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:

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So I decided I’d try and get myself out of 2003 by upgrading my Microsoft Office Professional suite to the 2007 version. However, I really wanted to try it out first before I committed to upgrading. The question is: Where do I find it? Surprisingly enough, Microsoft actually offers a free 60 day trial for the different 2007 Office components. Better still, these trials provide full functionality as opposed to the watered down versions you sometimes get with trial software. I was a little surprised because I don’t remember Microsoft offering free trials of their previous office versions (I could be wrong though, it’s been awhile since I bought one).

Here’s the link to the download page: Microsoft Office 2007 Free Trial. I’m going to download it and give it a test run, I’ll post my thoughts at the end of the trial run.

I thought I’d mention this site, as it’s a great resource for Microsoft Office articles. Basically, it aggregates these articles from multiple sources (with the author’s permission) and provides a little synopsis for each one and a link to the original article. I like this site because it’s quick loading and it provides an easy to use interface. Another good feature is that it’s not littered with ads like a lot of the other aggregation sites out there.

It’s definitely worth perusing if you have a chance, as there articles on a ton of different Microsoft Office related topics. Here’s the link:

Microsoft Office Reporter.

Most of the time, your installation of Microsoft Office will come with a decent size collection of Clip Art. However, there are some occasions where your default collection won’t do, and you need something specific. While you can find other images online to suit your needs, this can sometimes be a hassle (searching for a specific picture, being able to download it for free, etc). That’s why your online search for Clip Art should start with….Microsoft (I know, it’s shocking)!

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Here’s the situation: You have the perfect picture for your presentation, however you want to get rid of some of the excess borders around it to better fit your slide. How is this accomplished? To do this, you would use a process called Cropping. In this case, Cropping can be defined as taking the original image and eliminating certain parts of it. This process can be a bit of a pain, especially if you don’t have an image manipulation program such as Adobe Photoshop. Luckily, Microsoft PowerPoint has its own picture cropping utility that is both simple to use and effective.

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While Microsoft PowerPoint offers a variety of free design templates, it’s not always the best idea to use these in your presentations. Why? Simply because everybody is so familiar with the default templates that you miss a great opportunity to hook them into your presentation by using one. By using a custom template (or modified default one), you are grabbing your audiences attention right off the bat with something they have never seen before.

Chris Le Roy has written a pretty good article below on how to customize one of PowerPoint’s default templates, which is a good first step if you are new to creating templates. The article follows below:

The Secrets To Customising Your Microsoft Powerpoint Design Template

By Chris Le Roy

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What do the “big bosses” at your work do? Do they make copies? Do they write software? Do they conduct testing? The answer to all three of these questions is no. What do they do then? They sell work. This means that they sell projects, products, whatever your company markets to your clients. They are always looking for ways to create new business.

A common misconception at the workplace is that only people at a certain level can sell work. Actually, everybody who works for your company can sell work, it just may not seem obvious. One of the best ways to do this is to sell your Brand when you are doing PowerPoint presentations.

How do you go about doing this? Kevin Potts has outlined some good advice below on how to sell your brand through PowerPoint presentations. I’ve included my comments on the article right before the Author Resource Box.

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This is a question that plagues executives and those just starting out alike: How much do you put on a slide in your presentation? Three bullet points? Two paragraphs? When does it become too much, or when does it look like too little?

Although there is no one single definitive answer for this, there are a number of factors that should be taken into account when determining it.

I have laid out three important factors below:

• Font Size and Style - Obviously, depending on the size and style of your font, you are going to be limited as to how much will actually fit onto your slides. However, you need to make sure that by using your current font, you are able to get the information you need on each slide. If you think that your slide is lacking in information simply because all of it won’t fit, then maybe you need to re-evaluate your current font selection. The same thinking can be applied to the case where you have too much on one slide. If you are using a small font style and size, and this causes the slide to be cluttered because you put too much information on it, then you would want to take a look at changing your font style and/or size.

• Using Continue Slides - A Continue slide is basically when you can’t fit all of the information for a topic on one slide, so you create a second slide with the same title but with a (cont.) added on to the end of it to fit the rest of your information. There are times when you need to use these, however you want to make sure it’s necessary. If you find yourself using a lot of these kinds of slides, make sure you are summarizing your information enough. On the flip side, if you find that you are squeezing a ton of information on one slide just to make it fit, maybe you need to use one instead to make the presentation more readable.

• Getting your Message across - The main goal of each of your slides should be to get your message across in a clear and succinct fashion. Therefore, after you create each slide, you should review it to make sure that’s what you’re doing. If you have a lot of information, but it confuses the audience, then that doesn’t do you any good. If you have only a few sentences that don’t readily give the reader the purpose of that slide, then that doesn’t do you any good either. As long as you are getting your message across in an easily understandable manner, then the amount of information on your slide is probably just right.

As I stated above, there is no one single solution to figuring out if your slides have just the right amount of information on them. However, by using a combination of the points stated above, you should be able to successfully accomplish this goal.

One of the most frustrating things about creating a presentation can be determining the layout of each slide. “Where will the text go?” “How about that chart?” “What about this picture?” These are all questions that can cross your mind as you build your presentation. Fortunately, Microsoft PowerPoint provides a selection of basic layouts that figure this out for you in the form of the Slide Layout Menu.

To invoke the Slide Layout Menu, perform the following steps:

1. Click on Format.
2. Click on Slide Layout…

The following menu will be opened on the right side of your screen.

(Note: This screenshot has been cropped, this is only part of the menu, but it gives you the general idea.)

The Slide Layout Menu is broken into the following four sections:

• Text Layouts - These are layouts for slides that will be purely text based.
• Content Layouts - These are layouts for slides that don’t have text, but have pictures, charts, ect.
• Text and Content Layouts - These layouts are a mix of both text and possibly charts, graphs, ect.
• Other Layouts - Personally, I don’t think that this section is really necessary as I think the layouts here could be incorporated into the Text And Content Layouts section. In this section, they add the additional functionality of media clips, diagrams, and generally more advanced content.

There is also a check box at the bottom of this menu, labeled Show when inserting new slides. If checked, when you add a new slide to your presentation the Slide Layout Menu will automatically be displayed.

To use one of the layouts on your slide, simply highlight the slide or slides that you want to apply the layout to. Then, click on the layout in the Slide Layout Menu. Your slide will then have the layout you have selected.

Also, if you highlight a layout, you’ll see an arrow on the right side of the layout. If you click on it, the following menu is displayed:

This menu is pretty self-explanatory, but here is a quick overview:

• The Apply to Selected Slides option works just like clicking on the layout itself. It will apply that layout to any slides you have selected.
• The Reapply Layout option will apply the layout to your selected slides (much like the first option).
• The Insert New Slide option will insert a new slide into your presentation with that layout.

The Slide Layout Menu is a great tool for the beginning Microsoft PowerPoint user, or when you need to get a presentation done in a hurry. Play with the different layouts to find the one that best suits your needs.

Although I don’t use this functionality very much, I have seen other people use it for their presentations so I thought I’d write a quick tutorial on how to do it.

To begin, we have to define what a Slide Transition is. A Slide Transition can be defined as the way that one slide moves to the next slide during a Slide Show. For example, during your presentation, if you want to make Slide 1 “dissolve” to reveal Slide 2 when you advance from Slide 1 to Slide 2 during your show, you would use a Slide Transition.

To enable a transition on a slide, you must first access the Slide Transition Menu. The Slide Transition Menu should be shown on the right hand side of your screen by default when you start a new presentation (Note: this is for Microsoft PowerPoint 2002, it might be slightly different for later versions). This is shown below:

(This picture has been cropped so that the placement of the menu can be seen.)

The arrows at the top of the menu (1) allow you to switch between the Slide Transition Menu and the New Presentation Menu. If the Slide Transition Menu is not shown, use the arrows to navigate to it if the New Presentation Menu is shown. If neither is shown, you can open the Slide Transition Menu by performing the following steps:

1. Click on Slide Show on the top menu.
2. Click on Slide Transition…

Now that the menu is open, click on the slide you want the transition to occur on. The transition you put on a slide will happen when the slide is shown. For example, if you want Slide 1 to dissolve into Slide 2, you should select Slide 2 and enable the dissolve transition. In the case of Slide 1, any transition you enable on your first slide will occur when you first start your Slide Show.

The list shown in the above screenshot displays the types of transitions you can apply to your slides. There are a variety of transitions, play around with them to see which one suits your presentation. The rest of the Slide Transition Menu is shown in the screenshot below:

First, you have the Modify transition menu. It allows you to change the speed and sounds associated with the transition via the Speed and Sound drop downs. Setting the speed of the transition is pretty simple; see which one works best for you. The sound specified will play when the transition occurs. If enabled, the Loop until next sound check box will keep playing the specified sound until another sound is specified during another transition on another slide. This is an important point, because even if you have another transition in your Slide Show, if it doesn’t have a sound associated to it the previous sound will keep playing if that check box is enabled. If you want to stop this sound from playing but don’t want to have to specify a new sound to play, set the sound to Stop Previous Sound.

Next, the Advance slide menu allows you to specify how the transition will occur. If the On mouse click check box is enabled, the transition will occur when you manually advance to the next slide. If the Automatically after check box is enabled, the transition will occur after a certain amount of time has passed. The amount of time can be specified below the check box. For example, say on Slide 2 you specify to transition to Slide 3 after 5 seconds. Once your Slide Show gets to Slide 2, it will pause for 5 seconds and then move to Slide 3.

The last set of options are the buttons and a check box at the bottom of the menu. Their functions are as follows:

1. The Apply to All Slides button will apply your current settings to all the slides in your presentation.
2. The Play button show how your settings will work when the current slide is presented in the Slide Show.
3. The Slide Show button will launch a Slide Show of your presentation.
4. When enabled, the AutoPreview check box will do a quick preview of your slide each time you change the transition settings for that slide. This is similar to the Play button.

The above are the basic components to use when putting a Slide Transition into your presentation. One word of caution: be careful with how you use these in your presentations. Only use them when they are necessary, don’t throw a bunch of transitions in there just to have them in your presentation. Remember, you want the audience to focus on your content, not a ton of different flashy transitions.