how to design presentation in powerpoint

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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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How to Design a Professional PowerPoint Presentation

Our series of tips on presentation design outlined some generic rules and ideas that you can live by to create better, more professional presentations. Today we want to follow that up by taking you through the actual process of designing a presentation from start to finish.

We’ll break down every step of the design process, from choosing colors and images to using whitespace properly. After reading through this you should be all set to design your own beautiful presentation slides that will put your coworkers to shame.

Using a pre-built PowerPoint template can be a good starting point for many people (we collected some of the best PowerPoint templates for you!). But if you’re wanting to design your own from start-to-finish, you’re in the right place!

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A Word About Content

I usually make a big deal about content preceding design, and presentations are no exception. Ideally, you’ll have the topic and much or all of the content outlined before you even think about design. This will in every way shape the appearance of your design, which is why working from pre-built templates isn’t always the best move (though generic templates can and do work great in some circumstances).

The reason that I bring this up is that I don’t really have an actual presentation in mind for this project. I’ll be running with a basic theme, but the textual information will be entirely placeholder copy. Your image, font, color and layout selection shouldn’t necessarily match mine but instead reflect the topic and content you’re working with.

Choosing A Color Scheme

Before I even open Photoshop (yes, I design PowerPoint/Keynote slides in Photoshop and drop them in), I want to find a color scheme on which to base my entire design. When I need to quickly find several colors that go together I usually start with Adobe Color CC . Not only is it a great way to build your own color schemes, it’s an outstanding source to find schemes built by others that you can just grab for your projects.

As luck would have it, I liked the very first color scheme I saw upon opening Color. This scheme was featured on the home page and looked like a great place to start for our presentation design.

Now, if you wanted to get everything exactly right, you could make a list of the RGB or Hex values, but I prefer a quicker, more direct route. What I usually do is snap a screenshot of the color scheme, paste it into my document and stretch it across the canvas on its own layer for easy access. This way I can quickly activate the layer, eyedropper the color I want, then hide the layer and get back to work. It’s a bit like having a palette of colors to dip your paintbrush in.

Designing Your Cover Slide

Now that we have a color scheme, the design work is going to be much simpler. One trick that designers often use in presentations is to leverage the color scheme as heavily as possible. If you’re new to design, you’ll likely think that this is too easy, too plain or even that it’s cheating somehow, but trust me, it’ll be much more attractive and professional than that horrid Microsoft clipart library you love so much.

To start, simply grab one of your colors from the scheme you chose and flood the background of your slide with it (I chose #631c25). Good job, there’s your background. Don’t freak out. It’ll look great. Now let’s throw in some typography.

Choosing a Font

Font choice is a major issue for non-designers. The tendency is to think that most fonts are “boring” and to look around for something exciting and fun. This inevitably leads to the use of Comic Sans or some other equally hideous font.

Unless you’re an elementary school teacher, your presentations should never look like this. Instead, why don’t you try one of those “boring” fonts to see if you can come up with something you like.

Combining fonts can be a tricky task and can take a trained eye to pull off. Fortunately, font designers have already created collections that work well together and if you’re not a designer, they make it easy to pull off great typography. The trick is to just stay in a family. Again, I know this sounds lame, but it works really well if you make sure the two styles you choose are very different.

For instance, I chose a Helvetica Bold Condensed and a Helvetica Light for my cover slide. Notice how different the fonts are from each other in terms of thickness. Choosing two styles that are relatively close causes visual confusion and should be avoided as a general rule of thumb. Instead, what you want is contrast and plenty of it.

Alignment and Layout

Notice a few things about the way I set up this slide. First, I used a strong left alignment for the text. As I say in just about every design article I write, center alignment should be a last resort, not a first. It tends to be the weakest text alignment that you can choose, having a hard edge increases readability considerably (notice that book pages aren’t center-aligned).

Also, notice the generous whitespace that I used. Remember that you don’t have to eat up every inch of space. Giving your text room to breathe helps your layout immensely and gives the design a clean look.

Adding an Image

At this point you might be wondering why you wasted your time reading so I could give you such plain advice. The truth is, most people that create presentations could improve them by 100% from following the advice above. However, I realize minimalism may be too extreme for some folks so let’s throw in an image to make it look nice.

Since our text is on the left, I wanted to find something a little heavy on the right. The general theme that I’ll go for is “City photos” assuming I had some sort of architecture or city-centric presentation to give. Again, you’ll have to choose iamges relevant to your own topic.

I grabbed this Flickr Creative Commons image from photographer Ben Spreng .

Now, if we just made this image our background, the text would become unreadable and we would be ditching our color scheme. What we’re going to do instead is set it on top of the colored slide and set our blending mode to Overlay. Then throw your opacity to around 45%.

As you can see, this helps the slide look much more interesting but keeps the text and colors fairly intact. It’s a simple solution that adds a lot of interest to an otherwise plain design.

Adding Content Slides

The cover may seem like it’s only a tiny part of the battle, but you’ve actually already set the tone for the entire presentation. You’ve got your theme, color scheme and fonts already in place. Now you just need to set up a few different layouts for your content.

The thing to keep in mind is to keep everything extremely simple, and that includes the level of content that you include. Apart from design, these are just good presentation tactics that you’ll learn in every public speaking class. Filling your slides with everything you’re going to say makes you unnecessary. You could just email everyone the slides and shut up.

Instead, the slides are merely meant to be a visual aid. Show a slide with your overall topic or main point, then speak the rest, without reading. Nothing is worse than watching a guy read his note cards word-for-word for thirty minutes, except perhaps watching a guy turn his back to the audience so he can actually read his slides out loud to you the whole time! You may laugh, but I’ve seen it happen folks.

For our first content slide, we’ll grab another Flickr photo and set it to the bottom portion of our slide at full bleed. Then we’ll set the top to another color from our scheme and toss in some text using the same exact formatting that we used on the cover.

See how this closely resembles the theme we’ve already established while still looking significantly different? This is they key to good presentation design: cohesiveness without redundancy.

Now for our third slide, we can simply do the inverse of the second slide with a new color and a new image .

Adding Informational Elements

It would be nice if every slide ever presented could work in a full bleed image, but the truth is that this simply isn’t practical. It will often be the case that you’re presenting graphical information or some other item that isn’t necessarily a photo.

My advice here is to try to stick as close to your theme as possible. For the slide below I flooded the entire background with a solid color from our original scheme and made a quick 3D graph with white columns (I drew a few flat boxes in Illustrator and applied a 3D effect).

As you can see, this slide is very information-focused and yet it doesn’t sacrifice the aesthetics and simplicity we’ve already established.

You’re All Set

From here you might come up with one or two more alternate slide designs and then rotate between them for the duration of your speech. The result is a presentation that is beautiful, very readable and highly professional. The bonus is that the simple, straightforward design will probably result in less work than a clip-art-filled horror show.

Most of the time, great design doesn’t mean being particularly artistic or knowing how to create amazing complex layouts. Instead, it’s about presenting information in an attractive and user-friendly way. With this goal in mind you realize that you’re probably trying way too hard if your end result is ugly. Try cutting out half or more of the elements on one of your slides and giving what’s left a strong left or right alignment with plenty of whitespace.

I hope this article has convinced you to abandon that clip art gallery once and for all. The benefits of clean, minimal design in presentations are clear: the information is easier to take in and the end result is more professional than the mess of information you typically see in presentation slides.

Of course, if you’re looking to get started quickly, flick through our collection of the best PowerPoint templates to find a beautiful set of pre-made designs!

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Simple Steps to Make a PowerPoint Presentation

Last Updated: July 23, 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 4,338,303 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 6 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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17 PowerPoint Presentation Tips From Pro Presenters [+ Templates]

Published: April 26, 2024

PowerPoint presentations can be professional, attractive, and really help your audience remember your message.

If you don’t have much experience, that’s okay — I’m going to arm you with PowerPoint design tips from pro presenters, the steps you need to build an engaging deck, and templates to help you nail great slide design.

Download Now

Buckle up for a variety of step-by-step explanations as well as tips and tricks to help you start mastering this program. There are additional resources woven in, and you’ll find expert perspectives from other HubSpotters along the way.

Table of Contents

How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation

Powerpoint presentation tips.

Microsoft PowerPoint is like a test of basic professional skills, and each PowerPoint is basically a presentation made of multiple slides.

Successful PowerPoints depend on three main factors: your command of PowerPoint's design tools, your attention to presentation processes, and being consistent with your style.

Keep those in mind as we jump into PowerPoint's capabilities.

Getting Started

1. open powerpoint and click ‘new.’.

A page with templates will usually open automatically, but if not, go to the top left pane of your screen and click New . If you’ve already created a presentation, select Open and then double-click the icon to open the existing file.

10 Free PowerPoint Templates

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• Creative templates.
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Creating PowerPoint Slides

3. insert a slide..

Insert a new slide by clicking on the Home tab and then the New Slide button. Consider what content you want to put on the slide, including heading, text, and imagery.

• Finally, PowerPoint Live is a new tool that enables you to do more seamless presentations during video calls and may be a better overall match for doing presentations remotely. Check out this video:

11. Try Using GIFs.

12 Free Customizable Resume Templates

Fill out this form to access your free professionally-designed templates, available on:

• Microsoft Word
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15. Embed multimedia.

PowerPoint allows you to either link to video/audio files externally or to embed the media directly in your presentation. For PCs, two great reasons for embedding are:

• Embedding allows you to play media directly in your presentation. It will look much more professional than switching between windows.
• Embedding also means that the file stays within the PowerPoint presentation, so it should play normally without extra work (except on a Mac).

If you use PowerPoint for Mac it gets a bit complicated, but it can be done:

• Always bring the video and/or audio file with you in the same folder as the PowerPoint presentation.
• Only insert video or audio files once the presentation and the containing folder have been saved on a portable drive in their permanent folder.
• If the presentation will be played on a Windows computer, then Mac users need to make sure their multimedia files are in WMV format.
• Consider using the same operating system for designing and presenting, no matter what.

16. Bring your own hardware.

Between operating systems, PowerPoint is still a bit jumpy. Even between differing PPT versions, things can change. The easiest fix? Just bring along your own laptop when you're presenting.

The next easiest fix is to upload your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides as a backup option — just make sure there is a good internet connection and a browser available where you plan to present.

Google Slides is a cloud-based presentation software that will show up the same way on all operating systems.

To import your PowerPoint presentation into Google Slides:

• Navigate to slides.google.com . Make sure you’re signed in to a Google account (preferably your own).
• Under Start a new presentation , click the empty box with a plus sign. This will open up a blank presentation.
• Go to File , then Import slides .
• A dialog box will come up. Tap Upload.
• Click Select a file from your device .
• Select your presentation and click Open .
• Select the slides you’d like to import. If you want to import all of them, click All in the upper right-hand corner of the dialog box.
• Click Import slides.

When I tested this out, Google Slides imported everything perfectly, including a shape whose points I had manipulated. This is a good backup option to have if you’ll be presenting across different operating systems.

17. Use Presenter View.

In most presentation situations, there will be both a presenter’s screen and the main projected display for your presentation.

PowerPoint has a great tool called Presenter View, which can be found in the Slide Show tab of PowerPoint. Included in the Presenter View is an area for notes, a timer/clock, and a presentation display.

For many presenters, this tool can help unify their spoken presentation and their visual aid. You never want to make the PowerPoint seem like a stack of notes that you’re reading off of.

Use the Presenter View option to help create a more natural presentation.

Pro Tip: At the start of the presentation, you should also hit CTRL + H to make the cursor disappear. Hitting the “A” key will bring it back if you need it.

Your Next Great PowerPoint Presentation Starts Here

Now that you have these style, design, and presentation tips under your belt, you should feel confident to create your PowerPoint presentation.

But if you can explore other resources to make sure your content hits the mark. After all, you need a strong presentation to land your point and make an impression.

With several templates to choose from — both in PowerPoint and available for free download — you can swiftly be on your way to creating presentations that wow your audiences.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in September 2013 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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8 tips to make the best powerpoint presentations.

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Why it's important to have a linkedin account, i use this 53-year old trick to get files to my phone, quick links, table of contents, start with a goal, less is more, consider your typeface, make bullet points count, limit the use of transitions, skip text where possible, think in color, take a look from the top down, bonus: start with templates.

Slideshows are an intuitive way to share complex ideas with an audience, although they're dull and frustrating when poorly executed. Here are some tips to make your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations sing while avoiding common pitfalls.

It all starts with identifying what we're trying to achieve with the presentation. Is it informative, a showcase of data in an easy-to-understand medium? Or is it more of a pitch, something meant to persuade and convince an audience and lead them to a particular outcome?

It's here where the majority of these presentations go wrong with the inability to identify the talking points that best support our goal. Always start with a goal in mind: to entertain, to inform, or to share data in a way that's easy to understand. Use facts, figures, and images to support your conclusion while keeping structure in mind (Where are we now and where are we going?).

I've found that it's helpful to start with the ending. Once I know how to end a presentation, I know how best to get to that point. I start by identifying the takeaway---that one nugget that I want to implant before thanking everyone for their time---and I work in reverse to figure out how best to get there.

Your mileage, of course, may vary. But it's always going to be a good idea to put in the time in the beginning stages so that you aren't reworking large portions of the presentation later. And that starts with a defined goal.

A slideshow isn't supposed to include everything. It's an introduction to a topic, one that we can elaborate on with speech. Anything unnecessary is a distraction. It makes the presentation less visually appealing and less interesting, and it makes you look bad as a presenter.

This goes for text as well as images. There's nothing worse, in fact, than a series of slides where the presenter just reads them as they appear. Your audience is capable of reading, and chances are they'll be done with the slide, and browsing Reddit, long before you finish. Avoid putting the literal text on the screen, and your audience will thank you.

Related: How to Burn Your PowerPoint to DVD

Right off the bat, we're just going to come out and say that Papyrus and Comic Sans should be banned from all PowerPoint presentations, permanently. Beyond that, it's worth considering the typeface you're using and what it's saying about you, the presenter, and the presentation itself.

Consider choosing readability over aesthetics, and avoid fancy fonts that could prove to be more of a distraction than anything else. A good presentation needs two fonts: a serif and sans-serif. Use one for the headlines and one for body text, lists, and the like. Keep it simple. Veranda, Helvetica, Arial, and even Times New Roman are safe choices. Stick with the classics and it's hard to botch this one too badly.

There reaches a point where bullet points become less of a visual aid and more of a visual examination.

Bullet points should support the speaker, not overwhelm his audience. The best slides have little or no text at all, in fact. As a presenter, it's our job to talk through complex issues, but that doesn't mean that we need to highlight every talking point.

Instead, think about how you can break up large lists into three or four bullet points. Carefully consider whether you need to use more bullet points, or if you can combine multiple topics into a single point instead. And if you can't, remember that there's no one limiting the number of slides you can have in a presentation. It's always possible to break a list of 12 points down into three pages of four points each.

Animation, when used correctly, is a good idea. It breaks up slow-moving parts of a presentation and adds action to elements that require it. But it should be used judiciously.

Adding a transition that wipes left to right between every slide or that animates each bullet point in a list, for example, starts to grow taxing on those forced to endure the presentation. Viewers get bored quickly, and animations that are meant to highlight specific elements quickly become taxing.

That's not to say that you can't use animations and transitions, just that you need to pick your spots. Aim for no more than a handful of these transitions for each presentation. And use them in spots where they'll add to the demonstration, not detract from it.

Sometimes images tell a better story than text can. And as a presenter, your goal is to describe points in detail without making users do a lot of reading. In these cases, a well-designed visual, like a chart, might better convey the information you're trying to share.

The right image adds visual appeal and serves to break up longer, text-heavy sections of the presentation---but only if you're using the right images. A single high-quality image can make all the difference between a success and a dud when you're driving a specific point home.

When considering text, don't think solely in terms of bullet points and paragraphs. Tables, for example, are often unnecessary. Ask yourself whether you could present the same data in a bar or line chart instead.

Color is interesting. It evokes certain feelings and adds visual appeal to your presentation as a whole. Studies show that color also improves interest, comprehension, and retention. It should be a careful consideration, not an afterthought.

You don't have to be a graphic designer to use color well in a presentation. What I do is look for palettes I like, and then find ways to use them in the presentation. There are a number of tools for this, like Adobe Color , Coolors , and ColorHunt , just to name a few. After finding a palette you enjoy, consider how it works with the presentation you're about to give. Pastels, for example, evoke feelings of freedom and light, so they probably aren't the best choice when you're presenting quarterly earnings that missed the mark.

It's also worth mentioning that you don't need to use every color in the palette. Often, you can get by with just two or three, though you should really think through how they all work together and how readable they'll be when layered. A simple rule of thumb here is that contrast is your friend. Dark colors work well on light backgrounds, and light colors work best on dark backgrounds.

Spend some time in the Slide Sorter before you finish your presentation. By clicking the four squares at the bottom left of the presentation, you can take a look at multiple slides at once and consider how each works together. Alternatively, you can click "View" on the ribbon and select "Slide Sorter."

Are you presenting too much text at once? Move an image in. Could a series of slides benefit from a chart or summary before you move on to another point?

It's here that we have the opportunity to view the presentation from beyond the single-slide viewpoint and think in terms of how each slide fits, or if it fits at all. From this view, you can rearrange slides, add additional ones, or delete them entirely if you find that they don't advance the presentation.

The difference between a good presentation and a bad one is really all about preparation and execution. Those that respect the process and plan carefully---not only the presentation as a whole, but each slide within it---are the ones who will succeed.

This brings me to my last (half) point: When in doubt, just buy a template and use it. You can find these all over the web, though Creative Market and GraphicRiver are probably the two most popular marketplaces for this kind of thing. Not all of us are blessed with the skills needed to design and deliver an effective presentation. And while a pre-made PowerPoint template isn't going to make you a better presenter, it will ease the anxiety of creating a visually appealing slide deck.

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Find the perfect PowerPoint presentation template

Bring your next presentation to life with customizable powerpoint design templates. whether you're wowing with stats via charts and graphs or putting your latest and greatest ideas on display, you'll find a powerpoint presentation template to make your ideas pop., presentations.

Help your data, insights, and recommendations make a statement with beautiful and easily customizable presentation templates.

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Celebrate accomplishments big and small with customizable certificate templates. From gift certificates to awards for finishing a course or training, find a template that highlights their accolades.

Boost visibility for your show, project, or business with easily customizable poster templates. Find templates for all your promotion needs and make them uniquely yours in a flash.

Keep track of whatever you need to in style. From personal planning to promotional calendars, find templates for every kind of project and aesthetic.

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Say more with less using helpful and easily customizable infographic templates. Add clarity to business presentations, school projects, and more with these helpful templates.

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A quick way to create beautiful, powerful PowerPoint presentations

Create captivating, informative content for PowerPoint in just a few minutes—no graphic design experience needed. Here's how:

1. Find the perfect PowerPoint template

2. Customize your creation

3. Show it off

Let's create a powerpoint design, frequently asked questions, where can i find slide templates and themes that i can customize.

To find customizable slide templates and themes, you can explore the business presentations templates or search by PowerPoint templates . Once you find a template that resonates with you, customize it by changing its color scheme, add in your own photos, and swap out the font.

How do I use pre-made PowerPoint templates?

After you've chosen a PowerPoint template to use, customize it. Explore [design tips] on how to customize a deck that resonates with your brand while putting emphasis on the topic at hand. Play with other design elements, like photo shapes, to make each slide unique.

How can I make or edit my own custom PowerPoint templates?

Start from scratch by creating your own PowerPoint template . Follow tips for designs and business presentations so that your unique template is cohesive and relevant to your brand. Incorporate your brand's color scheme and graphics so that all your slides aren't text only.

What kinds templates can I get online for PowerPoint?

You can get PowerPoint templates that have modern designs, animated ones, or even hand-drawn art in each slide. The color schemes range from bold to subtle. Each template's slides are also organized based on what you may want to include in your presentation . You can use the template as a starting point and customize its specific details from theme.

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How To Use PowerPoint Design Ideas - All Questions Answered!

Designing slides can take anywhere from several minutes (for knowledgeable designers) to several days (for design novices). If your design skills lie somewhere in between, that’s still a few hours you can put to good use if freed up. Fortunately, PowerPoint Designer or the Design Ideas tool is available to save the day!

In this blog post, you’ll learn everything about this incredible PowerPoint feature. From its technical requirements to how to enable or disable it and, most importantly, how to edit your Design Ideas .

Let’s get started!

What is the PowerPoint Design ideas tool?

Think of PowerPoint Designer or the Design Ideas tool as your personal presentation designer. Just type in a few lines of text to the slide, maybe an image or two, and voila! You have 8 different layout and design suggestions from PowerPoint.

The first time you use it, you’ll probably be amazed by the visual feast PowerPoint will serve right before your eyes. The suggestions are random but can be breathtaking .

If you have an Office 365 subscription, you can find it on the Design tab. The Design Ideas button should be on the right side of your screen like you see here:

Now, let me give you a quick peek into how this tool works!

Take a look at the screenshots below. I only wrote the word ‘Hello’ on the slide, and look at what the Design Ideas panel on the right side of the screen has come up with!

This is on PowerPoint (Mac):

This is on PowerPoint (Windows):

As you can see, the same text (Hello) generated vastly different design ideas. On Mac, the suggestions were visually captivating, with beautiful imagery used as background. On Windows, the suggestions were a bit basic, to be honest.

For the next example, I deleted a couple of characters from the ‘Hello’ text, and then retyped them again. I got the following design ideas:

As you can see, it’s still the same text, but different design suggestions. This is the beauty of Design Ideas – the suggestions appear to be random. So, if you’re not happy with any of the suggestions, you can give it another try, and you’ll get a bunch of new ideas.

This can even be your starting point to building amazing presentations as the professionals do:

What are the requirements for PowerPoint Designer?

If you don’t see the Design Ideas tab in your copy of PowerPoint, then you probably don’t meet the following requirements:

• PowerPoint on Windows/Mac – an active Office 365 subscription
• PowerPoint Online (web version) – you don’t need an Office 365 subscription, but you need a OneDrive or SharePoint Online account
• iOS – you need an iPad. This feature isn’t available on iPhones.
• Android – you need an Android tablet. This feature is missing on Android smartphones.
• Windows mobile – you need a Windows tablet to access PowerPoint Designer. This feature is not available on Windows smartphones.

Don’t have an Office 365 subscription but want to use PowerPoint Design Ideas?

An Office 365 subscription can go as low as $6.99 per month (or $69.99 per year) for the Office 365 Personal plan. Whether you want to invest the money or not is up to you.

Personally, I think the subscription is worth it because, in addition to PowerPoint, you do have access to the entire Microsoft Office suite. Plus, you also get 1TB of storage on OneDrive. However, if you’re only going to be subscribing just so you can use the Designer tool, then I suggest you follow this tip below instead.

Here’s a workaround if you don’t have a subscription but really really want to use the Design Ideas tool (I don’t blame you, it’s a useful feature!):

1.- Sign up for a free Microsoft account, which automatically comes with 5GB OneDrive storage.

2.- You can then go to Office.com and log in using your account credentials.

3.- Click on the PowerPoint icon to open the app on your browser.

4.- You’ll notice that when you go to the Design tab, you’ll see the Design Ideas button in there!

Here’s a screenshot:

And what’s really cool about using PowerPoint Online is that you get 10 design suggestions as opposed to the 8 on either Windows or Mac desktop app.

Here are a couple of ways you can go about taking advantage of the free Design Ideas tab on PowerPoint Online:

Method 1 : You can design your slides on PowerPoint desktop. Then upload your presentation file to PowerPoint Online and edit it using the Design Ideas feature.

Method 2 : Just go directly to PowerPoint Online and work on your slides there. The downside to this method is that the web app is not as robust or as full-featured as the desktop version (specifically, PowerPoint for Windows). But if you just want a simple presentation without putting too much effort into the design, then this method is a great workaround.

How to activate or enable PowerPoint Design Ideas on your computer?

If you have an Office 365 subscription, but your Design Ideas button is missing in the Design tab, then it’s probably not activated. Here’s how you do it:

PowerPoint Windows:

Go to File > Options . In the General tab, you’ll see the options for PowerPoint Designer. There are a couple of choices for you:

• If you want to automatically show design ideas every time you click on Design Ideas, then you should tick the option that says ‘ Automatically show me design ideas. ’
• If you want PowerPoint to automatically show you suggestions every time you open a new blank document, then you should tick the option that says ‘Automatically show me suggestions when I create a new presentation.’

PowerPoint Mac:

First, go to PowerPoint Preferences or press the command and comma keys simultaneously (command + ,). In Authoring and Proofing Tools , click on General . You’ll then see the options for PowerPoint Designer . Just like the Windows version, make sure you tick on the two options (see the above screenshot for guidance).

Still don’t see PowerPoint Designer? Try these fixes.

If you know for a fact that you have an active Office 365 subscription but still don’t see the Designer button in your copy of PowerPoint, then you should try these possible solutions:

• If you’re coming from a standalone copy of Microsoft Office (not Office 365) and have recently subscribed to the service, you will need to uninstall your old copy. Then, you’ll need to install Office 365.
• Check with your IT department if they’ve turned off the Designer feature (apparently, some organizations aren’t fans).
• Restart your copy of PowerPoint. If this doesn’t work, try restarting your computer.
• Check if you have the latest version of PowerPoint. With an active Office 365 subscription , you should receive the latest versions automatically. Unless, of course, you choose to manually disable updates for some reason.

Check your PowerPoint Windows version:

To turn on automatic updates for PowerPoint, go to File > Account . On the right side of the screen, you should see Office Updates . Click on Update Options , then select Update Now .

If you’re running the latest version, you’ll get this message on your screen:

Now that you have the latest version of PowerPoint, you should be able to access the latest features.

If, for some reason, the Designer button is still missing, check your version and build number. You can see this info in About PowerPoint , just below the Office Updates button.

As you can see, I am on the monthly channel and have version 1906.

If you no longer have an active subscription and can’t update PowerPoint anymore, you can check PowerPoint Designer’s requirements for Windows . Perhaps your version still gives you limited access to some designer features. Just scroll down the web page, and you’ll see a section for Requirements.

Here’s a screenshot of the page:

You can check your version and see what kind of design options are available for your copy of PowerPoint. For instance, if you only have Version 1511, you’ll get design ideas for a single photo only. You won’t get design suggestions if you have multiple photos. Neither can you convert your lists to SmartArt graphics.

If you have version 1603, you’ll get design ideas for a single photo as well as multiple photos. But it’s not going to convert your lists to SmartArt graphics. The requirements list is frequently updated, so make sure you visit that page regularly.

Alternatively, you can always upload your PPT file to PowerPoint Online. The web app has all the latest Design Ideas features, so if your desktop PowerPoint is outdated, try going online!

Check your PowerPoint for Mac version:

For Mac users, you can check for updates by going to the Help tab. Then click on Check for Updates . If your software is updated, you’ll see this message:

I also recommend that you tick the ‘ Automatically Download and Install ’ button, so you get all the latest features from PowerPoint.

There are not a lot of version requirements for Mac users. If you check the Requirements for MacOS , you’ll see this on your screen:

According to Microsoft, PowerPoint Designer is available on Version 15.26.0.160910 or later for Mac users. You can check your PowerPoint for Mac version by going to PowerPoint > About PowerPoint .

Here’s a screenshot of my PPT version:

I have version 16.26, which means I should have access to all Designer features for PowerPoint Mac.

Design Ideas button is grayed out, what to do?

Sometimes you do see the Design Ideas button, but it’s grayed out, then you may need to check your Internet connection .

Now, if you’re online and the button remains grayed out, then double-check that you’ve selected a single slide . Whenever you’re in between slides, your Design Ideas button will be grayed out.

Here’s an example:

Have PowerPoint Designer button, but no design ideas generated?

It can be quite frustrating to add content to your slides, click on Design Ideas, and see nothing but a blank panel. And, of course, the message “ Sorry, no design ideas for this slide. ” Try the tips below to see if any of these will solve your problem:

• The most likely culprit for this scenario is actually your Internet connection . PowerPoint Designer needs a stable connection to the web to function properly.
• Use a default PowerPoint theme , not one that you downloaded elsewhere. You can choose your theme by going to Design > Themes. Choose from any of the available themes that show up in the Office section. Here’s a screenshot:

• Perhaps someone else is editing the slide you’re working on. You can either wait for that person to finish or ask them to go work on another slide (this works if you’re the boss).
• If there’s no content on the slide. Add some text or photo, and let Designer do its magic!
• Maybe you’ve drawn a shape on the slide. As of this time, Designer (Windows/Mac/Online) doesn’t support shapes. But you can insert icons, SmartArt graphics , tables, and charts, and the PowerPoint Designer tool will give you several design ideas!

Pro Tip: If you absolutely must use a shape on the slide, I would suggest removing the shape first. Then select a new layout from the Designer panel. Afterward, you can insert your shape anywhere you want on the slide!

• There are too many images on the slide. Currently, Designer can only accommodate up to 6 images. If you insert 7 images, Designer will let you know there are too many images.

I find this is a super cool way to get your photos resized into several different layouts. You can do it with SmartArt too, but with Designer, there are no extra text boxes added. Just images. Check out this example:

Another pro is that you can insert all images into the slide all at once. No need to rearrange anything. The PowerPoint Designer tool will automatically do it for you!

If you want to add more images, I recommend inserting 6 images first. Then select the Designer layout you want to use. And finally, add all the other images you need to show on the slide.

This may take some maneuvering, but at least Designer gets you halfway there. You just need to make a few extra clicks depending on how many images you want to add! If you’re still unsure of how to do it, check out our guide for working with multiple images in PowerPoint .

• Maybe you’ve got too many charts on the slide. As of now, the Design Ideas feature can only generate ideas if you’ve only got a single chart on the slide. Otherwise, you’ll get the message, “ Having multiple charts isn’t supported right now. Design Ideas will appear here when you’re working on a slide without multiple charts. ”
• If there are too many elements on the slide, PowerPoint Designer isn’t going to work. Keep your slide simple at first, and once you’ve selected a layout, feel free to add more elements to the slide.

How to disable PowerPoint Designer?

The answer is you can’t. But turning off automatic Designer suggestions will do. Just head over to PowerPoint Options (on either PC or Mac) and untick the boxes in the PowerPoint Designer section.

You’re not going to get automatic suggestions, but you can still view the Design Ideas in the Design tab. You’re just going to manually click on the button to get some design suggestions.

How do you edit design ideas in PowerPoint?

So, you want to make changes to a Design idea, but PowerPoint doesn’t let you select any element in the slide? I got you!

Many users report this as an issue when working with Design Ideas, but here’s how to do it right:

1.- Select your Design Idea slide

2.- Go to the Home tab > Select

3.- Click on “Selection Pane”

Once you open the Selection Pane , you’ll see your slide elements as individual layers, and this makes it so much easier to manage them all. Now you can select, edit or delete them as you wish.

How to change the color of suggested design ideas?

Here’s where things get tricky. You might not be able to change the element colors of your Design ideas, but you can work your way through with these two methods:

• Method 1: Change the Background color of your Design Ideas If you want to modify the colors of your Design ideas, changing the background can make a huge difference to the overall appearance of your slides. Just follow these steps:

1.- Make sure your Design Idea slide is selected

2.- Go to the Design tab > Background

3.- Choose between a Solid color or a Picture

Voilá! Now, if you want all your slides with the same background, return to the “Background” option and click on “Apply to all”

• Method 2 - Redraw the elements of your Design Ideas Sadly, we cannot change the colors of each element directly. However, you can still have some kind of control over how your Design Ideas turn out. The easiest way is to redraw the shapes and use the colors you want. Here’s the step-by-step:

1.- Select your Slide

2.- Open the Selection Pane

3.- Delete or Hide the element you want to change

4.- Insert your shape

5.- Fill it with your favorite color

How do you change icons of suggested design ideas?

The Designer tool recognizes when you use lists on your slides, and it will create at least one Design idea with icons.

But if you’re not happy with the icons, you can change them very easily. Just click any icon, and a “Replace your icon” tag will appear. Open it so you can get multiple icon suggestions, then select the one you like the most.

How to apply the same design idea to all slides in PowerPoint?

Wish I could tell you there’s a specific button for that, but as of now, PowerPoint doesn’t offer that option. However, we can always rely on one of my favorite features. If you want to repeat a design idea on several slides, here’s what you need to do:

1.- Select your design idea slide

2.- Right-click on the slide and select Duplicate

3.- Repeat as many times as you need

Looking for more? Get a Fully Customized Presentation

The Design Ideas tool can speed up your workflow by not letting you worry too much about the design process. Sure, it’s not perfect by any means, but you can get inspiration to take your design game to greater heights!

However, there’s a downside to this when working with company presentations. Don’t get me wrong - I’m a big fan of Design ideas, but in the end, you’re giving up control over what you communicate visually .

Let me break it down: If you rely on presentations to bring value to the business, then you need slides that convey what your brand stands for. I’m talking about slides that make you memorable and help your brand get a top position in the minds of your prospective clients.

Chances are your business already has a brand style guide for client-facing collateral, or at least a logo and colors that identify it. Here’s where the “Design Ideas” falls short. As a tool, it can’t understand that your brand colors and elements should be applied in a certain way so that your work looks more professional - and distinguishes you from competitors!

Design Ideas might not help you with that, but professional presentation designers surely can . At 24Slides , we inject your brand’s visual identity seamlessly into any presentation. Whether it’s a stand-alone PowerPoint or several company decks that require a visual update, rest assured the 24Slides designers will get you impactful on-brand slides .

If you’ve noticed “Design ideas” can only get you so far, learn more about our custom presentation design service - or even better: Redeem this $1 try-out offer and send your first slide today !

Frequent Customer Questions

How many suggested design ideas will i get.

On PowerPoint for Windows and Mac, the PowerPoint Designer tool gives you 8 design layouts to choose from. However, on PowerPoint Online (the browser-based version of PowerPoint), you can have up to 10 design ideas. In case you’re wondering, the most common layouts suggested will include a graphic, an image, or an icon, even if there’s just text on the slide. So, if you have no time to look for images, just type your text on the slide, and see what PowerPoint Designer gives you!

How to make icons appear in my Design ideas?

If you type in a word or phrase that matches an icon from the Office 365 icons library, then Designer will add that icon to your slide. Say, for example, your topic is about computers. You can just type the word ‘computer’ on the slide, click on Design Ideas, and PowerPoint will suggest some layouts with a computer icon on it.

How many times can I use the Design Ideas feature?

PowePoint Designer is an AI feature, so it can come up with many different variations. Once you select a design idea, you can then use it to re-generate a new batch of design ideas! No one has come to a number yet, but I think is safe to say you can use it as many times as you need.

You might also find these articles interesting:

• PowerPoint 101: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners
• How to Create a Venn Diagram in PowerPoint
• How to Make a PowerPoint Slideshow that Runs Automatically?
• The Cost of PowerPoint Presentations: Discover the hidden expenses you might overlook!

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30 PowerPoint Presentation Tips to Make Good PPT Slides in 2024 (+ 6 Expert Tips)

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Here are 30 quick PowerPoint presentation tips to help you improve your presentations. 

Plus, get PowerPoint tips on changing your slide design to make your content shine. We've even called on six presentation experts for their best tips.

How to Make a Good PowerPoint Presentation (Watch & Learn)

This screencast is a speed round of my very favorite PowerPoint tricks. It's a great resource to learn how to make a presentable PowerPoint. I'll walk you through ten of my favorite PowerPoint tips and tricks to create a better presentation.

Keep reading for an illustrated version of these good PPT tips (and more) that you can use to improve your PowerPoint presentations. You'll see 30 of our favorite PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks, including techniques to update slide master PowerPoint 2024 designs.

Jump to content in this section:

• How Do You Give a Memorable PPT Presentation?
• Practice Makes Perfect
• Adapt Your Presentation to the Audience
• Use a Custom Font
• Use Contrast
• Avoid Too Many Animations
• Use the Rule of Three
• Use a Custom PPT Theme Design
• Make Use of Charts and Graphs
• Use the Built-in Slide Layouts
• Align Text Consistently
• Make Your Exports User-Friendly
• Try a Different Color Scheme
• Edit Slide Masters for Consistency
• Use the Alignment Feature
• Use Stock Assets
• Reduce Your Content
• Rethink Your Slide Order
• Use PowerPoint Animations
• Invite Collaborators
• Add Supporting Video Clips
• Use Infographic Templates
• Use Impactful Closing Techniques
• Include Data in the Appendix
• Alternate Between Solid Color and White Slides
• Present Information With Maps
• Keep the Design Best Practices in Mind
• Set a Time Limit
• Test Your Content Everywhere

30 Tips: How to Make Good PowerPoint Presentation Designs Fast in 2024

A few tried and true tips can help you speed up your PowerPoint presentation design. Check out 30 of my favorite PowerPoint tips to do just that. Each of these give you PowerPoint slideshow help to create good PowerPoint slides:

1. How Do You Give a Memorable PPT Presentation?

If you're learning the top PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks, you're probably asking yourself: how do I give a presentation that won't be forgotten?

We all want to be remembered. The best PowerPoint slideshow help to make a mark on the audience. There are tried-and-true ways to do just that, and expert Neil Tomlinson shares expertise on being remembered:

Get your main point into the presentation as early as possible (this avoids any risk of audience fatigue or attention span waning), then substantiate your point with facts, figures etc and then reiterate your point at the end in a ‘Summary’.

2. Practice Makes Perfect

Also, don’t forget to practice your presentation. Go through your slide deck a few times to make sure you know it like the back of your hand when the big day arrives. Doing so helps you feel more confident. It'll reduce any anxiety and nervousness you might feel as the presentation day approaches.

What's the best way to rehears for a good PowerPoint? Here's one of the top PowerPoint presentation tips from expert presenter Sandra Zimmer :

Once slides are ready, practice one slide at a time aloud until you feel like you know it and like the flow of speech. Be willing to change anything that does not feel in flow. At the end of learning all your slides, practice the whole talk.

If you want even more great PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks, check out the following post:

3. Adapt Your Presentation to the Audience

Let's say that you're a seasoned presenter with a pretty standard set of presentation topics. Maybe you're an expert in your field, and you're asked to give a PPT presentation frequently on similar topics.

That's the value of being an expert. You might have a standard spiel that you give your audiences, and your content won't totally change from one presentation to another. That's why it helps to make only slight tweaks to adapt your presentation to each audience.

Leading presentation expert Suzannah Baum offered up this advice:

Different audiences will have different needs and different challenges, which requires me to re-sequence the slides, or create new ones. I tend to do a lot of research on my audiences – via surveys, interviews, and conversations with the hiring manager – to help me better understand what information would be most relevant to them.

How do you adapt to your audience? Here are a few more tips:

• Learn about them. If you're asked to speak, talk to the curator of the presentation to learn more about the audience and their background.
• Ask about them! With contact details, send out a survey or a response link to ask for feedback and preparation info. Ask leading questions like "what do you want to learn?"
• Consider the environment.  If you're presenting via Zoom, your style will differ from presenting in person. The key is to acknowledge the difference and adapt to your environment.

Learn everything you can about your audience. Learning how to make a presentable PowerPoint is all about thinking of the recipient, not the presenter!

4. Use a Custom Font

A PowerPoint presentation tip that'll make your slideshow more interesting and more engaging is to use a custom font.

Fonts set the tone for your presentation. So, when you use a premium font, you’re opting for a high-quality font while also adding a personal or creative touch. 

When choosing a font, remember that you want everyone to read your text easily. 

5. Use Contrast

One PowerPoint trick is to use contrast to make some of your text stand out or make it easier to read.

If you’re putting text over an image on our PowerPoint slide, you may need to use a white box with black text in it to make your text easier to read. You can also use contrasting colors to highlight important text.

6. Avoid Too Many Animations

Another PowerPoint tip is to avoid having too many animations or transitions.

When you've got too many animations, it can be distracting to the audience. It’s not only distracting, but it's unprofessional.

It’s best to stick to one or two animations throughout your presentation. Also, if you've got any animations in your presentation, make sure to test them to see if they work before presenting.

7. Add Audio

Include audio on a slide on PowerPoint to increase audience engagement. Audio can be anything from fun sound effects to interview clips. You can even add an audio clip of your voice.

Audio gives you a break from speaking while also engaging the audience. Envato Elements has hundreds of premium audio clips if you want to add some.

8. Use the Rule of Three

One PowerPoint tip and trick is to follow the rules of PowerPoint.

One of those rules is the rule of three. It's where you start by dividing your presentation into thirds. Everything should come in thirds, so if you use bullet points, you should only have three. If you use icons, you should only have three.

When things come in threes, it's easier to remember them. For more information, read this informative article:

9. Use a Custom PPT Theme Design

Above all, consistently use custom PowerPoint themes. Microsoft has built-in themes that you can use for free, sure. But the premium themes that are on Envato Elements   are a major step-up from PowerPoint's built-in themes. 

When you subscribe to Envato Elements, you'll have access to unlimited downloads of all the PowerPoint themes. Right now, Envato Elements has almost 4,000 PowerPoint themes and that number is always growing. You'll learn tips for a good PowerPoint presentation by using the best templates.

10. Make Use of Charts and Graphs

Illustrate your data with the use of charts and graphs. Not only will you be able to make your presentation more visually appealing, but you'll also help your audience remember the information better.

Many PowerPoint templates already include chart and graph elements. Easily customize them to make your data and stats more interesting and easier to understand.

Want to learn more about how to use data? Turn to expert Adrienne J ohnston , a presentation professional:

When it comes to visualizing data in presentations, we have to remember that our audience does not need all the fine details of the data - they need the main takeaway and we need to make sure that's evident to them when looking at the slide.

11. Use the Built-in Slide Layouts

Inside of PowerPoint themes, you'll find layouts , which are custom slide designs.

Most themes include a selection of content layouts that you can use as a starting point for your own slide designs. You can leverage slide master PowerPoint 2024 designs with the help of layouts.

Layouts are like a starting point for your PowerPoint presentation slides. They contain combinations of placeholders for text boxes, images, and more.

Instead of clicking and drawing individual objects onto the slide, use one of these layouts to start your slide off. It's one of the top PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks to save time.

12. Align Text Consistently

When you're working with text on your slide, it helps to ensure that it aligns consistently. Keeping your text aligned in the same orientation really makes a slide look clean. 

In the example below, I've basically got three text boxes:

• list of bulleted points

Notice that all this text is aligned left. 

Aligning text was the " aha " moment that I learned when I started studying slide design. It's one of those steps that makes a slide look much neater and professional, so keep it in mind when designing.

13. Make Your Exports User-Friendly

No matter how great your PowerPoint presentation slides look, you need to think about how your user will use the presentation file. 

Any of these are likely scenarios if you're regularly sending presentations to other users:

• The viewer may not have PowerPoint installed on their computer.
• The recipient may be using a version of PowerPoint that renders the presentation differently.
• Maybe you don't want the user to be able to make any edits or see your notes in the presentation file.

In this case, my favorite tip is to export the presentation as a PDF. To do that, go to File > Export > Create PDF , and then save your presentation as a PDF.

This is sure to help most of your users see the presentation just the way you intended.

14. Try a Different Color Scheme

Many PowerPoint themes have more than one color scheme that you can apply to your presentation. On the Design  tab, click on the drop-down next to Themes to try out a different color scheme.

Typically, these will restyle your entire presentation. Premium themes that you might get from Envato Elements, for example, may have many versions inside the original presentation zip file.

15. Edit Slide Masters for Consistency

The slide master controls the design for your PowerPoint slide. Instead of making the same change to each slide, apply a change to a slide master. It'll affect all the PowerPoint presentation slides that use the same master.

It's ideal to apply a logo to the slide master itself, for example. This keeps the logo the same size and in the same position on each slide.

To do that, go to View > Slide Master.  On the right side, you're likely to see a variety of slide masters that control designs for many slides. Drop the elements that you want to remain consistent onto one of the slide masters.

16. Use the Alignment Feature

PowerPoint presentation slides look better when the objects on them are in line with one another. There's a certain visual rhythm that occurs when objects line up in the center or along certain boundary lines.

When you start dragging objects on your slide, you'll see guiding lines that pop up. These are very intuitive, and you'll likely notice that they help you line up your objects. You might seem them pop up when you've got a box that's equidistant between two other objects on the slide, for example.

This is one of the best tricks for improving the look of your PowerPoint slide. Spend some time making sure that your key elements line up cohesively.

17. Use Stock Assets

Earlier, I mentioned using Envato Elements to grab PowerPoint themes. But there's more that comes with an Envato Elements subscription for presentations.

That includes a wide variety of stock photos, graphics,  and custom designed fonts  that you can use in your presentation. Instead of reusing the same stock photo or clip art, Envato Elements has everything you need to supplement a presentation. 

Again, Envato Elements is the perfect subscription if you build presentations. It's a one-stop-shop that you can use to fill content.

18. Reduce Your Content

There's nothing that makes an audience tune out faster than being overloaded with slide content. Sometimes we try to make so many points that the audience misses all of them due to information overload.

Less is truly more. When you cut the weaker points of your presentation, the audience's attention will follow your key points accordingly.

It seems like cheating, but one of the best steps that you can take for your slide is to simply reduce the number of items that are on it. Convert some of your typed points to things you'll speak verbally.

19. Rethink Your Slide Order

Sometimes, I find that my presentations are out of order. I might spend too much time explaining my decision before I get to the conclusion.

In these cases, I like to use Slide Sorter View  to re-sequence the slides in my presentation. To access this view, go to View > Slide Sorter  on PowerPoint's ribbon.

From Slide Sorter view, you've got a top-down view of all the slides in your presentation deck. It sometimes becomes obvious that the slides can be reordered into a better sequence from this view.

20. Use PowerPoint Animations 

One of my favorite PowerPoint presentation tips is to complement your major points with a bit of animation. Using animation can bring a key point onto your slide with style!

Check out ten of the best PowerPoint tips for how to use animation from expert Sven Lenaerts below:

21. Invite Collaborators

Building a presentation often benefits from a second set of eyes. That's why it helps so much to invite a collaborator to work with you side-by-side in Microsoft PowerPoint.

Pushing your presentation up to OneDrive and inviting collaborators is easy. Thanks to the cloud-based approach, more than one user can edit a slide deck in real time. Learn how to do that in the tutorial below:

22. Add Supporting Video Clips

Building impactful presentations is all about adding other perspectives and angles to the content. One of my favorite ways to do that is to add a video clip. Maybe that's a production that you built on your own or found on sites like YouTube.

Either way, learn how to add and auto play a video clip in the quick tip below:

23. Use Infographic Templates

More presentations than ever will feature visuals that tell stories with data. But it's easy for an audience become overwhelmed with data. 

That's where infographics come into play. Learn to use them in PowerPoint in the tutorial below:

24. Use Impactful Closing Techniques

I've sat through many presentations in my life. I can only remember a few that really stick out, thanks to techniques that highlighted key points. You need PowerPoint tips and tricks that help leave your audience with an impact.

To do just that, make sure you use some of the techniques highlighted in the article below:

To do that, just drag and drop the thumbnails into the order you want. When you return to Normal view, the PowerPoint presentation slides will be in the resequenced order you set here.

25. Include Data in the Appendix

Many PowerPoint presentations include data in the form of charts and graphs. That means that you'll condense specifics into a few easy-to-follow charts.

But what if your audience wants more of the backing details? Maybe they want to validate and review the detail for themselves. In that case, a   set of  appendix slides  with extra data is sure to help.

Appendix slides are included at the end of a presentation deck for backup purposes. You might not present them, but your audience is certain to appreciate that you included them. That helps your presentation continue to be useful even after you leave the room.

Here's a great tip from: pro presenter  Graeme Thomas of Johnny F Designs:

If (my clients) are sending the deck straight to clients however, I would then put all the information on the slides but will often use more slides so that they aren't too cluttered. In cases where there is a lot of content, like financial statements, I would use  appendix slides.

Including an appendix helps your audience understand data  without  overwhelming them with that data. Follow these tips so that you get the best of both worlds.

26. Alternate Between Solid Color and White Slides

Alternating between solid color and slides with a white background can produce an interesting visual effect and engage your audience. You can use the solid-colored slides to signify a new section in your presentation.

Not to mention, solid-colored slides are the perfect way to re-enforce your brand colors and build your brand recognition.

27. Present Information With Maps

If you’re trying to make a case for a global expansion or need to report on how other branches are performing, consider using a map to help your audience visualize the data.

There's no shortage of quality PowerPoint templates with maps built in so be sure to take advantage of them.

28. Keep the Design Best Practices in Mind

The design of your presentation matters just as much as the content of your presentation. That’s why you need to devote an equal amount of time to making sure the design of your presentation is on point as you do to the actual content.

Familiarize yourself with best design practices and keep them in mind as you go about customizing your template.

29. Set a Time Limit

How many slides is the right number for you? Well, it all depends on the time limit you set for your presentation.

Believe it or not, setting a time limit is helpful to create good PowerPoint slides. If you want to learn how to make a presentable PowerPoint, it's a must to lock in the time limit and ensure that your slides support that timeframe. 

Expert presenter Stephanie Ottavan offers one of our top tips for a good PowerPoint presentation based on time limits:

A presenter is usually limited to a specific time frame and you want to adhere to that as closely as you can. If you have animations and transitions in your deck, these take added time so make sure to rehearse in “show mode” of PowerPoint or Keynote and time yourself.

Believe it or not, setting a time frame is one of the most important part of creating a PPT presentation. It helps you influence how many good PowerPoint slides you should design.

30. Test Your Content Everywhere

PowerPoint in 2024 could take place anywhere. Maybe you present, online, in-person, or beam it to mobile devices. It's important to remember that the content will appear differently on each device.

PowerPoint Online is a different medium than many other apps. Make sure that your presentation design appears the same by testing it with the help of this tutorial. It shows you how your PPT presentation appears even in a browser:

Discover Great Premium PowerPoint Templates With Google Slides (For 2024)

Creating a great presentation starts with a great template. And a great PowerPoint slide design use the best presentation practices, for example:

• Use high-quality photos and graphics to help tell the story.
• Keep text to a minimum.
• Stick to one idea per slide.

Designing a great template doesn’t mean you've got to start from scratch, though. Take a look at some of the best PowerPoint templates we've got on Envato Elements.

1. Neo PowerPoint Template

The Neo PowerPoint template features a modern and bold design and includes five color variations to get you started. Along with this, you'll also get 10 master slides and 30 individual slides for all your presentation needs.

2. Vexana PowerPoint Template

The Vexana template is a great choice for brands that need a touch of elegance. This template works with PowerPoint and Google Slides and comes with a grand total of 150 slides. It also has five color variations and includes infographic elements and photo placeholders.

3. Sprint PowerPoint Template

The Sprint PowerPoint template features a professional and modern design. The template is easy to customize. You'll find 20 masters in the standard 4:3 size, allowing you to choose the best layout for your information.

4. Travelicious PowerPoint Template

For any presentation that deals with the topic of travel, check out the Travelicious template. This template is compatible with both PowerPoint and Google Slides. It includes three premade color variations as well as 30 unique slides.

 As you can see from the examples above, there's no shortage of beautiful and professional PowerPoint slide designs on Envato Elements . What’s more, Envato Elements allows you to download as many PowerPoint templates as you want. Plus, get thousands of other design assets such as fonts, photos, and icons—all for one low monthly price.

Want to see even more great PowerPoint template examples? Be sure to check out our related roundup:

Need Help? Grab Our Making Great Presentations eBook (Free)

We've got the perfect complement to this tutorial. You can find more information in our eBook on making great presentations . Download this PDF eBook now for FREE with your subscription to the Tuts+ Business Newsletter. 

It'll help you master the presentation process from initial creative ideas through to writing, design, and delivering with impact.

PowerPoint Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Now that you’ve read about PowerPoint tips and tricks, if you want to learn more about PowerPoint, here are some FAQs:

1. What Is a Placeholder?

Placeholders in your slide on PowerPoint help you easily add text or images to your slide without changing your design.

In a template, sometimes the placeholders have prompts such as “Click to insert a picture” or “Click to add text.” These prompts let you know what kind of placeholder it is. To learn more about placeholders, read this article: 

2. How Can I Automatically Play a Video?

A PowerPoint tip is to insert an automatically played video in your presentation. When you've got a video that'll play automatically, it saves you the trouble of starting your video manually.

Videos can illustrate topics or specific points. They're also a great way to keep your audience engaged. If you want to learn how to play a video automatically, read this tutorial:

3. How Can I Add a Map to my Slide?

Another PowerPoint trick is to add a map to your slide. If you're discussing a specific location, then a map can help your audience visualize the location you're presenting. To learn how to add a map to your PowerPoint slide, read this tutorial:

4. How Do I Add a GIF to My Presentation?

Adding a GIF to your slide on PowerPoint is one way you can grab your audience's attention. To add a GIF to your slide, you’ll need to download a GIF.

Once you download it, upload it into PowerPoint and use it on your slide. For more information about how to add a GIF to your slide on PowerPoint, read this article:

5. Can I Recover My Unsaved Presentation?

Another PowerPoint trick is to learn how to recover unsaved PowerPoint files so that you can be prepared in case of an emergency. If you want to learn more, read this tutorial:

Learn More About How to Make Presentable PowerPoints

These quick PowerPoint Presentation tips are some of my favorite ways to rapidly improve a presentation. Keeping them in mind while you build a presentation can help you build a deck that you'll be confident about presenting.

Check out these tutorials to keep learning more about PowerPoint. These tutorials will give you more ideas for fixing up your PowerPoint presentation slides efficiently:

Find More Templates

Didn't see a template you like? Here are some more:

Use These PPT Presentation Tips on Your Next Presentation

Now that you've studied some of our best PowerPoint tips, it's time to put them to use. Download one of our top-notch PowerPoint themes from Envato Elements to get started. These PowerPoint presentation tips and tricks give you confidence to make you a skilled presenter.

Editorial Note : This post was first published in February of 2019. Our staff updates this post regularly — adding new, exciting PowerPoint tips and templates (with special help from Brenda Barron , Andrew Childress and Sarah Joy ).

Home Blog Business How to Create Engaging and Persuasive Proposal Presentations

How to Create Engaging and Persuasive Proposal Presentations

Whether you’re pitching a new project to stakeholders, seeking investment from potential backers, or presenting a solution to a client, the success of your proposal hinges on your ability to convey your ideas clearly and convincingly. It’s not enough to count on flashy graphics: the presenter must understand how to communicate ideas in the same business language as their target audience. 

This article explores the critical components of a successful proposal presentation, providing you with practical insights and strategies to craft and deliver a compelling pitch. From understanding the core elements and structuring your presentation to delivery techniques, this comprehensive guide will equip you with the tools you need to make your proposal stand out and achieve your business objectives.

Table of Contents

What is a Proposal Presentation?

What makes a great proposal presentation, elements of a proposal presentation, how to start a proposal presentation, tips for delivering the proposal presentation, how to end a proposal presentation, recommended ppt templates for proposal presentations, final words.

A proposal presentation is a communication framework aimed at convincing an audience to adopt a certain idea, plan, or project. It serves as a persuasive tool to pitch products, services, or concepts to potential clients, investors, or stakeholders. A business proposal presentation often incorporates data, case studies , and visuals to build a compelling argument, making it an essential aspect of business development and strategic planning .

A great proposal presentation is clear, concise, and compelling. It captures the audience’s attention, holds their interest, and convincingly presents the proposed solution’s benefits. The following attributes contribute to a successful presentation:

Avoid jargon and overpopulated sentences that might confuse your audience. Use straightforward language to ensure your message is easily understood. If you need to introduce a complex concept in your presentation, work your way through graphics and try to simplify ideas as much as possible.

A well-thought presentation structure guides the audience through the proposal logically. It should start with an introduction that outlines the purpose, followed by a detailed discussion of the problem, proposed solution, implementation plan, and expected benefits.

Visual Appeal

Visual elements such as charts or graphs , images, and videos can enhance understanding and retention. To maintain a polished look, use a consistent and professional design for your slides.

Tailor your content to the audience’s needs and interests. Address their pain points and demonstrate how your proposal provides a solution. Use relevant examples and case studies to support your arguments.

Engage your audience with questions, interactive presentation elements, and storytelling . Personal anecdotes or client testimonials can make your presentation more relatable and persuasive.

In order to create a winning proposal presentation, we must count with the following elements.

Title Slide

This is the audience’s first impression. It sets the context and tone for the entire presentation and must feature a professional and polished look.

Clearly state the presentation title, your name, and the company’s name. If relevant, add a date, but it’s not absolutely required. Branding presentation elements like logo, colors, and fonts need to remain consistent to reinforce your company’s identity. You can use a pertinent image or graphic to the presentation topic (i.e., if it’s a product presentation , a product photo highlighting your product) to make the slide more visually appealing.

Avoid cluttering the slide with too much text. Any secondary information, like what the presentation is about, belongs on the introduction slide. Complex animation effects may deter the audience’s focus and render your slide deck amateurish. 

Another common mistake is to use poor font pairing choices, e.g., script fonts with poor readability or low-sized texts.

Introduction Slide

Here, we provide the audience with an overview and context for the proposal, outlining the problem or opportunity. Factual information like financial data , surveys, or any kind of data presentation that can back up your problem statement is relevant. Remember to deliver a teaser of the full problem or opportunity, as that information is bound to be expanded in the next slide.

Explain the purpose of your proposal and what you aim to achieve. This will give the audience a clear understanding of the presentation’s objective from the outset. However, you should avoid ambiguous statements that can confuse the audience. 

Problem Statement Slide

Clearly defining the problem or opportunity is essential for establishing the need for your proposal. It helps the audience understand the context and significance of your proposal. A well-articulated problem statement sets the stage for your proposed solution and underscores the urgency or importance of addressing the issue.

Support your statement with data, statistics, and real-world examples to illustrate the problem’s impact. Data adds credibility and helps quantify the issue. Additionally, we can make the problem relevant to the audience by linking some of its key points to their experiences or interests. This is a social proof of how the problem affects them directly or indirectly.

Compare the current situation with industry benchmarks or best practices to highlight the gap or deficiency. On this behalf, there are excellent presentation tools like gap analysis templates and comparison chart templates .

Proposed Solution Slide

The proposed solution is the core of your presentation, outlining how you plan to address the problem or seize the opportunity. This section is crucial for convincing the audience of your proposal’s feasibility and effectiveness. A coherently conveyed solution can demonstrate your expertise, innovation, and ability to deliver results.

Provide a detailed explanation of your proposed solution. Break it down into clear, actionable steps to help the audience understand how it works. Emphasize the solution’s benefits and competitive advantages . Explain how it will address the problem or capitalize on the opportunity. Diagrams, charts, and infographics are powerful tools to visually represent your solution without requiring lengthy walls of text in your slides. We invite you to check our article on how to present a project proposal for more strategies.

Don’t overlook possible challenges or limitations of your solution, as they are likely to come up in a Q&A session. Address them proactively and explain how you plan to mitigate them.

A good practice is to conduct a cost-benefit analysis to show the financial feasibility of your solution. Compare the costs involved with the expected benefits to demonstrate value for money. 

Implementation Plan Slide

The implementation plan outlines the steps necessary to execute your solution, demonstrating feasibility and practicality. This section is key for convincing the audience that your proposal is not just theoretical but actionable and achievable. A detailed and realistic implementation plan can build confidence in your ability to deliver the proposed solution.

Outline the key steps, timelines, and resources needed to implement your solution. A detailed plan helps the audience understand what is required to bring your proposal to fruition. Identify major milestones and deliverables, as they provide a sense of progress and achievement, helping to keep the project on track. 

Finally, develop a risk management plan to identify, assess, and mitigate potential risks. A robust risk management plan can enhance the audience’s confidence in your proposal.

Financials Slide

The financial section demonstrates the economic viability of your proposal. This section provides a detailed analysis of the costs involved, potential revenue, return on investment (ROI), and overall financial impact.

Don’t underestimate costs or overestimate revenues. Be realistic in your financial projections to maintain credibility. A break-even analysis is excellent for showing when the project will start generating profit, which boosts the perception of the proposal’s financial viability.

Conclusion Slide

The conclusion summarizes your presentation’s key points and reinforces your proposal’s value. It provides a final opportunity to persuade the audience and leave a lasting impression. A strong conclusion can help seal the deal and gain the support or approval needed for your proposal.

Recap the main points of your presentation, including the problem, proposed solution, implementation plan, and financials. Emphasize the benefits and value of your proposal and highlight the positive outcomes and advantages of your solution.

End with a clear call to action, specifying what you want the audience to do next. A call to action can include approval, funding, support, or any other desired outcome.

There are numerous ways on how to start a presentation , especially for proposals, but in our experience, it’s best to stick with a strong, attention-grabbing opening statement. You can pick from a surprising fact related to your problem statement, a compelling statistic, or even a thought-provoking question linked to your proposed solution.

An icebreaker can help relax the audience and make them more receptive to your presentation. For instance, you could share a relevant and engaging story or anecdote that ties into the theme of your proposal. A personal story can humanize you and make the presentation more relatable.

Another approach is to ask the audience a simple question that requires a show of hands or a quick verbal response. This encourages participation and makes the audience feel involved from the start.

Acknowledge the audience’s role or contributions with a personal touch. For in-company presentations, you can use a line similar to: “I know that many of you have been working tirelessly to improve our company’s performance, and I believe this proposal can help us achieve even greater success.” This creates a common ground with the audience, increasing their interest in what you have to say next.

Tip #1 – Voice Tone

Use pitch, tone, and volume variations to emphasize key points and maintain audience interest. Speak at a moderate pace, as speaking too fast can confuse the audience, whereas speaking too slow can lead to boredom.

Tip #2 – Use Silence Effectively

Working with pauses in your speech can help important points sink in. Silence in a presentation is a powerful tool for emphasis, and as a speaker, you can moderate it by introducing a 30-to-50-second pause after a mind-blowing fact about your proposal.

Tip #3 – Be Adaptable

Not all proposal presentations work alike. Be prepared to adapt your presentation if the situation calls for it, such as if you need to move forward with a Q&A session much sooner than you expected. Flexibility shows professionalism and command of your topic.

Tip #4 – Body Language

If space allows, move around the stage or presentation area with purpose. Avoid pacing or fidgeting, which is distracting and causes unease, lack of preparation, and lack of professionalism. Appropriate hand gestures can help emphasize points and convey enthusiasm as long as you don’t overdo it.

Try to stay relaxed and calm. Deep breathing techniques before and during the presentation can help manage anxiety.

Now it’s time to acknowledge how to end a presentation when working with business proposal presentations or any kind of professional-ranged proposal.

As we mentioned before, you need to clearly state what you want the audience to do next. This could be approving the proposal, providing funding, supporting the initiative, or any other specific action. Outline the steps required to move forward. Make it easy for the audience to understand what is needed from them.

Emotions are a persuasive factor in a conclusion. If you feel the proposal is likely to be accepted, paint a vivid picture of the future. Describe the positive outcomes and improvements that will result. Thank the audience for their time, attention, and consideration. Acknowledging their participation helps to build a positive relationship.

In this section, we selected some of our best Project Proposal PowerPoint templates to speed up your slide design process. Keep in mind you can test the Free Business Proposal PowerPoint Template and adapt it to your requirements.

1. Project Proposal Planning PPT Template

A compendium of tools to meticulously present any kind of project proposal is at one click of distance. It features an intro slide with relevant KPIs, objectives, scope, implementation timeline, resource allocation, risk assessment, and much more. Check it out!

Use This Template

2. Construction Painting Proposal PowerPoint Template

Ideal for contractors, architects, interior designers, or any construction professional who needs to deliver a construction proposal to a prospective client, A slide deck listing 15 easy-to-edit slides in a clean layout.

3. Sponsorship Proposal PowerPoint Template

This minimalistic slide deck is intended for companies seeking to seal sponsorship deals. It contains all the required tools to discuss sponsorship tiers, benefits, target audience, deliver past experience testimonials, etc.

4. Legal Services Proposal PowerPoint Template

For any law firm that wants to power up its game, this proposal presentation slide deck reduces the need for lengthy text paragraphs in slides in favor of easy-to-remember icons with placeholder text areas next to them.

5. SEO Proposal Slide Deck for PowerPoint

Digital marketing professionals can learn how to present a proposal by using this creative slide deck. In a sleek blue-to-green gradient and white color scheme, the 18 slides available in this proposal PPT template offer a broad range of tools to create a winning proposal presentation.

Crafting an effective proposal presentation requires meticulous planning and strategic execution. Each element must be well-organized and clearly articulated, from a compelling opening to a persuasive conclusion. By following the methodology shown in this article, you can enhance your proposal’s impact, build credibility for your brand, and increase the likelihood of securing support from your audience, whether they are investors, clients, or internal stakeholders.

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Business Ideas, Business Presentations Filed under Business

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Make an Interactive Quiz on PowerPoint in 30 Secs (Free Templates)

Leah Nguyen • 09 August, 2024 • 4 min read

As the world shifts, PowerPoint presentations will not go anywhere soon as statistics suggest that more than 35 million presentations are presented each day.

With PPT becoming so mundane and boring, with the audience's shortened attention span as a cherry on top, why not spice things up a bit and create an interactive PowerPoint quiz that reels them in and gets them involved?

In this article, our AhaSlides team will guide you through easy and digestible steps on how to make an interactive quiz on PowerPoint , plus customisable templates to save heaps of time🔥

Table of Contents

How to make an interactive quiz on powerpoint.

Forget the complicated setup on PowerPoint that took you a stinking 2-hour and more, there's a much better way to have a quiz out in minutes on PowerPoint - using a quiz maker for PowerPoint.

Step 1: Create a Quiz

• First, head over to AhaSlides and create an account if you haven't already.
• Click "New Presentation" in your AhaSlides dashboard.
• Click the "+" button to add new slides, then choose any type of question from the "Quiz" section. Quiz questions have correct answer(s), scores and leaderboards and a pre-game lobby for everyone to interact.
• Play with colours, fonts, and themes to match your style or brand.

Or use the AhaSlides' AI slides generator to help create quiz questions. Simply add your prompt, then choose within 3 modes: Funnier, Easier or Harder to fine-tune the PPT quiz to your liking.

Step 2: Download Quiz Plugin on PowerPoint

After you are done with these steps, open your PowerPoint, click "Insert" - "Get Add-ins" and add AhaSlides to your PPT add-in collection.

Add the quiz presentation you have created on AhaSlides to PowerPoint.

This quiz will stay on one slide, and you can use keyboard shortcuts to move to the next quiz slide, show the QR code for people to join, and put on quiz celebration effects like confetti to motivate the audience.

Step 3: Run an Interactive Quiz on PowerPoint

After you are done with the set-up, it's time to share your elaborated quiz with the world.

When you present your PowerPoint in slideshow mode, you'll see the join code appear on the top. You can click on the small QR code symbol to make it appear larger so everyone can scan and join on their devices.

🔎Tip: There are keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate the quiz better.

When everyone has appeared in the lobby, you can start your interactive quiz in PowerPoint.

Bonus: Review Your Quiz Statistics Post-event

AhaSlides will save the attendants' activity in your AhaSlides presentation account . After closing the PowerPoint quiz, you can review it and see the submission rate or feedback from the participants. You can also export the report to PDF/Excel for further analysis.

Start in seconds.

Get free templates for your next interactive presentation. Sign up for free and take what you want from the template library!

Free PowerPoint Quiz Templates

Get started quickly with our PowerPoint quiz templates down here. Remember to have the AhaSlides add-in ready in your PPT presentation💪

#1. True or False Quiz

Featuring 4 rounds and over 20 thought-provoking questions covering a wide range of topics, this template is perfect for parties, team-building events, or simply a fun way to test your knowledge.

#2. English Language Lesson Template

Sharpen your students' English skills and get them involved in the lesson from start to finish with this fun English quiz. Use AhaSlides as your PowerPoint quiz maker to download and host it for free.

#3. New Class Icebreakers

Get to know your new class and break the ice among students with these fun icebreaker activities. Insert this interactive quiz on PowerPoint before the lesson starts so everyone can have a blast.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you make an interactive game in powerpoint.

Yes, you can by following all the simple steps we have stated above: 1 - Get a quiz add-in for PowerPoint, 2 - Design your quiz questions, 3 - Present them while you're on PowerPoint with the participants.

Can you add interactive polls to PowerPoint?

Besides interactive quizzes, AhaSlides also let you add polls to PowerPoint.

Leah Nguyen

Words that convert, stories that stick. I turn complex ideas into engaging narratives - helping audiences learn, remember, and take action.

Tips to Engage with Polls & Trivia

More from AhaSlides

Basic tasks for creating a PowerPoint presentation

PowerPoint presentations work like slide shows. To convey a message or a story, you break it down into slides. Think of each slide as a blank canvas for the pictures and words that help you tell your story.

Choose a theme

When you open PowerPoint, you’ll see some built-in themes and templates . A theme is a slide design that contains matching colors, fonts, and special effects like shadows, reflections, and more.

On the File tab of the Ribbon, select New , and then choose a theme.

PowerPoint shows you a preview of the theme, with four color variations to choose from on the right side.

Click Create , or pick a color variation and then click Create .

Read more: Use or create themes in PowerPoint

Insert a new slide

On the Home tab, click the bottom half of  New Slide , and pick a slide layout.

Read more: Add, rearrange, and delete slides .

Save your presentation

On the File tab, choose Save .

Pick or browse to a folder.

In the File name box, type a name for your presentation, and then choose Save .

Note:  If you frequently save files to a certain folder, you can ‘pin’ the path so that it is always available (as shown below).

Tip:  Save your work as you go. Press Ctrl+S often or save the file to OneDrive and let AutoSave take care of it for you. 

Read more: Save your presentation file

Select a text placeholder, and begin typing.

Format your text

Select the text.

Under Drawing Tools , choose Format .

Do one of the following:

To change the color of your text, choose Text Fill , and then choose a color.

To change the outline color of your text, choose Text Outline , and then choose a color.

To apply a shadow, reflection, glow, bevel, 3-D rotation, a transform, choose Text Effects , and then choose the effect you want.

Change the fonts

Change the color of text on a slide

Add bullets or numbers to text

Format text as superscript or subscript

Add pictures

On the Insert tab, select Pictures , then do one of the following:

To insert a picture that is saved on your local drive or an internal server, choose This Device , browse for the picture, and then choose Insert .

(For Microsoft 365 subscribers) To insert a picture from our library, choose Stock Images , browse for a picture, select it and choose Insert .

To insert a picture from the web, choose Online Pictures , and use the search box to find a picture. Choose a picture, and then click Insert .

You can add shapes to illustrate your slide. 

On the Insert tab, select Shapes , and then select a shape from the menu that appears.

In the slide area, click and drag to draw the shape.

Select the Format or Shape Format tab on the ribbon. Open the Shape Styles gallery to quickly add a color and style (including shading) to the selected shape.

Add speaker notes

Slides are best when you don’t cram in too much information. You can put helpful facts and notes in the speaker notes, and refer to them as you present.

Click inside the Notes pane below the slide, and begin typing your notes.

Add speaker notes to your slides

Print slides with or without speaker notes

Give your presentation

On the Slide Show tab, do one of the following:

To start the presentation at the first slide, in the Start Slide Show group, click From Beginning .

If you’re not at the first slide and want to start from where you are, click From Current Slide .

If you need to present to people who are not where you are, click Present Online to set up a presentation on the web, and then choose one of the following options:

Broadcast your PowerPoint presentation online to a remote audience

View your speaker notes as you deliver your slide show.

Get out of Slide Show view

To get out of Slide Show view at any time, on the keyboard, press Esc .

You can quickly apply a theme when you're starting a new presentation:

On the File tab, click New .

Select a theme.

Read more:  Apply a design theme to your presentation

In the slide thumbnail pane on the left, select the slide that you want your new slide to follow.

On the Home tab, select the lower half of  New Slide .

From the menu, select the layout that you want for your new slide.

Your new slide is inserted, and you can click inside a placeholder to begin adding content.

Learn more about slide layouts

Read more: Add, rearrange, and delete slides

PowerPoint for the web automatically saves your work to your OneDrive, in the cloud.

To change the name of the automatically saved file:

In the title bar, click the file name.

In the File Name box, enter the name you want to apply to the file.

If you want to change the cloud storage location, at the right end of the Location box, click the arrow symbol, then navigate to the folder you want, then select Move here .

On the Home tab, use the Font options:

Select from other formatting options such as Bold , Italic , Underline , Strikethrough , Subscript , and Superscript .

On the  Insert  tab, select  Pictures .

From the menu, select where you want to insert the picture from:

Browse to the image you want, select it, then select Insert . 

After the image is inserted on the slide, you can select it and drag to reposition it, and you can select and drag a corner handle to resize the image. 

On the slide canvas, click and drag to draw the shape.

Select the Shape tab on the ribbon. Open the Shape Styles gallery to quickly add a color and style (including shading) to the selected shape.

A horizontal Notes pane appears at the bottom of the window, below the slide.

Click in the pane, then enter text. 

On the  Slide Show  tab, select  Play From Beginning .

To navigate through the slides, simply click the mouse or press the spacebar.

Tip:  You can also use the forward and back arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate through the slide show.

Read more:  Present your slide show

Stop a slide show

To get out of Slide Show view at any time, on the keyboard, press Esc.

The full-screen slide show will close, and you will be returned to the editing view of the file.

Tips for creating an effective presentation

Consider the following tips to keep your audience interested.

Minimize the number of slides

To maintain a clear message and to keep your audience attentive and interested, keep the number of slides in your presentation to a minimum.

Choose an audience-friendly font size

The audience must be able to read your slides from a distance. Generally speaking, a font size smaller than 30 might be too difficult for the audience to see.

Keep your slide text simple

You want your audience to listen to you present your information, instead of reading the screen. Use bullets or short sentences, and try to keep each item to one line.

Some projectors crop slides at the edges, so that long sentences might be cropped.

Use visuals to help express your message

Pictures, charts, graphs, and SmartArt graphics provide visual cues for your audience to remember. Add meaningful art to complement the text and messaging on your slides.

As with text, however, avoid including too many visual aids on your slide.

Make labels for charts and graphs understandable

Use only enough text to make label elements in a chart or graph comprehensible.

Apply subtle, consistent slide backgrounds

Choose an appealing, consistent template or theme that is not too eye-catching. You don't want the background or design to detract from your message.

However, you also want to provide a contrast between the background color and text color. The built-in themes in PowerPoint set the contrast between a light background with dark colored text or dark background with light colored text.

For more information about how to use themes, see Apply a theme to add color and style to your presentation .

Check the spelling and grammar

To earn and maintain the respect of your audience, always check the spelling and grammar in your presentation .

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Impressive AI Powerpoint Builder

By: Stephen Toback

Gamma is a tool that leverages AI to help you create presentations, documents or websites. I got quite a bit of use out of their free credits to do some testing. I found their process easy and the content, both text AND images to be remarkably accurate. They also give you the ability to use AI to change photos or text after you create your document. Having a web search for images (which gave you the ability to only search images per a specific license, was pretty great. You could also generate AI images from within the app with a selection of various image engines (some were restricted to their paid subscription). At the end, you can export their content and continue editing in Powerpoint or export as a PDF.

I found the process to be pretty simple with a good selection of variables both in prompt and option choices.

I’m not sure what model they are using for AI text generation but I seemed to get a better result when I pasted in text made with ChatGPT 4o. This example uses their generation which was still good.

From that prompt, it generated an outline. The trial version limits you to 10 slides but I believe you can do up to 30 with the paid version.

Next step is to pick a theme.

There were options even in the free version to select your own fonts and create custom themes as well as add your own logo. The logo placement is limited to the bottom left corner, but I’ve already requested a feature request to be able to place it anywhere on the page.

That’s it. Here’s a link to the slides .

I wasn’t a fan of the default placement of the images as “fit” in large areas but the image selection was suprisingly good. Specifically how it picked the Karsh Center when talking about alumni. There are ways you can “fill” the image and change the “focus” which I thought was cool. Again, at anytime you can export to Powerpoint but I found you lose the ability to edit the images – they get cropped however they are in the app.

Overall, this was very impressive compared to my experience using ChatGPT to create Visual Basic scripts to create Powerpoints or using Co-Pilot 365 to create slide decks. The image searching (and ability to search for different images in the interface) was pretty extraordinary. I’d also add that their support is incredibly responsive.

This software has not been cleared to use at Duke so feel free to test, but do not use it for any protected information.

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