Engage Presentations

Take advantage of the canvas area in PowerPoint to speed up the design of complex slides

Harvey — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:47:46 +0000

Many of my clients have found that slides can get pretty busy, especially in the editing phase. They want to find a better way to manage design elements and text to ensure they develop a balanced presentation. An easy way to give yourself some breathing room is to reduce the magnification of your slide to 50% and then use the surrounding blue area around the slide. The blue area in PowerPoint (grey in 2003 and older versions) is the background field, I tend to treat it as a canvas. I use the canvas to lay out design elements and text boxes before deciding on the proper placement. Text boxes, autoshapes, graphs etc. can be placed out here and edited to avoid cluttering up your slide. Most elements floating in the blue area won’t have an effect on or display in your presentation.

Great Handouts Should Support your Branding

Harvey — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 20:08:30 +0000

Handouts are an opportunity to expand upon and reinforce the key points of your presentation. Did you know that you can design your handouts to include your logo, tagline, and other important information by formatting the Handout Master? In PowerPoint 2007 and 2010, click on the View tab and under the Presentation Views section click on the Handouts Master button. In PowerPoint 2003 Choose View | Master | Handout Master. To print them, choose File | Print and choose Handouts in the Print What drop-down list. Change the settings in the Handouts section of the Print dialog box and click OK.

Often handouts are a copy of your presentation, I believe this to be a missed opportunity. By that I mean your slides should be your visual aid, and as such support not duplicate everything you express as a presenter. I recommend that handouts reflect what you say rather than just what you project. In other words your handout should be a reflection of the full manuscript from your presentation. A manuscript handout goes beyond your visual aid (the PowerPoint) to provide the essence of the oral presentation. Most people have their full manuscript in the speakers notes. You have the option of sending the presentation to Microsoft Word, where you can add or delete anything you want and change the layout to suit your needs. In PowerPoint 2010 click on File |Save and Send| Create Handout | and choose your preference. In PowerPoint 2007, click on the Microsoft button on the top left corner of your window. Under Publish, go to Create Handouts in Microsoft Office Word. In PowerPoint 2003 Choose File | Send To | Microsoft Word. In the Send To Microsoft Word dialog box, choose one of the options and click OK. You even have the option to create a link (choose Paste Link) so that the Word document is updated if you change your presentation.

I caution you that this feature will create very large Word files, therefore if you want to share it electronically with others create a PDF version to minimize file size. Furthermore before using this feature I suggest closing all applications other than PowerPoint as this will tax the resources of most computers.

Did you know that your slide number is adjustable?

Harvey — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:34:27 +0000

Have you ever had to weave your slides into a larger presentation or prepare handouts as a component of a larger printout? For example, if you are following a 30 slide presentation by someone else you may want or need to start your slide show with slide 31. We often need to adjust the numbering when producing handouts (electronic or hardcopy).

To change the slide numbering so that your deck begins with another number, choose File | Page Setup from the menu bar. Then, in the resulting Page Setup dialog box, adjust the value in the “Number Slides From” box to the number you want your first slide to be and click OK.

In PowerPoint 2007, click on the Design Tab and under the Page Setup group click on Page Setup. In the popup dialog box change the Number Slides From to the number that you would like your first slide to start from.

Did you ever wonder how to hide the popup menus when presenting in PowerPoint?

Pauline — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:19:15 +0000

In all my years as a presentation consultant I have yet to see a presenter make use of the popup menu button that appears in the bottom-left corner of the presentation screen. In fact I would argue that it can be distracting and at times obscure your content. Fortunately, hiding it from your audience is a simple procedure.

The quick but temporary method is to press Ctrl+H to hide the button, and then press Ctrl+A to make it reappear. This keyboard shortcut will also make the mouse curser (arrow) on your slide disappear and reappear.

If you like this approach and want to program your presentation computer to disable this tool you need to change your settings. In PowerPoint 2003, select Tools | Options to launch the Options dialog box. Click on the View tab, deselect the Show Popup Menu Button check box in the Slide Show panel and click OK. To hide the popup menu during a Slide Show in PowerPoint 2007, click on the Office Button and go to PowerPoint Options (located at the bottom of the menu). Then, click on Advanced and under the Slide Show section, uncheck the box that says “Show Popup Toolbar”.

Creating hyperlinks that open instantly during a Slide Show

Harvey — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:07:55 +0000

Have you ever experienced that moment when you think your computer has frozen because your hyperlink was sluggish to respond during a slide show? Here is a quick fix to avoid that uncomfortable feeling. Prior to the start of the slideshow, open the host application of the file that will run when the hyperlink is enabled, such as QuickTime, Windows Media Player, VLC etc. If you intend to show a YouTube Video, make sure that you will have Internet access where you are presenting. Then, preload the video online and minimize the browser until you are ready to play it. I would recommend against simply copying and pasting the video address link onto a slide, as Internet addresses sometimes change.

Whenever you present I strongly recommend that you close or disable all other applications such as Outlook or Antivirus software that may be running in the background. You should take a moment to hide your alerts. Always present from a system where all the software updates are current. Taking these steps will reduce the unpleasant distractions and surprises when you present and you should notice an improved response time. In other words your presentation will appear more seamless.

Keep reference data close at hand while you design your slides

Pauline — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:24:37 +0000

If you find yourself frequently referencing outside data while you create your PowerPoint slides (such as content located in a Word* document, Excel* workbook, or even another PowerPoint presentation), you may want to consider linking to your slide with an unobtrusive custom icon. First navigate to the slide your working on in Slide or Normal view, and then choose Insert | Object from the PowerPoint menu bar. Select the “Create From File” option button, and then click the Browse button. Navigate to and select the file you want easily accessible in the Browse dialog, and then click “OK”. Select the Link check box to make sure you’re always looking at updated content, and then select the “Display As” Icon check box so you can easily hide the content when you don’t need it. If you are using PowerPoint 2007, navigate to the Insert Tab and click on the Object Button located in the text section. The subsequent steps remain exactly the same as previously stated.

Now the data isn’t in your way as you design your slide, yet it’s only one click away whenever you want to reference it. (If you want to keep the icon in your file while you present the slides, yet you want it to remain unseen to your audience, simply drag the icon off to the side / gray area of your slide.)

Give it a try, and let us know if this tip was useful! We look forward to your feedback.

Quickly select multiple objects on a slide

Pauline — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:58:16 +0000

Many slides contain a combination of text boxes, shapes and graphs to create a comprehensive mosaic of information. Later we may want to revisit and update this complex slide. Most PowerPoint users know how to select all the objects on a slide from the menu by choosing Edit | Select All. Did you know that you can also use the shortcut key [Ctrl]+A? You can use this select-all shortcut, even if what you really want is to select most of the slide objects. If one slide object is selected and you hold down the [Shift] key as you click on additional objects, all of the objects you click on are then selected. If you accidentally click on the wrong object, click on it a second time and it’s deselected. This concept also works with the select-all feature. Simply press [Ctrl]+A to select all the objects on your slide and then click on the objects you don’t want to deselect them. Working backwards like this can save a lot of time and hassle on complex slides.

Make sure the audience can read your slides

Pauline — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:06:16 +0000

Slides are intended to be visual aids therefore it is crucial that your audience can actually see the content. This may seem obvious yet so often we are presented with slides that are difficult to read – especially in larger venues. A paper out of UCLA suggests some “Font Basics⁽¹⁾” to consider when developing slides.

The font size should communicate the relative importance of the text content on the slide.

The heading should be larger than main body text entries
Main body text entries should be larger than any sub-entries
Footers and graphics captions should be the smallest text of all

Font sizes should range between 18 and 48 points.

Headings text should be 36-44 pt
Main body text should generally be 24-32 pt
Anything below 24 pt. is likely to be illegible in a medium to large venue
When in doubt, use a bigger font size

I would add that you avoid difficult to read fonts, and use no more than two font styles in a slide. Also make sure you have good contrast between the foreground and background.

That being said, and coming back to the notion of a visual aid, I suggest that you do not overload a slide with detailed information. It is up to you as a presenter to leverage the information on the slide to tell a compelling story.

(1) Adapted from: Humphries J., Lindsay E., Wright D., Font Basics, Electronic Research Administration, UCLA, 1997

Cropping an image to focus the audience’s attention

Harvey — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:33:33 +0000

Visuals are a fundamental method of engaging your audience. Images need to be relevant, well positioned by the presenter and of course clear and of high resolution. Sometimes we need to crop a photo or image to focus the audience’s attention. Ideally images should be manipulated with software such as Photoshop – however the reality is most people have neither the time, tools or expertise. Microsoft Office suites include a simple to use basic cropping tools that can be operated directly from PowerPoint (the following directions work from MS Word and Excel as well, and MAC users have more robust tools for cropping and editing images).

The Picture Toolbar can be accessed by opening Tools, Customize and enabling the Picture Toolbar. You will see options in the toolbar such as; inserting a picture, adjusting the brightness or colour and so on. What you want to select is the crop feature. Thick black lines will appear in the outer edges of the picture you have selected. By dragging these lines you can crop out the distracting portions of the photo. If this doesn’t achieve the desired result (or if you find it takes you more than 5 minutes) you may want to give us a call or drop us an email. We can probably help you out, saving you time and increasing the impact of your visual!

Add Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story to your reading list

Harvey — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:19:25 +0000

The first (and often skipped) step in any presentation is to define communication objectives. Skipping this step often leads to content oriented presentations that fail to resonate with the audience. To better appreciate why it is so important to rise above this common faux pas I suggest the book Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story by Jerry Weissman. The author describes the steps that you can take as a presenter in order to persuade even the toughest audiences, and bring them to action. The book offers great tips and concrete examples on the following topics:

Beyond the bullet point: presentations that connect!
Bring your message to life: using proven storytelling techniques
Show your audiences what really is in it for them
Use graphics to support your story, not bury it
Keep your presentations fresh, no matter how often you deliver it
Learn by example: case studies from the world’s leading companies

Click here to purchase Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story from Amazon, or here to visit the author’s website.

Let me know what you think of the book, and of course, I encourage you to share your insights!