At all about presentations I discuss everything related to making presentations. How to create meaningful content, how to prepare well, how to design slides and how to deliver confidently.
Question: "My 10 slide presentation has fonts; Arial and Calibri. My header and body text are in Arial. The text boxes and shapes (including SmartArt) is in Calibri. I want to change all Calibri to Helvetica. I don't like Calibri. It's boring and too common. How do I do it at once?" Solution: Under the Home Tab -> Replace (on your extreme right) -> Replace font (click down arrow to choose this option) -> Choose which font you want to replace with which new font -> Done! (MS PowerPoint 2010)
You can use this technique to change any font you have used in your presentation.
I am going to share one tip today. This one tip is going to save you a lot of time in making PowerPoint slides. There are some tasks which you do many many times while making a set of slides. This tip reduces your time in doing such 'regular' tasks. Example: I convert my PowerPoint slides into PDF regularly. These are the steps do this in MS PowerPoint 2010. Go to File Tab -> Save & Send -> Create PDF/XPS Document -> Create PDF/XPS These 4 steps can be shrunk into 1 step by adding 'Creat PDF' task onto the Quick Access Toolbar. Where is this Toolbar? This toolbar is at the top of the window.
How to add 'Create PDF' task to the toolbar? By default there are only three tasks on this tool bar. Save, Undo and Redo. To add any task, click on the down arrow on the right of Redo. Go to more commands. Now choose File Tab under Choose Commands From.
Click on Publish as PDF or XPS. Click on Add button in the middle. Now click OK.
This task has been added to the quick access toolbar. The next time you want to save the PPT files as PDF, just click on the icon in the toolbar at the top. That's it. The four step process shrinks into one step. Similarly, you can add any task in the toolbar. Just choose it from the list of tasks. Any and every task can be added here. However, ensure the list is not made too long. Have tasks which are done too frequently by you on this toolbar. When will Quick Access Toolbar work for you? This trick will only work for tasks which are done too frequently in making slides. These are some of the tasks I have on my Quick Access Toolbar:
Publish as PDF (since I regularly convert PPT to PDF)
Align objects on the slide (I do a lot of aligning of obects in every PPT)
Open slide master (I use slide master to edit my self made templates)
Which tasks are you going to add to the Quick Access Toolbar?
In my last post I asked a question. Here is a table:
How will you copy this table onto PowerPoint and still retain the formulas? After copying, if you want to change the discount from 5% to 6%, the Total figure (after discount) should change. The table should work in PowerPoint the way it does in Excel. This is how to do it... Copy the table in Excel -> Go to PowerPoint -> Paste Special as Embed. How to Paste Special? Option 1: Right click on the slide. Choose Embed from the Paste Options. Option 2: Under Home tab. Click on the arrow below Paste. Choose Embed.
Now the table has been copied onto the slide. To modify any cell, double click on the table. You can now go to any cell and change its value. If you change the discount to 6%, the total will change from 11,400 to 11,280. Provided your formula in excel was correct :-)
We copy tables from excel sheet onto PowerPoint. But once we have done that, the tables do not work like they do in Excel. The formulas don't work. Here is a table.
The challenge is, how will you copy this table onto PowerPoint and still have the formulas intact. So after copying, if we change the discount from 5% to 6% in PowerPoint, the Total (after Discount) column will change. How will you do this? Avoid Googling for the answer :-)
A major strategy presenting is going on. The presenter is presenting lots of data (tables after tables). There are his recommendations and then there is data. After 10 slides, the CEO speaks out. "In all these complex slides, can you put one sentence summary at the bottom." The CEO was being bombarded by complex tables after tables. All he wanted to know is... what's your point? What does this table on slide 5 mean to me? Why are you showing it to me?
The Samsung Galaxy S4 launch was a major event this month. People across the globe were waiting for it. The event had many segments and the one we are going to talk about is the 8 minute long presentation by JK Shin (Head of Samsung Mobiles). JK Shin had a big job on his hands. His presentation started 3 minutes after the event started and he spoke very briefly (just under 8 minutes). You can watch him speak here. Go directly to 3:20 on the timeline and view till 11:10. JK Shin's presentation had a simple content and flow. He talks about the following:
The structure of the talk is extremely simple. Mr. Shin starts off by saying Samsung believes in innovation and it learns from observing consumers. He then talks about what would it be like to have features like... and talks about 9-10 new features. Wouldn't it be great if the smartphone allowed the photographer to be in the picture? Wouldn't it be great if the smartphone allowed us to capture sounds with our pictures? He emphasizes that these features have been based on observing consumer needs. He re-emphasizes that the phone will let us live a richer, simpler and fuller life. What's good? The simple structure. It is easy to follow him and understand him. He talks at a comfortable speed. Since he has a different accent, he medium pace helps us understand him without any problem. Above all, he uses repetition to drive home his key message. During his brief talk he talked about 'leading a richer, simpler and fuller life' thrice. He also repeated 'Samsung learns from observing consumers'. Lastly, in order to get us excited, he talks about WHAT IF. He encourages the audience to imagine how life would be if their smartphone had those 9-10 features which Samsung Galaxy S4 has. It is important to make you see & feel how life would be richer and more fun. Overall, the content was well structured. The slides were very simple and clean. The slides fully supported what Mr. Shin was saying. The focus was kept on Mr. Shin and the slides never overtook the speaker. What could be better? Delivery. The only thing that the talk lacked is infectious passion and emotion. There is no doubt that Mr. Shin is passionate but it needed to come out a bit more. There was something that kept him away from expressing his emotion and passion fully. The energy was lacking. The magnitude of the event must have taken its toll.
Why does it matter? If you know the dimensions of the screen, you can change the setup in PowerPoint to make best use of screen real estate. It also makes the overall presentation look different (and better). I presented at a press meet last week where the screen size was 6 feet by 4 feet. I figured this out before I started making my slides. 6 by 4 also happens to be the most common screen size here in India. PowerPoint allows you three setup choices; 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10. 4:3 is the default choice.
Screen size of 6 by 4 means a ratio of 1.50 (6 divided by 4). 4 by 3 essentially means 1.33 (4 divided by 3). The size closest to 1.50 is 16:10. Hence, if you choose a 16:10 setup the presentation will come out the best. It will look a bit different at first, but trust me it will look very refreshing for your audience. Try out a 16:10 and see the difference.
This was the headline of a news article which talked about the launch of Blackberry 10. The reporter criticises Thornsten Heins, the CEO of Blackberry, on two grounds. One, unable to answer basic questions asked at the launch conference Two, lack of passion and enthusiasm. Here is what the article says, "Heins had difficulties answering basic questions during the live presentation yesterday. He struggled in giving an answer to a question on how Blackberry had learned anything from Apple‘s success. To make it worse, his delivery lacked both passion and enthusiasm about his new product, which made the entire presentation painful to watch." The world is watching and watching carefully. Businesses cannot afford to be lacklustre any more with their presentations. Let your presentation skills not come in way of your business. You can watch Thornsten Heins talk here:
...if you rehearse your presentation 10 times. If you do rehearse so many times, you will come out as spontaneous and confident. Your audience will like you and you will be able to deliver the presentation without butterflies in your stomach. Try it once. Rehearse your talk 10 times and see the difference it makes. Rehearse it by actually standing and delivering the talk (along with your slides), the way you would do when you 'will be' presenting.
Notice the slide design. Every slide is handwritten. All you need to do is to write on pieces of card paper (thicker paper) and take a picture of it. The pictures can be easily adjusted for contrast, colour & brightness in MS PowerPoint 2010 to give them a similar and consistent look. Worth trying out. Will make the presentation fresh and will make you stand out.
