
Ask HN: How do I learn to use Powerpoint well? - tawayway
I work a job that uses Powerpoint both for traditional presentations (talk in front of slides) and documentation (here&#x27;s a 10 slide presentation covering X that you read yourself).<p>I don&#x27;t pick the format, I am aware of all the disadvantages, I have read Tufte, Powerpoint is the tool I will be using for this.<p>I am looking for a method to learn how to use PP quickly (shortcuts, best practices, features to avoid) so I can put things together quickly that look decent. The vast majority of online content on this is extremely basic or focused on presentation skills - I am looking to learn the software. Something like Joel Spolsky&#x27;s &quot;You Suck At Excel&quot; talk, but for Powerpoint.<p>Articles, MOOCs, video, <i>whatever</i> will be fine. Thanks.
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ea016
I always wonder why people always use libraries when building software but
never use templates when making presentations. Graphics and transitions are
extremely important when presenting, so why not build on top of other people's
work ?

I highly recommend using templates. You can get some really good ones here
(from 5 to 30 dollars)[1] or for free using google.

[1] [https://graphicriver.net/category/presentation-
templates/pow...](https://graphicriver.net/category/presentation-
templates/powerpoint-templates)

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jacobolus
Focus on real content – maps, charts, pictures – and create it using some
better tools outside of Powerpoint. Don’t write everything you plan to say on
your slides. The talk is the written content, the slides are visual backup.

Cut the bullet lists. Cut the animated transitions. Cut the clip art, tacky
color schemes, overabundance of wacky fonts.

Use text big enough to read. Don’t put too much of it on each slide. Write in
complete sentences. If you have more information than easily fits on slides,
print it on a handout.

This will both improve your talk, and reduce the amount of work you have to do
trying to herd powerpoint into doing anything tricky. All the MS Office
products are hilariously bad at doing precise layout work, full of
inexplicable and unreproducible bugs. The best approach is to not try too hard
with it, you’ll just frustrate yourself. If you keep your layouts exceedingly
simple, you have a chance of success.

~~~
baldfat
BAD PowerPoint presentations are for the speaker's benefit. They are just
transparent notes. Professors are the most guilty of this with a VERY close
second anyone that just is a bad public speaker.

GOOD PowerPoint presentations add to the speaker's presentation and requires
more from the speaker and less from the audience. These are very rare. People
who are selling you something are the most likely to do this well.

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slidemagic
I am a professional presentation designer and the founder of a PowerPoint
alternative: www.slidemagic.com.

Of course, I am biased and encourage you to try my app, but failing that, feel
free to browse through blog posts I have written over the past 8 years that
include a lot of PowerPoint advice: [http://www.slidemagic.com/search-the-
presentation-design-blo...](http://www.slidemagic.com/search-the-presentation-
design-blog-archive/)

My book (free) also provides useful pointers:
[http://www.slidemagic.com/book#free-presentation-design-
book](http://www.slidemagic.com/book#free-presentation-design-book)

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stats111
The best way I've found to learn powerpoint to identify 'good' powerpoint
slides, and then try and recreate the slides yourself from scratch. My top tip
in general is to use the Align and Distribute feature to manage the layout;
you'll be surprised how much of a difference it makes!

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richardboegli
As you've asked for "Best Practices"

The Old KISS principal applies here too.

Use whatever standard template your company or whomever mandates and then have
a Title per slide and Bullet points.

If none mandated, just plain white background and standard font size in the
default template works best.

All transitions etc.... get lost when converting and delay switching time.

Only have a single image per slide. The image should be self contained. i.e:
Create the diagram in word or other and use image of it.

It might look BORING, but it'll be easier to read and the slides are a guide.
People should be looking at presenter, NOT at the slides. :)

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zhte415
1\. Use you organisation's template. It should have 30+ slides of different
layout options. 'Text on left, 2 graphics vertically stacked on right', 'Text
on right, 1 graphic on left' etc, and a few pages of widgets. And your
organisation's colour palette with adjusted shading, etc.

If you can't find it, ask someone in marketing, as they'll probably have
something similar if not official.

2\. Use the keyboard to move things around. It is much more effective than
using a mouse.

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sssilver
This reminds me. The best "presentation" I've ever seen (and I was lucky to be
present in person for this) has been by a guy that was, if I remember
correctly a top person in Twitter's scalability team a few years ago. His name
was Raffi. It was so good that I've since been looking for these slides
actively and never managed to find them. The talk was about how they scaled
Twitter after it became a thing, and what happens to a tweet once the user
clicks "Post", how the timelines are generated, etc. The presentation on the
wall was made so tastefully, and clicked so amazingly in place with the
speaker's verbal story, that everyone was completely mesmerized.

If anyone can find me these slides (they weren't traditional slides and the
whole thing felt more like a smooth movie almost), I'd be extremely grateful.
Great material to learn from.

~~~
sssilver
[https://twitter.com/raffi](https://twitter.com/raffi) is the guy that did the
presentation.

------
rabboRubble
My personal recommendations:

1 - use your corporate template

2 - stay away from fancy transitioning between slides

3 - watch font size, avoid small font unless printed, and even then...

4 - augment what is seen on slide with what you say, do not read verbatim, or
if you do read, read then expound.

5 - control viewing with bullet point transition, revealing one bullet point
at a time.

6 - fewer slides are better unless your internal corporate is accustomed to
100 page decks (I've actually seen this)

7 - Images are great, but avoid juvenile images.

The other thing is that Powerpoint creation is an actual career in and off
itself. A friend of mine in marketing said that some executives offload PPT
creation to freelancers and that is _ALL_ that the freelancer does to feed and
house themselves. Creating a good presentation is an art in and off itself.

------
idan
[http://gazit.me/2012/12/05/designing-
presentations.html](http://gazit.me/2012/12/05/designing-presentations.html)

------
nitin_flanker
As you're asking specifically for using powerpoint, I would like to suggest
few tips you can use.

Colors:

When choosing colors for presentations, use
[http://colorhunt.co](http://colorhunt.co),
[http://Coolors.co](http://Coolors.co), or
[http://colorlovers.com](http://colorlovers.com), as you'll find prebuilt
color templates that look quite good than the stock colors of powerpoint. This
will definitely save you a lot of time on deciding colors.

Fonts:

If you can, install google fonts and use them instead of stock fonts. Most of
the stock fonts are overused in the industry (comic sans) and gives your
presentations a boring look. You can use [http://canva.com/font-
combinations](http://canva.com/font-combinations) for fonts suggestions that
go well togather. One for headings and other for content. You can choose a
thrid font for comments or captions.

Template:

Here, I would suggest that many other are suggesting. Use your company's
provided template. It would be much easier to modify that than to start from
scratch and think of something new. Still if you want to use something new,
watch a lot of presentations, especially the featured one on Slideshare.

And if Powerpoint is not the only option: I would highly suggest using
[http://canva.com](http://canva.com) for your designing needs. I, from past
year, have been using it to design almost everything. From presentations to
Infographics and deliverables.

3 benefits I would like to highlight - 1\. It is much more flexible than
powerpoint to modify, add colors, add pictures, resizing your designs.

2\. Provides hundreds of shapes, illustrations, images, few good fonts (for
free). This saves a lot of time.

3\. Offers multiple free templates to start with.

The major of all is, its free and you can use it anywhere, on home, office.
Share the files easily with just a link.

PS: I'm not related to Canva's marketing or anything, I'm just a too happy
client of them. I haven't even purchased their premium package as I never felt
the need.

------
dvh
Create plaintext to powerpoint generator

~~~
dvh
Not sure why the downvotes. He doesn't seems to be excited about it, when you
will have 50 different presentstions and you need to do minor change in it,
you just run the generator and it's done in few seconds. You can diff the
changes with VCS. You will have consistent style in every presentation, if you
change color of title it will change in every slide of every presentation.

------
CJefferson
I would suggest looking at presentations like the one you want to give.

That last bit is important. I see academics trying to emulate Steve Jobs, not
realising the Steve Jobs style doesn't work when you have genuinely
technically difficult material to get across.

------
facelessman
I found an useful YT playlist. Hope you enjoy it.
[https://youtu.be/g5EX7dpoLiY?list=PLq-
yuDBwPhRvOP9qGzQtQlK1v...](https://youtu.be/g5EX7dpoLiY?list=PLq-
yuDBwPhRvOP9qGzQtQlK1vNvbWmKs8)

Good luck!-

------
dilemma
one sweet trick is to design each slide as an image in photoshop. looks much
better.

------
numinary1
@dilemma's suggestion is the right one. The best way to use powerpoint is
DON'T USE POWERPOINT to create your presentation. For example, if you use PPT
shapes and text objects on a slide, and somebody tries to view it on a
different version of PPT (mac v. PC for example), the layout may change.
Yesterday, I presented in a webinar. I sent my slides to the sponsor in PPT
format. The webinar presentation software wanted 4:3 aspect slides and mine
were 16:9 so they mangled the format.

Use another tool to create each slide. Photoshop if that's your thing. I use
omnigraffle on my mac a lot. Each slide should consist of a single jpg or png.

So you don't have to learn anything about PPT, which is a worthless tool, but
unfortunately ubiquitous. Make your content and use PPT only to share and
present.

~~~
DeusExMachina
The OP clearly stated:

> I don't pick the format, I am aware of all the disadvantages, I have read
> Tufte, Powerpoint is the tool I will be using for this.

And still there are people that go on telling him not to use PowerPoint and
the reasons why.

~~~
AndyRewtD
The poster above didn't say not to use PPT as the final format. If you had
read OPs issue closely you would probably identify this as a viable work-
around.

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imron
I know you're not specifically looking for suggestions on content, but this is
worth a look:

[http://blog.dilbert.com/post/144505424481/impossible-to-
igno...](http://blog.dilbert.com/post/144505424481/impossible-to-ignore)

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hantusk
Don't know any content references, but find a person in your network that has
worked in management consulting, and they can take you through exactly what
you need

------
na85
A foolproof method that I have used to great success:

Use the 6 by 6 rule: keep your slides to a maximum of 6 words per line, and 6
lines per slide.

Budget about 30 seconds per slide, and then talk about the things that your
slides outline; don't just read what's on the slide.

You can add notes to the slides that don't show up in the presentation but I
prefer to use a piece of paper as it lets you walk around.

~~~
v3gas
30 seconds per slide? are you mad?

~~~
vog
I'm confused by your statement. Do you think that 30s/slide is too fast or too
slow?

