PowerPoint Tricks You Did Not Know About

Last updated on September 14th, 2023

PowerPoint presentations are often associated with being dull, boring, and counter-productive. This is why many presentations are tagged “death by PowerPoint” because, unfortunately, many still need a lot of work to liven up their PowerPoint presentations.

In fact, it’s so easy to go wrong with your PowerPoint presentations. Many, even in the corporate world, still don’t know about the laws of design that must be incorporated into every slide. Many also still find it hard to create an equilibrium between being informative and keeping your audience interested, even inspired.

As a result, PowerPoint has been misused with too much animations, incongruent messages, and utterly distracting elements that detract from the main idea you should be conveying.

So now, we are listing down a few precious PowerPoint tricks that you should know and use for your next presentation.

powerpoint tricks

PowerPoint Tricks to Have Up Your Sleeve

1. Maintain Visual Symmetry

Having a balanced slide makes up for a balanced presentation that doesn’t distract from your main points and core message. In order to do this, you must ensure that your slides are also aesthetically symmetrical, to make them pleasing to the eyes.

You can achieve this with the help of grids and rulers. You can turn on grids in PowerPoint by right-clicking on the slide, choosing Grid and Guides, and then clicking on the Gridlines and Smart Guides. This allows you to have a grid view of your slide so you can align elements in your slide to create a complete yet balanced look. Learn how to use Smart Guides in PowerPoint in our separate article.

Maintain Visual Symmetry with the use of rulers, grid lines, guidelines and smart guides in PowerPoint

2. Save Time with Slide Master

Not many PowerPoint users know about Slide Master, and perhaps this is where they make a mistake. With Slide Master, you can edit layouts of your theme so that they look uniform and organized. This allows you to save time as compared to editing your slides and formatting them one by one.

To go to Slide Master, just click on the View tab on the Ribbon and click Slide Master. This will then show you different slide layouts that belong in your selected PowerPoint theme. Here, you can format your text and add designs to various layouts so you achieve a consistent, and therefore more professional, look to your slides.

Example of Slide Master View in PowerPoint
Example of Slide Master View in PowerPoint

3. Make the Most of the Selection Pane in PowerPoint

To keep the elements of your slides organized, it’s best to have the Selection Pane accessible right beside the slides you’re working on. The selection pane is a control feature that allows you to select anything on your slide and name it. You can also use this feature to re-arrange or re-order your layers, which is important in ensuring that everything shows up and is optimally visible in your slideshow. The selection pane also helps you to keep track of the elements in each slide as you animate them.

To access the Selection Pane, go to the Home tab in the Ribbon, select Editing, and choose Select. Under Select will be many options, the last of which is the Selection Pane, which you will then click.

Use Selection Pane in PowerPoint to adjust the shapes and organize everything.

4. Audio Plays a Crucial Role in Your PowerPoint Presentation

In the search for a powerful slideshow, much focus is put in text and images. However, people forget to include audio in the mix. Audio, such as commentary, background music, and sound effects, can also greatly help your presentation.

Audio can set the mood of your presentation, help you emphasize crucial points, as well as add more information to your slides. You can insert audio by going to the Insert tab in the Ribbon, clicking on Audio and choosing to insert sound clips from Audio on my PC. Here, you can search your computer to insert audio files to your slide. Then, you can choose to play audio clips or even music in each slide or as background music for your whole presentation.

audio in powerpoint

5. Be in Control with Presenter View

PowerPoint has a cool feature called Presenter View so that you can be on top of your slides. This feature allows you to have two displays so that you can show your deck to your audience while still having your own view of your current and upcoming slides. You can acess this option by right-clicking an active slideshow and selecting Show Presenter View option from the context menu.

presenter view

At the end of the day, the goal of your presentation is to inform, inspire, and influence your audience through your slides. Using the tips mentioned above can help you, but still, you have to do your part in coming up with interesting content and choosing the perfect theme or PowerPoint template for your topic.

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