+Power Point Tips and Tutorials

Power Point Tips

Before getting into specific Power Point tips, let's cover some basics on making a presentation--Power Point or not:

Your goal is to communicate. It is not to show off how much clip art you can cut and paste or how much text you can cram into a slide. Use only 2 to 4 fonts, maximum. Go easy on the colors.
Limit all slides to about 5 lines of text--use slides to accent, not document, your presentation. Less is more.
The Prime Directive: Keep It Short and Simple. Try to pace yourself at 3 minutes per slide.
Don't read your slides to the audience. This insults them. And bores them. And makes you look bad.

See our course: How to Give a Winning Presentation

Power Point Tip #1
Power Point does organizational charts. However, this does not mean you should make a mondo chart that shows every unrelated position in your company just because PowerPoint allows you to do so. Keep the chart minimal in size and scope, so people don't have to strain to read it.

Power Point Tip #2
Use graphs to show trends. Make your graphs clutter-free for maximum impact. Go for the "clean" look.

Power Point Tip #3
Power Point has a huge clipart gallery. Ignore it. Everyone else is using this same boring clip art.

Power Point Tip #4
Power Point has different "views" to allow you to check your work. It pays to become familiar with these. Outline view is a good place from which to plan your overall presentation. Once you have your main ideas in place, you may find it easiest to work from the Slide Sorter View.

Power Point Tip #5
Feel free to experiment with Power Point--the undo button keeps screwups from being permanent until you save.

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Power Point Templates

See the selection of free Powerpoint templates, backgrounds and artwork at
http://presentationtree.com/freetemplates.php

Power Point Tip #6
When editing text in Power Point, remember that text is not "text characters" (as in Word 97), but "text objects." When you format the object, you format all the "text" in it. Ditto for moving, copying, and deleting. However, you can edit and insert inside an object. Just watch where the object handlers and your cursor are.

Power Point Tip #7
You can specify line and paragraph spacing in Power Point the same way you do in Word. Highlight the text you want to format and select the Format drop down menu.

Power Point Tip #8
You can add texture to objects. Use the Format drop down menu.

Power Point Tip #9
Don't forget Power Point's text tools: Find, Replace, Spelling, and AutoCorrect. You can also replace fonts globally. Power Point has a Style Checker to help you put the final polish on your presentation.

Power Point Tip #10
You may wish to add special effects, but do so without getting carried away. You can use slide transitions (people like these), animation (the order in which, and the manner in which objects appear on the slide), and sound effects. Check out the action settings dialog box in the Slide Show drop down settings.

Power Point Tip #11
Action buttons allow you to move easily from one slide to another, start and stop music, or perform some other function with one click.

Power Point Tip #12
Media clips, video clips, and animated charts can add pizzazz, as long as you don't try to use these features as substitutes for good content.

Power Point Tip #13
You can try out a slide show, and even hide slides to see what your presentation will be like without them. Try the options in the Slide Show drop down menu.

Power Point Tip #14
You can turn your screen black at any time during a presentation. To do so, Go to the Pointer Popup menu, and select Screen then Black Screen. You can even use the pen tool to write on the black screen.

Power Point Tip #15
You can use other applications to build your Power Point content (e.g., a Word outline, an Power Point chart, etc.)

MY BEST Power Point Tip:

Buy a book on Power Point or Microsoft Office. You can find books and tapes by clicking on the software link at the top of this page. This tip is not a cheap sales trick. The reason I suggest you buy a book is I could list at least 1500 Power Point tips and the Internet is just is not the format for that. The capabilities of this program go far beyond what those unfamiliar with it could dream of. It is truly a masterpiece of a program.

Click here to see all of our books on PowerPoint.
Click here to see all of our DVDs on PowerPoint.
Click here for PowerPoint Software

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Working the Windows Desktop

The whole desktop approach ignores the fact that a computer's hard drive(s) are the electronic version of a paper filing cabinet. It also ignores the fact that people store a huge amount of files in that system. And it ignores a few dozen other facts relevant to using a computer. It's just a bad approach.

The desktop assumes you don't care what files you actually work on. It opens apps, not files, and this is the pathway to problems. You can inadvertently be revising the wrong thing, if you can even find it in the first place.

What you should do instead is use Windows Explorer. Microsoft tends to hide this, but it should be your standard interface with your computer, unless you don't mind working blind.

You can always right mouse click the Start button to invoke it, but you should add Windows Explorer to your Quick Launch bar and several other menus in Windows.

The default settings for Windows Explorer defy logic. Change these so you can actually see what files you are looking at. Enable it to show you the file extensions (unclick the insane "Hide extensions" box that is, stupidly enough, checked by default though actually there is never any reason to ever check this box). Select the option to show details. Now, you will be able to see your file size, file date, and other useful information. If you right click around a bit, you can find quite a bit of functionality in Windows Explorer.

If you haven't been using this interface previously, make a point of using it now. If you always open files from within Windows Explorer, you will always be able to see all available files and select the right one.

Use Windows Explorer to set up your filing system as if it's a paper filing cabinet. Save all files either on the data drive (dual hard drive machine) or in a folder on a single hard drive machine. Do NOT save files to the default locations. These never make any sense. They are typically within your applications, which is a dumb place to save them. That's how you end up with corrupted data files and it also makes file backups difficult.

For single-drive users, an easy solution is to create a folder called 0files as your top-level data folder. The zero means it will show up at the top of your file list, making things easy for you. Below this folder, create you filing structure. Never store anything at the root of this folder. Think of it as the shell of a five-drawer filing cabinet and don't toss stuff in the bottom. Always put files in folders that are in drawers.

With a good filing structure in place, you will always be able to find your files by simply clicking right to them. So think this out as you go and follow a good taxonomy. It's a much more effective way to work than how the zombies at Microsoft envision people working.

Recovering hard drive space

Even with today's huge drives, people sometimes run out of hard drive space. The steps below can recover wasted space.

Do a search for *.tmp files. Delete all of them. Then defrag your drive.

Do a search for *.bak files. Delete all of them. Then defrag your drive.

If you have any *.bmp files, change the format to *.jpg. This will result in radically smaller files. You need an image tool for this; if you don't have one installed already, then skip this step.
Set the Properties for the drive to compress files. In Windows Explorer, right mouse click the drive name. Then select Properties. Then select Compress to Save Drive Space. This could take a while, so unless you want your machine tied up for a few hours do this process one folder at a time and then do it for the whole drive.
If this issue is for your programs drive, then remove any programs you aren't using. Go to Control Panel | Remove Programs.
On your data drive, zip files you aren't using.

There are other steps you can take, but if, at this point, you are still low on disk space you really need to add another hard drive or upgrade one that's in your system. Or, another very cool option, is to add a My Ditto system. See our Review of the Dane my Ditto network server.