PowerPoint Tips

If you are like most people, you probably get pretty nervous before delivering a PowerPoint presentation. I remember some of my first PowerPoint presentations while in school keeping me up all night the day before - even if some of that was from making last-minute edits. We’ve all heard before that “practice, practice, practice” is key in presenting with confidence. Though this is very true, also getting familiar with PowerPoint features can tremendously help.

These three tips should give you more mastery over PowerPoint and help you feel more confident in your future presentations.

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PowerPoint tips video transcript:

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to deliver PowerPoint presentations with more control and professionalism?

In this Quick Tip, we’re going to learn a few PowerPoint features that you can use during your presentation to make your performance more professional.

This first feature is simple, “starting your presentation” without opening the file. You may have seen a colleague or company representative start a PowerPoint presentation by revealing all his or her slides while saying, “Ummmm… Let’s see. Oh. Now let’s begin.”

We can eliminate this unprofessional fumbling. Instead of opening the file, Right click it and select Show. This will start the presentation from the beginning. Clean and to the point.

This next tip will help you “regain control” when your audience has lost focus by a distracting slide. You can make the PowerPoint presentation go to a black screen simply by pressing B. You can then finish your thought with everyone paying attention to you and not your slides. To return back to your PowerPoint press B again or space. You can do the same thing with W if you prefer a white screen.

Finally, “navigating with the pop-up menu.” Most of us know how to navigate forward and back with the mouse or keyboard (insert key). But not all of us know that we can immediately navigate to any slide in our presentation by left-clicking anywhere and selecting Go To Slide then making a slide selection. This is especially useful for really long presentations that would be annoying to flip through every slide.

That’s about it. You just learned how to quick-start a PowerPoint presentation, Go to a blank screen to regain control and jump to any slide you want. These features should help make your presentation style more professional!