Overview
PowerPoint is speaker support, not an on-screen script with everything you want to say word for word, therefore you should include only key points and not every point you wish to make.

Your presentation will convey the message much more efficiently if it is legible, clear and concise. Therefore, we recommend:

• No more than 6 bullet points per slide
• No more than 1 line per bullet point|
• No more than 2 font colours per slide
• No more than 2 fonts per presentation
• Title text should be no bigger than 56 point (36 – 48 is the recommended range)
• Body text between 24 and 36 point and certainly no smaller that 20 point if possible
• Correct usage of transitions and animations (see below)

Getting Started
The key to good PowerPoint is good planning.

Firstly decide whether your presentation is to be 4:3 or widescreen. The default for PowerPoint is 4:3, although PowerPoint 2007 does have widescreen page setups (16:9 and 16:10).

In general, if you are using a widescreen screen (either a plasma, LCD or projection screen) then you’re looking for 16:9. If your screen is not widescreen, it will be 4:3. (The main exception to this would be certain laptop screens which now also come in 16:10 ratios.

The next thing to do is to insert the chosen pre-formatted background image in the master slides (see below for formatting details).
The next stage is to choose a “slide colour scheme” from the “format menu”. Choose one that will allow the text to be visible when editing, it is not necessary to choose the scheme that gives the required text colour at this stage.
Having done this you can now set up predominant styles (including font colours) using the “Master Slides”

A light font and dark background works better than a dark font and a light background, therefore, choose a light colour for main text, another complimentary light colour for the heading if appropriate/required.

Within the body text you can use the heading colour (if it is different) for emphasis, but it is advisable not to introduce another font colour for further emphasis.
Emphasis can be given by bold text, underlined text, and italic text
–but not all at once

Transitions and Animations
Avoid random animation at all costs as you never know what you’ll get, and certain transitions and animations do not look good in any circumstances. The main animations to avoid are “Zoom Out”, “Spiral”, the main transitions to be avoided are “Fade through Black”, “Random Transition” and “Dissolve”.
Also avoid using sound, as it will detract from your verbal delivery.
Try to keep animations and transitions consistent, (a safe bet is always “Wipe Right” or “Fade Smoothly” for slide transitions, and “Fly From Left” or “Fade” for text animation).

Formatting Backgrounds
Imported backgrounds should be 96dpi and 1024 X 768 pixels (for 4:3) and 1024 X 576 (for 16:9 widescreen). 80% Quality JPEG images are usually sufficient.

Other Images
Images should be sized to display at 96dpi actual size.
I.e. if an image fills a quarter of the slide it should be 512 X 384 (on a 4:3 slide). If the image is too big it will result in a large file size (making transferring the presentation more difficult and slide transitions can become “jerky”), if the image is too small and is stretched it will loose quality and this quickly becomes noticeable when delivered on a large screen.

Graphs and Charts
Too much information in a graph or chart makes a graph or chart hard to read, demands you use many colours, demands a small font size and looks cluttered. This can be partially resolved if you are using a graph by removing the tick marks, floor and grid lines.

Bullet Points
Keep first bullet point consistently placed between slides wherever possible to stop the presentation taking on an untidy appearance.

Shadows
When using shadows use the shadow settings from the drawing toolbar. The default shadow is a little strong so I would recommend shifting it left and up by one click in each direction. We would always advise against using the text shadow from the format bar.

Clip Art
Avoid pointless clip art to fill space, ask yourself what the image adds to the presentation. Does it illustrate a point, and if so, is it the best way to illustrate this point.

Fonts
Make sure that the font you wish to use is installed on the playback platform. Cross platform fonts include “Arial”, “Times” and “Comic Sans MS”. These will work on both Mac and PC, and are included in the standard Windows install. It should be noted however, that even these cross platform fonts differ slightly on a Mac and PC (usually in width), so line wrapping can differ

The Golden Rule
Keep it simple and minimal.

When tidying up presentations done by other people:
Bear in mind the above rules, and most importantly double check everything:

Even if when you checked it on a screen show, it didn’t seem to contain any of the transitions or animations to be avoided; it doesn’t mean the creator has not used “Random Transitions” or “Random Animations”.

Check that the presentation has not been set to ‘advance slides automatically’. This can be checked under the menu item “slide show” > “set up show”. Ensure that in this dialogue box that the “advance slide” settings is set to “manually”.

While you are in this dialogue box it is worth checking the other options:
The “show type” should be set to “presented by a speaker” and no other options should be checked under normal conditions. It is worth knowing that the “loop continuously until esc” option exists but this would usually be used for a “logo loop” or “info loop” presentation, where the slides run automatically.
In normal circumstances the area of this dialogue box named “slides” would be set to “all”, where any slides you wish to omit are either hidden (see hiding slides) or erased.

Hiding Slides
To hide certain slides first highlight the slide(s) to be hidden in the slide sorter view (see “views”), and then select the “slide show” drop down menu, and select “hide slide”.

Views
There are a number of views you will encounter when using PowerPoint. The default is called the “tri-plane” or “normal” view. This displays the actual slide in the upper right plane, the notes beneath this plane, and the “presentation overview” on the left hand side.

The other view to be aware of, and the very reason for having PowerPoint, is the “slide show” view. This displays the slides as specified. Only here do you see the transitions and animations you have created.

In this view the slides can be advanced by pressing the space bar, the down arrow, the right arrow, the left hand mouse button (not to be advised), or page down. To change to the slide before the current one, use the up or right arrow, or page up. If you know the number of the slide you wish to jump to, you can access the slide directly by typing in the number of the slide and pressing return.

Other useful keyboard shortcuts to use during a show are “home” to return to the first slide of a presentation, and “end” to go to the last slide”.

The decision as to whether to use “Presenter View”, and “Hardware Graphics Acceleration” depend upon the environment, and hardware, used.

Presenter view can be very useful if you want to see the notes pane, the timers (that shoe the total time the presentation has been running for, and the time that the current slide has been on screen for), and, most importantly in many cases, what transition, animation will happen when you next advance.

This needs a second screen to run. For example, I usually use a laptop showing presenter view on the laptop screen, and outputting the slideshow via the VGA (or DVI) interface (usually designated monitor 2 default monitor). It should be noted however, that in order to do this you must first connect up the display device to the output (this can be a second screen or a projector), then you need to extend the windows desktop to this device (done through the display properties dialogue box, Settings tab).

Presenter view is enabled in the “Set Up Show” dialogue box in PowerPoint 2003 and earlier, and in the SlideShow tab of PowerPoint 2007.

Notes
The versions of PowerPoint, and many other items in this post refer only to the PC version of PowerPoint, as the Macintosh implementation leaves rather a lot to be desired (sorry Mac- heads. I am aware that this is due to Microsoft’s implementation of PowerPoint rather that the Apple Mac platform or OS.)

This is only a brief overview. More technical posts detailing such gems as PC setup before even opening PowerPoint, configuring PowerPoint to make it work for you, and good working practices, will appear here soon.