How to Use Power Point Effectively

Use the Outline View first

Use the Outline View firstThe most

important part of any presentation is the content, not the graphical appeal.

Use Contrasting Colours

Use Contrasting ColoursIf you want your audience to be able to see what you have on the slide, there needs to be a lot of contrast between the text colour and the background colour. I suggest a dark background with light text

Use a big enough fontWhen deciding what font

size to use in your presentation, make sure it is big enough so that the audience can read it. 

Stop the moving text

When text comes on the screen, we want the audience to read the text, then focus back on the presenter to hear the messageI suggest the use of the "Appear" effect, which just makes the text appear and is the easiest for the audience to read.

During a presentation, it is very annoying to have the pointer (the little arrow) come on the screen while the presenter is speaking. It causes movement on the screen and draws the audience attention from the presenter to the screen. The pointer comes on when the mouse is moved during the presentation. To prevent this from happening, after the Slide Show view has started, press the Ctrl-H key combination.

Turn the pointer off

There is a free program (downloaded from the Microsoft web site) called the PowerPoint viewer which can be a great tool for presenters. It was developed so that if someone did not have the PowerPoint program, they would still be able to view and print the slides in your presentation. It is much smaller than the full program because it does not have the ability to edit the slides, only view or print.

Use the PowerPoint Viewer to Present

Have Slides at the End of Your Presentation

The last slide you speak to should not be the last slide in your presentation file. You should have three identical copies of your last speaking slide so that if you accidentally advance one too many times at the end of your presentation, your audience never knows because you don’t drop into the program, the slide looks like it has not changed.

Be able to Jump to Any Slide

PowerPoint has a feature that allows you to be able to move quickly and seamlessly to any slide in your presentation. To do so, you need to know the slide numbers. The easiest way to print a list of the slide numbers and associated slide titles is to go to the Outline View and collapse the details for each slide (there is a button on the left side of the screen in this view that will do this).

Blank the screen

Sometimes we want the image on the screen to disappear so that the audience is focused solely on the presenter. There are two ways to do this. The first is if you want to blank the screen with a black image, similar to shutting the projector off. Just press the B key on the keyboard and the image is replaced with a black image. Press the B key again and the image is restored. If you want to use a white image instead of a black image, press the W key each time.

Draw on the screen during a presentation

Sometimes it can be valuable to be able to draw on the screen during your presentation to illustrate a particular point or item. This can be done in the following way. Press the Ctrl-P key combination to display a pen on the screen.