Students, teachers, trainers, and business professionals of all stripes are increasingly being asked (or required) to create and deliver slide presentations. But it’s not exactly a full-time job for most people. In fact, for many users, it’s a sporadic task, sometimes assigned at the last minute. That often means pushing other work aside and scrambling to remember how to add slides and speakers’ notes and hoping that the text doesn’t drift from blue 24-point Arial to white 44-point Calibri somewhere around the fifth slide.

PowerPoint has a few safety nets that can help with design and delivery issues, but there’s still ample opportunity to overlook critical details and wind up with mistakes, inconsistencies, and unwelcome surprises at presentation time. This checklist (which you can also download as a PDF) will help you cover all the bases without having to become a PowerPoint expert. We’ve included a list of additional resources at the end so you can drill down on any specific tricks and techniques that interest you.

Content issues

• Organization: Is your presentation constructed in a clear and logical way — beginning (title slide, introduction); middle (informational slides); and end (summary/conclusion)? PowerPoint’s AutoContent Wizard can help you structure the show if you get stuck.
• Objective: Does the presentation convey the necessary message/information? Is it suitable for the target audience?
• Clarity and focus: Does each point lead logically to the next? Is every slide pulling its weight or would the presentation be tighter if you ditched a slide here and there?
• Supporting/ancillary information: Does your presentation include hidden slides you can jump to if you need to fill time, answer questions, or amplify certain points?
• Graphics/multimedia: Have you included charts, tables, artwork, or audio/video clips that make your presentation more interesting and help illustrate key data?
• Supplemental material: Have you prepared handouts to distribute to your audience? This may not be necessary, but you don’t want to leave it until the last minute.

Design issues

• Consistent formatting: Have you used the same fonts and formats for common elements (titles, text boxes, bulleted lists, drawing objects) across all slides? Are the case and punctuation consistent (e.g., no ransom note capitalization or arbitrary periods after titles or phrases)? Have you applied a theme or background style to all the slides (or used a template) to create a unified design for the presentation?
• Legible text: Have you kept the words on your slides to a minimum, letting them serve as cues for elaboration? Remember that the fastest way to lose your audience is to read slide text to them verbatim. Make sure you haven’t crammed too much text on a slide. (PowerPoint makes it easy to move excess text onto its own slide.) Also check that you’ve used a large enough font in a readable color and there aren’t any conflicting background colors or designs.
• Accuracy: Have you checked spelling, verified names, and tested any links you’ve included on your slides?
• Speaker’s notes: Did you prepare some notes that will help you remember to say everything you want to say? If you put your key ideas and facts into PowerPoint’s speaker’s notes pane, you can refer to them during the show and optionally print them for audience handouts.
• Transitions/animations/sounds: Have you tested any transitions, animations, and sound effects to make sure they work the way you want? Did you limit yourself to only the effects that make the information easier for your audience to grasp (as opposed to running amok with spins, fades, dissolves, and canned applause and drum rolls)?

Delivery issues

• Timing: Have you rehearsed your presentation to make sure the timing is about right — with opportunities for Q/A, if appropriate? PowerPoint has a built-in rehearsal feature that will record the time you spend on each slide. Are you ready to fill time or cut to the chase if things run too short or too long?
• Logistics/equipment: Have you verified that you’ll have the necessary equipment at the presentation site (or made arrangements to bring your own)? A visit to the site ahead of time may help you spot any potential problems with the projector, power supply, physical layout, and so on. If you do run into a technical snag during the presentation, you may still be able to fix the issue and move on.
• Fonts, supporting files: Does your presentation include all the components necessary to run properly if you’ll be using someone else’s system? To be on the safe side, you may want to use PowerPoint’s Package for CD tool, which lets you put everything you might need — image files, video clips, TrueType fonts, sound files, and other files used by the presentation — onto a CD or into a folder for easy transport.
• Basic navigation techniques: Do you know how to launch the slideshow and go to the next or previous slide in a presentation? Can you jump to a specific slide if necessary or black out/white out the display temporarily? If you follow a link away from the presentation, can you find your way back? Can you navigate with both keyboard and mouse? If you don’t use PowerPoint very often, some last-minute practice and a simple cheat sheet will come in handy.
• Speaking skills: Are you well versed in the material you’ll be presenting? Have you rehearsed what you plan to say and practiced coordinating your speech with your slide navigation? Even if you’re mortally afraid of public speaking, reviewing some best practices may help you smooth some rough edges off your delivery.

Additional resources

General tips

• 10 slide design tips for producing powerful and effective presentations
• 10 things you can do to give your PowerPoint presentations a heartbeat
• 10 things you can do to make your presentations more effective
• Four tips for a killer PowerPoint presentation
• 10 tricks for working more effectively in PowerPoint
• 10 things you should know about PowerPoint abuse
• 10+ presentation tips to keep your audience from dozing off

Techniques

• Create your own AutoContent templates for building presentations
• How to trim down the size of your PowerPoint presentation
• Run your slide show on two monitors - one for you and one for your audience
• Create a custom PowerPoint presentation from a set of slides
• Create a self-running PowerPoint presentation
• Add a popup window to a PowerPoint slide
• Don’t risk a slide show nightmare: Save fonts with your PowerPoint presentations
• Add a looping introduction to a PowerPoint presentation
• How do I… Add music and narration to a PowerPoint presentation?
• Build a quick training presentation using PowerPoint’s Photo Album feature

Shortcuts

• 10 keyboard shortcuts for working with PowerPoint slides
• 10+ keyboard shortcuts to help you deliver a smooth PowerPoint presentation
• 50+ keyboard shortcuts to move faster in Microsoft PowerPoint

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Last week we asked…

How can you quickly increase the text size in an Outlook email message, without permanently changing settings? NestyPR was the first to respond with the solution I had in mind — hold down the [Ctrl] key and use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. It’s a great trick that works almost everywhere, not just in Office applications.

Other readers who responded with the same solution are Tigercane, Jvanlingen, Dsteiner_kc, Chris_Thomson, David.pyett, Art_Jeffries, and Heamenth.

If you’re being challenged by a specific Office problem, start a new thread. Let’s see if our creative and knowledgeable readers can help.

Taking a quick look around, you might notice that there’s no way to print multiple copies of individual pages. For instance, what if you want two copies of page 1 and 2, but only 1 copy of the remaining pages? If you didn’t know any better, you might run two separate print jobs. If you faced this printing task often, you might create a macro. Fortunately, Word has a built-in feature to handle such a unique printing task — even if it isn’t obvious.

To print multiple copies of an individual page or pages, use the Pages control in the Page Range section. You probably already use this feature to print specific pages when you don’t want to print the entire document. You can also use it to print multiple pages. For example, let’s suppose you want to print one copy of page 1, two copies of page 2, three copies of page 3, and then 1 copy of the remaining pages of a seven-page document. Using the Pages control, you can easily meet this requirement:

1. From the File menu, choose Print. In Word 2007, click the Office button and choose Print.
2. In the Page Range section, enter the following into the Pages control: 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4-7.

   
   

3. Click OK.

By repeating the appropriate page numbers, you can control the number of copies printed for individual pages. Specifically, enter the page number for each copy that you need. The component 4-7 will print one copy of pages 4, 5, 6, and 7.

Now, if you want many copies of individual pages, this method will still work, but creating the Pages entry will be a bit of a nuisance. This neat trick is for those odd situations where you need just a few extra copies of one or more pages, but not all of the pages, in the same document.

It should be simpler, right? Well, it is.

Inserting title text above a section of columns is easy. Just reset the column setting for the title — that’s the trick. You can display a title above columns in almost any configuration, even between two sections of columns. To quickly add a title above columns, do the following:

1. Position the cursor at the beginning of the columns — right where you want the title to appear.
2. Enter the title text.
3. Press [Enter] to push the column text to the next line, leaving the title text in a line of its own.
4. Select the title text.
5. Click the Columns tool on the Standard toolbar and choose one column, as shown below.

6. With the title still selected, click the Center alignment button on the Formatting toolbar.

Now, in this example, the title is centered across two columns that span the entire width of the page (from the left to right margin). You can also use this method to span a title across fewer columns than in the actual spread. For instance, the figure below shows a title that spans  two columns in a three-column spread. I used the same method, but in step 5 above, I choose two columns instead of one.

Instead of wrestling with the column margins, you insert the title text, format the title as one (or more) column, and then center it, just as you would a title or heading above a non-columned area of text.

That’s all there is to it! Sometimes tasks really are as simple as you think they should be!

First, once you type the function’s opening parenthesis, Excel displays the arguments. This particular hint is my favorite because the order of the arguments is often all you need. Excel 2007 also displays a drop-down list of possible functions when you begin to enter a function — just choose one and go!

Second, you can get Excel to enter the entire function for you. Enter an equals sign, as you normally would. Then, choose a function from the Name Box control.

When you do, Excel will display the Function Arguments dialog box. This dialog provides more information on the function. To the right of each argument field, Excel displays the argument’s data type. In addition, as you select each argument field, Excel explains the argument’s purpose in the lower pane. Once you fill in the argument fields, Excel will display the result of the function. This is a good catch for improper references and incompatible data types. If the result isn’t what you expect, you know you’ve made a mistake, so you can adjust the arguments before committing the function. 

Third, the Insert Function button on the Formula bar offers a quick way to find those functions you can’t quite remember. You know you’ve used it before, but you just can’t recall its name. Simply click Insert Function, enter a brief description of the function you’re looking for, and click Go. Excel will display a list of possible matches.

You might know about all of these function-entering helpers. But there’s a keyboard shortcut that might be new to you. You can bypass the Name Box and display the Function Arguments dialog box from the keyboard. Simply enter the function by name and press [Ctrl]+A to display the Function Arguments dialog box. Regardless of where you are in the process of entering a function, you can find a quick way to display helpful information.

Last week we asked…

Can you get Excel’s Auto Fill feature to fill a range with just workdays — excluding Saturday and Sunday? Several of you provided creative solutions, and Kirk.bare was the first to respond with the solution I had in mind. To exclude Saturday and Sunday using the Fill handle, do the following:

1. Enter Monday.
2. Pull the Fill handle down, according to the number of cells you want to fill.
3. When you release the mouse, Excel will display a small icon representing the Auto Fill Options. Click it.

   

4. Click Fill Weekdays (the last option). That’s all there is to it! Excel will fill the selected range with only weekdays.

This option is easy and requires no planning or special knowledge, beyond knowing it’s there.

Stapleb and Tim both mentioned that you must use the right mouse button, but that’s only partially true. By default, this setting is enabled and the left button will display the Auto Fill Options. If disabled, only the right button will display the Auto Fill Options. To check, choose Options from the Tools menu and click the Edit tab. Enable the feature for the left mouse by selecting the Show Paste Options Buttons option.

Jbaptiste also mentioned the Auto Fills Options solution. Thanks to all of you who suggested custom lists or entering Monday through Friday and using the fill handle to copy that list. In addition, thanks to A. C. Metcalf for providing a Mac solution.

There’s an easy way to avoid this situation if you’re willing to compromise just a bit. Simply use Excel’s Scale To Fit option to reduce the number of pages needed. For instance, if a report is five pages, but page five has only two rows of data, this option would reduce the number of pages to four. Here’s how:

1. From the File menu, choose Page Setup and click the Page tab. In Excel 2007, click the Page Layout tab and open the Scale To Fit group.
2. In the Scaling section, click the Fit To option.
3. In the Tall control (the second control), enter the number of printed pages that you want. In this case, that’s 4. Now click OK.

Excel will reduce the text size just enough to squeeze those last few records onto the fourth page, instead of printing a mostly empty fifth page. That’s the compromise — the option changes the text size just a bit. In most situations, where you’re pulling only a few records onto the previous page, no one will notice the change. However, if you have conventions that don’t allow for subtle changes, you won’t want to use the Scale To Fit option. In addition, Excel will ignore manual page breaks when you apply this option.

You can use this same setting to expand the size of the printout. For instance, if you have four pages of data and you want to fill six, you’d follow the instructions above but enter 6 in the Tall control. Excel won’t increase the font size, but it will divide the data over six pages. The first Fit To setting works the same way, with columns.

I like to enter the text and then insert the text box. That way, the text box adjusts to the text automatically. The approach seems a bit backward, but it’s more efficient. Here’s how to enter a text box based on the text:

1. Enter the text in the document anywhere you like. You can move the text box later.
2. Select the text.
3. Choose Text box from the Insert menu.

It’s that simple. Word inserts and fills the text box using the selected text and adjusts the size of the text box, accordingly. This method is more efficient than the more traditional method of filling an existing text box.

You can use Find to highlight all the occurrences of a specific word or phrase as follows:

1. Choose Find from the Edit menu or press [Ctrl]+F. In Word 2007, Find is in the Editing group on the Home tab.
2. On the Find tab, enter the word or phrase into the Find What control.
3. Check the Highlight All Items Found In option (shown below). You can narrow the search by choosing a section from the option’s drop-down list, but most of the time Main Document is adequate. In Word 2007, choose Highlight All from the Reading Highlight drop-down list. Narrow the search using the Find In control.

   

4. Click Find All and click Close.

Word will select the word or phrase throughout the document (or section). At this point, you might want to mark the selections in some way. For instance, you might click the Highlight button on the Formatting toolbar. It just depends on how you plan to use the selected text.

This trick can come in handy during a meeting or presentation when someone asks for more details, future plans, and so on. If you can tune in on a specific word or phrase, you can quickly find key points.

It’s worth noting that Word can help you automate the indexing process. If you’d like to learn more about indexing, search Word’s Help file for Create an Index. Because this process enters special codes into the document, I seldom use it.