Top 10 Powerpoint Tips and Hacks You Need to Know

Most people think that making presentations is easy. Yes, it is. However, making presentations that will inspire your audiences is a challenge. This challenge can be solved by making better presentations by trying some tips and tricks.

If you are excited to improve your next presentation, below are the top 10 PowerPoint tips and hacks you need to know! Keep reading to find out more.

10 PowerPoint Presentation Tips and Hacks

Below are ten PowerPoint design tips and tricks for your PowerPoint presentations.

1. Plan the Content

The first PowerPoint tip you must keep in mind is to plan the content of your presentation first before working on your slides. You first need to make an outline of what your presentation will focus on.

PowerPoint slides are created as a visual medium and not the focal point of your presentation. When you have an outline and know what you want to say to your audience, creating a PowerPoint presentation is easy, and the slides will flow properly.

2. Use PowerPoint Templates

Once you have finalized the content of your presentation, it is time to create your slides using a PowerPoint software such as Microsoft PowerPoint. Most likely, you are stuck with no idea what your slides will look like.

You can start browsing through various templates to visualize how your presentation will look. Simpleslides.co is an excellent place to start looking for professional templates that you can use for your presentation. The templates are highly customizable and can save you the trouble of making your presentation from scratch.

3. Customize With the Target Audience in Mind

Whether you are a lecturer or a seasoned public speaker, you may find yourself talking to different audiences. You may also find yourself reusing your PowerPoint slides.

You don’t have to redo your whole presentation to adjust to your audience. A good trick you can use is the custom slideshow feature of PowerPoint. The custom slideshow function helps you filter what slides your audience will see.

4. Simple Formatting

You often hear the phrase, “Less is more.” This is also applicable when creating your PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint has several interesting design options you may be tempted to use on your slides.

Practice self-restraint and avoid over-formatting your slides, such as using bullet points on all of your slides. The best presentations are simple and can effectively deliver the message to the audience.

Generally, audiences have short attention spans. Hence, it would be best if you made each presentation slide powerful so that they will hold onto their seats until the end of your presentation. You can use less text and more eye-catching graphics, images, or videos.

Your PowerPoint presentation should serve as a visual aid and is meant to be in the background to support you. It should not be the main focus of your presentation.

5. Customize the Quick Access Toolbar

A very useful tool that you can use is the quick access toolbar. This great PowerPoint presentation hack allows you to access your commonly used commands regardless of which tab you select.

The quick access toolbar is a collection of command shortcuts in PowerPoint that you frequently use, such as save and undo. It also displays folders and files that you constantly open and use. The quick access toolbar is customizable, allowing you to add more commands or functions for easy access.

6. Layout the Slide Master

You don’t have to design individual slides for your presentation. The slide master can do the job for you. 

The first slide is the slide master. Hence, any changes you make on the first slide shall be applied to all succeeding slides.

For instance, when adding page numbers to your slide master, the page numbers will be applied to all slides. As advice, you should do the general layout on your slide master before filling your presentation slides with content.

7. Using Appropriate Visuals and Fonts

Visuals

Visuals help audiences digest what you are saying quicker than text. Therefore, it is important that you choose the visuals for your presentation appropriately.

It is advisable to use high-quality photos. If you avoid using generic clip art images, the better. Aside from images, graphs, and charts are also great visual presentations to show data comparisons or trends.

With Microsoft 365, you may crop your images using SmartArt graphics. You can also use SmartArt graphics to create infographics for your PowerPoint presentation.

In Microsoft 365, you can use any image you have and transform it into a SmartArt graphic. All you have to do is select the image and click the Picture format tab. Then click on the picture layout tab.

With the SmartArt Design tab, you can transform the images into a uniform size, which is perfect for an interactive PowerPoint presentation.

If you plan to use multiple images in your presentation, ensure all images are the same size. Infographics are also excellent visual aids to add to your presentation design.

Fonts

Choosing the right fonts for your presentation has an impact on your audience. Choose fonts that are pleasing and readable. Use sans-serif fonts (Helvetica, Arial, and Calibri) as much as possible. This font is recommended because they are easily readable.

Although, when you use pre-made and professional PowerPoint templates, these have default fonts that you can use. You don’t have to worry about which font to use for your presentation.

1. Using Transparent Overlays

A transparent overlay is perfect if you don’t have Photoshop to manipulate images. An overlay is used to add another individual or element to the existing picture. A transparent overlay is perfect for logo making.

Using a transparent overlay helps make your image look professional and an integral part of your PowerPoint presentation design.

2. Use the Presenter View

You can make memorable presentations by using the presenter view feature of PowerPoint. This feature allows you to differentiate what your audience sees and what you see in the presentation.

This feature allows you to focus more on your content rather than on how your slide looks to your audience. The presenter view can show you the slides, a timer, and notes area similar to post-it notes. You will need at least two monitors to use the presenter view.

3. Hyperlink Between Slides

A PowerPoint hack that you can use is to hyperlink between slides. Hyperlinking makes your presentation more engaging and entertaining to your audience.

You can hyperlink to a specific slide in your presentation or link to a saved file. You can also hyperlink to videos on YouTube, a website, email, or another PowerPoint presentation.

Does rehearsing your PowerPoint presentations help?

Rehearsing is key to a successful presentation. Rehearsing helps you familiarize yourself with your content, slides, and equipment. It also increases your self-confidence and enables you to improve your presentation skills.

If this is your first time creating your PowerPoint presentation and the first time speaking to a live audience, you should know that all presentations are timed. This means you have to take time into consideration when preparing your verbal content and designing your entire slide presentation.

While in presentation mode, you can use the rehearse timing feature to monitor how long your whole presentation will be.

Final Thoughts

There are several PowerPoint tips and hacks that help make your next presentation better. It is best to familiarize yourself with the different features of PowerPoint so you can create slideshows faster and more effectively.

When you are confident and comfortable with how your slides turn out, this helps boost your self-confidence so you can deliver your speech with a standing ovation.