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Maximizing Your Productivity in PowerPoint
By Jim Endicott, Owner/Manager of Distinction If you've ever strapped on a tool belt to do a little remolding or minor construction I'll bet you've learned some good lessons about organization. It took me a while but after I misplaced my hammer for the tenth time I came to the realization that there was a carefully crafted spot for it on my leather tool belt. Upon closer examination I also discovered a place for screwdrivers, nails, tape measure and a few other spots that I couldn't figure out. One of the best by-products of mastering the tool belt is the fact it saves you a whole bunch of trips to the garage. Your personal productivity on the project improves dramatically (and it looks pretty cool too).
For those who create presentations on a regular basis, you may find that you're making far too many trips down through the PowerPoint menus searching for certain functions. To complicate things a bit more, some are located on the bottom of your screen while others are a right mouse click away. Since the ultimate goal of presenting is actually delivering the presentation and not spending all your time creating one, personal productivity in quickly and accurately laying out text and graphics becomes pretty important. If your specific role is to create the presentations for someone else, getting through that process with consistency and speed can only be a good thing because I'm guessing there are a few other presentations waiting in the wings to be started. Here are some tips for getting through your next presentation with a little less frustration.
Guides (Quick key: Control g)
With electronic projectors becoming the presentation display device of choice these days, a whole new set of issues have been introduced in creating presentations. As we sit through PowerPoint slide shows we often see screens of shared text, title and graphics where those elements appear to jump annoyingly around screen - a few pixels left, than a few right every time the presenter moves to the next slide. A subtitle jumps to the right or lines in an illustration don't seem to line up. It may seem like a pretty small thing but it's that sort of attention to detail that makes the difference between a professional presentation and a blatantly amateur one.
Turning on the guides (Control-g) can make double-checking placement of those elements easier. Those replicated elements will "snap" to the same location from screen to screen. If the x and y guides provided aren't enough, hold down the Control key while selecting and dragging a guide to create additional gridlines. This placement can be done vertically and horizontally to the extent you need to align objects. The new guides will remain until they're dragged off screen and disappear.
Customizing tool bars
Staying out of the drop down menus and getting to key design functions quickly is as easy as customizing your tool bars so those most frequently used items are right there and ready to use. In PowerPoint, a trip to the Tools menu, then the Customize submenu will display a whole list of special functions that can be dragged to your top or bottom toolbars. In addition to the stock elements that already exist in your toolbars, here's a quick list of some toolbar shortcuts that will make the job go quicker.
- Group/ungroup (for joining artwork so it does not shift in relationship to other elements)
- Send to front/back (layering control is essential in positioning graphics)
- Eye dropper tool (Acquire/deposit object characteristics can save a bunch of time)
- Align tools (top, bottom, right, left, center)
Quick keys I've never been one for memorizing a bunch of shortcut keys but if you create a lot of presentations, here are 7 quick keys that can save you a ton of time over a long project. Maybe you don't consider yourself a power user but taking a few minutes to learn these "quick keys" will help you be more productive in most Windows-based applications - not just PowerPoint.
- Control c - Copies a selected object to clipboard
- Control v - Pastes objects in clipboard into work area
- Control x - Cuts selected objects to clipboard
- Control z - Undo (a personal favorite)
- Control a - Selects all objects on screen
- Control p - Print command
Picture toolbar Right mouse-clicking on photos or clipart images will allow you to select the Show Toolbar option. Adjusting brightness, contrast and cropping out non-essential areas of images can now be accomplished right inside PowerPoint. Static clipart can be easily recolored as well. Now customize it to your toolbar so the tool is right there when you need it.
These are just a few of the types of short cuts that will help you shave some time off that next presentation development project. I actually like working with the software but given the choice of cranking out presentation graphics or spending some extra time practicing my delivery, I'll take the latter any day.
Learn more about Jim Endicott and Distinction in our Contributors area.
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