To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade?

Many of you have probably recently made the switch or are considering the switch between Office 2003/4 and Office 2007/8, featuring the new version of PowerPoint.  I’ve recently done so myself and after spending a good amount of time with the new version I’ve got a few pointers that I thought you’d find useful:

The Pros:

• Formatting Palette: Instead of having all of your formating options on the bottom of your workspace or in your traditional menu tabs, most of your options are now conveniently placed to the right of your work space. With this new tool, you can easily make changes without having to search through your options. The formatting palette changes options as well, with each different object you select, for instance photos have a different selection of options than do shapes. Another great thing about this is that many more of the lessor used items are now prominently available and easy to use, such as the distribution and sizing functions.
• Quick Styles: If you’ve been waiting for the ability to make “web 2.0-ish” looking graphics for your presentation, you’ll love these. Quick Styles provide a myriad of options, based on your chosen color palette, for treating shapes with just one click. No more wandering through dialog boxes to add just the right amount of reflection, rotation, etc. You also now have the ability to add reflections, glow and 3D-effects. One improvement I can see here however is the ability to have more control over the amount of reflection that is added. Either way, a great and very useful addition.
• Masters: Traditionally, there were only a few different masters slide layouts available by default. Now, your default master comes with eleven different layout options. So you can easily create different layouts for different types of slides, minus the headaches.
• Table Styles: With the old version of PPT, you’d often find yourself spending valuable time changing coloring and styles of your tables to help make them easier to read and distinguish. Now, PPT has done this all for you. Similar to Quick Styles, this function is based on your color palette and provides you with 20+ table layouts to chose from.
• Smart Art: Do you ever find yourself looking for inspiration to make a diagram a bit easier to understand? With Smart Art, there are seven categories (list, process, cycle, hierarchy, relationship, matrix and pyramid) of art choices which are easily laid out and all you have to do is enter the text. This functionality makes it very easy to add a new level of professionalism to your deck.
• Animations: With this version, animations are much easier to control. Especially with audio/video automations. You can now control all you actions in one easy to access place. Even though much of the functionality is the same, it’s much easier to access and apply.

The Cons:

• Speed: Or, lack thereof as it may be. This version of PPT runs much much slower than the 2004 version. And, although there are many more bells and whistles (changing formating palette, graphic treatments, etc) sometimes it’s just not worth it. The program also even has trouble keeping up with the speed of your typing.
• Graphs: Instead of using the old graphing tool, all graphs are now created using Xcel. And while, some may consider this to be a blessing, you’ve then got two separate programs running, even further slowing the actions. The graphs tend to turn out well and have more options in the formating realm. But, this causes a huge problem if you’re working on the deck with someone who has an older version of PPT or vice versa. You can no longer edit the graphs between 2003/4 and 2007/8. Big bummer.
• File Type: Office 2007/8 will automatically save your new files as .pptx or .docx or .xlsx. This means they can only be opened by other 2007/8 versions. Also a huge bummer when working on a document with someone who may not have the new version. Or even worse, if you just want that person to review the doc. There is an option to “save down” however, there are “compatibility reports” that you need to now pay attention to. See, many of the new functions that are so great about the 2007/8 version are non-functional in the older versions.
• Compressing file size on Mac: I just recently ran across this problem and it’s a disappointment. I work on a Mac most of the time and on the 2008 version, the options for reducing files size aren’t as good as they are on the Windows version. In Windows, you can right click any photo, select compress image and a great dialog box pops up. This allows you to select compress this image, or every image in the doc and to delete all cropped sections of images. Which, as you can imaging saves you the hassle of editing photos in another program. In this new version for Mac you’re only allowed to reduce the quality of the images, not delete the cropped areas. And while, it helps a tiny bit, that function really saves when emailing docs back and forth.

Overall, I’m happy with my decision to upgrade. Especially because you aren’t required to delete your old 2003/4 version when you install 2007/8. This means that you will still be able to use the functionality form your old version as well as make edits to your old decks without much hassle. The cons take a little getting used to but the pros make up for most of them. If you’ve had any other experiences, pros/cons, etc. that you’ve run across while making the switch, please leave your comments below.

Content Is King

Without valuable, relevant content you will loose your audience.

Before sitting down to develop your presentation content, sit back and picture yourself as the listener. What do you want to hear, to see, to walk away with? Here are some basic tips for improving your content, to make sure your audience gets what they need:

• Start simple: It’s very easy to assume everyone knows about the topic and rush right into the meat of your sale. However, most of the time, your audience will need to be introduced to the topic with a brief overview of the background.
• Make an outline: Creating a template to work from will help you stay focused. It will also help you to keep a steady flow through your presentation.
• Pare down as much as possible: Take the outline you just wrote and remove the extra data that isn’t relevant to your end goal. Overloading your audience will only confuse them. In addition, your audience will always thank you for ending a few minutes early, instead of late.
• Know all you can about your audience: Being able to relate the content to your audience will help them stay engaged. Using stories and examples they can relate to will create a bond and a reason for them to stay tuned.
• Substantiate: Using information from a third party, graphs created from outside studies or references will help give you credibility with your audience. This credibility not only helps make it easier to tell your story, you also give your audience an unbiased reason to believe in the detail of the presentation.

Keep these tips in mind for your next presentation, and keep your audience in touch.

Graphic Gumption

One of the keys to a quality presentation is quality graphics. It’s very common to see presentations with low quality graphics where images are pixelated, too small, have watermarks or other easily avoidable distractions. The purpose of an image is not only to fill space but to also bring life and help clarify or enhance the text. Here are some basic tips for helping make sure your graphics don’t end up as distractions:

Logos: Searching Google images for “company name” + logo, will give you many files to choose from. Not only will you find the logo without a background color, but you’ll also often have a choice of colors so you can pick the one that best suites your color scheme.

Photos: There is a wide variety of sites to pull photography from across a full spectrum of price ranges. Here are some of my favorites:

• Getty Images: High quality, rights-managed and royalty-free images for any category
• iStockPhoto: High quality, royalty-free, low-budget images for many categories
• Free Photos Bank: Medium quality, completely free images for a handful of categories

Charts & Graphs: It’s often easier to copy and paste an already created graph or chart into your presentation. However, I recommend recreating them within your presentation software. This method allows you to have coordinating graphs and charts throughout, as well as use a color scheme that matches the rest of the presentation.

With these tips in mind, you’ll be able to use graphics to the best of their ability. Not only will your presentation look better, but you’ll find your audience is more attentive as well.

Simplicity

As my first ‘official’ post. I want to tackle one of the most common, yet easiest to repair, mistakes.

In just about every presentation I’ve received from prospective clients, simplicity takes a backseat to detailed content. The challenge in this approach is that the audience easily becomes bogged down in the detail, and can loose track of the overall picture. Now, I’m not recommending you loose the detail, because as we both know without it there’s no point to a presentation. But, what I am suggesting is you move from fewer slides with more content to more slides with less content.

For instance, take this sample slide*:

Which, I’ve simplified here by turning into five separate slides and adding complementary graphics:

Not only is this method easier on the eyes but, you can now dedicate the time each deserves and present each topic more clearly. So, remember for your next presentation that less really is more. Whenever you can, reduce the amount of content per slide. It will make your presentation much more succinct.

*This slide was taken from a presentation by Dave McClure of the University of Edinburgh, released under the Creative Commons license.