What is Ms PowerPoint?

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis

Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20,
1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoint for $14 million
three months after it appeared. This was Microsoft's first significant acquisition, and
Microsoft set up a new business unit for PowerPoint in Silicon Valley where Forethought had
been located. Microsoft PowerPoint is one of many programs run by the company Microsoft
and can be identified by its trademark orange, and P initial on the logo. It offers users many
ways to display information from simple presentations to complex multimedia presentations.
PowerPoint became a component of the Microsoft Office suite, first offered in 1989 for
Macintosh and in 1990 for Windows, which bundled several Microsoft apps. Beginning with
PowerPoint 4.0 (1994), PowerPoint was integrated into Microsoft Office development, and
adopted shared common components and a converged user interface.
PowerPoint's market share was very small at first, prior to introducing a version for Microsoft
Windows, but grew rapidly with the growth of Windows and of Office. Since the late 1990s,
PowerPoint's worldwide market share of presentation software has been estimated at 95
percentage.
PowerPoint was originally designed to provide visuals for group presentations within
business organizations, but has come to be very widely used in many other communication
situations, both in business and beyond. The impact of this much wider use of PowerPoint
has been experienced as a powerful change throughout society, with strong reactions
including advice that it should be used less, should be used differently, or should be used
better.
The first PowerPoint version (Macintosh 1987) was used to produce overhead
transparencies, the second (Macintosh 1988, Windows 1990) could also produce colour
35mm slides. The third version (Windows and Macintosh 1992) introduced video output of
virtual slideshows to digital projectors, which would over time completely replace physical
transparencies and slides .A dozen major versions since then have added many additional
features and modes of operation and have made PowerPoint available beyond Apple
Macintosh and Microsoft Windows, adding versions for iOS, Android, and web access.

Its Features are:-

1. Start With a Built-in Layout

There are really two directions you can go when you're building out a new
slide in Microsoft PowerPoint:

 Design the slide from scratch, dropping in individual placeholder

boxes one after another, adding them one by one until you've got a
slide.
  Try out a built-in layout that includes all of the content boxes that you
need from the beginning.

It's really a no-brainer to start your slide design with a pre-built layout. It's a
time-saver, and it also improves the look of the presentation because all
boxes and content are aligned neatly.

From the Home tab, choose a Layout from the menu option:

I think one of the reasons that presenters avoid layouts is that they want to
customize the slide. There's nothing stopping you from taking a layout and
tweaking it, moving boxes around as needed or adding other content
placeholders.

It's a simple PowerPoint feature, but I've seen far too many presenters
draw and redraw boxes onto the slide. You're far better off using a starter
layout and adjusting it as needed.

2. Use Slide Master View to Update

Designs Consistently
Most of my favorite PowerPoint features not only save time, but also
ensure that slides are consistent. It's a huge advantage if the logo is in the
same spot on each slide, for example.

Slide masters control the design for multiple slides at the same time. When
you adjust a slide master, each slide that uses that master will have the
same changes.

Go to the View tab and choose Slide Master. Now, add something that
you want to appear on each slide (like a logo or footer text) to the master:

When you return to Normal view, you'll see the changes on each slide that
uses the same master.

Again: it's all about making clean slide designs with consistency. Adjusting
the slide master is a sweet spot of productivity and design excellence.

3. Use Someone Else's Presentation as

a Starting Point
Picasso is credited for having said, "Good artists borrow, great artists
steal." There's nothing wrong with using the hard work of others to build a
great presentation.

That's exactly what Envato Elements is for. Elements is an all-you-can-

download subscription service made for every creative. For one flat rate,
you'll get access to over 700 PowerPoint themes.

I use Envato Elements on literally every creative project that I work on. I
always start browsing on Elements to get ideas for what I'm working on.
With one of the PowerPoint templates, you have a huge head start on
creating a presentation.

The price of Envato is worth it for the PowerPoint themes alone. But for
those who create presentations frequently, you benefit greatly from the
stock photos, graphics, icons, and other assets that can really spice up a
presentation.

4. Rearrange Slides for Effectiveness

Most presentations can become markedly better in just a few seconds by
simply rethinking the order that your slides are sequenced. Over and over, I
coach presenters to remember the BLUF principle: bottom line up front.

How many presentations have you sat through where the message was
unclear? By the time you've sat through 30 minutes, you're so inundated
with data that it can be hard to remember the point. Instead, give your
conclusion up front and then share why you feel that way.

The best way to do this with PowerPoint is to switch to Slide

Sorter view. There's no better way to have all of your content in view at
the same time. Switch to it by clicking on View > Slide Sorter.

When I switch to Slide Sorter view, I'm taking a long hard look to ensure
that I'm not burying my conclusion, and I'm building a story that makes
sense sequentially. Drag and drop the slide thumbnails to reorder them in a
concise and BLUF-friendly order.

5. Follow the Guides

Earlier versions of PowerPoint made it somewhat difficult to align things
consistently on a slide. Now, the guides that you'll see pop up as you drag
and drop objects help ensure that your objects are nice and neat.

In the screenshot below, you can see an example of what I mean. The
small red arrows and dotted lines show how objects relate to each other,
and you'll see them when an object is equidistant between them.

Keep an eye out for these helper lines when you're working in PowerPoint.
Using them to align objects will result in a cleaner slide.

6. Set Slide Sizes

The key consideration when setting slide size is to consider the size of the
screen you'll present on. Some different types of screen have slightly
different aspect ratios.

To change slide size, go to the Design tab and choose to change the slide
size from the Customize dropdown:
Setting the size of your presentation is important. When you align the two,
your presentation will fill the screen or projector that you're using.

7. Resize Multiple Objects

As I mentioned earlier, I think consistency in slides is important for
maintaining a clean look. If you've got multiple images that need to be the
same size, there's an easy feature for doing just that.

A great example of this is when you've got several profile images that need
to be resized consistently. To do this, start off by holding Control on your
keyboard (Command on Mac) and click on all of the images that should be
resized.

Now, make sure that you're on the Format tab on PowerPoint's ribbon.
Next up, find the Size area, and type a number into one of the boxes and
press enter. All of the images will be resized to the same size that you set
in the box:
After you set a starting point on size, you can tweak it to get things perfect.
The important thing is that you keep them all selected, and tweak the size
in lockstep.

8. Clean Up Tables Quickly

Data tables in PowerPoint are one of the most effective ways to present
data. They're easy for your viewer to quickly glance at and understand
numbers with an easy row-column view.

As you start resizing and tweaking the look of a table in PowerPoint, it's
likely that your rows and columns may become a bit disjointed or messy. I
like to fix this with Distribute Rows, which evens up the sizes of the rows:
Highlight the rows, and then go to the Layout tab and click Distribute
Rows to apply an easy fix to your rows.

9. Learn to Use SmartArt

Without a doubt, SmartArt is one of my favorite PowerPoint features. Think
of this feature as the sweet spot between infographics and text-only
diagrams.

Basically, SmartArt is a way to create flexible graphics that you can update
right inside of PowerPoint. You don't need a separate app to build out your
own graphics and charts.
SmartArt allows you to build out a variety of diagrams, such as hierarchies,
processes, cycles, and more. Basically, you can build out a simple bulleted
list, and the art will adapt to include the points you add.

I'm all about doing as much as you can directly inside of PowerPoint.
Features like SmartArt are a great bridge that cut out one more app like
Illustrator or Photoshop from your workflow.

10. Try a Theme Variant

What do you do when you get to the end of designing a presentation, and it
just doesn't feel right?

The easiest solution might be to try a new variant. This simply tweaks the
color scheme and style of the presentation. On the Design tab, click a
different thumbnail from the Variants selection.

When you change a variant, it will change the entire presentation's color
scheme as you can see below. One simple click is the easiest way to try an
alternate style:
Changing the Theme Variant is yet another step you can use to
quickly and consistently apply a new look to your presentation. You may
not have time to redo the presentation from scratch, so try out a variant as
an alternative.