how to make a presentation on powerpoint 2016

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How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation (Step-by-Step)

• PowerPoint Tutorials
• Presentation Design
• January 22, 2024

In this beginner’s guide, you will learn step-by-step how to make a PowerPoint presentation from scratch.

While PowerPoint is designed to be intuitive and accessible, it can be overwhelming if you’ve never gotten any training on it before. As you progress through this guide, you’ll will learn how to move from blank slides to PowerPoint slides that look like these.

Table of Contents

Additionally, as you create your presentation, you’ll also learn tricks for working more efficiently in PowerPoint, including how to:

• Change the slide order
• Reset your layout
• Change the slide dimensions
• Use PowerPoint Designer
• Format text
• Format objects
• Play a presentation (slide show)

With this knowledge under your belt, you’ll be ready to start creating PowerPoint presentations. Moreover, you’ll have taken your skills from beginner to proficient in no time at all. I will also include links to more advanced PowerPoint topics.

Ready to start learning how to make a PowerPoint presentation?

Take your PPT skills to the next level

Start with a blank presentation.

Note: Before you open PowerPoint and start creating your presentation, make sure you’ve collected your thoughts. If you’re going to make your slides compelling, you need to spend some time brainstorming.

For help with this, see our article with tips for nailing your business presentation  here .

The first thing you’ll need to do is to open PowerPoint. When you do, you are shown the Start Menu , with the Home tab open.

This is where you can choose either a blank theme (1) or a pre-built theme (2). You can also choose to open an existing presentation (3).

For now, go ahead and click on the  Blank Presentation (1)  thumbnail.

Doing so launches a brand new and blank presentation for you to work with. Before you start adding content to your presentation, let’s first familiarize ourselves with the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint interface

Here is how the program is laid out:

• The Application Header
• The Ribbon (including the Ribbon tabs)
• The Quick Access Toolbar (either above or below the Ribbon)
• The Slides Pane (slide thumbnails)

The Slide Area

The notes pane.

• The Status Bar (including the View Buttons)

Each one of these areas has options for viewing certain parts of the PowerPoint environment and formatting your presentation.

Below are the important things to know about certain elements of the PowerPoint interface.

The PowerPoint Ribbon

The Ribbon is contextual. That means that it will adapt to what you’re doing in the program.

For example, the Font, Paragraph and Drawing options are greyed out until you select something that has text in it, as in the example below (A).

Furthermore, if you start manipulating certain objects, the Ribbon will display additional tabs, as seen above (B), with more commands and features to help you work with those objects. The following objects have their own additional tabs in the Ribbon which are hidden until you select them:

• Online Pictures
• Screenshots
• Screen Recording

The Slides Pane

This is where you can preview and rearrange all the slides in your presentation.

Right-clicking on a slide  in the pane gives you additional options on the slide level that you won’t find on the Ribbon, such as  Duplicate Slide ,  Delete Slide , and  Hide Slide .

In addition, you can add sections to your presentation by  right-clicking anywhere in this Pane  and selecting  Add Section . Sections are extremely helpful in large presentations, as they allow you to organize your slides into chunks that you can then rearrange, print or display differently from other slides.

The Slide Area (A) is where you will build out your slides. Anything within the bounds of this area will be visible when you present or print your presentation.

Anything outside of this area (B) will be hidden from view. This means that you can place things here, such as instructions for each slide, without worrying about them being shown to your audience.

The  Notes Pane  is the space beneath the Slide Area where you can type in the speaker notes for each slide. It’s designed as a fast way to add and edit your slides’ talking points.

To expand your knowledge and learn more about adding, printing, and exporting your PowerPoint speaker notes, read our guide here .

Your speaker notes are visible when you print your slides using the Notes Pages option and when you use the Presenter View . To expand your knowledge and learn the ins and outs of using the Presenter View , read our guide here .

You can resize the  Notes Pane  by clicking on its edge and dragging it up or down (A). You can also minimize or reopen it by clicking on the Notes button in the Status Bar (B).

Note:  Not all text formatting displays in the Notes Pane, even though it will show up when printing your speaker notes. To learn more about printing PowerPoint with notes, read our guide here .

Now that you have a basic grasp of the PowerPoint interface at your disposal, it’s time to make your presentation.

Adding Content to Your PowerPoint Presentation

Notice that in the Slide Area , there are two rectangles with dotted outlines. These are called  Placeholders  and they’re set on the template in the Slide Master View .

To expand your knowledge and learn how to create a PowerPoint template of your own (which is no small task), read our guide here .

As the prompt text suggests, you can click into each placeholder and start typing text. These types of placeholder prompts are customizable too. That means that if you are using a company template, it might say something different, but the functionality is the same.

Note:  For the purposes of this example, I will create a presentation based on the content in the Starbucks 2018 Global Social Impact Report, which is available to the public on their website.

If you type in more text than there is room for, PowerPoint will automatically reduce its font size. You can stop this behavior by clicking on the  Autofit Options  icon to the left of the placeholder and selecting  Stop Fitting Text to this Placeholder .

Next, you can make formatting adjustments to your text by selecting the commands in the Font area and the  Paragraph area  of the  Home  tab of the Ribbon.

The Reset Command:  If you make any changes to your title and decide you want to go back to how it was originally, you can use the Reset button up in the Home tab .

Insert More Slides into Your Presentation

Now that you have your title slide filled in, it’s time to add more slides. To do that, simply go up to the  Home tab  and click on  New Slide . This inserts a new slide in your presentation right after the one you were on.

You can alternatively hit Ctrl+M on your keyboard to insert a new blank slide in PowerPoint. To learn more about this shortcut, see my guide on using Ctrl+M in PowerPoint .

Instead of clicking the New Slide command, you can also open the New Slide dropdown to see all the slide layouts in your PowerPoint template. Depending on who created your template, your layouts in this dropdown can be radically different.

If you insert a layout and later want to change it to a different layout, you can use the Layout dropdown instead of the New Slide dropdown.

After inserting a few different slide layouts, your presentation might look like the following picture. Don’t worry that it looks blank, next we will start adding content to your presentation.

If you want to follow along exactly with me, your five slides should be as follows:

• Title Slide
• Title and Content
• Section Header
• Two Content
• Picture with Caption

Adding Content to Your Slides

Now let’s go into each slide and start adding our content. You’ll notice some new types of placeholders.

On slide 2 we have a  Content Placeholder , which allows you to add any kind of content. That includes:

• A SmartArt graphic,
• A 3D object,
• A picture from the web,
• Or an icon.

To insert text, simply type it in or hit  Ctrl+C to Copy  and Ctrl+V to Paste  from elsewhere. To insert any of the other objects, click on the appropriate icon and follow the steps to insert it.

For my example, I’ll simply type in some text as you can see in the picture below.

Slides 3 and 4 only have text placeholders, so I’ll go ahead and add in my text into each one.

On slide 5 we have a Picture Placeholder . That means that the only elements that can go into it are:

• A picture from the web

To insert a picture into the picture placeholder, simply:

• Click on the  Picture  icon
• Find  a picture on your computer and select it
• Click on  Insert

Alternatively, if you already have a picture open somewhere else, you can select the placeholder and paste in (shortcut: Ctrl+V ) the picture. You can also drag the picture in from a file explorer window.

If you do not like the background of the picture you inserted onto your slide, you can remove the background here in PowerPoint. To see how to do this, read my guide here .

Placeholders aren’t the only way to add content to your slides. At any point, you can use the Insert tab to add elements to your slides.

You can use either the Title Only  or the  Blank  slide layout to create slides for content that’s different. For example, a three-layout content slide, or a single picture divider slide, as shown below.

In the first example above, I’ve inserted 6 text boxes, 3 icons, and 3 circles to create this layout. In the second example, I’ve inserted a full-sized picture and then 2 shapes and 2 text boxes.

The Reset Command:  Because these slides are built with shapes and text boxes (and not placeholders), hitting the  Reset button up in the  Home tab  won’t do anything.

That is a good thing if you don’t want your layouts to adjust. However, it does mean that it falls on you to make sure everything is aligned and positioned correctly.

For more on how to add and manipulate the different objects in PowerPoint, check out our step-by-step articles here:

• Using graphics in PowerPoint
• Inserting icons onto slides
• Adding pictures to your PowerPoint
• How to embed a video in PowerPoint
• How to add music to your presentation

Using Designer to generate more layouts ideas

If you have Office 365, your version of PowerPoint comes with a new feature called Designer (or Design Ideas). This is a feature that generates slide layout ideas for you. The coolest thing about this feature is that it uses the content you already have.

To use Designer , simply navigate to the  Design tab  in your Ribbon, and click on  Design Ideas .

NOTE: If the PowerPoint Designer is not working for you (it is grey out), see my troubleshooting guide for Designer .

Change the Overall Design (optional)

When you make a PowerPoint presentation, you’ll want to think about the overall design. Now that you have some content in your presentation, you can use the Design tab to change the look and feel of your slides.

For additional help thinking through the design of your presentation,  read my guide here .

A. Picking your PowerPoint slide size

If you have PowerPoint 2013 or later, when you create a blank document in PowerPoint, you automatically start with a widescreen layout with a 16:9 ratio. These dimensions are suitable for most presentations as they match the screens of most computers and projectors.

However, you do have the option to change the dimensions.

For example, your presentation might not be presented, but instead converted into a PDF or printed and distributed. In that case, you can easily switch to the standard dimensions with a 4:3 ratio by selecting from the dropdown (A).

You can also choose a custom slide size or change the slide orientation from landscape to portrait in the Custom Slide Size dialog box (B).

To learn all about the different PowerPoint slide sizes, and some of the issues you will face when changing the slide size of a non-blank presentation,  read my guide here .

 B. Selecting a PowerPoint theme

The next thing you can do is change the theme of your presentation to a pre-built one. For a detailed explanation of what a PowerPoint theme is, and how to best use it,  read my article here .

In the beginning of this tutorial, we started with a blank presentation, which uses the default Office theme as you can see in the picture below.

That gives you the most flexibility because it has a blank background and quite simple layouts that work for most presentations. However, it also means that it’s your responsibility to enhance the design.

If you’re comfortable with this, you can stay with the default theme or create your own custom theme ( read my guide here ). But if you would rather not have to think about design, then you can choose a pre-designed theme.

Microsoft provides 46 other pre-built themes, which include slide layouts, color variants and palettes, and fonts. Each one varies quite significantly, so make sure you look through them carefully.

To select a different theme, go to the  Design tab  in the Ribbon, and click on the  dropdown arrow  in the  Themes section .

For this tutorial, let’s select the  Frame  theme and then choose the third Variant in the theme. Doing so changes the layout, colors, and fonts of your presentation.

Note: The theme dropdown area is also where you can import or save custom themes. To see my favorite places to find professional PowerPoint templates and themes (and recommendations for why I like them), read my guide here .

C. How to change a slide background in PowerPoint

The next thing to decide is how you want your background to look for the entire presentation. In the  Variants area, you can see four background options.

For this example, we want our presentation to have a dark background, so let’s select Style 3. When you do so, you’ll notice that:

• The background color automatically changes across all slides
• The color of the text on most of the slides automatically changes to white so that it’s visible on the dark background
• The colors of the objects on slides #6 and #7 also adjust, in a way we may not want (we’ll likely have to make some manual adjustments to these slides)

Note: If you want to change the slide background for just that one slide, don’t left-click the style. Instead, right-click it and select Apply to Selected Slides .

After you change the background for your entire presentation, you can easily adjust the background for an individual slide.

Inside the Format Background pane, you can see you have the following options:

• Gradient fill
• Picture or texture fill
• Pattern fill
• Hide background

You can explore these options to find the PowerPoint background that best fits your presentation.

D. How to change your color palette in PowerPoint

Another thing you may want to adjust in your presentation, is the color scheme. In the picture below you can see the Theme Colors we are currently using for this presentation.

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own color palette. By default, the Office theme includes the Office color palette. This affects the colors you are presented with when you format any element within your presentation (text, shapes, SmartArt, etc.).

The good news is that the colors here are easy to change. To switch color palettes, simply:

• Go to the  Design tab in the Ribbon
• In the Variants area, click on the  dropdown arrow  and select  Colors
• Select  the color palette (or theme colors) you want

You can choose among the pre-built color palettes from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

As you build your presentation, make sure you use the colors from your theme to format objects. That way, changing the color palette adjusts all the colors in your presentation automatically.

E. How to change your fonts in PowerPoint

Just as we changed the color palette, you can do the same for the fonts.

Each PowerPoint theme comes with its own font combination. By default, the Office theme includes the Office font pairing. This affects the fonts that are automatically assigned to all text in your presentation.

The good news is that the font pairings are easy to change. To switch your Theme Fonts, simply:

• Go to the  Design tab  in the Ribbon
• Click on the  dropdown arrow  in the  Variants  area
• Select  Fonts
• Select  the font pairing you want

You can choose among the pre-built fonts from Office, or you can customize them to create your own.

If you are working with PowerPoint presentations on both Mac and PC computers, make sure you choose a safe PowerPoint font. To see a list of the safest PowerPoint fonts, read our guide here .

If you receive a PowerPoint presentation and the wrong fonts were used, you can use the Replace Fonts dialog box to change the fonts across your entire presentation. For details, read our guide here .

Adding Animations & Transitions (optional)

The final step to make a PowerPoint presentation compelling, is to consider using animations and transitions. These are by no means necessary to a good presentation, but they may be helpful in your situation.

A. Adding PowerPoint animations

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust animations engine designed to power your creativity. That being said, it’s also easy to get started with basic animations.

Animations are movements that you can apply to individual objects on your slide.

To add a PowerPoint animation to an element of your slide, simply:

• Select the  element
• Go to the  Animations tab in the Ribbon
• Click on the  dropdown arrow  to view your options
• Select the  animation  you want

You can add animations to multiple objects at one time by selecting them all first and then applying the animation.

B. How to preview a PowerPoint animation

There are three ways to preview a PowerPoint animation:

• Click on the Preview button in the Animations tab
• Click on the little star  next to the slide
• Play the slide in Slide Show Mode

To learn other ways to run your slide show, see our guide on presenting a PowerPoint slide show with shortcuts .

To adjust the settings of your animations, explore the options in the  Effect Options ,  Advanced Animation  and the  Timing  areas of the  Animation tab .

Note:  To see how to make objects appear and disappear in your slides by clicking a button,  read our guide here .

C. How to manage your animations in PowerPoint

The best way to manage lots of animations on your slide is with the Animation Pane . To open it, simply:

• Navigate to the  Animations tab
• Select the  Animation Pane

Inside the Animation Pane, you’ll see all of the different animations that have been applied to objects on your slide, with their numbers marked as pictured above.

Note: To see examples of PowerPoint animations that can use in PowerPoint, see our list of PowerPoint animation tutorials here .

D. How to add transitions to your PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint has an incredibly robust transition engine so that you can dictate how your slides change from one to the other. It is also extremely easy to add transitions to your slides.

In PowerPoint, transitions are the movements (or effects) you see as you move between two slides.

To add a transition to a PowerPoint slide, simply:

• Select the  slide
• Go to the  Transitions tab in the Ribbon
• In the Transitions to This Slide area, click on the  dropdown arrow  to view your options
• Select the  transition  you want

To adjust the settings of the transition, explore the options in the  Timing  area of the Transitions tab.

You can also add the same transition to multiple slides. To do that, select them in the  Slides Pane  and apply the transition.

E. How to preview a transition in PowerPoint

There are three ways to preview your PowerPoint transitions (just like your animations):

• Click on the Preview  button in the Transitions tab
• Click on the little star  beneath the slide number in the thumbnail view

Note:  In 2016, PowerPoint added a cool new transition, called Morph. It operates a bit differently from other transitions. For a detailed tutorial on how to use the cool Morph transition,  see our step-by-step article here .

Save Your PowerPoint Presentation

After you’ve built your presentation and made all the adjustments to your slides, you’ll want to save your presentation. YOu can do this several different ways.

To save a PowerPoint presentation using your Ribbon, simply:

• Navigate to the  File tab
•  Select  Save As  on the left
• Choose  where you want to save your presentation
• Name  your presentation and/or adjust your file type settings
• Click  Save

You can alternatively use the  Ctrl+S keyboard shortcut to save your presentation. I recommend using this shortcut frequently as you build your presentation to make sure you don’t lose any of your work.

This is the standard way to save a presentation. However, there may be a situation where you want to save your presentation as a different file type.

To learn how to save your presentation as a PDF, see our guide on converting PowerPoint to a PDF .

How to save your PowerPoint presentation as a template

Once you’ve created a presentation that you like, you may want to turn it into a template. The easiest – but not technically correct – way, is to simply create a copy of your current presentation and then change the content.

But be careful! A PowerPoint template is a special type of document and it has its own parameters and behaviors.

If you’re interested in learning about how to create your own PowerPoint template from scratch, see our guide on how to create a PowerPoint template .

Printing Your PowerPoint Presentation

After finishing your PowerPoint presentation, you may want to print it out on paper. Printing your slides is relatively easy.

To open the Print dialog box, you can either:

• Hit Ctrl+P on your keyboard
• Or go to the Ribbon and click on File and then Print

Inside the Print dialog box, you can choose from the various printing settings:

• Printer: Select a printer to use (or print to PDF or OneNote)
• Slides: Choose which slides you want to print
• Layout: Determine how many slides you want per page (this is where you can print the notes, outline, and handouts)
• Collated or uncollated (learn what collated printing means here )
• Color: Choose to print in color, grayscale or black & white

There are many more options for printing your PowerPoint presentations. Here are links to more in-depth articles:

• How to print multiple slides per page
• How to print your speaker notes in PowerPoint
• How to save PowerPoint as a picture presentation

So that’s how to create a PowerPoint presentation if you are brand new to it. We’ve also included a ton of links to helpful resources to boost your PowerPoint skills further.

When you are creating your presentation, it is critical to first focus on the content (what you are trying to say) before getting lost inserting and playing with elements. The clearer you are on what you want to present, the easier it will be to build it out in PowerPoint.

If you enjoyed this article, you can learn more about our PowerPoint training courses and other presentation resources by  visiting us here .

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PowerPoint 101: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners

Are you struggling with PowerPoint? You need a quick design in PowerPoint but don't know where to start? Don't worry, you have nothing to be ashamed of.

In this article, we're going to refresh the most important PowerPoint basics so you can take advantage of this Microsoft software and create high-impact presentations at any time!

Millions of users worldwide use Microsoft 365 services , making PowerPoint the presentation design software with the highest market share. And with good reason! PowerPoint's features stand out for its usability and originality . We can tell you that PowerPoint is pretty intuitive software, and it's a great option to choose when working with presentations on a daily basis. So, are you ready for a quick PowerPoint 101 class?

Let ' s see what you ' re going to learn today with this PowerPoint Guide :

What is PowerPoint?

What are the best uses of powerpoint, powerpoint basics: what are the components of powerpoint workspace, mastering powerpoint: what are the main features of powerpoint, what are powerpoint templates and where to find them, time to practice how to make a presentation in powerpoint.

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation design software that is part of Microsoft 365 . This software allows you to design presentations by combining text, images, graphics, video, and animation on slides in a simple and intuitive way.

Over time, PowerPoint has evolved and improved its accessibility to users. For this reason, it has been adapted to the main operating systems and modalities:

• PowerPoint Online

Additionally, you can use Word and Excel in this online version. That way, you'll be able to make real-time changes in the cloud without fearing losing your files. Sounds great, right?

PowerPoint has a versatile range of uses. Here's a list of the different tasks you can complete with this presentation design software:

• Business presentations or Pitch decks.
• Marketing, Sales and HR plans.
• Project briefs and timelines.
• Inductions to new employees.
• Seminars and educational classes.
• Professional portfolio of photos or designs.
• Presentations of a research summary.
• Presentations for special occasions.

These are just a few examples of the multiple possibilities this Microsoft software offers. Your imagination is the only limit!

Stay tuned as we continue with this PowerPoint 101 Guide...

In order to deeply understand this presentation design software, you need to recognize its main components. Now it's time to learn about the PowerPoint basics!

A quick note before going any further: when opening PowerPoint, some of the commands in the ribbons will look grayish and won't be highlighted when you hover the mouse over them.

This happens since some commands need to be selected in order to function. For example, if you want to change the color of a text, you first need to select it.

That being said, let's start with this Guide for PowerPoint beginners:

PowerPoint Main Window

The first aspect to learn is PowerPoint Main Window. To facilitate the explanation, we've organized its main elements with numbers from 1 to 10:

Based on that, the main components of PowerPoint window are the following:

1. Quick Access Toolbar: allows you to customize commands to have them at hand. You only have to select it and go to "More commands."

2. Title Bar: shows you the name of your file and other "Suggested options" like Slide Master View . These options will vary depending on the use you give to the commands.

3. File Tab: you will see the Home Menu (PowerPoint backstage) by selecting it. There, you can create a new presentation, save it, print it, export it, and many other options.

4. The Ribbon: it's where PowerPoint tabs and tools are. These tools can also be called "commands" or “features.”

5. More Button or Down Arrow: these arrows allow you to view more tools or layout options in PowerPoint.

6. Slides Pane: shows your slides in thumbnail size. By right-clicking, you can access additional options for customizing each slide. Perfect for PowerPoint beginners!

7. Slide: PowerPoint's blank canvas and the frame to be seen when presenting the file.

8. Placeholders: they are dotted boxes that will store your content.

9. Status Bar: allows you to view the slide number, grammatical errors, speaker notes, and the comments on your file.

10. Zoom: allows you to enlarge or minimize your PowerPoint workspace. The range goes from 10 to 400%.

PowerPoint Tabs

The PowerPoint tabs are the control desk of your presentation . Since PowerPoint's features are too many, they're organized in tabs.

You can come and go between tabs as you need. Once you click on a tab, it will open its ribbon, and there, you'll be able to see all the tools related to that particular category.

This PowerPoint tutorial for beginners will give you an overview of all PowerPoint tabs . Pay attention to the following list:

• Transitions Tab
• Animations Tab
• Slide Show Tab
• Recording Tab

1. Home Tab

The Home tab is the most common tab of PowerPoint. This is the tab you'll probably use the most if you're designing a presentation deck from scratch.

It allows you to add new slides and change the text characteristics : font, size, boldness, underlining, alignment, etc. If you've ever used Microsoft Word, these features will be familiar to you.

Also, you will find commands to edit the characteristics of the geometric shapes you insert. This includes: fill color, line color, sharpe effects, among others.

2. Insert Tab

The Insert tab is exactly what its name says it is. In this ribbon, you'll find all the options concerning adding a new element to your PowerPoint presentation .

You can insert a picture, some geometric shapes, icons, WordArt graphics, among others. We can tell you that this tab is really helpful for PowerPoint beginners!

For example, if you have a lot of data in PowerPoint , you could add a chart or diagram to show your information in a more visual way. Also, you can embed videos or music into PowerPoint really easily.

• PowerPoint tip for beginners: To be able to write text on your slides, you need a text box. So, if you're designing your presentation from scratch, remember to go first to the Insert tab and add a text box to start writing.

3. Design Tab

If you are one of those people who enjoy choosing the design of a PowerPoint presentation, this tab will be your favorite.

The Design tab offers a wide range of premade designs , allowing you to get more polished slides. Even better, if you explore its ribbon, you can adjust the color palette and change the overall style of your PowerPoint deck.

The PowerPoint interface, as this basic PowerPoint Tutorial, is really intuitive. We believe that you won't have any problem with this tab!

4. Transitions Tab

Using transitions in PowerPoint is a dynamic way to move from one slide to the next during a presentation. This feature is PowerPoint's stamp, so don ' t miss it!

Some PowerPoint transitions are really classic, like wiping the old slide to present the new one. Others are somewhat over the top, like the “Vortex” or the “Airplane” effect.

If you click on each kind of transition, you'll see a preview on how it would look when presenting. Really cool, right?

5. Animations Tab

In case you want to add special effects for certain elements in your slides , the Animations tab in PowerPoint will interest you.

Like the Transitions tab, you will find various animation effects in this ribbon. It's a matter of trying and choosing the best one according to your needs!

6. Slide Show Tab

As its name says, the Slide Show tab is about presenting your slides . We really like that it gives you several options to show up your presentation!

Considering that you're a PowerPoint beginner, you're not likely to use the Slide Show tab very much.

But if you're curious about this command, you must read our article: How to Make a PowerPoint Slideshow that Runs Automatically?

7. Review Tab

The Review tab is not often used by PowerPoint beginners either.

However, if your job is related to writing or if you work at an international company, this tool can be extremely useful!

With this tab, you can check the slide's spelling, translate the text in real-time, and add comments to your slides . This last function can be helpful to give feedback to a colleague.

8. View Tab

This View tab allows you to change the view of your PowerPoint slides and make handouts from them, among other things.

As you can see, the majority of its commands are really specific. So you won't have any issues while designing, test and see!

In this section, our favorite command for PowerPoint beginners is Slide Master . Explore more about this tool in our guide!

9. Recording Tab

In the last versions of this design presentation software, PowerPoint added the Recording tab. As its name says, it allows you to record all your presentation slides .

This ribbon has advanced commands, so the most common action for a PowerPoint beginner is to take a screenshot or record the screen sequentially .

10. Help Tab

Finally, there is the Help tab. If you have any problem or question concerning how to use PowerPoint, you may go here to look for a solution.

In the latest versions, Windows has added a “Show Training” option. You can click this command to practice the PowerPoint basics since it will download training templates.

As a beginner in PowerPoint, you must recognize the objective of each PowerPoint tab to be able to master the software . But, in order to conduct an outstanding presentation deck, you also need to dominate its most important features. Let's see some of them in the next section!

If you feel ready to delve deeper into PowerPoint's tools, this section is for you.

As you may know , 24Slides specializes in creating outstanding presentations for any Design Project . So, we asked one of our experts about her favorite PowerPoint features, and we want to share them all with you!

Carmen Navarrete , Graphic Designer at 24Slides, highlighted the following features that will make your presentations stand out from the crowd:

PowerPoint Feature #1: Crop to Shape

This first PowerPoint feature is simple but effective!

Let's see how to use it:

• First, choose an image you want to cut and insert it into your workspace.
• Once inserted, select it with the mouse.
• Go to the "Picture Format" tab.
• Press the arrow of the "Crop" button (right side of the screen).
• Select "Crop to Shape."
• Choose your favorite shape and customize your PowerPoint presentation!

PowerPoint Feature #2: Merge Shapes

If you don't like any figure enough, you can create one from scratch!

This is possible thanks to the "Merge Shapes" option. Follow these steps to unleash your creativity:

• First choose an image you want to cut.
• Check the list of PowerPoint shapes (Insert tab > Shapes).
• Choose two or three figures you want to merge (they can be the same figure).
• Select the figures you are going to merge (see the image).
• Once selected, go to the "Shape Format" tab.
• Press the "Merge Shapes" option and the type of merge you want (test and choose!).

• A new figure will appear, and you must fill it with the image from the first step.
• Stay on the Shape Format tab and go to "Shape Fill" (button in the middle of the ribbon).
• Select "Picture Fill" and browse for your image.
• Select the image to fill your new figure, and that's it!

• PowerPoint tip for beginners: When your merged figure is ready, paste the image to the background of your slide to achieve a better result. This way, you can use your image as a canvas and see if both elements fit well.

PowerPoint Feature #3: Insert Icons

This PowerPoint feature is quite easy to follow for PowerPoint beginners!

Just follow these steps:

• Go to the Insert tab.
• Select the "Icons" option.
• A Microsoft 365 library will open, where you can search for the required icon.
• Now, you must insert it into your presentation and adapt it to your design.
• If you have an active Microsoft 365 subscription, you'll have access to a larger number of icons in PowerPoint.

• PowerPoint tip for beginners: If you want to learn more about icons in PowerPoint, read our article on How to Use Icons to Make Amazing PowerPoint Presentations .

PowerPoint Feature #4: Insert SmartArt

PowerPoint's SmartArt is one of the most popular and accessible tools to dominate while learning about PowerPoint basics.

To use it in your slide deck, you must:

• Select SmartArt.
• See all SmartArt categories and choose your favorite based on your needs.
• Add the text you have prepared and adapt it to your presentation.

We want to give you some ideas to master this SmartArt tool in PowerPoint: you can make timelines , flowcharts , and even a Venn diagram in just a few seconds. Try and see!

PowerPoint Feature #5: Remove Background

If you don't know how to use Photoshop and want to remove the background from an image, in this PowerPoint 101 Guide, we show you how:

• First choose the image you want to remove the background from.
• Insert the image in the PowerPoint workspace.
• Select the image and go to the "Picture Format" tab.
• Select "Remove Background" (first option on the left).
• You can keep and remove parts of the image with the first two tools of the ribbon (see image).
• Keep in mind that all the sections highlighted in purple will be deleted.

• We recommend zooming in to keep or remove parts of the image with more detail.
• Once you're done, press the "Keep Changes" button.
• Finally, adapt the new image to your PowerPoint presentation.

• PowerPoint tip for beginners: Choose a high-contrast photo or image for best results. In other words, the outline of the person or object you want to cut out must have clear edges and cannot blend with the image's background color.

PowerPoint Feature #6: Add Speaker Notes

The latest PowerPoint feature is a command you can use to prepare your speech before presenting to an audience.

Learning how to add speaker notes in PowerPoint is simple:

• Select the slide that needs some notes.
• Usually, there is a footer below the slide, but if not, you will have to activate it.
• Go to the View tab and select "Notes."
• The Speaker Notes section will appear, and you can add whatever you want!

• PowerPoint tip for beginners: In case you want to practice your entire presentation and have a lot of notes, go to the View tab and select "Notes Page" (fourth command). You'll be able to see all your Speaker Notes faster!

PowerPoint Feature #7: PowerPoint Translator

If you've ever wondered how to translate your PowerPoint Slides, we'll explain the step by step here:

• Go to the Review tab.
• Select the text you want to translate.
• Press the “Translate” button.
• A panel will open on the right side of the screen.
• Choose the language you need and you'll see the translation in real-time.
• If you press Insert, the text will change to the new translation!

PowerPoint Feature #8: Screen Recording

The process of recording your screen in PowerPoint is straightforward and intuitive. Let's see:

• Go to the “Record” or “Recording” tab.
• Press the "Record Slide Show" button or the “From Beginning” button (depending on your PPT version).
• A new window will open.
• Select the red record button and start recording!
• When you're done, select “Export.”
• By default, the video will be 1080p. If you want to lower the video quality, go to "Customize export."
• Name the video, save it to a folder and that's it!

As you may have noticed, this software has endless PowerPoint design options for beginners. We encourage you to try and test each functionality!

However, we're clear that PowerPoint has different features, so it can be hard to know where to start. That's why understanding PowerPoint basics is crucial if you truly want to master this software!

Our PowerPoint 101 Guide continues; stay tuned to discover more great stuff about this Microsoft software. Keep reading!

A PowerPoint template is a pre-made design that you can use for your own means, and that will save you a lot of time!

Templates in PowerPoint are a great resource for designing since all the structure is already done, and you only have to update the content . We can tell you they're the perfect resource for PowerPoint beginners!

They can be incredibly specific. For example, there are templates for a SWOT analysis or a complete Marketing report. Otherwise, templates can also be very general, with several slides with a similar design.

If you struggle with the artistic part of designing presentations, downloading PowerPoint templates will be a life changer!

How to download PowerPoint templates for free?

If you didn't know, 24Slides has an extensive repository of PowerPoint templates. But how to obtain them? It's really simple:

• First, create an account on our Free Templates Website with the button “Register” (that way, you can download everything without problems!).
• Think about the graphics you need and the ideal structure for your presentation deck (you can also change the color palette later!).
• Download it in PowerPoint format (if you prefer it in Google Slides format, you'll also find this type in our repository).
• Edit and change everything you need for your PowerPoint presentation!

24Slides Designers specialize in business and corporate PowerPoints, but you'll also find other types of templates on our website: Data templates, Timelines, Roadmaps, Matrixes, Diagrams, and more.

Keep in mind that a well-designed PowerPoint deck helps you communicate stronger messages to your audience . Don't waste this opportunity to make your presentation shine!

If you want to learn more about how to master PowerPoint, do not miss the last section. We'll show you some PowerPoint basics from the software itself!

A PowerPoint 101 Guide wouldn't be that useful with no examples. So, if you enjoy the step-by-step guides, this section is for you.

Below, we'll show you how to make a simple PowerPoint presentation. But first, here are some tips to be more efficient in the process:

• Be clear about what type of presentation you're going to create (is it corporate, playful, or more creative?).
• Make a draft with the most important information you need to add and, thus, generate a good structure in your presentation .
• Get inspired by examples on the internet , but adapt them to your needs and audience.
• If you will create a business presentation, keep in mind your brand identity .
• Make sure your PowerPoint works , you may need to update to the latest version or pay for the subscription.

Step 1: Make a draft to structure your presentation

As we said before, writing a draft or script of your content will be vital to start on the right foot as a PowerPoint beginner.

This advice is so important that we choose it as the first step to learning how to make a PowerPoint presentation. Remember: Planning is key!

Regarding the process of planning, we share some good practices:

• If your presentation will be very long , write down all subtitles and content in a Word document. This will help you organize your ideas and give a correct sequence to your narrative. In addition to avoiding redundancies in the message you want to communicate.
• If your presentation will use many visual resources , we recommend choosing high-quality images. This will help you have a starting graphic base. Some good free image repositories are Freepick , Unsplash , and Adobe Stock .
• If your presentation is based on data , have all your results summarized or your most relevant conclusions at hand. The idea of making a PowerPoint presentation is to show your information in the simplest way possible for your audience.

Step 2: Create a new document in PowerPoint

Once you check that all the functions are working fine with the software, please open it and go to the File tab. If you've ever used Word or Excel, you'll probably find this Home Menu familiar.

In short, this is the main page of PowerPoint, where you can create a new presentation or open an older one. Let's see:

In order to follow this part of our PowerPoint Tutorial correctly, take into consideration the following points:

• On the lower side of the screen, you'll find your recently opened PowerPoint files. This option is great for saving some time.
• If you don't find the presentation you're looking for, click on the “Open” option at the left bar and find older files.
• Don't forget to save your presentation with a relatable name so you won't lose sight of it!

Step 3: Choose the perfect design for your presentation

With your information ready in a draft, it's time to choose the design of your PowerPoint slide deck. You must imagine that the available design options are endless!

For practical reasons, you have three options regarding the design:

• Start a design from scratch (very difficult for a PowerPoint beginner).
• Choose an established PowerPoint design or layout.
• Download a PowerPoint template and modify some details.

Don't worry if you don't know how to continue! In this PowerPoint 101 class, we're going to explain step by step the second option:

How do you set a default design in PowerPoint?

• First, go to the Design tab.
• Open the list of options by clicking on the third arrow.
• Choose the design you like the most for your PowerPoint presentation.

If you want to explore more PowerPoint designs, there is a way to research online. For that, you only need to:

• Go to the File tab (first tab, next to the Home tab).
• Select "More themes" (see image).

• Use the search engine and write the keyword you want (it can be related to your business or it can be a color).
• Check the list of PowerPoint themes and choose your favorite.
• Wait a few minutes while it loads and keep designing in PowerPoint!

How do you change the layout of one slide in PowerPoint?

In this PowerPoint 101 Guide, you will also learn how to configure the layout of each slide.

Keep in mind that to have a high-impact presentation, you must adapt your slides' design to the type of content you'll add. And using layouts is perfect for this purpose.

To change the layout type in PowerPoint, follow these steps:

• Right-click on the slide you want to change.
• Select the "Layout" option.
• You will find more than ten layout models.
• Choose the one that best suits your content.
• Repeat these steps for each slide (if you wish or require).

How do you customize your slides in PowerPoint?

The design process in this PowerPoint 101 Guide doesn't stop there.

You also can customize your presentation's color palette , font style, background format , and graphics effects .

Just go to:

• Design tab > Variants.
• Select Colors, Fonts, Effects or Background Styles (as you need).
• If you're inspired and want to create your own background in PowerPoint, select Background Styles > Format Background.
• Finally, custom your slides as you want!

Step 4: Add all your information to your presentation

Now, it's time to add all your information to your slides. If your script is long, take your time to copy each part of it.

In this PowerPoint Tutorial, we're going to show how our design is going so far. We design at your side!

Step 5: Add transitions or animations to your presentation

The stamp of PowerPoint is its transitions and animations! Naturally, our PowerPoint 101 has considered these essential commands.

If you want to add them to your presentation and make your speech more fluid, follow these steps:

• Go to the tabs section of PowerPoint.
• Select "Transitions" or "Animations" and try your favorite effects.
• Remember that if you select Transitions, these will modify the entire slide, while Animations can be added to each element individually.

When choosing one Animation, you can eliminate it if you aren't 100% convinced. You only need to:

• Select the Animation number that appears on the corner.
• Press the "Delete" or "Backspace" button on your keyboard.
• Choose another Animation in PowerPoint if you want!

This “PowerPoint for dummies” is full of tips and tricks! So here is one more: Don't overuse transitions or animations in PowerPoint ; they can make your presentation slower and unprofessional . Use this tool in a subtle way!

Step 6: Refine the final details

As always, every final product must be reviewed. Especially if you're learning the PowerPoint fundamentals with us.

We recommend reviewing each slide of your PowerPoint presentation one final time. In this process, you will be able to:

• Add icons if your presentation requires it.
• Change any image or illustration if they don't convince you.
• Change transitions or animations.
• Customize your presentation's color palette .
• Proofread your slides' text or add more information.
• Add speaker notes to your presentation.

Step 7: Slideshow your presentation

When your presentation is finished, it's essential to know how to make a PowerPoint slideshow. This way, you can see your slides from the exact same perspective your audience will see them.

To slideshow your presentation in PowerPoint, follow these simple steps for PowerPoint beginners:

• Position yourself on your first slide.
• Go to the bottom right of the software.
• Select the "Slide Show" button (see image).
• Have a look of your presentation by clicking on each slide or pressing the right arrow on your keyboard.
• To go out from the Slide Show mode, you have to press the ESC key.

Now you can present your slides like an expert!

When you master this presentation design software, you'll be able to create amazing things in PowerPoint : infographics, diagrams, charts, pitch decks, business cards, calendars, you name it!

This was our PowerPoint Guide for beginners. We hope that our compilation today will be useful for conducting more professional presentations in the future and, why not, achieve all your goals!

Don't forget to share this PowerPoint 101 Guide with your co-workers or whoever you want!

Want to boost your beginner PowerPoint skills? Check out this content:

• How to Work with Multiple Images in PowerPoint
• How to Add a Timer to Your Powerpoint Presentations
• PowerPoint Charts, Graphs, & Tables Made Easy | Tips & Tricks
• How To Use PowerPoint Design Ideas - All Questions Answered!
• 36 Fun Icebreakers for Your Next Presentation
• The Cost of PowerPoint Presentations: Discover the hidden expenses you might overlook!

Create professional presentations online

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PowerPoint 2016

In this free PowerPoint 2016 tutorial, learn how to use themes and background styles, add pictures and clip art, modify charts and lists, and do more to create standout presentations.

PowerPoint Basics

• 1 Getting Started with PowerPoint arrow_forward_ios ✓ Get to know the PowerPoint 2016 interface.
• 2 Understanding OneDrive arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn all about working with your Microsoft account and OneDrive.
• 3 Creating and Opening Presentations arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn all about creating and opening presentations.
• 4 Saving Presentations arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to save presentations.

Working with Slides

• 5 Slide Basics arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn the basics of working with slides.
• 6 Text Basics arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to cut, copy, paste, and format text.
• 7 Applying Themes arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to apply a theme to your slides.
• 8 Applying Transitions arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to apply transitions to your slides.
• 9 Managing Slides arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn the tools available to help organize and prepare your slide show.
• 10 Using Find & Replace arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to find and replace text.
• 11 Printing arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to print your slides.
• 12 Presenting Your Slide Show arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to present your slide show to an audience.

Text and Objects

• 13 Lists arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to add numbered and bulleted lists.
• 14 Indents and Line Spacing arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to use indents and line spacing.
• 15 Inserting Pictures arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to insert and modify images.
• 16 Formatting Pictures arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to format the images in your slides.
• 17 Shapes arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to add and modify shapes.
• 18 Aligning, Ordering, and Grouping Objects arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to align, group, and order objects.
• 19 Animating Text and Objects arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to animate text and objects.

More Objects

• 20 Inserting Videos arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to add and edit videos within your slides.
• 21 Inserting Audio arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to insert and edit audio in your slides.
• 22 Tables arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to add and modify tables.
• 23 Charts arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to add and modify charts.
• 24 SmartArt Graphics arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to add and edit SmartArt graphics.

Review and Collaborating

• 25 Checking Spelling and Grammar arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to use the spelling and grammar check features.
• 26 Reviewing Presentations arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to review presentations before you present them to an audience.
• 27 Inspecting and Protecting Presentations arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to inspect and protect your presentation.

Customizing Your Presentation

• 28 Modifying Themes arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn all about modifying themes to mix and match colors and fonts.
• 29 Slide Master View arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to use Slide Master view to ensure a consistent look.
• 30 Hyperlinks arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to add and edit hyperlinks.
• 31 Action Buttons arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to add and edit action buttons.
• 32 Rehearsing and Recording Your Presentation arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to rehearse and record your presentation.
• 33 Sharing Your Presentation Online arrow_forward_ios ✓ Learn how to share your presentations online.
• 34 Buying Office 2016 arrow_forward_ios ✓ If you're considering purchasing Office 2016, learn about some important changes you should know about.
• 35 New Features in Office 2016 arrow_forward_ios ✓ Discover some of the new features in Office 2016.
• 36 PowerPoint Quiz arrow_forward_ios ✓ Test your knowledge of PowerPoint by taking our quiz.

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Simple Steps to Make a PowerPoint Presentation

Last Updated: April 28, 2024 Fact Checked

Creating a New PowerPoint

Creating the title slide, adding a new slide, adding content to slides, adding transitions, testing and saving your presentation.

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Darlene Antonelli, MA . Darlene Antonelli is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. Darlene has experience teaching college courses, writing technology-related articles, and working hands-on in the technology field. She earned an MA in Writing from Rowan University in 2012 and wrote her thesis on online communities and the personalities curated in such communities. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 4,330,986 times. Learn more...

Do you want to have your data in a slide show? If you have Microsoft 365, you can use PowerPoint! PowerPoint is a program that's part of the Microsoft Office suite (which you have to pay for) and is available for both Windows and Mac computers. This wikiHow teaches you how to create your own Microsoft PowerPoint presentation on a computer.

How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation

• Open the PowerPoint app, select a template and theme, then like “Create.”
• Click the text box to add your title and subtitle to create your title slide.
• Click the “Insert” tab, then “New Slide” to add another slide.
• Choose the type of slide you want to add, then add text and pictures.
• Rearrange slides by dragging them up or down in the preview box.

Things You Should Know

• Templates make it easy to create vibrant presentations no matter your skill level.
• When adding photos, you can adjust their sizes by clicking and dragging in or out from their corners.
• You can add animated transitions between slides or to individual elements like bullet points and blocks of text.

• If you don't have a Microsoft Office 365 subscription, you can use the website instead of the desktop app. Go to https://powerpoint.office.com/ to use the website version.
• You can also use the mobile app to make presentations, though it's easier to do this on a computer, which has a larger screen, a mouse, and a keyboard.

• If you don't want to use a template, just click the Blank option in the upper-left side of the page and skip to the next part.

• Skip this step if your selected template has no themes available.

• If you're creating a PowerPoint presentation for which an elaborate title slide has been requested, ignore this step.

• You can change the font and size of text used from the Home tab that's in the orange ribbon at the top of the window.

• You can also just leave this box blank if you like.

• You can also click and drag in or out one of a text box's corners to shrink or enlarge the text box.

• On a Mac, you'll click the Home tab instead. [1] X Research source

• Clicking the white slide-shaped box above this option will result in a new text slide being inserted.

• Title Slide
• Title and Content
• Section Header
• Two Content
• Content with Caption
• Picture with Caption

• Naturally, the title slide should be the first slide in your presentation, meaning that it should be the top slide in the left-hand column.

• Skip this step and the next two steps if your selected slide uses a template that doesn't have text boxes in it.

• Text boxes in PowerPoint will automatically format the bulk of your text for you (e.g., adding bullet points) based on the context of the content itself.
• You can add notes that the Presentation will not include (but you'll still be able to see them on your screen) by clicking Notes at the bottom of the slide.

• You can change the font of the selected text by clicking the current font's name and then clicking your preferred font.
• If you want to change the size of the text, click the numbered drop-down box and then click a larger or smaller number based on whether you want to enlarge or shrink the text.
• You can also change the color, bolding, italicization, underlining, and so on from here.

• Photos in particular can be enlarged or shrunk by clicking and dragging out or in one of their corners.

• Remember to keep slides uncluttered and relatively free of distractions. It's best to keep the amount of text per slide to around 33 words or less. [2] X Research source

• Slide content will animate in the order in which you assign transitions. For example, if you animate a photo on the slide and then animate the title, the photo will appear before the title.
• Make your slideshow progress automatically by setting the speed of every transition to align with your speech as well as setting each slide to Advance . [3] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source

• If you need to exit the presentation, press Esc .

• Windows - Click File , click Save , double-click This PC , select a save location, enter a name for your presentation, and click Save .
• Mac - Click File , click Save As... , enter the presentation's name in the "Save As" field, select a save location by clicking the "Where" box and clicking a folder, and click Save .

Community Q&A

• If you save your PowerPoint presentation in .pps format instead of the default .ppt format, double-clicking your PowerPoint presentation file will prompt the presentation to open directly into the slideshow view. Thanks Helpful 5 Not Helpful 0
• If you don't have Microsoft Office, you can still use Apple's Keynote program or Google Slides to create a PowerPoint presentation. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Your PowerPoint presentation (or some features in it) may not open in significantly older versions of PowerPoint. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 2
• Great PowerPoint presentations avoid placing too much text on one slide. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=DBDCE00C929AA5D8!252&ithint=file%2cpptx&app=PowerPoint&authkey=!AH4O9NxcbehqzIg
• ↑ https://www.virtualsalt.com/powerpoint.htm
• ↑ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/set-the-timing-and-speed-of-a-transition-c3c3c66f-4cca-4821-b8b9-7de0f3f6ead1#:~:text=To%20make%20the%20slide%20advance,effect%20on%20the%20slide%20finishes .

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Create and Manage Slides in Microsoft PowerPoint 2016

Add and remove slides.

• Divide presentations into sections
• Rearrange slides and sections
• Apply themes
• Change slide backgrounds
• Skills review
• Practice tasks

In this chapter

Practice files

For this chapter, use the practice files from the PowerPoint2016SBS\Ch03 folder. For practice file download instructions, see the introduction.

When you create a presentation from a design template, the only slide that is immediately available is the title slide. It’s up to you to add more slides for the content that you want the presentation to include. You can create slides based on slide templates that are designed to hold specific types of content, or you can copy existing slides from other presentations.

When the presentation you’re developing has multiple slides, you can organize them into sections. Sections are not visible to the audience, but they make it easier to work with slide content in logical segments. A logical presentation and an overall consistent look, punctuated by variations that add weight exactly where it is needed, can enhance the likelihood that your intended audience will receive the message you want to convey.

This chapter guides you through procedures related to adding and removing slides, dividing presentations into sections, rearranging slides and sections, applying themes, and changing slide backgrounds.

The content in this chapter is about slides in general, rather than the content of the slides. Chapters 4 through 8 of this book are about working with the various types of slide content.

The appearance and structure of slides is defined by the slide layouts associated with the slide master that is part of the design template. Slide layouts define the elements on specific types of slides, such as:

• Slide backgrounds and incorporated graphics.
• Text box locations, sizes, and formats.
• Default paragraph and character formats for each text box location.
• Standard headers or footers.

Text boxes can contain static content that can’t be changed by the presentation author (for example, a company logo), or they can serve as placeholders that define the default formatting of content entered within the text box.

A slide master could have only one slide layout, but most have unique slide layouts for slides that display the presentation title, section titles, and various combinations of slide titles and content, and a blank slide with only the background. Each slide layout is named; the name suggests the primary application of the slide layout, but you aren’t limited to that suggestion; you can enter any type of content in any slide layout and modify the layout of any slide. The slide layouts that are available in a presentation are displayed on the New Slide menu.

For information about working with slide masters and slide layouts, see “Customize slide masters and layouts” in Chapter 12, “Create custom presentation elements.”

The structure and design of each slide layout is visible on its thumbnail

You can modify the built-in slide layouts, create your own slide layouts, or create entirely new sets of slide layouts called slide masters, and you can reset slides to match their slide layouts, or apply different slide layouts to existing slides.

Insert new slides

When you create a new slide, PowerPoint inserts it after the currently active slide. In a new presentation based on a standard PowerPoint template, a slide you add after the title slide has the Title And Content layout, and a slide added after a slide other than the title slide has the layout of the preceding slide.

Click to view larger image

The Title And Content layout accommodates a title and either text or graphic content—a table, chart, diagram, picture, clip art image, or media clip

If you want to add a slide that has a different layout, you can select the layout when you insert the slide or you can change the slide layout after you create the slide.

To add a slide based on the default slide layout

• Select the slide after which you want to add the new slide.

Do either of the following:

• On the Home tab, in the Slides group, click the New Slide button (not its arrow).
• Press Ctrl+M .

You can reset slide content to the slide layout defaults by clicking the Reset button in the Slides group on the Home tab. If you add content to a slide and then realize that the content would work better with a different layout, you can change the slide layout by clicking the Layout arrow in the Slides group, and then clicking the slide layout you want to apply.

To add a slide based on any slide layout

• On the Home tab, in the Slides group, click the New Slide arrow to display the New Slide gallery and menu.
• In the gallery, click a slide layout thumbnail to add a slide based on that slide layout.

Copy and import slides and content

You can reuse slides from one presentation in another, in one of two ways: you can copy the slides from the original presentation to the new presentation, or you can use the Reuse Slides tool, which displays the content of an original presentation and allows you to choose the slides you want to insert in the new presentation.

Within a presentation, you can duplicate an existing slide to reuse it as the basis for a new slide. You can then customize the duplicated slide instead of having to create it from scratch.

If you frequently include a certain type of slide in your presentations, such as a slide that introduces you to the audience, you don’t have to re-create the slide for each presentation. You can easily reuse a slide from one presentation in a different presentation. (You can use the same techniques to reuse a slide from someone else’s presentation to standardize the appearance or structure of slide content with other members of your organization.) The slide takes on the formatting of its new presentation unless you specify otherwise.

PowerPoint automatically applies the new theme to reused slides

If the content of your presentation exists in a document, you can configure that content in outline format and then import the outline into PowerPoint. For the import process to work smoothly, format the document content that you want to port into the presentation as headings. PowerPoint converts some styles into slide headings, converts some styles into bullet points, and ignores other styles.

A slide created from an imported outline

The following table illustrates how PowerPoint converts Word document styles to PowerPoint slide elements.

To select a single slide

Do any of the following:

• In Normal view, click the slide in the Thumbnails pane.
• In Outline view, click the slide header in the Outline pane.
• In Slide Sorter view, click the slide in the Slide pane.

To select multiple slides

• In Normal view, Outline view, or Slide Sorter view, click the first slide you want to select.
• To select a contiguous series of slides, press and hold the Shift key, and then click the last slide you want to select.
• To select noncontiguous slides, press and hold the Ctrl key, and then click each additional slide you want to select.

To insert a copy of a slide immediately following the original slide

• Display the presentation in Normal view.
• In the Thumbnails pane, right-click the slide that you want to copy, and then click Duplicate Slide .

To insert a copy of one or more slides anywhere in a presentation

• Display the presentation in Normal view or Slide Sorter view.

Do either of the following to copy a slide or slides:

• Select the slide thumbnail or thumbnails, and then press Ctrl+C or, on the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click the Copy button.
• Right-click a slide thumbnail, and then click Copy .

Do either of the following to insert the slide copy or copies:

• Click the thumbnail that you want to insert the slide copy or copies after, or click the empty space after the thumbnail. Then press Ctrl+V or, on the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click the Paste button.

Right-click where you want to insert the slide copy or copies, and then, in the Paste Options section of the shortcut menu, click the Use Destination Theme button or the Keep Source Formatting button.

You can match the destination theme, retain the source theme, or paste as a picture

When PowerPoint displays the paste options, press H to use the destination style or K to use the source style.

• Repeat step 3 to paste additional copies of the slide or slides into the presentation.

To insert a slide from another presentation

• Open the source and destination presentations in PowerPoint. Display each presentation in Normal view or Slide Sorter view.
• Display the two PowerPoint windows side by side.
• In the source presentation, select the slide or slides you want to copy.

Drag the selection to the destination presentation. A horizontal line between slide thumbnails in Normal view or a vertical line between thumbnails in Slide Sorter view indicates the location at which PowerPoint will insert the slides.

PowerPoint creates copies of the slides and applies the destination theme to the copies.

• Display the destination presentation in Normal view.
• On the Home tab or Insert tab, in the Slides group, click the New Slide arrow.
• On the New Slide menu, below the gallery, click Reuse Slides to open the Reuse Slides pane on the right side of the screen.

Click the Browse button, and then click Browse File . In the Browse dialog box, browse to the folder that contains the presentation you want to use slides from, and then double-click the presentation.

If you’ve previously connected to the presentation you want to import slides from, you can click the down arrow in the Insert Slide From box to expand the list, and then click the presentation in the list, or click the presentation file name in the Open section of the Reuse Slide pane.

Click the Browse button, and then click Browse Slide Library. In the Select a Slide Library window, browse to the slide library that contains the slide or slides you want to insert.

For information about slide libraries, see the sidebar “SharePoint slide libraries” in this topic.

The Reuse Slides pane displays thumbnails of the available slides.

In the Reuse Slides pane, click the thumbnail of each slide you want to use to insert that slide into your presentation.

The reused slide takes on the design of the presentation in which it is inserted. If you want the slide to retain the formatting from the source presentation instead, select the Keep Source Formatting check box at the bottom of the Reuse Slides pane.

• Close the Reuse Slides pane.

To prepare a source document to import as a presentation

• Enter the content that you want to appear on the slides (and any other content) in a document.

Review the styles applied to the content you want to include in the presentation.

• Title, Subtitle, Heading 1, and any list items will convert to slide titles.
• Heading 2 through Heading 8 will convert to bulleted list items.
• Save and close the document.

To create a presentation by importing a Word document

• On the Open page of the Backstage view, click Browse .
• In the file type list, click All Files (*.*) .
• Browse to the folder that contains the Word document that contains the slide title and bullet point information.
• Double-click the document to create a new presentation.
• Select all the slides in the new presentation, and then on the Home tab, in the Slides group, click the Reset button.
• Apply the design template you want.

For information about applying design templates to presentations, see “Create presentations” in Chapter 2, “Create and manage presentations.”

To create slides in an existing presentation by importing a Word document

• Select the slide after which you want to insert the new slides.
• On the New Slide menu, below the gallery, click Slides from Outline to open the Insert Outline dialog box, which resembles the Open dialog box.
• Use standard Windows techniques to browse to the folder that contains the Word document you want to use for the slide titles and content.
• Double-click the document to insert slides based on its content.

SharePoint slide libraries

If your organization uses a version of Microsoft SharePoint that supports slide libraries, you and your colleagues can store individual slides or entire presentations in a slide library so they are available for use by anyone who has access to the library. At the time of this writing, the current versions of SharePoint (SharePoint Server 2013 and SharePoint Online 2013) don’t support the creation of new slide libraries but you can publish slides to and insert slides from legacy libraries.)

To store slides in a slide library, follow these steps:

• On the Share page of the Backstage view, click Publish Slides , and then click the Publish Slides button.
• In the Publish Slides dialog box, select the check box of each slide you want to publish. (Click the Select All button to select the entire presentation.)

In the Publish To box, enter or paste the URL of the slide library (or click the Browse button and browse to the slide library).

Each slide is published individually

• Click Publish .

Hide and delete slides

If you create a slide and then later realize that you don’t need it, you can delete it. If you don’t need the slide for a presentation to a specific audience but might need it later, you can hide the slide instead. Hidden slides aren’t presented in slide shows. They remain available from the Thumbnails pane, but their thumbnails are dimmed and slide numbers crossed through with a backslash.

You can edit the content of hidden slides

When you select a hidden slide, the Hide Slide button on the Slide Show tab is shaded to indicate that the command is in effect. You can edit a hidden slide in the Slide pane just as you can any other, so you might use this feature to keep a slide that you’re still working on hidden until it’s final. You can unhide a slide to include it in the slide show.

To hide or unhide slides

• Select the slide or slides you want to hide or unhide.
• Right-click the selection, and then click Hide Slide .
• On the Slide Show tab, in the Set Up group, click the Hide Slide button.

The name of the Hide Slide command and button doesn’t change; when a hidden slide is active, the command and button are shaded.

To delete slides

• Right-click a single slide, and then click Delete Slide .
• Select the slide or slides you want to delete.
• Right-click the selection, and then click Delete Slide .
• On the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click Cut .
• Press the Delete key.

When you add or delete slides in a presentation, PowerPoint renumbers all the subsequent slides.

This chapter is from the book

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A step-by-step guide to captivating PowerPoint presentation design

november 20, 2023

by Corporate PowerPoint Girl

Do you often find yourself stuck with a lackluster PowerPoint presentation, desperately seeking ways to make it more engaging and visually appealing? If your boss has ever told you to "please fix" a presentation and you didn't know where to start, you're not alone. In this article, we'll walk you through a straightforward method to transform your PowerPoint slides into a visually captivating masterpiece. 

Let's dive right in! 

Clean up your slides 

The first step in this journey to presentation excellence is all about decluttering your slides and elevating their impact. Say goodbye to those uninspiring bullet points that often dominate presentations. Instead, focus on what truly matters – the key call-out numbers. By increasing the font size of these numbers, you ensure they take center stage, immediately drawing your audience's attention. 

To make those numbers pop, consider breaking the text after the numbers into the next line and adding a touch of color. The contrast created by pairing a dark color with a lighter shade, like dark teal and light teal or burnt orange with peach, can work wonders. This simple adjustment makes your data more engaging , enhancing the overall impact of your presentation. 

Add dimension with boxes 

Now, let's introduce an element of depth and organization to your slides. By adding boxes, you'll create a visually pleasing structure that guides your audience through the content. In the "Insert" menu, select "Table" and opt for a one-by-one table. Change the table color to a light gray shade, elongate it, and position it neatly to the left of your text. 

To improve readability and aesthetics, increase the spacing between text phrases. A small adjustment in the before spacing setting (setting it to 48) significantly enhances the visual appeal of your slides. 

Insert circles 

To further enhance the visual appeal and engagement of your slides, let's introduce circles. In the Insert menu, navigate to Shapes and choose the circle. Adjust the circle's height and width to 1.2, ensuring it complements your content seamlessly. Match the circle's shape fill color with the corresponding text color for a harmonious look. 

Avoid using colored outlines for the circles, as they may distract from the overall aesthetic. This simple addition of circles adds an element of visual interest to your presentation, making it more captivating. 

Choose icons 

Now, it's time for a touch of creativity. Selecting icons to complement your text can elevate the clarity and appeal of your slides. In the "Insert" menu, you can search for relevant keywords to find the perfect icon from PowerPoint's extensive library . 

For instance, if your text discusses investment portfolio yield, search for "growth" and choose an upward arrow growth icon. These icons add an extra layer of visual appeal and clarity to your content, making it more engaging and informative. 

Final touches 

To wrap up the transformation process, we come to the final touches that give your presentation a polished, professional finish. Align your icons with their corresponding circles and change the shape fill color to white. This simple adjustment creates a crisp, cohesive look that ties everything together seamlessly. 

In conclusion, by following these steps, you've embarked on a journey to enhance your PowerPoint presentation . These initial steps are just the beginning of your exploration into the world of design elements and styles that can cater to your specific presentation needs. The key to a stunning PowerPoint presentation lies in the details. By following these steps, you can turn a lackluster set of slides into a visually engaging and dynamic presentation that will captivate your audience. So, the next time your boss says, "Please fix," you'll know exactly where to start. Happy presenting! 

Related topics

60 Effective PowerPoint Presentation Tips & Tricks (Giant List)

Here's a PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks guide that takes you through how to make a good PowerPoint presentation.

The best PowerPoint presentations shouldn’t be remembered. Instead, they should fall into the background to support you and the message you’re trying to get across.

Unlike good PowerPoint presentations , bad PowerPoint presentations are a distraction. You may remember them, but not in a good way.

You’ve seen them before. They might have millions of lines of text. Or a disjointed flow to the slides. Even worse, some slides feature ugly photos and poor design that detract from the message you’re trying to get across. That can even hurt your credibility as a professional or speaker.

This article will take you from finding your initial topic to learning how to make a great PowerPoint presentation. Our guide covers everything in between so that you learn how to present a PowerPoint like a pro.

These Microsoft PowerPoint presentation tips and guidelines are organized into sections. So cut straight to the advice you need and come back when you’re ready for the next steps.

Guide to Making Great Presentations (Free eBook Download)

Also, download our Free eBook: The Complete Guide to Making Great Presentations . It’s the deepest resource for learning effective presentation skills for a PPT.

This eBook covers the complete presentation process. It takes the PowerPoint tips and tricks you learn in this article further. Learn how to write your presentation, design it like a pro, and prepare it to present powerfully. It’s another great source for presentation design tips.

Master PowerPoint (Free Course): 15 Essential Tips

This article is full of helpful tips so you can build a powerful presentation. You can also find more PowerPoint tips in this video lesson:

To learn even more about how to make a PowerPoint look good, review the huge list of tips below.

What Makes a PowerPoint Presentation Effective?

Knowing how to use PowerPoint and work within it quickly is helpful. But more important is making a good presentation that hits all your goals. A great PowerPoint presentation is:

• Prepared to Win . Research, plan, and prepare your presentation professionally. It helps you deliver an effective message to your target audience.
• Designed Correctly . Your visual points should stand out without overwhelming your audience. A good PowerPoint visual shouldn’t complicate your message.
• Practiced to Perfection . Rehearse your timing and delivery so that your points land as practiced with a live audience.
• Delivered With Poise . Present with a relaxed inner calm and confident outward projection. Give your audience warmth, excitement, and energy.
• Free From Mistakes . Avoid typos, cheesy clip art, and mistakes like reading directly from your slides.

Consider this your all-inclusive guide to how to make a good presentation. We’ll look at preparing your presentation and explore how to design it in PowerPoint. Plus, we’ll cover how to practice and nail your delivery successfully come presentation time.

We’ll also address what not to do in these tips for PowerPoint presentations—so you can sidestep any big mistakes. Now let’s dig into these tips for effective PowerPoint presentations.

Killer Presentation Preparation Tips to Get Started Right

Before even opening PowerPoint, start by addressing these things. These Microsoft PowerPoint tips and tricks will ensure that you’re prepared for your presentation:

1. Know Your Stuff

Your presentation isn’t about your slides alone. It’s about the message you want to get across. Before filling in stats, facts and figures, think about the narrative that’ll be discussed, why, and in what order.

2. Write It Out

Start in a Word or Google doc, and storyboard or script the entire presentation. This will give you an idea of how the information presented will flow and how viewers will see it in sequence. Learn the complete writing process .

3. Highlight What’s Most Important

A presentation covers the most crucial pieces only. Whatever you’ve been working on that led to this—a paper, a work project, a new product design—doesn’t need to be shared in its entirety. Pick key points and put the rest in an “Appendix” to refer to during the Q&A session at the end.

4. Know Your Audience

How you talk to a room full of medical professionals should be different from the way you address a room full of young entrepreneurs. Everything, in fact, is different: your topic selection, the language you use, the examples you give to illustrate points. The little bits of humor you include should be tailored specifically with your target audience in mind.

Understand your audience’s needs to create a successful PowerPoint presentation. Customize your content to meet their specific requirements.

5. Rehearse! (Yes, Already)

It’s never too early to get used to the rhythm of your presentation and take note of points you want to emphasize. While saying it out loud, you’ll start to develop a “feel” for the material. You’ll notice that some things work well, while others don’t and might need to be worked around.

6. Rewrite After You Rehearse

As you’re rehearsing your presentation, you’re bound to stumble over sections that don’t quite flow naturally. Instead of reworking your delivery, it might be time to consider the content and rewrite the areas that served as stumbling blocks.

“Editing is hard. ‘It’s good enough,’ is a phrase wannabes use. Leaders take editing seriously.” – Anthony Trendl

The most important part of creating a great presentation is the writing stage. The second most important stage is rewriting.

7. Share With a Friend

If the stakes are high for your presentation, it’s never too early to get feedback from those that you trust. Here’s an article that helps you collaborate as a team on a PowerPoint presentation. Get PowerPoint design tips from those that you trust when you collaborate.

Simple Tips to Design Your PowerPoint Presentation Better

Second only to you (the information you bring and how you present it) is your PowerPoint slides. If not designed well, a PowerPoint can be disengaging or distracting (regardless of the content quality). Here are some presentation design tips to make sure this doesn’t happen to you:

8. Keep Your Slides Simple

This is one of the most important PowerPoint presentation tips to follow when designing your slides. Keep in mind that less is more (effective.) A cluttered slide is distracting. It causes confusion for an audience: Which part of the slide should I focus on? Should I read the slide or pay attention to the presenter?

A simple, visually appealing slide will engage your audience, keeping them on track with your main points. Here’s an example of a simple slide that serves its purpose perfectly:

Minimalist slide templates like Nook can help you resist the urge to clutter your slides.

9. Limit Words on Your Slides

Piggybacking on the last point, less is more effective. If possible, avoid bullets altogether. Otherwise cut them to just a few simple words. The audience should be listening, not reading.

10. Use High-Quality Photos and Graphics

One of the most important tips for quality PowerPoint presentations is to use high-quality photos and graphics.

Earlier in this tutorial, you saw Envato Elements, an all-you-can-download service with PPT tips inside of templates. Those pre-built designs are a beginner’s best friend. They’re even better when paired with Elements’ unlimited library of stock photos .

People are more likely to take you seriously if your presentation is visually appealing. Users view attractive design as more usable. Similarly, they’ll view a more attractive PowerPoint as more effective.

11. Use Accurate and Relevant Charts and Graphs

Charts and graphs can also be distracting if they’re not used right. Make sure your information design is simple and clean so that the audience doesn’t spend the entire time trying to decipher what your X axis says. Learn more about PPT data presentation .

12. Use High-Quality, Fresh Templates

Have you seen the old PowerPoint template that looks like worn paper and uses ink splashes? Yeah, so has your audience. Templates can be distracting if they’re too basic or if the design feels dated. You need one with great design options.

Costs are always a concern. But when you use Envato Elements, you’ve got everything you need to create a great PowerPoint presentation . That’s thanks to the incredible all-you-can-download subscription package.

The best PowerPoint tips and tricks can hardly compare to the value of using a template while building your presentation.

On Envato Elements, there are thousands of PowerPoint design templates that are ready to use. Instead of designing a presentation from scratch, start with a template! Just add your specifics to the placeholders.

Templates like Galaxi are impressively designed and waiting for your slide specifics.

The best PowerPoint design tips save you time. And there’s no tip more powerful than this one: use a pre-built template . It helps you master how to present a PowerPoint without spending all your time in the app.

13. Choose Appropriate Fonts

Fonts are an important part of engaging your audience. Fonts and typography choices have a subconscious effect on viewers. They can characterize your company’s presentation and brand either positively or negatively. Make sure that you’re choosing fonts that are professional and modern.

14. Choose Color Well

Like font choice, colors cause specific subconscious reactions from viewers. Choosing an outdated color combination for your presentation will render it ineffective.

Below is an example of the Popsicle PowerPoint template , which has a modern presentation color choice:

The Popsicle PowerPoint template highlights how harmonized color palettes can create beautiful slides.

15. Clean + Simple Formatting Makes All the Difference!

We’ve got a full tutorial on how to make a good presentation slide . Give it a read through and review the accompanying video. Just remember, less is more. The focus is you and your message , not your slides.

16. Make Sure All Objects Are Aligned

A simple way to create a well-designed presentation is to make sure all items on a slide are intentionally aligned. To do this, hold down Shift and select all the objects you want to include. Then choose Arrange in the options bar and apply Alignment Type .

17. Limit Punctuation

This isn’t the place for exclamation points. Emphasize your points (while speaking). Don’t enlist punctuation to do this for you. (Leave these at home!!!)

18. Avoid Over-Formatting Your Points

This PowerPoint presentation tip is simple. There’s no need to have every word of every bullet point capitalized, or to have all your bullet points in title case. If possible, drop bullets altogether. Again, the simpler, the better!

Limit your text formatting, including reducing the use of bullets, underline, and other effects. Compare the before example on the left to the revised version on the right.

19. Combine Information With Graphics in PowerPoint

One of the most powerful presentation skills for PPT is using infographics. With the right type of visuals, slides come to life and reduce the text in favor of graphics.

Infographics help combine information with graphics. It’s easier to explain complex ideas when you use visual formats that are intuitive.

Practice Presentation Tips: Rehearse, Rehearse, Rehearse!

Delivery is probably more important than the actual content. Here’s how to become more aware of your own unique ticks, and how to present like a polished pro:

20. I’ll Say It Again, Rehearse!

Just do it. Again and again. Experiment with pauses, gestures, and body language. Practice around one hour for every minute of your speech.

21. Practice With a Timer

Consistency is key to an effective PowerPoint presentation. The timing should be similar (ideally the same) each time you rehearse. This one will especially pay off when it’s time to present in front of your audience.

22. Slow It Down

Many of the best speakers today intentionally speak slowly. You’ll have the chance to emphasize, appear more thoughtful, and make your information easier to digest.

23. Pause More Often

Like the prior tip, pausing more often allows your main points to be emphasized and gives time for information to sink in. You need to let key points breathe a little before rushing into the next section.

24. Record Yourself

Use your phone’s voice recorder. Assess and critique yourself. Consider:

• Are your pauses too short or too long?
• Are you speaking slowly enough? Too slow?
• When you’re nervous, does your voice get high like the mice in Cinderella?

It’s always weird to hear your own voice recorded; don’t stress it. Use this as a time to adjust.

25. Choose Three Focal Points in the Room

If you stare at the same spot (or even creepier, the same person) the entire time, your presentation will be ineffective (and awkward.) People will be distracted by you, wondering what you’re staring at.

Try this: pick three points in the room (typically: left, center, right). Take time to direct your delivery toward each physical focal point in the room. Also, focus on the center when making your primary points.

26. Vary Your Sentence Length

This makes you sound more interesting, and it’s easier for your audience to follow. Think short and punchy. Or go long and complex for dramatic effect.

27. Modulate!

Don’t speak in monotone for your whole presentation. Be conscious of raising and lowering your voice tone. Otherwise, people will tune you out, and you’ll come across like the teacher in Charlie Brown.

28. Practice in Front of a Mirror

What you look like is as important as how you sound. Pretend you’re having a normal conversation, and allow your hands to move with your speech to emphasize your points. Just don’t get carried away! (I’m thinking Brene Brown or President Obama , not your Aunt Jamie after a few gin and tonics.)

29. Use “Present Mode” When Rehearsing

When you finally are ready to hit the Present button in PowerPoint, make sure you use the Present Mode option. This allows you (and only you) to view extra notes about each slide—just in case you forget something!

30. Practice With New Audiences

If possible, try doing a few real live test runs as a webinar or even at a local Toastmasters organization to get some feedback from a live audience.

31. Engage the Audience by Asking Questions

There’s no reason that a presentation should be one-sided. Why not invert the format and ask your audience a question?

To learn how to create a slide that kicks off a Q&A, use this article . These PowerPoint design tips help you create an engaging and exciting discussion.

Helpful Tips to Step Up and Deliver Come Presentation Time

When the actual day arrives, there are only a few last PowerPoint presentation tips and guidelines to keep in mind:

32. Take a Deep Breath

Deep breathing is proven to relieve stress. It’s simple, and it’ll help you remain calm and in the moment, even up to the last minute before starting.

33. Lighten Up Your Mood

Tell yourself a joke or watch a funny video clip. Do this before the presentation, of course. Research concludes that happy people are more productive. More productive is more focused and able to perform better.

34. Remind Yourself to Take It Slow

When we’re stressed or nervous (or both), we tend to speak faster. Consciously, take yet another deep breath and remind yourself to take it slow!

35. Read the Room

Every presentation room has a temperature. It’s your job as a speaker to gauge it and tailor your presentation to it.

Here’s a great example. Layoffs are coming at a company, and you’re asked to speak to an audience. Even if the audience isn’t personally affected by the actions, you’ve got to consider the morale of the workforce.

Skilled speakers have a knack for reading the energy of the room and adjusting their presentation on the fly.

The last thing that group will want to hear is how strong the economy is and why the company is the best place to work. That doesn’t mean that you’ve got to align to their uncertainty, but don’t go too far against the grain while presenting.

Robert Kennedy III is a master of bringing energy and aligning a speech to the audience. Here’s his advice for adjusting:

“It can be hard to wake up a “dead” crowd but go for it. Most of all, don’t take their energy personally. Focus on serving them with every bit of your fiber then leave empty.”

36. Fake It ‘Til You Make It!

Go forward with confidence. If you act confident, you’ll start to feel more confident. Move slowly with grace, speak clearly, smile, wear something nice. You’ll appear confident to all attendees (no matter how you feel internally).

PowerPoint Presentation Tips and Tricks to Help Avoid Mistakes (What Not to Do)

Most importantly, focus on what you can do to make your presentation better. There are a few important things not to do that we’ve got to address. Here are a handful of PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks to help you avoid missteps.

37. Stop With the Sound Effects

Sound effects are distracting and outdated. In most cases, avoid them. Add audio or music to your presentation to inject interest or highlight an important point, but it’s something to take extra care with. If you insert audio, then make sure your use really connects with your audience and has a fresh approach. Otherwise, it’s best to leave it out.

38. Don’t Use Flashy Slide Transitions

Again, this is distracting and outdated. Use transitions and subtle animations in your PowerPoint presentation. But you need to take care and do it right .

39. Beware of Clip Art

This PowerPoint presentation tip shouldn’t even have to be said. But please, please don’t use clip art. Use professional graphics instead.

40. Don’t Be Afraid to Be Afraid

The fear of public speaking is a real one. Many beginners think that if they’re feeling nervous that a presentation won’t go well or succeed. That might lead them to cancel the presentation.

Here’s a tip from expert Sandra Zimmer, who leads The Self-Expression Center on conquering your fears before you take the stage:

“Get out of your head and into your body. I do this through a grounding exercise that really works to calm nerves and bring you present in the moment.”

If you think that public speaking fears aren’t normal, you might never give your award-winning presentation. So don’t be afraid to be afraid, and acknowledge it’s part of the process!

41. Don’t Read Directly During Your PowerPoint Presentation

If you spend your entire presentation looking at the screen or your note cards, you’re sure to lose your audience’s attention. They’ll disengage from what you’re saying, and your presentation will fall flat.

Reading from your paper or screen also makes it look like you’re not prepared. Many people do it, but no one should. As a general rule, only present something you know well and have, at least mostly, memorized the main points of.

42. Don’t Miss Out on PowerPoint Customizations

Many new PowerPoint users often make significant mistakes when using Envato Elements designs.

The best way to see how to make a good presentation PPT is to start with designs from others. That means using a template, but that doesn’t mean you can’t customize them!

Don’t forget that PowerPoint templates are infinitely customizable. Think of them as guides with built-in presentation design tips.

To see more presentation tips that show you what not to do, make sure to check out our guide .

Work in PowerPoint More Effectively (Tips & Tricks to Level Up Your PPT Skills)

These PowerPoint tips will help you get the most out of the application to level up your next presentation. Let’s dive in.

43. Use the Visual Guides

When you’re designing your next PowerPoint presentation, it helps to create a sense of visual rhythm. Slides that have objects aligned and centered are more likely to resonate with an audience.

44. Use a Few Animations (Tastefully)

Animations in effective PowerPoint presentations are a slippery slope. We’ve all sat through presentations where there were so many objects in motion that it was easy to lose focus on the key ideas in the presentation.

But that’s why animations get an unfairly bad reputation. Use animations to create motion and hold an audience’s attention. Use them sparingly and on key elements on your slide, and you’ll capture that attention properly.

45. Stage Key Content With Animations

You just learned that animations should avoid being distracting. But there’s an important principle to using animations properly. It’s called staging content.

Staging content means that the content appears step by step. There’s nothing worse than overwhelming an audience with all your content at once. But when you stage content, bring it on step by step.

Take it from presentation pro Suzannah Baum :

“If you’re sharing a slide with lots of different points on it, using the animation to reveal those points one at a time is a way to keep the presenter’s content flowing smoothly.”

For more animation presentation tips and tricks, follow our guide .

46. Add a Video to Your PowerPoint

When you’re sharing a big idea in your presentation, it helps to share your perspective from a few different angles. Adding a video to supplement your content can do just that. Luckily, it’s easy to add and embed a YouTube video in your next PowerPoint presentation.

47. Add Charts & Graphs

Charts and graphs can help you tell stories with data. It’s easy for an audience to zone out when you throw a big data table or set of statistics at them.

instead, convert those to charts and graphs. Try out our tutorial to learn how to edit those graphs.

48. Build Your Own Infographics With SmartArt

Earlier in this tutorial, we gave you one of my favorite PowerPoint design tips: use infographic templates.

Here’s another. One of my favorite PowerPoint features is SmartArt, which allows you to build infographics right inside the app.

You don’t have to use another graphic design app like Photoshop or Illustrator to add visuals. Instead, try out SmartArt to help you build graphics that are easy to update.

49. Use Presenter View

Remember that when you use the PowerPoint, you’ re the presentation. The slides are just there to reinforce what you’ve got to say and support your speaking points.

That’s why I always recommend using Presenter view. More often than not, you’re going to have several displays. Presenter view shows your content on your screen, while your presentation is displayed on another screen.

50. Track Your PowerPoint Changes

One of my favorite PowerPoint design tips is to collaborate. Those who know you best will suggest compelling changes that are sure to help you succeed.

As you start collaborating on your presentation, it helps to keep track of proposed and included PowerPoint changes. Use this article to track changes made by others.

10 More Advanced PowerPoint Tips & Tricks

Really need to wow an audience with a good PowerPoint presentation? Give these tips a try to make an unforgettable impression:

51. Engage With an Interactive Quiz

A good PowerPoint presentation gets your audience involved. One of the best PowerPoint tricks is to do that with a quiz. By engaging audiences, a quiz makes your slides memorable.

By adding trivia, you’ll see how to present a PowerPoint in a way that people will love. Channel your inner game-show host today. MIDTEST is a  good PowerPoint presentation  with quiz slides.

52. Illustrate With Custom Image Masks

One of the top PowerPoint tips is to illustrate your slides. But you can go beyond simple, rectangular images on each slide.

The Burte template is full of  PowerPoint tricks , including custom image masks. Image masks shape photos into unique works of art. And thanks to premium templates, you can style photos just like this. Masks overlay your photos onto geometric shapes, instantly elevating your style.

53. Print Handouts With Extra Notes

Wonder how to give a good presentation PPT that audiences will remember? Give them a piece of it to take home.

PowerPoint makes it easy to print handouts with room for notes on the page. This way, audiences can keep copies of your slides, along with their own notes. This is the perfect way to ensure everyone engages with and retains your content.

54. Make Bulk Edits With Master Slides

When you think about how to present a PowerPoint, consider your branding. That means keeping your logo front and center in the eyes of an audience. But if you’re working with a lengthy slide deck, this could seem daunting.

That’s where master slides come in. They’re common in premium layouts, and they’re a leading example of presentation skills for PPT. Master slides let you make bulk edits fast.

55. Shrink File Sizes for Sharing

Many of the top presentation tips involve making your slides more accessible. Often, that involves sharing them with audiences online.

You’ll often find that email clients and cloud services limit the size of files that you share. This can be a problem with large PPT slide decks. But there are a few quick steps you can take to reduce PPT file size. Cut graphics, scale down photos, and more.

56. Map Processes With Flowcharts

As you consider how to do a good PowerPoint presentation, think of ease of understanding. After all, you’re trying to explain something to your audience.

The  Flowcharts in Infographics  template seamlessly illustrates ideas and processes. A flowchart maps out a process in a visual way. Instead of resorting to endless narration, try a quick illustration like this. It saves you time and effort, and your audience is sure to thank you.

57. Use Brand-Specific Colors

Using presentation skills for PPT helps form an association between your message and branding. There’s no better way to do that than with your brand colors.

PowerPoint makes it easy to change color themes, adding your brand colors and logo to each slide. This is one of the top PowerPoint tricks for marketing presentations.

58. Build Social Media Posts in PPT

A good PowerPoint presentation doesn’t have to be shared through a projector. Use the app and templates to build amazing illustrations to use anywhere.

A template like Soffee helps you learn how to present a PowerPoint easily with a pre-built design.

Try using PowerPoint to create social media posts. It helps you engage with your audience, with no need to design custom layouts from scratch.

59. Be Industry-Specific

One of the top presentation tips in 2024 is to be industry-specific. That means avoiding generic layouts and choosing something more customized.

This offers two key advantages. First, you save time by having layouts built for you. Second, you gain design inspiration for your specific topic. Themed templates are truly the best of both worlds.

The Medical and Health template is a good PowerPoint presentation with a set theme.

60. Design for Online (Virtual) Sharing

Last but not least in our list of PowerPoint tips comes virtual presenting. More and more often, slides will be shared with online audiences around the globe.

Why not design your slides for that very purpose? And then learn how to share flawlessly with a global team? It’s one of the top presentation tips for 2024. Embrace it today.

More Great PowerPoint Tutorial Resources

We’ve built a resource for Microsoft PowerPoint that you’re sure to want to try. It includes countless PowerPoint tips and tricks. It’s called How to Use PowerPoint (Ultimate Tutorial Guide) and has all the PowerPoint design tips you need.

Discover More Top PowerPoint Template Designs From Envato Elements for 2024

You’ve just seen our favorite powerful PowerPoint presentation tips and guidelines to help you improve your speaking. We’ve also mentioned Envato Elements, an incredible all-you-can-download source for top PowerPoint designs .

Here are five of the best PowerPoint templates that you can use to create your best presentation yet:

1. Galaxi PowerPoint Template

Blast off to success with the help of this PowerPoint template! Think of the pre-built slide designs as pro PowerPoint design tips. They’re built by professional graphic designers. All the popular and modern slide styles that are perfect for your next presentation. Use Galaxi’s five styles and 30 designs to create a great presentation.

2. Masmax PowerPoint Template

We selected templates for this article that match the PowerPoint tips and tricks provided. Masmax fits the bill perfectly across its 234 unique slide designs. These slide designs are sure to align with the latest in design expectations.

3. STYLE Multipurpose PowerPoint Template V50

Style is subjective, but we can all agree that this template is stunning! The light and airy slide designs are built with fashion-focused designs in mind. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not perfect for most presentations. When learning to present a PowerPoint, remember that templates can be customized to suit your purpose.

4. Peachme Creative PowerPoint Template

Peachme has image-focused slides with splashy designs. The slides are colorful and perfect for a modern presentation. Don’t worry about remembering all the PowerPoint design tips because they’re included in the pre-built slides. Use Peachme’s designs for your presentation today.

5. Buizi Office Building Rent PowerPoint Template

Buizi markets itself as a real estate focused template. It’s ideal for that purpose because of the minimal, image-focused slide designs. But that also makes it a perfect choice for presentations in many fields.

We’ve just scratched the surface of PowerPoint design tips with these five options. Here are many more, bundled inside of the best roundups on Envato Tuts+:

How to Build a Good PowerPoint Presentation Quickly (In 2024)

You’ve already seen effective presentation skills PPT techniques. But you may be wondering exactly how to do a good PowerPoint presentation. It only takes a few clicks. Let’s learn how in just five steps.

For this mini-tutorial, we’ll use the Enjoy PowerPoint Template from Envato Elements. You’ll see that it’s a beautiful template that helps you learn how to present a PowerPoint by giving you every object and layout you need.

Let’s get started:

1. Choose Your Slides

As you can see, a template like Enjoy has dozens of unique slides inside. The key to how to give a good presentation PPT is to choose only the slides that you need.

One of the best PowerPoint tricks is to start by selecting slides you wish to use from your template.

In PowerPoint, scroll through the sidebar on the left to view different slide layouts. Right-click and choose Delete to remove unwanted designs. Plus, you can click and drag slide thumbnails to reorder them in the deck.

2. Add Text

Consider how to do a good PowerPoint presentation without investing a ton of time. That’s where premium templates come in.

One of our top presentation tips when working with a PPT is to lean on the pre-built text boxes for your content.

To add custom text, simply click and select the contents of any text box on your slide. Then, type in your own words. Repeat as needed throughout your slide deck.

3. Customize Fonts

With text selected, it’s easy to customize fonts on each slide. Find the Font section on PowerPoint’s Home tab. From there, you’ve got a variety of dropdown options.

Another of our top tips for presentation tricks is to use a custom font setting in your template.

Click to change the font, font size, and more. You can also use the buttons on the left to add bolds, italics, and more.

Need more custom font styles? As an Envato Elements subscriber, you’ve got instant access to thousands of custom fonts . Use them in your presentation with ease.

4. Insert Images

Slides like this one contain an image placeholder. That’s another advantage found only with premium templates. These make adding images a breeze.

Add images to your PPTX template for more visually interesting slides.

To get started, find an image file stored on your computer. Then, drag and drop it over the placeholder. PowerPoint will import it, sized and scaled for a perfect fit.

5. Change Colors

One of the top effective presentation skills is changing shape colors. This helps you control the look and feel of each slide.

With a shape selected, find the Shape Format tab on PowerPoint’s ribbon. Then, click on the Shape Fill dropdown. You’ll see a color chooser menu appear. Click on any thumbnail to apply it to the shape or browse through the Gradient and Texture options.

Start Putting These PowerPoint Presentation Tips & Tricks Into Use Today!

Learning to write, design, and present a PowerPoint presentation is an invaluable skill, no matter where you use it. If you’re a good communicator of important messages, you’ll never go hungry.

Luckily, improving PowerPoint presentations isn’t as hard as it seems. Follow these tips for PowerPoint presentations to design and deliver with greater confidence.

Remember: Less is more (effective) . Use PowerPoint presentation templates for better design and more effective visual impact. And you can customize a PPT template quickly , with the right workflow.

Related Articles

10 Tips for Making Better PowerPoint Presentations with Office 2016

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6 AI Tools to Easily Get Rid of Background Noise in Your Audio or Video Recording

Why i still use the ps4 in 2024, 9 alternative sites better than goodreads for book lovers.

Most of us don't get what Microsoft PowerPoint is all about.

Like any presentation tool, it is meant to enhance what the presenter is saying. It is not a tool to do all the job for the presenter.

If the latter had been true, TED Talks would have killed scores of audiences around the world. Death by PowerPoint bloodies the hands of a bad presenter.

"Your slides should be a billboard not a document!" - Lee Jackson (Author)

A PowerPoint presentation needs to work with the creative constraints of short attention spans. Not unlike the billboards designed to catch the eyes of speeding motorists. But, PowerPoint creators have the luxury of multiple slides to make a point. And some wonderful creative tools that have become better with the enhancements in Microsoft Office 2016 .

So, let's dive into these new creative tools in PowerPoint 2016 and see how they can help you make better presentations .

Save Time with PowerPoint Designer

Suffering from "presentation block"?

With Microsoft PowerPoint 2016, you can banish both annoyances. Any presentation starts with the hunt for a suitable template or theme . Or creating a nice one from scratch. But you may not be a designer.

Drop the first image into a fresh slide and PowerPoint Designer automatically offers several design ideas. The recommendation engine works with 12,000+ creative designs created by graphic artists.

Microsoft says:

Designer applies cloud intelligence to analyze and identify the most compelling portion of your images to determine which blueprints work best with your content.

You can also open it from Ribbon > Design > Design Ideas .

If you don't find it useful, go to File > Options > General .  Uncheck the box that says Enable PowerPoint Designer .

The time-saving assistance isn't only about dropping a pretty graphic on a slide. Designer uses cloud intelligence to analyze and highlight the most compelling portion of your images. Try it. It's different from our old habit of selecting a pre-made template.

General tip – Right now, PowerPoint Designer recognizes a few simple slide types. As further updates arrive, the recommendations will get better with different slide types.

Learn with Tell Me

Still feel lost on the Ribbon?

Microsoft Office 2016 introduced the "Tell Me" assistant to help you navigate through the many options. The Tell Me What to Do box is located above the right side of the Ribbon. Type what you want to do in this box, and PowerPoint points you to the Ribbon button that lets you do it.

Let's say you want to organize multiple PowerPoint windows on the desktop by cascading them. Type "windows" and Tell Me displays the Cascade Windows command (originally located under the View tab).

Tell me is a time saver and a timely confusion killer.

Power Search with Bing "Insights"

Looking for more information or creative inspiration?

Highlight a keyword and right-click to use the Bing-powered Smart Lookup in PowerPoint 2016 (Insights) to bring in search results from the web. A panel opens on the right with results from the web and Wikipedia.

You don't have to leave PowerPoint for looking up simple information. Make error free presentations quickly by checking the facts or the vocabulary you will use on your slides. Use it for creative inspiration or for finding RGB values of colors.

You can also use Smart Lookup from the Ribbon > Review tab.

Smart Lookup is also a part of the new Tell Me feature.  Enter keywords into the Tell Me box and select Smart Lookup from the dropdown suggestions.

General tip – try to avoid using it for image searches. Finding images to insert with the right Creative Commons license is almost impossible via the search pane.

Ink Your Equations

Remember the struggles with math on the slides?

Working with math equations is easier in PowerPoint now with both the keyboard and the stylus. From the Ribbon, go to Insert > Equation > Ink Equation . For touch-enabled devices, you can use your finger or a touch stylus to write math equations by hand. You can also use the mouse in the Write box. The Office software converts it into text.

As the Ink Equation editor brings the fight with mathematical expressions to an end, it can be an effective teaching tool if you broadcast your presentation to a remote audience. Or pair it with one of the creative uses of Google Chromecast .

General Tip -- Use the Tell Me box to quickly get to the Ink Equation editor. Type Ink in the box.

Smoothly Animate with Morph Transitions

Found Motion Paths too difficult to apply?

Morph Transitions in PowerPoint 2016 is designed to make animations easier. Simply explained, Morph allows you to move an object from Point A to Point B. To move objects effectively, you'll need to have two slides with at least one object in common. An easy way is to duplicate the slide and then move the object on the second slide to a different place. You can also copy and paste the object from one slide and add it to the next.

Then, with the second slide selected, go to Transitions > Morph .

PowerPoint estimates the difference between the two slides and applies a smooth animation between them. Play around with movement and transitions. You can use Morph to move objects, change colors, shrink or zoom into a particular view.

The Microsoft Mechanics video demonstrates Morph (and PowerPoint Designer):

The direct transitions of Morph can be powerful tool to explain business processes or steps. Morph Transitions is an easier way to animate without the use of complicated motion paths. But unlike motion paths, the transition takes the shortest direct route.

For example, you cannot show the curved flight path of a butterfly with a morph transition. For more complicated animations, revert to the use of motion paths.

Note: This feature is only available if you have an Office 365 subscription .

Tell Beautiful Stories with Six New Chart Types

Stumped when you have to tell stories with data?

Data visualization today is not only about displaying datasets. Effective visualizations send a message and help us recognize shapes and patterns. As we are wired to visualize information far faster than we can read it, using the right chart type in PowerPoint puts us at an advantage.

Six new charts types -- Box and Whisker, Treemap, Sunburst, Histogram, (and within Histogram options, Pareto), and Waterfall – give the presenter more flexibility.

This Microsoft Office blog article shows how to use the new Treemap and Sunburst charts to breakdown hierarchical data.

General Tip -- For a given set of numbers, Microsoft Office allows you to change the chart types. But ask yourself why is the chart important for the audience. If possible, simplify the data and look beyond charts.

More Options with Preset Shapes

Do you long for more preset shape formats?

Remember how the Merge Shapes feature helps you draw your own custom shapes? The feature to save your own custom shapes is still missing, but PowerPoint 2016 gives us another incremental improvement with five more rows of preset Shape styles. Draw a shape in your slide and apply a new preset style to the shape. PowerPoint 2016 makes it easier for the creatively challenged.

Access the shapes and the Quick Styles from the Drawing group on the Home Tab. Alternatively, you can also go to the Insert tab and draw a shape. This again brings up the Shape Styles under a Drawing tab.

Though, you can finetune any shape with the Format Shape options, the variety of Quick Shape Styles makes creating stylish presentations a bit breezier.

General Tip -- The new presets with transparent and semi-transparent fills are useful for creating neat overlays over another image.

Show Them Better with Screen Recordings

Wondering how to record high-quality screencasts?

There is an industry standard tool like Camtasia and then there are many lightweight screen recorders , too. PowerPoint's native screen recording utility is a one-touch process. Camtasia takes some learning. Try PowerPoint's Screen Recording feature with a bit of creativity and you can avoid the boring static screenshots.

Go to Insert > Screen Recording .

Click the Select Area button and drag across the area you want to record. Click the Record button.

Use the Windows button + Shift + Q shortcut to stop the recording and insert the video on your current slide.

PowerPoint gives you a whole slew of Video Tools to format and present your screencasts.

General Tip -- PowerPoint screencast slides are ideal for how-to tutorials and training courses. A single dynamic slide can be more effective and less time consuming than making multiple static slides with fancy graphics. If you missed a few opportunities to use Screen Recording in the updated PowerPoint 2013, it's time to set the "record" straight now!

Present on Larger High-Def Screens

Hate the black bars on the top and bottom of your slides?

This is another little, but useful feature that continues from PowerPoint 2013. When you export your presentation as a video, you can create a file with resolution as high as 1920 x 1080 and display it cleanly on an HDTV, projector, or a computer monitor.

Remember, you can also design slides with the widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9 used on such displays. If you show a slide in this aspect ratio on a standard 4:3 screen you will get black bars on the top and bottom.

General Tip – Find out the dimension of the presentation screen beforehand. This could make all the difference.

Resolve Conflicts

Can't make up your mind on two slides?

PowerPoint 2016 has beefed up the collaboration options. When two or more people work on the same slide, it can lead to two slides with a few, conflicting differences. The conflict resolution feature will pop up automatically and display the two slides side-by-side. Compare them visually, select the best one, and restore team harmony.

Combine Old Tips with the New for Better Presentations

Presenting in front of an audience is an old game. The newer features in PowerPoint 2016 won't make you radically change the way you prepare, but make the process just a little bit easier. New features like the new Office themes are superficial and the management of version history is available only for files stored with OneDrive for Business or SharePoint.

What are your favorite professional presentation tips for designing slides or giving them? Which among the new tools in PowerPoint 2016 do you see yourself using more? Write to us in the comments!

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Become a PowerPoint pro: 7 must-know tips and tricks

Microsoft’s PowerPoint is extremely popular in schools, universities, and the corporate world, but it has never been as popular with home users. Not surprising since it’s all about creating presentations, something a private person doesn’t have to do very often.

So, if you suddenly find yourself needing to make a PowerPoint presentation and have no idea how to make it good, rest assured that you aren’t alone and there’s hope for you.

Microsoft Office 365 Home

These days, PowerPoint is more than just a basic slideshow—it can be used to create video presentations with voice-over narration, and it even has an AI-based helper called Designer that gives suggestions on how to make your presentation better.

Here are several smart tips and tricks you can use to improve your PowerPoint presentations and come off as a pro.

1. Customize Quick Access

Have you noticed that PowerPoint—and the other apps in Microsoft 365 for that matter—have a small, narrow toolbar at the very top of the application window? By default, you’ll find shortcut buttons for toggling Auto Save and basic actions like Save, Undo, Repeat, etc.

This nifty toolbar also comes with some app-specific actions that you may or may not use frequently. In PowerPoint, for example, there’s a shortcut to start slideshows from the beginning.

This toolbar is called Quick Access and you can actually customize what actions show up here. You can add frequently used actions while removing the ones you never use.

This can make it easier to find important functions that you would otherwise have to rummage around the ribbon to find.

To customize Quick Ass, select File > Options and then Quick Access Toolbar . The box on the right shows the actions currently on it and their order. The box on the left has all the available actions you can add.

Select an action you want in Quick Access and click on Add . To change the order, highlight the action you want to move and use the the arrow buttons on the right side of the window.

2. Use custom themes and templates

PowerPoint comes with a bunch of ready-made templates for presentations, which have also been themed.

A theme is a collection of settings for typography, colors, and effects that make it easy to maintain a consistent style across presentations. A template is a theme plus ready-made content that makes it easier to make a particular type of presentation again in the future.

For example, a company may have a theme that defines the colors and fonts employees should use in presentations, plus a number of templates for product presentations and quarterly reports.

A template may have a number of ready-made slides with images, charts, and everything else already laid out. When you create a new presentation from a template, you will find these individual page templates in New slide in either Start or Insert .

Creating your own custom theme

New themes can be added at any time as long as you have a presentation open—even if it’s a blank presentation.

Select the Design tab and click on the small down arrow with a dash over it on the right side of the Variants section. This shows the four categories of settings you can designate for a theme.

Select Colors > Customize Colors… and the Create new theme colors dialog box will open. A complete set of theme colors includes two pairs of text and background colors (dark/light, to be used either for dark text on a light background or vice versa), six spot colors used for graphic elements, and two colors for hyperlinks. Enter a name at the bottom and click Save when you are done.

If you also want to change the font, select Fonts > Customize Fonts… and you’ll be able to designate a Heading font and a Body font . I recommend a neutral, easy-to-read font for both.

Under Effects , you can choose the style of effects but there’s no way to customize or create a completely new effect. Under Background Styles , you can select Format Background… to tweak backgrounds.

When you’re done, go to the Themes section of the Design tab and click the down arrow with a line above it, then select Save Current Theme… to save your new theme. Give it a name and save and your new theme will appear among the available themes in the Design tab of all presentations.

Create your own custom templates

To create a new PowerPoint template, you can start from either a blank presentation or an existing template. Don’t add any content of your own yet. Instead, go to the View tab and click on Slide Master .

Start by changing the theme of your new template, under the Themes button. If you created your own theme as described above, it will normally be at the top of the list of available themes.

PowerPoint uses the term layouts for slide templates. Click on the Insert Layout button to create a new slide template.

New layouts are automatically given a header and a footer, but you can remove them if you wish (either by selecting and deleting the elements manually or via checkboxes in the Slide Background tab).

To delete an existing layout, right-click on it in the list and select Delete Layout or select it in the list and press Backspace.

To add new design elements to a layout, click the Insert Placeholder button in the ribbon and select the element type you want. You can then position and resize it, and change the placeholder text for it.

If you want to make per-layout changes, make sure to select that layout in the list before tweaking. For example, you can change a layout’s color theme or switch between the four background formats.

When you’re happy, save the template by selecting File > Save As and changing the format to Powerpoint Template (*.potx) . Templates can be stored either locally on your computer or in OneDrive—and since the theme is included, you can freely share the template with others.

3. Link to Excel data

If you’re making a presentation with figures in tables or charts, you can make your life easier by linking PowerPoint to Excel.

To do this, start by copying a chart in Excel, then switching over to PowerPoint and navigating to the Home tab in the ribbon. Select Paste > Paste Special… , then choose the Paste Link option, select Microsoft Excel Chart Object and finish by clicking OK .

A linked chart, table, or other Excel object can be instantly updated with up-to-date information as the data in the Excel document changes, all without having to copy and paste all over again.

To update the Excel object, right-click on it in PowerPoint and select Update Link . PowerPoint will retrieve the latest data to be reflected in the Excel object. This makes it easy to build a data-heavy report in PowerPoint that can be kept up-to-date with zero hassle.

4. Edit and apply effects to images

Basic slide editing in PowerPoint isn’t difficult, but there are a few tricks you can learn to make your slides both behave the way you want them to and do new things you may not have realized were possible.

For example, did you know that PowerPoint has built-in editing features that can change brightness, contrast, and sharpness of images?

Select an image in a slide and the Picture Format tab will open. Here you’ll find several adjustments you can make:

• Corrections alters brightness, contrast, and sharpness
• Color applies color filters
• Artistic Effects stylizes the image (but apart from the useful Blur effect, most of these feel pretty old-fashioned)
• Transparency makes the image more or less transparent
• Picture Styles can format the image in various ways (e.g., frame, shadow, rounded corners, perspective, etc.)

One thing you’ll notice when you add an image is that PowerPoint automatically generates alternative text—that is, descriptive text that gets read aloud for users with visual impairments. You can set this text to whatever you want, and it’s nice that Microsoft has thought about accessibility in this way.

5. Fill a shape with an image

PowerPoint makes it easy to fill a vector graphic shape with an image instead of just a solid color or gradient.

Create the shape as you want it, then make sure it’s selected before navigating to either the Home or Figure Format tabs in the ribbon. Select Shape Fill > Picture… , then select From a File to pick an image that’s saved on your computer.

If you aren’t satisfied with the positioning of the image in the shape, you can open the Picture Format tab and select Crop > Crop to resize and move the image in relation to the shape, allowing you to center it at a different point and even zoom in or out.

6. Incorporate audio and video

These days, PowerPoint isn’t just for presentations on screen or with a projector—it’s increasingly common to export finished presentations as videos to be sent to recipients, uploaded to the web, embedded in mobile apps, and more.

To make such presentations more vivid and interesting, you can record voice-over audio and/or video from a connected webcam to be placed on top of slides. You can find these features in the Record tab, where PowerPoint has also placed the Export to Video function.

The export function allows you to set the video resolution as well as how long each slide will display in the video.

More on this: How to turn a PowerPoint presentation into a video

7. Get AI help with Designer

Designer is the new name for Design Ideas, a feature that has been around since PowerPoint 2016 and uses machine learning to analyze the content of presentations and suggest improvements.

You can find it as a button in the Home and Design tabs, with Designer itself appearing in a column on the right.

This feature continuously analyzes your presentation and displays a list of suggested changes for the current slide. If you don’t like any of the suggestions, you can click on See More Design Ideas at the bottom and it will generate additional suggestions.

How attractive and useful are the suggestions? Well, it varies. When I tested it myself, they’ve rarely been results that I could use straight away—but the suggestions were helpful in that they gave me several great ideas that I hadn’t thought of myself.

For example, in the image above, you can see a suggestion for a color filter on a photo that looks like it could work really well with bright text and maybe a little blur.

Further reading: PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts worth knowing

This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC för Alla and was translated and localized from Swedish.

Author: Anders Lundberg , Contributor

Anders writes news, reviews and buying guides that touch most categories of consumer tech.

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• How to master Excel: From beginner to pro
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How to Set Up a Slideshow in PowerPoint 2016

Powerpoint 2016 for dummies.

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The PowerPoint 2016 printing features are useful, but PowerPoint is really designed to create slides that are presented directly on a screen rather than printed out. The screen can be your computer's own monitor, a projector, or an external monitor, such as a giant-screen television.

In most cases, the default settings for showing a presentation are adequate. However, in some cases, you may need to change the default settings. To do so, first open the presentation that you want to set up and then open the Slide Show tab on the Ribbon and click Set Up Slide Show (found in the Set Up group). This action summons the Set Up Show dialog box, which is shown here. With this dialog box, you can twiddle with the various options that are available for presenting slide shows.

With the options on the Set Up Show dialog box, you can do the following:

Configure the presentation: You can configure the presentation for one of three basic slide show types: Presented by a Speaker (Full Screen), Browsed by an Individual (Window), or Browsed at a Kiosk (Full Screen).

Loop through slides: Select the Loop Continuously until 'Esc' check box if you want the show to run indefinitely. If you enable this setting, the show jumps back to the first slide after the last slide is shown, and the show continues to repeat until you press Esc.

Simplify the presentation: Deselect the Show Without Narration and Show Without Animation options if you want to simplify the presentation by not playing narrations that you've recorded or animations that you've created.

Disable hardware graphics acceleration: Use this option only if your computer is having trouble properly displaying the graphics, media, or animations in your presentation.

Select pen and laser pointer color: Select the color to use for the pen or laser pointer.

Select slides: In the Show Slides area, select All to include all slides in the slide show or choose From and supply starting and ending slide numbers if you want to display just some of the slides in the presentation.

Set up custom shows: Choose Custom Show if you have set up any custom shows within your presentation.

Choose to change slides manually: In the Advance Slides area, choose Manually to advance from slide to slide by pressing Enter, pressing the spacebar, or clicking. Or, if you want the show to proceed automatically, select the Using Timings, If Present option if it's available.

Select a monitor: If your computer has two monitors, select the monitor to use for the slide show by using the drop-down list in the Multiple Monitors area.

About This Article

This article is from the book:.

• PowerPoint 2016 For Dummies ,

About the book author:

Doug Lowe is a veteran author with more than 40 For Dummies books to his credit, including titles on everything from Microsoft Office productivity with PowerPoint to networking to programming in ASP.NET.

This article can be found in the category:

• PowerPoint ,
• PowerPoint 2016 For Dummies Cheat Sheet
• How to Show Your PowerPoint 2016 Presentation Online
• How to Insert WordArt into Your PowerPoint 2016 Presentation
• How to Insert a Picture into Your PowerPoint 2016 Presentation
• How to Share Your PowerPoint 2016 Presentation via OneDrive
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How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

• Guy Kawasaki

Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

• Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

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Create a presentation

Create a presentation in powerpoint for the web.

With PowerPoint for the web running in your web browser, you can:

Create presentations that include images, videos, transitions, and animations.

Get to your presentations from your computer, tablet, or phone.

Share and work with others, wherever they are.

If you're using the desktop version of PowerPoint on a Windows PC, see the PowerPoint Quick Start .

If you're using the desktop version of PowerPoint on a Mac, see Office for Mac Quick Start Guides and PowerPoint for Mac Help .

Create, open, and name a presentation

Go to powerpoint.office.com .

Select New blank presentation , open a Recent file, select one of the themes , or start with a presentation template .

To name the presentation, select the title at the top and type a name.

If you need to rename the presentation, select the title and retype the name.

Add a slide

Select the slide you want your new slide to follow.

Select Home > New Slide .

Select Layout and the you type want from the drop-down.

When working in PowerPoint for the web, your work is saved every few seconds. You can select File > Save a Copy to create a duplicate copy in another location.

Or choose File > Download As to save a copy to your device.

When you're online, AutoSave is always on and saves your changes as you work. If at any time you lose your Internet connection or turn it off, any pending changes will sync as soon as you’re back online.

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