r/powerpoint

I have watched people with average design skills put out decks that read as senior, and people with real talent put out decks that read as junior. The gap is almost never design ability. It is a handful of habits. Here are the ones that move a deck from junior to senior.

1. Titles that state the point, not the topic. Junior decks title a slide "Q3 Results." Senior decks title it "Q3 revenue beat plan by 12 percent." The senior version does the thinking for the reader.

2. One idea per slide. Junior decks cram three points on one slide to save space. Senior decks give each point room. A longer deck of simple slides reads as more confident than a short deck of crammed ones.

3. Restraint with color and font. Junior decks use five colors and three fonts because more feels richer. Senior decks use one accent color and a lot of white space. Restraint reads as control.

4. The ask comes early. Junior decks build to the point over twenty slides. Senior decks say what they want up front and spend the rest supporting it.

5. Nothing is there just to show effort. Junior decks keep slides in because someone worked hard on them. Senior decks cut anything that does not earn its place, even good work.

None of this needs talent. It needs the confidence to say less. That is the actual senior move.

What instantly makes a deck look junior to you?

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to understand how to structure a chart where the categories are years (e.g. 2025–2030), but I want to display two different metrics for the same set of entities.

For example, assume I have three countries: Country A, Country B, and Country C. For each year, I want to show:

• Revenue for Country A, B, and C as clustered columns
• Net Income for Country A, B, and C as lines

So the X-axis should simply be 2025, 2026, …, 2030, while the chart should somehow understand that there are two groups of series:

Revenue

• Country A
• Country B
• Country C

Net Income

• Country A
• Country B
• Country C

My issue is how to structure the underlying data so that PowerPoint / think-cell understands this distinction between the two sets of series while keeping the years as the categories.

I can manually change the colours so that they appear to be just 3 series, each for Country, but it would be rather lengthy and any change would be problematic.

Is there a specific way the datasheet needs to be structured to achieve this? Or does this require a different chart setup / multiple overlaid charts?

My company put a few of us through presentation skills training last year and I've been going back and forth on whether it was worth it.

The useful parts were small and concrete. Stop reading the slide. Pause instead of saying "um." Look at one person per thought. Plant your feet. None of it was groundbreaking, but having someone film me and play it back was uncomfortable enough that it stuck.

The part I'm less sure about is whether I'd have gotten there anyway just by presenting more often. A lot of what improved was confidence, and confidence mostly came from reps, not from the classroom day.

So I'm curious what others have seen. Did formal training move the needle for you, or was it the volume of actually standing up and presenting? And if training did help, what specifically, so I know what to look for if I ever send my own team.

https://reddit.com/link/1vqs3hm/video/i7f35u3yqxjh1/player

Hello everyone!

I'm a college student and this is my first serious attempt at creating a more visually engaging PowerPoint.

I recently got a presentation assignment for my professors, so I asked my group to give me a basic PPT containing all the required content. I then took that presentation and tried to transform it into something more visual, engaging and polished.

I spent around 2.5 hours working on this version, and I'm honestly enjoying the process a lot. I'm planning to keep improving my PowerPoint/design skills and potentially turn this into a service in the future.

I'd really appreciate some honest feedback:

• What do you think this is worth if someone were paying for it?
• What would you expect to pay for a presentation of this quality?
• What should I improve if I want to eventually charge professionally?

I'm still learning, so I'd especially appreciate feedback from people who work professionally with presentations/design.

Thanks! 🙌

Most of my presentation tips over the years were about making slides look better. This one is the opposite and it did more for me than any of them.

Before I make a single slide, I write the last one. The slide with the ask, the decision, or the one sentence I want people repeating on the way out. If I can't write that clearly, the deck isn't ready and no layout is going to save it.

Then I build backwards. Every slide has to earn its place by moving the room toward that closing line. If it doesn't, it gets cut. Sounds obvious, but it quietly kills the "here's everything I know about the topic" deck that goes nowhere.

The side effect is my decks got shorter and I stopped reordering slides five times the night before. The order mostly writes itself once you know where it ends.

What's the one presentation habit that actually changed your decks, not the flashy trick, the boring one that stuck?

Hi, I'm new to this subreddit and I apologise if this post breaks any rules.

I'm using my PC (Windows) and I'm using the Powerpoint app, version 2607 (Build 20228.20190 Click-to-Run).

I would like to know how to create a smooth sliding band with different sections with information in them, and make it start and end abruptly. I'm not sure how to explain it without sounding dense, but for a better idea, check out videos such as "100 Longest Reigning Monarchs" by Dieu le Roi or any price comparison videos by Reigarw Comparisons (apologies for lack of links).

I would really appreciate any suggestions you might have! Thanks!

Working on a day-long conference. How can I seamlessly switch between the file with static speaker slides during sessions and a looping slideshow of photos?

I don't think combining the two files makes sense...

I've started running into this more often these days.

I'll make a presentation and then send someone a pptx (end users usually make edits so pdf won't work), but they either don't have PowerPoint, open it on their phone, or just don't want to download another file.

I'm wondering if people have moved toward web-based presentations instead.

I am looking for a sharable link that works well in broswer and looks good on mobile without having to build a webpage from scratch

what are people facing this scenario using?

https://reddit.com/link/1vq0n4f/video/c7ef8y6nxsjh1/player

It's not exactly a genuine OS, but rather than recreation of Windows, but with a unique identity and name - OnysmOS. I want suggestions on how to make my work bit easier to keep going, because these are the problems that I'm running into:

1. PowerPoint doesn't have memory, so if a user makes any changes (for eg. change wallpaper), It won't be updated across other slides where background is displayed, so I will have to duplicate existent slides but with an updated background instead;
2. More about the memory and multitasking, that's the biggest culprit of this app and I'm aware, it's not meant for these type of projects, but I've seen somewhere that it's possible to code in the PowerPoint and I really hope that can save me from duplicating slides for every variety of choice that a user makes (for eg. open explorer and browser tab and the same time)
3. I have built-in font downloaded from PowerPoint, it was available in the cloud, but if anyone else wants to experience this OS with that font, they have to manually download it, it doesn't come included with shared PowerPoint file. In case anyone wants to experience the way it's meant to be, the font's name is ADlam Display

That's all. I'd be very thankful just to get even the smallest tip to optimize my work or inspire others to make similar projects. Suggestions, ideas, tips, criticisms, everything's accepted.

✅ It's absolutely safe to open this project, it doesn't run any programs nor redirect you to strange links, everything can be checked beforehand. Even hovering the mouse over buttons will display the URL that you're getting redirected to. Don't get surprised with its huge size too (106MB), it got inflated because of inserted mp4 videos.

Here's the download link:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/1m86l6ttza4d8q8/OnysmOS_FullRelease.pptx/file
(Google Drive was forcing me to open it in google slides, so I will save you headache and it will be available through mediafire)

Thanks in advance! :) Here's some screenshots!

https://preview.redd.it/soeninv6erjh1.png?width=1336&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf44da319711a79cdb4eb240a0e31ac50afb93ca

https://preview.redd.it/t1cxm4d8erjh1.png?width=1334&format=png&auto=webp&s=27a27ddaa719f138acc06d6976ae3f1ca3102954

https://preview.redd.it/7xwve3naerjh1.png?width=1325&format=png&auto=webp&s=dedd3e3c4fcf359cb556e81d4fc8b6736654655c

I build decks in house and I keep getting asked for a pitch deck template the sales team can reuse. The first version I made looked great when I handed it over, and was a mess a week later. Text boxes dragged off the grid, logos stretched, my spacing gone.

I have been rebuilding it around the person who edits it next instead of around the perfect first version. Real placeholders, so when someone types they land inside a box that is already positioned, not a floating frame. Fewer layouts, five clean ones they can remember instead of thirty they never learn. Nothing decorative that breaks when a title runs to two lines.

It is less satisfying than one beautiful slide, but it survives contact with the rest of the company.

For those who maintain a pitch deck template other people use, do you lock everything down or design so it holds up even when someone ignores the structure? Locking it just made people rebuild slides from scratch for me.

I’m only seeing the rehearsal coach option

1. Website with samples/demo
2. Portfolio
3. Ads
4. Cold calls/email/DMs
5. WoM
6. what else

hello, I’m working on a big Powerpoint Project. I used a lot of animations on each slide. However, today I just saw that all their animations and Slide Timings on all slides are completely wiped! Slide transitions remained but everything else is gone. Luckily I have a backup that still has them. but still I want to know what caused it to happen.

Lately we've had a lot of posts that smell strongly of AI.

You know the ones ... several paragraphs of "here's how I do XYZ" and always a question like "How do YOU do this" at the end.

Here's the thing. Well, two things:

First, there's no reliable way to tell that they're truly AI, so the mods are reluctant to delete them out of hand. We don't want to be deleting honest questions from legit r/powerpoint visitors.

And some of these things, while quite likely AI, set off some interesting and useful discussions. We'd hate to remove all of that just to punish an AI post.

So at the risk of sounding like one of these AI posts myself, I'll ask:

Should we come down hard on these things immediately, delete them, knowing that we'd potentially be preventing some interesting and useful threads?

Or should we let them live for a day or three. Wait to see if any engaging discussion follows?

Or maybe delete or let them live, based on our (the mods') best guess as to which might provoke interesting threads and which are clearly duds?

Or some better idea? If you got 'em let's hear 'em!

Meanwhile, thanks for hanging in there with us while we try to sort this out.

What I currently do with theory lectures is keep the slides pretty plain & simple, with just a minimal amount of text on them, then i explain the concepts by writing & drawing on the slides directly using my pen tablet. I also try to throw in as many relevant images as i can, and use them to illustrate the points while I'm talking & annotate them as i go. Occasionally I'll throw in a short video if it helps get a point across.

To be honest I'm pretty comfortable with the way things are tech-wise, but I do have a major problem - keeping students engaged.

The thing is, these lectures are basically just screen recordings/live with my voice so there's hardly any interaction with the student at all. And i think an important part of a traditional classroom lecture experience is actually seeing the teacher - you know, facial expressions, hand gestures, body language & all the non-verbal cues that help make learning feel more natural.

Even when the actual content is good, a completely faceless lecture starts to feel a bit dull & monotonous.

Do you have any tips to make it more engaging/natural to students?

I'm especially looking for tips on how to make it feel like you're actually learning from a person, without having the teacher's face on screen the whole time.

After years of building decks I'm still surprised how many people have never used F4. All it does is repeat your last action, and it quietly saves hours.

Some ways I use it every day:
- Draw one box the size I want, then click each other shape and hit F4 to force them all to the same size and position style
- Set the exact spacing between two objects, then F4 down the rest so everything is evenly gapped without opening the align menu forty times
- Recolor one icon, then F4 across the others to match instantly
- Nudge one item, F4 to nudge the next one the same amount

The trick is that F4 repeats whatever you last did, so if you build a rhythm of "do it once perfectly, then F4 everything else into line," a slide that used to take ten minutes of fiddling takes two.

It doesn't work on every single action, but it works on far more than you'd expect. What's your one keyboard habit that quietly saves you the most time, the boring one, not the flashy one?

I used to think making better presentations meant learning more complicated PowerPoint features.

Turns out, most of the improvements I've made came from doing simpler things.

Less text.

Fewer elements on a slide.

One clear idea instead of trying to explain everything at once.

And probably the biggest one: spending more time deciding what to remove than what to add.

I'm curious what made the biggest difference for other people.

What's one PowerPoint habit, rule, or small change that noticeably improved your presentations?