Many suffer from glossophobia, the fear of public speaking. Reasons vary, from traumatic childhood experiences to the inability to imagine your co-workers in their underwear. Enter Microsoft PowerPoint. This program helps visually depict a presentation, whether it be for a class project or a boardroom meeting, or to convince parents to buy your first car. With the nine following tips, you can maximize the efficiency of your next PowerPoint presentation.

Start slideshows instantly

The audience doesn’t want to see the speaker’s cluttered desktop or unread emails as the PowerPoint presentation is being set up. Simply name the file with a .PPS or .PPSX file extension and voilà! Bypass the editing mode and start the show with a double click and end it with the Esc key.

Pull back the focus with Blackouts and Whiteouts

Audience members have the tendency to lose focus or drift away when presentations are longer than usual. If you suspect audience members are starting to lose focus, hit the B key for a complete blackout or the W key for a total whiteout. Then hit any key or click the mouse to return to the slides – this technique helps get the eyes back on you, where they belong.

Say no to bullet points

Both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook agree that bulleted lists aren’t the ticket. A better way to create lists is to drop each item in one at a time, if possible, next to a big image that is the main focus of your presentation. Don’t forget to talk about each individual list item, but not with bullets.

Insert pictures from Flickr and OneNote

Jazz up presentations by including images or memes that’ll make the audience laugh instead of doze off. Head to the Insert tab and select Online Pictures; you’ll see Office.com Clip Art, Bing Image Search, Flickr, OneNote and even Facebook. The vast pool of online imagery is now at your disposal.

Chart animation

The challenge doesn’t lie in inserting the chart into the presentation, but in making it interesting. Enter chart animation. After inserting the chart, click the Animations tab and activate the Animations pane. From there, click Add Animation. Pick an animated effect. Then, in the Animation Pane where you see the entry for the chart’s animation, right click and select Effect Options.

This lets you customize sound and animation timing. But on the final tab—Chart Animation—be sure to change Group Chart from “As One Object” to “By Category.” This makes charts display on screen one element at a time as you click, with bars or pieces of pie arriving one after the other, as if each was its own slide.

Kiosk presentations

Kiosk mode simply plays your presentation on a loop without allowing any human intervention or desktop access. This is ideal for trade shows and kiosks that you’d find in malls. Simply click the Slideshow tab > setup Slideshow > and in the dialog box, click next to Browsed at kiosk. Duration, audio, animation and transitions are fully customizable.

Extend music over multiple slides

Why confine your favorite tunes to just one slide? Expand it over the duration of your presentation by clicking on the speaker icon that indicates the embedded audio. Look for the Audio Tools above the tabs on top. Now select the new Playback tab, and in the Start section make sure to check the box for “Play Across Slides.” And presto, the audio is played across the next few slides or until the music runs out.

Duplication

If you are constantly reusing the same element throughout your presentation, the good old Ctrl-C+Ctrl-V is fine, but Duplication is better. Hold Ctrl while you click and drag on the object to create an exact dupe, keep selecting and making dupes and they’ll all space themselves out evenly. You can even dupe entire sets of slides; simply select one or more slides on the left navigation pane, select Insert, click New Slide menu and select Duplicate Selected Slides.

Animate, animate, animate

Any element of a PPT slide is animatable. Choose the element, go to the Animations tab, and at the right end of the Animations Gallery, click the down arrow to get “More.” You can choose from many options about how an element appears, gets emphasis, or disappears—but for animated motion, go to the fourth section. If you pick Custom Path, you can get the object to do just about any wild motions you want on the screen before it settles down. Keep in mind that you don’t want an audience with motion sickness.
PowerPoint presentations are complicated — that’s a fact. So is how effective it becomes once utilized properly. If you have any further questions regarding our tips or how to execute them, please feel free to give us a call or send us an email. We’re more than happy to answer all of your questions.

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Ever wish you could get more work done with your iPad? You’re not alone. In fact, one of the main reasons people purchase an iPad in the first place is because they believe it will give them the ability to be more productive while out and about. The reality is that many individuals only end up using it to surf the web or watch Netflix. However, if you still harbour ambitions of making your iPad a productivity tool, here are the three things you need to make it happen.

Keyboard

We understand a lot of people buy an iPad because it doesn’t have a keyboard, but if you really want to be more productive using your iPad then a keyboard is a must have item. With both Microsoft Office and Google Apps for Work now available for use on iPads and iPhones, it means that it is now easy to create and edit documents and spreadsheets from your tablet. And it is far easier and quicker to edit them using a keyboard.

A number of iPad keyboards are available including Apple’s Smart Keyboard which acts as a case as well. Logitech’s Create keyboard is an alternative that will give your iPad the look and feel of a laptop. Both of these options connect to your iPad via the Smart Connector, but you’ll also find a number of Bluetooth keyboards on the market too. The key is finding a keyboard that you find comfortable to use.

Duet Display app

If you have ever worked in an office that let you use dual monitors, you know how awesome it is. Unfortunately, if you have to work from home or out on the road it means you are usually confined to the single screen of your laptop. However, with the Duet Display app, you can connect your iPad to a Mac computer operating on OS X 10.9 or above or a PC running Windows 7 or above and have it serve as your second monitor. Both mirror and extended desktop modes are available so you can capture the same feel of working at the office even if you can’t physically be there.

Stylus

Samsung Note users constantly rave about how much they love using their stylus but Apple continues to lag behind on this front. The software giant didn’t release their first stylus until late in 2015 and the functionality is still fairly basic. However, many third-party developers have stepped in to fill this gap by creating styluses for the iPad and now some heavy hitters including Microsoft are making their apps stylus compatible to increase your productivity options.

That’s great news, but the biggest productivity benefit of using a stylus is probably more of a mental one than any tangible gain. Holding and working with a pen, or in this case a pen-shaped device, feels more like traditional work and gets you in productivity mode. Since you likely use your fingers to navigate your iPad in more casual settings, this mindset can carry over to when it’s time to work. Investing in a stylus can create a clear divide as to when it’s time to work using your iPad and when it’s okay to open up your favorite freemium game and challenge for the high score.

Need more advice on how to boost your productivity when using an iPad? Want to see what work alternatives are available for mobile employees? Contact our experts for answers to these and any other questions you might have.

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