Ask HN: How do I learn to use Powerpoint well?

A foolproof method that I have used to great success:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Create plaintext to powerpoint generator

I always wonder why people always use libraries when building software but never use templates when making presentations. Graphics and transitions are extremely important when presenting, so why not build on top of other people's work ?

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

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

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

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

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

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

As you've asked for "Best Practices"

The Old KISS principal applies here too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My personal recommendations:

1 - use your corporate template

2 - stay away from fancy transitioning between slides

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

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

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

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

7 - Images are great, but avoid juvenile images.

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

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

Colors:

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

Fonts:

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

Template:

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

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

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

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

3. Offers multiple free templates to start with.

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

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

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

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

I found an useful YT playlist. Hope you enjoy it. https://youtu.be/g5EX7dpoLiY?list=PLq-yuDBwPhRvOP9qGzQtQlK1v...

Good luck!-

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

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

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/144505424481/impossible-to-igno...

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