You'll find free tips, techniques, articles, and tutorials here, all designed to help you succeed when you present. This blog gives you knowledge. I'm passionate about turning Death by PowerPoint into Life by PowerPoint. Discover books and courses to aid you in becoming an outstanding presenter. Find out more about consulting, training, webinars, and coaching on presentation skills and PowerPoint.
I’m excited to announce an unprecedented opportunity for you to hear top presentation experts present on what they know best: How to create outstanding presentations! Never before have so many famous presenters come together to speak to you, people who present day in and day out.
It’s called “Outstanding Presentations Workshop.” Click the link and complete the simple sign-up form on that page. You’ll need to confirm your registration. It’s 8 free webinars, starting on Wednesday, September 15th and going through Wednesday, November 10th. The time is 1pm PT/4pm ET.
If you’ve been following my posts over the last few years, you know that I’ve been beating the drum for effective presenting. Specifically, I’ve been searching for ways to reach more people. This is it!
I strongly encourage everyone reading this to sign up, if you’re interested in learning what the best presenters and designers in the world are saying. Then, spread the word. I’m sure you know of people who need to hear this message. You might even want to organize a group to watch together each week where you work.
The presenters are:
Rick Altman, Author of Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck and organizer of the Presentation Summit (PowerPoint Live) conference
Nancy Duarte, Author of Slide:ology and the upcoming Resonate, designer of the slides in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth
Olivia Mitchell, Presentation trainer based in Wellington, New Zealand and blogger at Speaking about Presenting
Robert Lane, Author of Relational Presenting and founder of Aspire Communications
Dana Bristol-Smith, Author of Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking and founder of Speak for Success
Jim Endicott, President of Distinction Communication
Scott Schwertly, Author of How to be a Presentation God and CEO of Ethos3
and me!
You won’t want to miss this. Note that GoToWebinar, the webinar service, allows only 1,000 registrants to enter a webinar, and we think we’ll certainly exceed that number. So register now (and be sure to sign in a little early each week).
Everyone Communicates, Few Connect is a book about speaking in a way that connects with the audience. Author John C. Maxwell makes the point that no matter what you say (even with your body language), you’re communicating something, but it takes more effort to connect with people.
Using stories about his own struggles to communicate effectively, first as a church pastor, then as a speaker, the author explains principles and practices that anyone can use to connect. He breaks these down into little steps that are easy to implement.
I was surprised at the tone of the book; it’s like a motivational speech, but then I realized that this reflects his personality (and probably the fact that he led a church for a long time).
Since I write about the importance of presenting well, I was pleased to see this quote that the author uses from the Harvard Business Review:
The number one criteria for advancement and promotion for professionals is an ability to communicate effectively.
One point that he makes is similar to a point that Steven Covey makes in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and that is to focus on others’ needs first before focusing on your own. In a presentation situation, this means thinking about what will be useful and relevant to your audience before focusing on what is important to you. For example, John Maxwell says,
When you are trying to connect with people, it’s not about you—it’s about them.
We’ve heard that before, but he goes further and says that you need to actually care about others and try to help them.
Three ideas that he offers to activate your audience are to
Ask questions
Get people moving (get up and stretch!)
Ask people to interact
If you’re looking to work on your speaking technique from the inside out, you’ll find this book helpful.
Note: I received a free copy of the book to review.
Get a free copy of this book!
The publisher has offered to mail out 5 free copies of this book to readers of this blog. If you’re interested, sign up below and I’ll choose 5 winners randomly. The deadline is Monday, September 6th. If you’re not already a subscriber to the PowerPoint Tips Newsletter, you’ll also get a free subscription.
If you are selected to receive a book, I’ll e-mail you for your mailing address so I can send it to the publisher.
To introduce a panel at a panel discussion or employees to a group, you can create a slide with their photos, name, title, and so on.
Because you want to speak about each person in turn, you can use animation to display each person’s photo and name when you click. Here is one approach you can use.
Follow these steps:
Collect the photos of your panel members. Ideally, they should be approximately the same shape.
Insert a shape and size it according to your needs. This will contain the photo.
Insert another shape and move it adjacent to the first shape, as you see here. This will contain the person’s name and other information. Format it however you want.
Copy the shapes and align them so that you have enough shapes for each person on the panel.
Right-click the first shape that will contain a photo and choose Format Shape/AutoShape.
To fill the shape with the picture, do the following:
In PowerPoint 2007 & 2010, in the Fill category, choose Picture or Texture, then click the File button. Choose the photo and click Open.
In PowerPoint 2003, on the Colors and Lines tab, in the Fill section, click the Color drop-down list and choose Fill Effects. On the Picture tab, click the Select Picture tab to choose the photo you want.
To display the image, I used the Fade entrance animation.
In PowerPoint 2003, choose Slide Show> Custom Animation to open the Custom Animation task pane. In PowerPoint 2007, click the Animations tab and then Custom Animation button.
In PowerPoint 2010, click the Animations tab.
Select the image (that is, the shape filled with the image).
In PowerPoint 2003 and 2007, in the Custom Animation task pane, click Add Effect> Entrance> (More Effects, if necessary)> Fade.
In PowerPoint 2010, click the Add Animation button and choose Fade in the Entrance section. (If it isn’t there, choose More Entrance Effects.)
You may want to change the speed on the fade in effect:
In PowerPoint 2003 and 2007, in the Speed drop-down list, choose a different speed.
In PowerPoint 2010, on the Animations tab, in the Timing group, change the speed in the Duration text box or click the Up or Down arrow.
To add the text to the empty shape, right-click inside the shape and choose Edit text. Enter the text and format it as desired.
To display the shape with the text, I used the Peek animation to give the appearance of the text coming out from behind the photo. Select the shape and display the Animations tab or Custom Animation task pane, as described earlier. Then do the following:
In PowerPoint 2003 and 2007, click Add Effect> Entrance> (More Effects, if necessary)> Peek In. In the Direction drop-down list, choose From Right (if your shapes are aligned as shown in the above image ).
In PowerPoint 2010, click the Add Animation button> More Entrance Effects (if necessary)> Peek In. In the Animation group, click the Effect Options button and choose the From Right option.
Add the animation to all of the shapes. In PowerPoint 2010, select an animated shape, double-click the Animation Painter button and select the rest of the shapes that need the same animation. click the Animation Painter button again to deselect it.
Do you have another slide technique for introducing panel members, employees, executives, or colleagues during a presentation?
The 2 CDs contain 41 lessons organized into Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced levels. Each lesson is a professionally-produced video in which Danny verbally explains the feature while showing you how to use it. The lessons run from about 6 to 10 minutes.
The lessons are a great combination of technical information along with his wisdom on when and why you should use the technique. For example, in the lesson on custom shows, he explains when you might want to use them, how to create and use them, and why they’re such an important tool to include in your presentation arsenal.
Some of the topics are:
Choosing Slide Layouts (Beginning)
Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar (Beginning)
Formatting Tables (Intermediate)
Selecting the Best Chart Type (Intermediate)
Preparing Presentation Handouts (Intermediate)
Adding Video to Your Presentation (Intermediate)
Setting Up Self-Running Presentations (Intermediate)
I import graphics from InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop. I say import, but sometimes I do copy/paste out of indesign…a NO-NO i’m sure. Anyway, the deck looks great. I send it out to everyone — they make any last minute changes and sometimes send back for me to approve. This is where I’m guessing the compression is taking place and making most every graphic look awful. Is there a way to stop this?
The reader is right. A new “feature” of PowerPoint 2007 is that PowerPoint automatically compresses pictures when you save the file. This is usually OK, but in certain situations, it degrades the images unacceptably. (And it makes animated GIFs stop working, but few people use them any more.)
Selecting an image in another program and pasting into PowerPoint is not a good idea. Save the image as a separate file and then insert it as a picture in PowerPoint.
You can stop PowerPoint 2007 from compressing images automatically, but it’s very hard to find this setting! When you change the setting, it applies to the file, so the setting should stick with the file.
Here are the steps:
Select a picture on a slide.
Under Picture Tools, on the Format tab, go to the Adjust group and click Compress Pictures. You see this Compress Pictures dialog box
Click the Options button to display the Compression Settings dialog box.
Uncheck Automatically Perform Basic Compression on Save check box.
Click OK twice.
Luckily, PowerPoint 2010 doesn’t automatically compress pictures when you save.
I’ve often said that kids do a better job in PowerPoint, before they learn that PowerPoint should be boring and have bullet points.
In “It’s back to school time: Does your youngster PowerPoint?,” Doug Thomas makes this same “point” and shows a video of cartoonist and author Scott McCloud’s 13-year-old daughter giving a very engaging presentation about their family trip.
A good use of animation is to show change or contrast. For example, you can make a winter scene disappear as a summer scene appears, to show the difference. At the bottom of this tip, I have some links to other tips on animation.
In previous versions of PowerPoint the fade transition didn’t look very good, so most people put both photos on one slide and faded the first out as the second came in. This still works well.
It’s worthwhile to try out all the animations to see what they do, especially with their variations. You never know when one will give you just the effect you want.
But PowerPoint 2010 has added some new transitions, including some 3D ones, that look much better. The 3D transitions let you watch the old slide exit as the new one enters, and so helps connect the two slides.
In this video, the first effect is a Split exit animation on a photo, which reveals a second photo beneath it. The second effect is on of the new 3D PowerPoint 2010 transitions, called Rotate.
It’s just in the idea stage, but suppose you could hear any presentation/speaking expert for free? Suppose you could ask questions and get answers! Which people would you like to hear?
Sales reps can use PowerPoint to create a product catalog that they bring to potential customers. This catalog is easy to modify, even at the last minute. You can change photos, prices, descriptions, and so on.
From the point of view of the Sales Manager, PowerPoint product catalogs ensure that the catalog always looks professionally laid out and the content is always up to date. You accomplish this with a custom layout.
A custom layout creates a framework to the slide’s layout. You can then insert text in a text placeholder, a photo in an image placeholder, and it will always be formatted nicely and fit properly.
(There’s a link at the end for a similar tip that includes a workaround for creating a custom layout in PowerPoint 2003.)
Create a custom layout in PowerPoint 2007 and 2010
Click the View tab, then click the Slide Master button in the Presentation Views group. The slide master appears. Or simply click the Slide Master button at the lower-right corner of the screen.
You see all the layouts in the left pane. Scroll down and right-click the layout that is closest to the one you want. Choose Duplicate Layout.
Right-click the duplicate and choose Rename Layout. Give the layout a name that’s meaningful to you. Here you see my example.
A renamed custom layout in PowerPoint's Slide Master view
To delete placeholders that you don’t want, select them and press the Del key.
To insert a new placeholder, on the Slide Master tab, in the Master Layout group, click the Insert Placeholder button’s down arrow and choose one of the 8 placeholder types:
Content: Lets you insert any type of content, that is, any of the types listed below
Text
Picture
Chart
Table
SmartArt
Media
ClipArt
Drag to size and place the placeholder on the slide.
Place more placeholders, laying them out as needed.
Did you know that you can change the prompt text in a placeholder? For example, you can change “Picture” to “Insert a photo of a product here.”
A custom layout for a product catalog
The presentation now contains the new layout and you can choose it the same way you’d choose any of the standard layouts for any slide.
Choosing the custom layout
If you want to use the layout in the future, save the file as a template (.potx, or .potm if it contains macros) or theme (thmx).
To insert content, click a text prompt or click an icon. When you insert a picture, it automatically expands (or contracts) to fit the placeholder. While this might result in some distortion, the upside is that the slide always looks good. Here’s a sample slide:
You'll find free tips, techniques, articles, and tutorials here, all designed to help you succeed when you present. This blog gives you knowledge. I'm passionate about turning Death by PowerPoint into Life by PowerPoint. 
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