoint.

But, what is the right image? We’ll be honest. There’s no direct answer to this conceptual, almost mystical subject, but we can break down some strategies for approaching image selection that will help you curate your next presentation.

The ideal presentation images are:

Inspirational

Ground view of palm trees and airplane flying over

These may seem like vague qualities, but the general idea is to go beyond the literal. Think about the symbols in an image and the story they tell. Think about the colors and composition in an image and the distinct mood they set for your presentation.

With this approach, you can get creative in your hunt for relatable, authentic, and inspirational images. Here are some more handy guidelines for choosing great images.

Tips on Making Beautiful PowerPoint Presentations

So, the slide in question is about collaborating as a team. Naturally, you look for images of people meeting in a boardroom, right?

While it’s perfectly fine to go super literal, sometimes these images fall flat—what’s literal doesn’t necessarily connect to your audience emotionally. Will they really respond to generic images of people who aren’t them meeting in a boardroom?

In the absence of a photo of your actual team—or any other image that directly illustrates the subject at hand—look for images of convincing realism and humanity that capture the idea of your message.

Doing so connects with viewers, allowing them to connect with your message. This is one way to learn how to make your PowerPoint stand out and ensure a dynamic presentation PowerPoint.

Silhouettes of five men standing on a bridge on a foggy day

The image above can be interpreted in many ways. But, when we apply it to slide layout ideas about collaboration, the meaning is clear.

It doesn’t hurt that there’s a nice setting and good photography, to boot.

Now that we’ve told you to get creative with your image selection, the next lesson is to rein that in. While there are infinite choices of imagery out there, there’s a limit to what makes sense in your presentation.

Let’s say you’re giving an IT presentation to new employees. You might think that image of two dogs snuggling by a fire is relatable, authentic, and inspirational, but does it really say “data management” to your audience?

To find the best supporting images, try searching terms on the periphery of your actual message. You’ll find images that complement your message rather than distract from it.

In the IT presentation example, instead of “data connections” or another literal term, try the closely related “traffic” or “connectivity.” This will bring up images outside of tech, but relative to the idea of how things move.

There’s a widespread misconception that business presentations are just about delivering information. Well, they’re not. In fact, a great presentation is inspirational. We don’t mean that your audience should be itching to paint a masterpiece when they’re done. In this case, inspiration is about engagement.

Is your audience asking themselves questions? Are they coming up with new ideas? Are they remembering key information to tap into later? You’ll drive a lot of this engagement with your actual delivery, but unexpected images can play a role, as well.

When you use more abstract or aspirational images, your audience will have room to make their own connections. This not only means they’re paying attention, but they’re also engaging with and retaining your message.

To find the right abstract or unconventional imagery, search terms related to the tone of the presentation. This may include images with different perspectives like overhead shots and aerials, long exposures taken over a period of time, nature photos , colorful markets , and so on.

The big idea here is akin to including an image of your adorable dog making a goofy face at the end of an earnings meeting. It leaves an audience with a good, human feeling after you just packed their brains with data.

Use that concept of pleasant surprise when you’re selecting images for your presentation.

Silly Great Dane looking down trying to catch yellow ball on hind legs

Setting Appropriate Image Resolution in PowerPoint

Want to learn how to make a PowerPoint look good? Though you can drag-and-drop images into PowerPoint, you can control the resolution displayed within the file.

All of your PowerPoint slide layout ideas should get the same treatment to be equal in size.

Simply click File > Compress Pictures in the main application menu.

If your presentation file is big and will only be viewed online, you can take it down to On-screen , then check the Apply to: All pictures in this file , and rest assured the quality will be uniform.

This resolution is probably fine for proofing over email, but too low for your presentation layout ideas. For higher res in printed form, try the Print setting, which at 220 PPI is extremely good quality.

For large-screens such as projection, use the HD setting, since enlarging to that scale will show any deficiencies in resolution. Low resolution can not only distract from the message, but it looks low-quality and that reflects on the presenter.

If size is no issue for you, use High Fidelity (maximum PPI), and only reduce if the file size gives your computer problems.

Screenshot of compression options for your image

The image quality really begins when you add the images to the presentation file. Use the highest quality images you can, then let PowerPoint scale the resolution down for you, reducing the excess when set to HD or lower.

Resizing, Editing, and Adding Effects to Images in PowerPoint

PowerPoint comes with an arsenal of tools to work with your images. When a picture is selected, the confusingly named Picture Format menu is activated in the top menu bar, and Format Picture is opened on the right side of the app window.

Editing a PowerPoint slide with an image of a businessman walking up stairs

In the Format Picture menu (on the right) are four sections, and each of these sections expand to show their options by clicking the arrows by the name:

Fill & Line (paint bucket icon): Contains options for the box’s colors, patterns, gradients, and background fills, along with options for its outline.
Effects (pentagon icon): Contains Shadow, Reflection, Glow, Soft Edges, 3-D Format and Rotation, and Artistic Effects.
Size & Properties (dimensional icon): Size, Position, and Text Box allow you to control the physical size and placement of the picture or text boxes.
Picture (mountain icon): Picture Corrections, Colors, and Transparency give you control over how the image looks. Under Crop, you can change the size of the box containing the picture, instead of the entire picture itself as in Size & Properties above.

The menu at the top is more expansive, containing menu presets for Corrections, Color, Effects, Animation, and a lot more. This section is where you can crop more precisely than just choosing the dimensions from the Picture pane on the right.

Cropping Images in PowerPoint

The simple way to crop an image is to use the Picture pane under the Format Picture menu on the right side of the window. Use the Picture Position controls to move the picture inside its box, or use the Crop position controls to manipulate the box’s dimensions.

To exert more advanced control, or use special shapes, select the picture you want to crop, then click the Picture Format in the top menu to activate it.

Hit the Crop button, then use the controls on the picture’s box to size by eye. Or, click the arrow to show more options, including changing the shape of the box (for more creative looks) and using preset aspect ratios for a more uniform presentation of images.

Screenshot of how to change the shape of an image

The next time you design a PowerPoint presentation, remember that simplicity is key and less is more. By adopting these simple slide design tips, you’ll deliver a clear, powerful visual message to your audience.

If you want to go with a PowerPoint alternative instead, you can use Shutterstock Create to easily craft convincing, engaging, and informative presentations.

With many presentation template designs, you’ll be sure to find something that is a perfect fit for your next corporate presentation. You can download your designs as a .pdf file and import them into both PowerPoint and Google Slides presentation decks.

PowerPoint Presentations FAQs

What is the 5 5 5 rule in powerpoint.

The 5 5 5 rule in PowerPoint is fairly simple: 5 lines per slide, each line with no more than 5 words, and make sure your presentation is no longer than 5 minutes.

How long should your PowerPoint be?

A PowerPoint can be as long as it needs to be, but some people—and the 5 5 5 rule—advise you to keep five minutes or shorter.

What is the easiest way to make a PowerPoint prettier?

Beyond using eye-catching imagery and colors, a pretty PowerPoint should also follow good design principles. You want the information to be organized, balanced, and easy to digest. It doesn’t matter how many appealing images you include are if the information is hard to internalize. Use appropriate fonts and shorts sentences to make sure the words are legible and don’t crowd the slides with too many elements.

License this cover image via F8 studio and Ryan DeBerardinis .

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How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation (Step-by-Step)

PowerPoint Tutorials
Presentation Design
January 22, 2024

In this beginner’s guide, you will learn step-by-step how to make a PowerPoint presentation from scratch.

While PowerPoint is designed to be intuitive and accessible, it can be overwhelming if you’ve never gotten any training on it before. As you progress through this guide, you’ll will learn how to move from blank slides to PowerPoint slides that look like these.

Example of the six slides you'll learn how to create in this tutorial

Additionally, as you create your presentation, you’ll also learn tricks for working more efficiently in PowerPoint, including how to:

Change the slide order
Reset your layout
Change the slide dimensions
Use PowerPoint Designer
Format text
Format objects
Play a presentation (slide show)

With this knowledge under your belt, you’ll be ready to start creating PowerPoint presentations. Moreover, you’ll have taken your skills from beginner to proficient in no time at all. I will also include links to more advanced PowerPoint topics.

Ready to start learning how to make a PowerPoint presentation?

Take your PPT skills to the next level

Start with a blank presentation.

Note: Before you open PowerPoint and start creating your presentation, make sure you’ve collected your thoughts. If you’re going to make your slides compelling, you need to spend some time brainstorming.

For help with this, see our article with tips for nailing your business presentation here .

The first thing you’ll need to do is to open PowerPoint. When you do, you are shown the Start Menu , with the Home tab open.

This is where you can choose either a blank theme (1) or a pre-built theme (2). You can also choose to open an existing presentation (3).

For now, go ahead and click on the Blank Presentation (1) thumbnail.

In the backstage view of PowerPoint you can create a new blank presentation, use a template, or open a recent file

Doing so launches a brand new and blank presentation for you to work with. Before you start adding content to your presentation, let’s first familiarize ourselves with the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint interface

Picture of the different parts of the PowerPoint layout, including the Ribbon, thumbnail view, quick access toolbar, notes pane, etc.

Here is how the program is laid out:

The Application Header
The Ribbon (including the Ribbon tabs)
The Quick Access Toolbar (either above or below the Ribbon)
The Slides Pane (slide thumbnails)

The Slide Area

The notes pane.

The Status Bar (including the View Buttons)

Each one of these areas has options for viewing certain parts of the PowerPoint environment and formatting your presentation.

Below are the important things to know about certain elements of the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint Ribbon

The Ribbon is contextual. That means that it will adapt to what you’re doing in the program.

For example, the Font, Paragraph and Drawing options are greyed out until you select something that has text in it, as in the example below (A).

Example of the Shape Format tab in PowerPoint and all of the subsequent commands assoicated with that tab

Furthermore, if you start manipulating certain objects, the Ribbon will display additional tabs, as seen above (B), with more commands and features to help you work with those objects. The following objects have their own additional tabs in the Ribbon which are hidden until you select them:

Online Pictures
Screenshots
Screen Recording

The Slides Pane

This is where you can preview and rearrange all the slides in your presentation.

Right-clicking on a slide in the pane gives you additional options on the slide level that you won’t find on the Ribbon, such as Duplicate Slide , Delete Slide , and Hide Slide .

Right clicking a PowerPoint slide in the thumbnail view gives you a variety of options like adding new slides, adding sections, changing the layout, etc.

In addition, you can add sections to your presentation by right-clicking anywhere in this Pane and selecting Add Section . Sections are extremely helpful in large presentations, as they allow you to organize your slides into chunks that you can then rearrange, print or display differently from other slides.

Content added to your PowerPoint slides will only display if it's on the slide area, marked here by the letter A

The Slide Area (A) is where you will build out your slides. Anything within the bounds of this area will be visible when you present or print your presentation.

Anything outside of this area (B) will be hidden from view. This means that you can place things here, such as instructions for each slide, without worrying about them being shown to your audience.

The notes pane in PowerPoint is located at the bottom of your screen and is where you can type your speaker notes

The Notes Pane is the space beneath the Slide Area where you can type in the speaker notes for each slide. It’s designed as a fast way to add and edit your slides’ talking points.

To expand your knowledge and learn more about adding, printing, and exporting your PowerPoint speaker notes, read our guide here .

Your speaker notes are visible when you print your slides using the Notes Pages option and when you use the Presenter View . To expand your knowledge and learn the ins and outs of using the Presenter View , read our guide here .

You can click and drag to resize the notes pane at the bottom of your PowerPoint screen

You can resize the Notes Pane by clicking on its edge and dragging it up or down (A). You can also minimize or reopen it by clicking on the Notes button in the Status Bar (B).

Note: Not all text formatting displays in the Notes Pane, even though it will show up when printing your speaker notes. To learn more about printing PowerPoint with notes, read our guide here .

Now that you have a basic grasp of the PowerPoint interface at your disposal, it’s time to make your presentation.

Adding Content to Your PowerPoint Presentation

Notice that in the Slide Area , there are two rectangles with dotted outlines. These are called Placeholders and they’re set on the template in the Slide Master View .

To expand your knowledge and learn how to create a PowerPoint template of your own (which is no small task), read our guide here .

Click into your content placeholders and start typing text, just as the prompt suggests

As the prompt text suggests, you can click into each placeholder and start typing text. These types of placeholder prompts are customizable too. That means that if you are using a company template, it might say something different, but the functionality is the same.

Example of typing text into a content placeholder in PowerPoint

Note: For the purposes of this example, I will create a presentation based on the content in the Starbucks 2018 Global Social Impact Report, which is available to the public on their website.

If you type in more text than there is room for, PowerPoint will automatically reduce its font size. You can stop this behavior by clicking on the Autofit Options icon to the left of the placeholder and selecting Stop Fitting Text to this Placeholder .

Next, you can make formatting adjustments to your text by selecting the commands in the Font area and the Paragraph area of the Home tab of the Ribbon.

Use the formatting options on the Home tab to choose the formatting of your text

The Reset Command: If you make any changes to your title and decide you want to go back to how it was originally, you can use the Reset button up in the Home tab .

Hitting the reset command on the home tab resets your slide formatting to match your template

Insert More Slides into Your Presentation

Now that you have your title slide filled in, it’s time to add more slides. To do that, simply go up to the Home tab and click on New Slide . This inserts a new slide in your presentation right after the one you were on.

To insert a new slide in PowerPoint, on the home tab click the New Slide command

You can alternatively hit Ctrl+M on your keyboard to insert a new blank slide in PowerPoint. To learn more about this shortcut, see my guide on using Ctrl+M in PowerPoint .

Instead of clicking the New Slide command, you can also open the New Slide dropdown to see all the slide layouts in your PowerPoint template. Depending on who created your template, your layouts in this dropdown can be radically different.

Opening the new slide dropdown you can see all the slide layouts in your PowerPoint template

If you insert a layout and later want to change it to a different layout, you can use the Layout dropdown instead of the New Slide dropdown.

After inserting a few different slide layouts, your presentation might look like the following picture. Don’t worry that it looks blank, next we will start adding content to your presentation.

Example of a number of different blank slide layouts inserting in a PowerPoint presentation

If you want to follow along exactly with me, your five slides should be as follows:

Title Slide
Title and Content
Section Header
Two Content
Picture with Caption

Adding Content to Your Slides

Now let’s go into each slide and start adding our content. You’ll notice some new types of placeholders.

Use the icons within a content placeholder to insert things like tables, charts, SmartArt, Pictures, etc.

On slide 2 we have a Content Placeholder , which allows you to add any kind of content. That includes:

A SmartArt graphic,
A 3D object,
A picture from the web,
Or an icon.

To insert text, simply type it in or hit Ctrl+C to Copy and Ctrl+V to Paste from elsewhere. To insert any of the other objects, click on the appropriate icon and follow the steps to insert it.

For my example, I’ll simply type in some text as you can see in the picture below.

Example typing bulleted text in a content placeholder in PowerPoint

Slides 3 and 4 only have text placeholders, so I’ll go ahead and add in my text into each one.

Examples of text typed into a divider slide and a title and content slide in PowerPoint

On slide 5 we have a Picture Placeholder . That means that the only elements that can go into it are:

A picture from the web

A picture placeholder in PowerPoint can only take an image or an icon

To insert a picture into the picture placeholder, simply:

Click on the Picture icon
Find a picture on your computer and select it
Click on Insert

Alternatively, if you already have a picture open somewhere else, you can select the placeholder and paste in (shortcut: Ctrl+V ) the picture. You can also drag the picture in from a file explorer window.

To insert a picture into a picture placeholder, click the picture icon, find your picture on your computer and click insert

If you do not like the background of the picture you inserted onto your slide, you can remove the background here in PowerPoint. To see how to do this, read my guide here .

Placeholders aren’t the only way to add content to your slides. At any point, you can use the Insert tab to add elements to your slides.

You can use either the Title Only or the Blank slide layout to create slides for content that’s different. For example, a three-layout content slide, or a single picture divider slide, as shown below.

Example slides using PowerPoint icons and background pictures

In the first example above, I’ve inserted 6 text boxes, 3 icons, and 3 circles to create this layout. In the second example, I’ve inserted a full-sized picture and then 2 shapes and 2 text boxes.

The Reset Command: Because these slides are built with shapes and text boxes (and not placeholders), hitting the Reset button up in the Home tab won’t do anything.

That is a good thing if you don’t want your layouts to adjust. However, it does mean that it falls on you to make sure everything is aligned and positioned correctly.

For more on how to add and manipulate the different objects in PowerPoint, check out our step-by-step articles here:

Using graphics in PowerPoint
Inserting icons onto slides
Adding pictures to your PowerPoint
How to embed a video in PowerPoint
How to add music to your presentation

Using Designer to generate more layouts ideas

If you have Office 365, your version of PowerPoint comes with a new feature called Designer (or Design Ideas). This is a feature that generates slide layout ideas for you. The coolest thing about this feature is that it uses the content you already have.

To use Designer , simply navigate to the Design tab in your Ribbon, and click on Design Ideas .

To use Designer on your slides, click the

NOTE: If the PowerPoint Designer is not working for you (it is grey out), see my troubleshooting guide for Designer .

Change the Overall Design (optional)

When you make a PowerPoint presentation, you’ll want to think about the overall design. Now that you have some content in your presentation, you can use the Design tab to change the look and feel of your slides.

For additional help thinking through the design of your presentation, read my guide here .

A. Picking your PowerPoint slide size

If you have PowerPoint 2013 or later, when you create a blank document in PowerPoint, you automatically start with a widescreen layout with a 16:9 ratio. These dimensions are suitable for most presentations as they match the screens of most computers and projectors.

However, you do have the option to change the dimensions.

For example, your presentation might not be presented, but instead converted into a PDF or printed and distributed. In that case, you can easily switch to the standard dimensions with a 4:3 ratio by selecting from the dropdown (A).

You can also choose a custom slide size or change the slide orientation from landscape to portrait in the Custom Slide Size dialog box (B).

To change your slide size, click the Design tab, open the slide size dropdown and choose a size or custom slide size

To learn all about the different PowerPoint slide sizes, and some of the issues you will face when changing the slide size of a non-blank presentation, read my guide here .

B. Selecting a PowerPoint theme

The next thing you can do is change the theme of your presentation to a pre-built one. For a detailed explanation of what a PowerPoint theme is, and how to best use it, read my article here .

In the beginning of this tutorial, we started with a blank presentation, which uses the default Office theme as you can see in the picture below.

All PowerPoint presentations start with the default Microsoft Office theme

That gives you the most flexibility because it has a blank background and quite simple layouts that work for most presentations. However, it also means that it’s your responsibility to enhance the design.

If you’re comfortable with this, you can stay with the default theme or create your own custom theme ( read my guide here ). But if you would rather not have to think about design, then you can choose a pre-designed theme.

Microsoft provides 46 other pre-built themes, which include slide layouts, color variants and palettes, and fonts. Each one varies quite significantly, so make sure you look through them carefully.

To select a different theme, go to the Design tab in the Ribbon, and click on the dropdown arrow in the Themes section .

On the Design tab you will find all of the default PowerPoint templates that come with the Microsoft Office Suite

For this tutorial, let’s select the Frame theme and then choose the third Variant in the theme. Doing so changes the layout, colors, and fonts of your presentation.

Example choosing the Frame PowerPoint theme and the third variant of this powerpoint presentation

Note: The theme dropdown area is also where you can import or save custom themes. To see my favorite places to find professional PowerPoint templates and themes (and recommendations for why I like them), read my guide here .

C. How to change a slide background in PowerPoint

The next thing to decide is how you want your background to look for the entire presentation. In the Variants area, you can see four background options.

To change the background style of your presentation, on the Design tab, find the Background Styles options and choose a style

For this example, we want our presentation to have a dark background, so let’s select Style 3. When you do so, you’ll notice that:

The background color automatically changes across all slides
The color of the text on most of the slides automatically changes to white so that it’s visible on the dark background
The colors of the objects on slides #6 and #7 also adjust, in a way we may not want (we’ll likely have to make some manual adjustments to these slides)

What our PowerPoint presentation looks like now that we have selected a theme, a variant, and a background style

Note: If you want to change the slide background for just that one slide, don’t left-click the style. Instead, right-click it and select Apply to Selected Slides .

After you change the background for your entire presentation, you can easily adjust the background for an individual slide.

You can either right-click a PowerPoint slide and select format background or navigate to the design tab and click the format background command

Inside the Format Background pane, you can see you have the following options:

Gradient fill
Picture or texture fill
Pattern fill
Hide background

You can explore these options to find the PowerPoint background that best fits your presentation.

D. How to change your color palette in PowerPoint

Another thing you may want to adjust in your presentation, is the color scheme. In the picture below you can see the Theme Colors we are currently using for this presentation.

Example of the theme colors we are currently using with this presentation

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own color palette. By default, the Office theme includes the Office color palette. This affects the colors you are presented with when you format any element within your presentation (text, shapes, SmartArt, etc.).

To change the theme color for your presentation, select the Design tab, open the Colors options and choose the colors you want to use

The good news is that the colors here are easy to change. To switch color palettes, simply:

Go to the Design tab in the Ribbon
In the Variants area, click on the dropdown arrow and select Colors
Select the color palette (or theme colors) you want

You can choose among the pre-built color palettes from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

As you build your presentation, make sure you use the colors from your theme to format objects. That way, changing the color palette adjusts all the colors in your presentation automatically.

E. How to change your fonts in PowerPoint

Just as we changed the color palette, you can do the same for the fonts.

Example of custom theme fonts that might come with a powerpoint template

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own font combination. By default, the Office theme includes the Office font pairing. This affects the fonts that are automatically assigned to all text in your presentation.

To change the default fonts for your presentation, from the design tab, find the fonts dropdown and select the pair of fonts you want to use

The good news is that the font pairings are easy to change. To switch your Theme Fonts, simply:

Go to the Design tab in the Ribbon
Click on the dropdown arrow in the Variants area
Select Fonts
Select the font pairing you want

You can choose among the pre-built fonts from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

If you are working with PowerPoint presentations on both Mac and PC computers, make sure you choose a safe PowerPoint font. To see a list of the safest PowerPoint fonts, read our guide here .

If you receive a PowerPoint presentation and the wrong fonts were used, you can use the Replace Fonts dialog box to change the fonts across your entire presentation. For details, read our guide here .

Adding Animations & Transitions (optional)

The final step to make a PowerPoint presentation compelling, is to consider using animations and transitions. These are by no means necessary to a good presentation, but they may be helpful in your situation.

A. Adding PowerPoint animations

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust animations engine designed to power your creativity. That being said, it’s also easy to get started with basic animations.

Animations are movements that you can apply to individual objects on your slide.

To add an animation to an object in PowerPoint, first select the object and then use the Animations tab to select an animation type

To add a PowerPoint animation to an element of your slide, simply:

Select the element
Go to the Animations tab in the Ribbon
Click on the dropdown arrow to view your options
Select the animation you want

You can add animations to multiple objects at one time by selecting them all first and then applying the animation.

B. How to preview a PowerPoint animation

There are three ways to preview a PowerPoint animation:

Click on the Preview button in the Animations tab
Click on the little star next to the slide
Play the slide in Slide Show Mode

To learn other ways to run your slide show, see our guide on presenting a PowerPoint slide show with shortcuts .

To adjust the settings of your animations, explore the options in the Effect Options , Advanced Animation and the Timing areas of the Animation tab .

The Animations tab allows you to adjust the effects and timings of your animations in PowerPoint

Note: To see how to make objects appear and disappear in your slides by clicking a button, read our guide here .

C. How to manage your animations in PowerPoint

You can see the animations applied to your objects by the little numbers in the upper right-hand corner of the objects

The best way to manage lots of animations on your slide is with the Animation Pane . To open it, simply:

Navigate to the Animations tab
Select the Animation Pane

Inside the Animation Pane, you’ll see all of the different animations that have been applied to objects on your slide, with their numbers marked as pictured above.

Note: To see examples of PowerPoint animations that can use in PowerPoint, see our list of PowerPoint animation tutorials here .

D. How to add transitions to your PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust transition engine so that you can dictate how your slides change from one to the other. It is also extremely easy to add transitions to your slides.

In PowerPoint, transitions are the movements (or effects) you see as you move between two slides.

To add a transition to a slide, select the slide, navigate to the transitions tab in PowerPoint and select your transition

To add a transition to a PowerPoint slide, simply:

Select the slide
Go to the Transitions tab in the Ribbon
In the Transitions to This Slide area, click on the dropdown arrow to view your options
Select the transition you want

To adjust the settings of the transition, explore the options in the Timing area of the Transitions tab.

You can also add the same transition to multiple slides. To do that, select them in the Slides Pane and apply the transition.

E. How to preview a transition in PowerPoint

There are three ways to preview a transition in PowerPoint

There are three ways to preview your PowerPoint transitions (just like your animations):

Click on the Preview button in the Transitions tab
Click on the little star beneath the slide number in the thumbnail view

Note: In 2016, PowerPoint added a cool new transition, called Morph. It operates a bit differently from other transitions. For a detailed tutorial on how to use the cool Morph transition, see our step-by-step article here .

Save Your PowerPoint Presentation

After you’ve built your presentation and made all the adjustments to your slides, you’ll want to save your presentation. YOu can do this several different ways.

Click the file tab, select Save As, choose where you want to save your presentation and then click save

To save a PowerPoint presentation using your Ribbon, simply:

Navigate to the File tab
Select Save As on the left
Choose where you want to save your presentation
Name your presentation and/or adjust your file type settings
Click Save

You can alternatively use the Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut to save your presentation. I recommend using this shortcut frequently as you build your presentation to make sure you don’t lose any of your work.

The save shortcut is control plus s in PowerPoint

This is the standard way to save a presentation. However, there may be a situation where you want to save your presentation as a different file type.

To learn how to save your presentation as a PDF, see our guide on converting PowerPoint to a PDF .

How to save your PowerPoint presentation as a template

Once you’ve created a presentation that you like, you may want to turn it into a template. The easiest – but not technically correct – way, is to simply create a copy of your current presentation and then change the content.

But be careful! A PowerPoint template is a special type of document and it has its own parameters and behaviors.

If you’re interested in learning about how to create your own PowerPoint template from scratch, see our guide on how to create a PowerPoint template .

Printing Your PowerPoint Presentation

After finishing your PowerPoint presentation, you may want to print it out on paper. Printing your slides is relatively easy.

The print shortcut is control plus P in PowerPoint

To open the Print dialog box, you can either:

Hit Ctrl+P on your keyboard
Or go to the Ribbon and click on File and then Print

In the Print dialog box, make your selections for how you want to print your PowerPoint presentation, then click print

Inside the Print dialog box, you can choose from the various printing settings:

Printer: Select a printer to use (or print to PDF or OneNote)
Slides: Choose which slides you want to print
Layout: Determine how many slides you want per page (this is where you can print the notes, outline, and handouts)
Collated or uncollated (learn what collated printing means here )
Color: Choose to print in color, grayscale or black & white

There are many more options for printing your PowerPoint presentations. Here are links to more in-depth articles:

How to print multiple slides per page
How to print your speaker notes in PowerPoint
How to save PowerPoint as a picture presentation

So that’s how to create a PowerPoint presentation if you are brand new to it. We’ve also included a ton of links to helpful resources to boost your PowerPoint skills further.

When you are creating your presentation, it is critical to first focus on the content (what you are trying to say) before getting lost inserting and playing with elements. The clearer you are on what you want to present, the easier it will be to build it out in PowerPoint.

If you enjoyed this article, you can learn more about our PowerPoint training courses and other presentation resources by visiting us here .

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PowerPoint Options (Advanced)

Many less commonly used PowerPoint options are located in the Advanced pane in the PowerPoint Options dialog box.

Editing options

When selecting, automatically select entire word Select this check box to select the entire word when you click a word, or clear this check box to select an individual letter in a word when you click a word.

Allow text to be dragged and dropped Select this check box to move or copy text within a presentation or from PowerPoint to another Microsoft Office program by dragging the text, or clear this check box to prevent dragging text to move or copy it.

Automatically switch keyboard to match language of surrounding text Select this check box when you are working with text in different languages. PowerPoint automatically detects the language in which the insertion point is placed, and switches to the correct keyboard language.

Do not automatically hyperlink screenshot When you use Insert > Screenshot and capture an image from the Internet Explorer web browser, PowerPoint can make the image a hyperlink that points to the web page that you take the screenshot of. Select this option if you don't want such images hyperlinked.

Maximum number of undos On the Quick Access Toolbar , the Undo command allows you to undo one or more of the recent changes that you made to your presentation. In this box, enter the number of times that you can click Undo to undo your changes at any particular time.

Cut, copy, and paste

Use smart cut and paste Select this check box if you want PowerPoint to adjust the spacing of words and objects that you paste into your presentation. Smart cut and paste ensures that pasted content does not run up against other words or objects that appear before or after the content that you paste. Clear this check box if you do not want PowerPoint to automatically adjust the spacing of words or objects.

Show Paste Options buttons Select this check box to show the Paste Options buttons, or clear this check box to hide the Paste Options buttons. The Paste Options buttons appear alongside text that you paste. By using these buttons, you can quickly choose between keeping the source formatting or pasting text only.

Note: When you clear the Show Paste Options buttons check box, you turn off this feature in all Office programs in which it is an option.

Use pen to select and interact with content by default If you don't want to automatically be in inking mode when Office detects your active pen or stylus, select this check box to use your pen to select objects by default.

Image size and quality

Options that you set in this section are only applicable to the presentation file that you have open at the time.

Discard editing data If you have cropped a picture or made other changes to the picture, such as applying an artistic effect or changing the brightness, contrast, or sharpness of a picture , information to reverse those changes is stored in your file. You can reduce the size of your file by deleting this editing data. Checking this option will reduce your document size, but if you want to undo your edits, you will need to reinsert the picture into your document if you want to undo any changes you have made. For more information, see Reduce the file size of a picture .

Do not compress images in file Compressing images in a file saves space, but it reduces the picture quality. If picture quality is more important to you than file size, select this check box. . To compress an individual picture or set other picture quality or resolution options, see Reduce the file size of a picture .

Default resolution / Set default target output to PPI (pixels per inch) is a measure of image resolution. The higher the PPI value, the richer the image. High fidelity resolution preserves picture quality but may increase the file size of your presentation.

Chart options

Properties follow chart data point for all new presentations Select this check box to have custom formatting and chart data labels follow data points as they move or change in the chart. This setting applies to all presentations created hereafter.

Properties follow chart data point for current presentation Select this check box to have custom formatting and chart data labels follow data points as they move or change in the chart. This setting only applies to the current presentation.

Show this number of recent documents/presentations Enter the number of recently opened or edited presentations that you want to appear in the Recent Documents list.

To view the Recent Presentations list, click File > Open .

Quickly access this number of Recent Presentations A quick-access list of recent presentations appears at the bottom left of the window, after the Options command, as shown in the following image, labeled 1.

Show this number of unpinned Recent Folders A quick-access list of recent folders appears on the Recent tab in the Open dialog, as shown in the following image, labeled 2. Specify the number of folders you want listed there, when you select a particular source, such as OneDrive or This PC. .

Quick-access and Recent lists in PowerPoint 2016

Show shortcut keys in ScreenTips Select this check box to show the keyboard shortcuts in all ScreenTips , or clear this check box to hide the keyboard shortcuts in all ScreenTips.

Show vertical ruler Select this check box to show the vertical ruler, or clear this check box to hide the vertical ruler. The vertical ruler is a bar that appears alongside your PowerPoint presentation and that you can use to measure and align objects.

Note: If you select the Show vertical ruler check box, and on the View tab, in the Show/Hide group, you select the Ruler check box, the vertical and horizontal rulers appear. If you clear the Show vertical ruler check box, and then on the View tab, in the Show/Hide group, you select the Ruler check box, only the horizontal ruler appears.

Disable hardware graphics acceleration Using hardware graphics acceleration increases the performance speed when you are playing your presentation. Selecting this check box turns off the use of that graphics acceleration. For more information, see Tips for improving audio and video playback and compatibility .

Disable Slide Show hardware graphics acceleration If you are using transitions between slides and they are not behaving as expected (that is, you see flashing black screens instead of the transitions you've chosen) try selecting this check box.

Automatically extend display when presenting on a laptop or tablet To turn off using presenter view, clear this check box. By default, PowerPoint uses presenter view for slide shows. This mode "extends" the computer's desktop, creating two separate monitors on the presenter's computer. One monitor is the built-in screen on the presenter's laptop or tablet. The other monitor is the display device, or projector, attached to the presenter's laptop or tablet.

Show presence flags for selected items This option takes effect when you are working on a shared presentation with others. If you select an item that someone else is editing a small flag appears indicating who is currently editing that item.

Open all documents using this view Select an option from the list to specify that all presentations open in a specific view each time that you start PowerPoint.

Show menu on right mouse click Select this check box to show a shortcut menu when you right-click a slide in Slide Show view , or clear this check box to prevent the shortcut menu from showing.

Show popup toolbar Select this check box to show a toolbar at the bottom of a full screen presentation that allows you to navigate between slides and apply annotations to your presentation, or clear this check box to hide the toolbar.

Prompt to keep ink annotations when exiting Select this check box to be prompted to save your changes when you draw on or highlight slides during a presentation , or clear this check box to exit without being prompted to save your ink annotations.

End with black slide Select this check box to insert a black slide at the end of your presentation, or clear this check box to end your presentation without a black slide. If you clear this check box, the last thing your audience sees is the last slide in your presentation, rather than a black slide.

Print in background Select this check box to work in PowerPoint while you print your presentation (printing can slow the response time in PowerPoint), or clear this check box to turn off background printing when you want rapid response time while you work in PowerPoint.

Print TrueType fonts as graphics Select this check box to turn your fonts into vector graphics so that your fonts will be printed clearly and at any size (or scale), or clear this check box if the print quality or scalability is not important to you.

Print inserted objects at printer resolution Select this check box when you want quality printouts of inserted objects, such as pie charts or tables, or clear this check box to ignore distorted or vertically stretched objects when printing.

High quality Select this check box when you want to see improvements in your print jobs such as increased resolution, blended transparent graphics, or printed soft shadows. By selecting this option, you get the best possible output, but printing may take longer.

Align transparent graphics at printer resolution Select this check box to ensure that your transparent content lines up properly with all other content. By selecting this option, PowerPoint uses the printer's resolution to print, which can slow down performance if the printer has a very high resolution.

Print slide numbers on handouts (Only in PowerPoint for Microsoft 365, beginning with version 1810) By default, slide numbers appear below slide thumbnail images on printed handout pages. Turn this feature on or off by selecting or clearing this check box.

When printing this document

When printing this document In this list, select the presentation that you want to apply settings to, and then click one of the following:

Use the most recently used print settings To print the presentation according to the options that you used previously in the Print dialog box, click this button.

Use the following print settings To choose new print settings for the presentation, click this button, and then do the following:

Print what In this list, select what you want to print.

Color/grayscale In this list, select the setting that you want. For information about printing in color, grayscale, or black and white, see Print your handouts, notes, or slides .

Print hidden slides Select this check box to print slides that you have previously hidden, or clear this check box to print only slides that are not hidden. For information about why you would want to hide a slide and how to hide a slide, see Hide or show a slide .

Scale to fit paper Select this check box to scale the contents of a slide, handout, or notes page to fit the paper size that you are printing on, or clear this check box to print the default font and object sizes on the default paper size.

Frame slides Select this check box to add a border-like frame around each slide, or clear this check box if you do not want a frame around each slide.

Provide feedback with sound (PowerPoint 2016) Select this check box to make a sound when an error appears or clear this check box if you do not want to hear a sound when an error appears.

Note: To use this feature, your computer must have a sound card, microphone, and speakers.

Show add-in user interface errors If you are a developer, select this check box to show errors in your user interface customization code, or clear this check box to hide the errors.

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5 ways to improve your presentation design with AI

Creating a presentation that grabs attention and effectively communicates your message can be challenging. A well-designed presentation is key to engaging your audience and ensuring your message sticks.

This is where AI comes in, offering great solutions to streamline the presentation design process.

Using AI in your presentation design can save you tons of time. From generating fresh ideas to perfecting visuals, AI tools are your secret weapon. Let's dive into how AI can elevate your presentation design.

What is presentation design?

Presentation design involves organizing your content in a visually appealing way that makes it easy for your audience to follow along.

Presentation design is about enhancing communication, ensuring your message is clear, and keeping your audience engaged.

A well-designed presentation can make or break your pitch deck, social media marketing, or any form of communication where you need to persuade or inform.

Great presentation design blends content and visuals seamlessly, making complex ideas easy to understand and engaging. Let's explore some practical design tips and AI tools to help you create compelling presentations.

1. Harmonize your colors for maximum impact

A cohesive color scheme ties your presentation together and makes it look professional. Choosing the right colors can be daunting, but it’s crucial for a polished look.

When your colors are in harmony, your audience can focus on your message without being distracted by clashing hues.

Design tip: Use color theory to create harmonious palettes

Color theory can help you understand which colors work well together. Complementary colors (opposites on the color wheel) create vibrant looks, while analogous colors (next to each other on the color wheel) provide a more relaxed and cohesive appearance.

A consistent color scheme not only reinforces your branding but also makes your presentation more memorable. So remember:

Stick to a limited color palette : Choose 2-3 main colors and 1-2 accent colors.
Use contrast wisely : Ensure there’s enough contrast between text and background for readability.
Test your colors : Check how your colors look on different screens and projectors.

AI tip: Leverage AI-powered color palettes

Tools like Coolors and Adobe Color use AI to generate harmonious color palettes. Simply input your primary color or a theme, and these tools will suggest the best combinations. This eliminates guesswork and ensures your presentation looks cohesive and polished.

AI-powered tools to help with color palettes

Khroma : It uses AI to learn which colors you like and creates limitless palettes for you
Palettemaker: It uses AI to create unique color schemes ‍
Muzli Color Combination Generator : Helps create palettes that are visually appealing and suitable for various themes.

Using these tools can also inspire your overall design. Sometimes, seeing a new color combination can spark presentation design ideas you hadn't considered before, leading to a more creative and engaging presentation slide.

2. Make data delightful and digestible

Presenting data in a clear and understandable way is crucial. Overwhelming your audience with complicated charts and graphs can detract from your message. AI can help make your data look clean and professional, transforming numbers into visual stories that resonate.

Design tip: choose the right type of chart or graph

The type of chart or graph you use can significantly impact how your data is understood. Bar charts are great for comparisons in real time, line charts for trends over time, and pie charts for proportions. Ensure your data is simple and focused on the key points you want to convey.

Here's how you can easily present your data effectively:

Use clear labels and legends : Make sure every element is clearly labeled.
Avoid clutter : Simplify your charts and graphs to focus on the most important data.
Highlight key data points : Use color or bold fonts to emphasize important informa

AI tip: Use AI-driven tools for charts and graphs

AI-powered tools can transform complex data into visually appealing charts and graphs. They automatically select the best type for your data, making it easy for your audience to grasp key insights.

Simplifying data helps your audience stay focused and engaged, allowing them to quickly understand the important points you're making.

AI-driven tools for charts and graphs:

ChartMaster AI : Transforms complex data into clear, impactful visuals.
Julias AI : Makes beautiful graphs instantly with AI.
Venngage : Effortlessly prompt, create, and tailor charts that turn raw data into clear, compelling visuals.

Instead of manually creating charts and graphs, you can focus on crafting your narrative and refining your presentation skills. This makes the overall process of creating a PowerPoint presentation more efficient and enjoyable.

3. Craft compelling copy with a clear structure

Crafting engaging content can be challenging, especially when you're staring at a blank slide. AI tools can help spark your creativity and ensure your content is compelling and concise. Your slides should tell a story, guiding your audience through your message effortlessly.

Design tip: use a clear and logical structure

Organize your content in a way that flows naturally. Start with an introduction that outlines what you will cover, follow with the main content divided into clear sections, and end with a strong conclusion. Use bullet points, numbered lists, and headers to break up text and make it easier to follow.

Here are some tips for crafting compelling content:

Keep it simple : Focus on one main idea per slide.
Use bullet points : Break down information into digestible chunks.
Tell a story : Frame your content in a narrative that guides your audience.

Have to hand it to @figma , some of the coolest stock templates I've seen ✨ pic.twitter.com/OhcqdfZju9 — andy (@aalimbuyuguen) July 30, 2024

AI tip: Get content ideas from AI

Creatives have no shortage of AI tools for quickly creating quality copy for your presentation. Even better, you can test all of them to see which creates the best content the quickest.

AI copy tools:

Copy.ai : Free resource for turning your ideas into presentation points.
Jasper AI : A library of writing tools that can help improve your presentation copy.
Claude AI : Provides AI-driven content suggestions for various needs.

These tools can also help you refine your message by suggesting alternative phrasing or highlighting key points you might have missed.

4. Enhance your slides with high-quality visuals

Visuals are a powerful way to enhance your slides. But finding the right images can be time-consuming. AI can generate unique visuals tailored to your content, making your slides stand out. Imagine having a custom image that perfectly complements your message without spending hours searching for it.

Design tip: Use relevant and high-quality images

Choose images that complement your content and enhance your message. Avoid generic stock photos that don't add value. Instead, select images that are relevant and high-quality. This ensures your slides are visually engaging and relevant.

Here are some tips for using visuals effectively:

Use high-resolution images : Ensure your images are clear and not pixelated.
Keep it relevant : Choose images that directly relate to your content.
Avoid clutter : Don’t overload slides with too many visuals.

AI-tip: Use AI stock photos and AI-generated images

Once again, you have a buffet of options for either generating or finding quality AI-generated images. The beauty of these tools is that you have the choice of creating unique content, or finding exactly what you need in a curated AI stock image library.

AI tools for visuals:

Lummi : Tens of thousands of free AI-generated stock photos.
DALL-E : Generates images from textual descriptions.
Midjourney : Creates detailed visuals based on your inputs.

AI-generated images can make your presentation more memorable and impactful. Instead of using generic stock photos, you can have custom visuals that perfectly match your content.

5. Make your presentation inclusive for all

Ensuring your presentation is inclusive and user-friendly is important. AI tools can help you identify and fix issues, making your content accessible to all.

This is about making sure everyone in your audience can engage with your presentation.

Design tip: Use best practices for inclusive design

Ensure your presentation is accessible by using clear fonts, sufficient contrast, and descriptive text for images. This makes your content easier to read and understand for everyone.

Here are some tips for making your presentation inclusive:

Use large, readable fonts : Ensure text is legible from a distance.
Provide captions for videos : Make sure video content is accessible.
Make sure to optimize colors : Follow WCAG and APCA guidelines.

AI Tip: Make sure your designs are accessible with AI

Leverage tools to make sure that everyone has a chance to participate with your presentation. These tools identify issues with color contrast, font size, and screen reader compatibility.

AI-driven tools to make your presentation inclusive:

Design.ai color checker : Ensures that your colors are optimized for inclusive design.
accessiBe : A variety of tools for accessibilty testing.

Making your presentation inclusive ensures that all audience members, regardless of their abilities, can engage with your content.

6. Understand your audience to tailor your presentation

Understanding your audience is key to creating a presentation that resonates. Knowing who you're talking to allows you to tailor your content to their preferences and needs, ensuring maximum engagement. This leads to higher engagement and better outcomes, whether you're delivering a pitch deck, a marketing strategy, or a social media update.

General tip: Research your audience

Take the time to learn about your audience's demographics, interests, and needs. This will help you tailor your presentation design to their expectations.

Here are some tips for understanding your audience:

Conduct surveys : Gather information about your audience before the presentation.
Analyze past presentations : Look at feedback from previous presentations to identify what worked and what didn’t.
Engage with your audience : Ask questions and interact with your audience during the presentation.

AI Tip: Analyze audience preferences

Tools like Crystal Knows or Acrolinx use AI to analyze your audience's communication style and preferences. They provide insights into what types of content and tone will be most effective for your specific audience.

This ensures your presentation is tailored to engage your audience effectively, making your message more impactful.

AI tools to analyze your audience:

ChatGPT : It can give you quick insights and ideas for your designs.
Fillout survey maker : Import or create surveys in seconds with the first AI Survey Maker.

By understanding your audience better, you can create presentations that speak directly to them.

7. Use presentation generators to speed up your workflow

Creating a presentation involves many repetitive tasks, from formatting slides to updating data. Automating these tasks can save you time and allow you to focus on the creative aspects of your presentation design.

To make creating your presentations as seamless as possible, here are a list of a few of our favorite AI-powered presentation makers:

Canva presentation maker
Pitch presentation software
Visme slide generator

Embrace the future of presentation design

By using AI in your presentation design process, you can transform your slides from a good presentation to a great one.

Plus, with these presentation design tips will help you create presentations or slide decks that captivate your audience and communicate your message effectively.

Next time you're working on a presentation, try out these AI-powered presentation design ideas. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned pro, these tools can help you take your presentations to the next level.

2. How can AI improve my marketing strategy with presentations?

AI can help streamline the creation of marketing presentations by suggesting design elements, creating visuals, and optimizing content for audience engagement.

This ensures your marketing strategy is effectively communicated and visually appealing.

3. What is the importance of white space in presentation design?

White space, or negative space, is crucial in presentation design as it prevents your slides from looking cluttered. It helps guide the audience’s focus on the main design elements that matter most.

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COMMENTS

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Advanced PowerPoint Presentation Tips and Hacks

By Melissa Lin

Key Highlights

Love It or Hate It…

The Basics of Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar

Life-changing PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts

PowerPoint Design Tips for Common, Frustrating Situations

How to convert text to SmartArt

How to Resize Multiple Objects/Shapes at Once

How to Identify and Match Exact Colors

How to Leverage Arrows with Elbow Connectors

How to Fit Text into a Shape

How to Remove the Background of a Picture

How to Convert a Table to Text Boxes

How to Make a Table’s Rows or Columns the Same Size

Other PowerPoint Features and Best Practices

Slide Templates and Presentation Graphics for Common Concepts

Final Thoughts

Understanding the basics

What makes for an effective PowerPoint presentation?

How do I link an Excel chart to PowerPoint?

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How-To Geek

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15 PowerPoint Tutorials to Help You Master PowerPoint

2. Tips and Tricks for working with PowerPoint

3. How to add audio in PowerPoint?

4. How to make photos 3D in PowerPoint?

5. How to collaborate in PowerPoint?

6. How to Insert a GIF in PowerPoint?

7. How to Add Speaker Notes in PowerPoint?

8. Microsoft PowerPoint Tutorial for Beginners Level 1

9. Ten Powerful PowerPoint Tips

10. PowerPoint Slide Master tutorial – Placeholders & Basics

11. Three PowerPoint Hacks for Instant Improvement

12. How To Make Videos in PowerPoint?

13. Animated 3D Models in PowerPoint – Part 1, The Basics

14. How To Create Parallax Effect PowerPoint Step-by-Step?

15. 40 Best Animation Tutorials for PowerPoint

To wrap up,

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