PowerPoint Tips and Tricks
I am a Masters student in Business Administration and as such we are required to create and deliver quite a few presentations. Mentioned in the following paragraphs are some of the things I have learned and used in the course of creating and giving presentations.
- Use the slide master
- Dimming after animation
- Use animation painter for quick and consistent animations across slides
- While presenting, use the presenter’s view
- Use the slide master
Slide master is a great tool when you want to reflect changes across the whole slide deck. You can use it to create a consistent format across all slides. The changes made to the slide master appear across all slides that are under it. When you change or edit a slide master, the changes appear on all slides that are based on the master. The slide master can be used to keep fonts, logos, and layouts consistent across all slides.
To access Slide Master, go to View menu on the Ribbon and click on the Slide Master. (View -> Slide Master)
2. Dimming after animation
PowerPoint provides a nifty tool to dim text after animation. This is useful in making the audience focus on the points that you are currently presenting. This effect can be used to make the previous talking points fade into the background.
To apply the dimming effect,
0. Apply suitable animations to the bullet points.
1. Click on the Animations tab from the ribbon
2. Click on Animation Pane. The animation pane appears to the right side of the screen
3. On the Animation Pane, right-click on the bullet point on which you want to add the dimming effect.
4. Click on Effect Options
5. On the Effects tab, under Enhancements, select the After Animations down arrow and choose the appropriate color for the dimmed text.
(Note: The text color should match the background color closely.)
3. Using the animation painter
PowerPoint provides several ways to animate elements present in the slides. The animations in the slides should be simple and subtle. In the course of creating a presentation, some animations must be applied several times such as animating text in the slides or animating images that accompany the text. PowerPoint provides a good tool to apply a previously used animation to other blocks quickly. This can be done using the Animation Painter option.
To access Animation Painter, go to the Animations menu on the Ribbon and click on Animation Painter. (Animations -> Animation Painter)
(Note: The animation painter remains grayed out when there are no previous animations.)
Select the block on the slide with the animation you want and click on the Animation Painter, the arrow pointer changes.
Then click on the block that you want to animate.
Click on the Animation Painter once to animate a single block. Doubling clicking the Animation Painter lets you animate multiple blocks.
4. While presenting, use the Presenter View
Presenter View is like a control panel for a PowerPoint presentation. The presenter view gives you various tools to make your presentations more comfortable. The presenter view is ideal for a dual monitor setup where the presenter’s monitor runs the presenter’s view and the audience sees the actual presentation.
To use the Presenter View,
Right-click on the slide show and select Show Presenter View
OR,
Click the Options button in the slide show then click Show Presenter View
Once the presenter view is loaded you will see the interface shown below
The presenter view provides a lot of tools to work with. Some of the most useful are :
- Speaker’s note
- Elapsed Time
- View thumbnails
- Current Slide (this is what the audience sees)
- Next Slide
— Prabodh Tuladhar
