Effective Presenting With Microsoft Powerpoint

You may want to customize a slide show for a particular audience. Rather than randomly hiding slides for a particular audience you could create three different versions of a presentation inside the same file. One may contain slides suitable for your clients; other custom view might contain slides suitable for new starters and a third senior management. The core presentation might be the same but displaying different levels of detail and nuance to suit.

Don’t forget to add visual effects for moving from one slide to another. You may want to create a transition effect as your presentation moves from one slide to another. As well as transition effects between slides you may want to add either standard or custom animation effects on the slide. Imagine you were an oil company and wanted to show each of your new rigs flying in from different directions in a predefined sequence.

 Why not consider adding action buttons to the slide that can be invoked during the presentation.

You could add links to graphics on your slides to add links to another slide, slide show, or Web page. Other links might be made to Excel spreadsheets, Visio drawings or Word documents

PowerPoint also can be setup so that all or part of the slide show can be shown automatically on timers. Once the presentation reaches the last slide it can then be programmed to start again from the beginning.

PowerPoint provides a wide array of  keyboard short cuts for use during presentations. For example 7 and enter would take you back to slide seven.

 To prompt questions at the end leave your conclusion slide visible, so that your audience can refer to it.  You can bet that your audience will want you to go back to a few of your slides so you should have a handy list of likely slide numbers so you can quickly access the requested slide.

 Do create speaker notes and handouts to back up your presentation. PowerPoint can print the slides in miniatures to hand out to the audience or as speaker notes to prompt the speaker.

 You must pack up a presentation to run on another computer. A presenter should take good care if they are displaying the presentation on a remote site to ensure that they copy not just the PowerPoint file but all the linked files and fonts that make up the finished products. If need be you can also copy and bring with you a PowerPoint viewer just in case the machine you are running your presentation on does not have a copy of PowerPoint installed.

Beware of Networks and unpredictable Internet Connections. In general it’s good advice to disconnect from the Internet. While you are presenting, there is no requirement to have a network connection you can copy all the files you require to a local directory. Similarly unless you intend to show to show a website or disconnect network cables and disable wireless connectivity. Don’t take a chance on your computer deciding to download software updates, display unexpected instant message, or alerting you to the arrival of a new email.

Know your venue. If your venue is offering light pens, dimming options on lighting and a wireless Mouse check then all work and rehearse how to use them. Better still make sure that you have the number of the support person if it all goes wrong. Have a plan B. If the projector bulb blows have paper copies or transparencies at hand.