Microsoft PowerPoint presentations have become a stable of “The office meeting”. It used to be strictly reserved for more formal meetings, however with its increasing popularity there are really no restrictions on what types of meetings it is used for today. However, while it is a fantastic tool and very versatile, there are situations where it is overkill to use a PowerPoint presentation. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. Sometimes the benefits of creating a PowerPoint presentation just don’t outweigh the costs.

The following are the situations I’m talking about:

1.) When you make less than five slides - It may seem arbitrary, but based on my experience if you don’t have enough presentation information to make at least five slides then you shouldn’t be making a PowerPoint presentation. If you think about it, by the time you straighten out your template and organize your information into slides, you’ve put too much work in compared to what you’re getting out of it. Instead, a couple page handout, neatly organized into bulleted sections, is more time efficient and just as effective.

2.) Very frequent meetings - By “very frequent” I mean daily or every other day. Unless there’s some specific reason why you absolutely have to have a new presentation for each meeting, an agenda and a few talking points will probably do here. Once again, it comes down to opportunity cost, or the ratio of effort to results. More than likely if you have a meeting with this kind of frequency then there’s not going to be a lot of changes to the presentation from meeting to meeting. A good idea is to have a kick-off PowerPoint, and then have interim statuses where you update the PowerPoint with the results to date.

3.) When another medium works better - This is most important reason not to use PowerPoint: Don’t use it just for the sake of using it. If another medium such as a handout or spreadsheet genuinely works better, use that instead. Because of PowerPoint’s popularity and widespread use, many people think they have to use it for their meetings, but this is simply not true. Just like any other tool, you should only use it when it’s the best choice.

Don’t get me wrong: PowerPoint presentations are a very powerful and useful tool. However, this doesn’t mean you have to use it for everything. Take the time to consider what you’re using it for before you dive in, and you’ll end up being more efficient as well as making your presentations more effective.