Advanced Presentation Skills

Other considerations: 

Design Elements for Video and Data 

How to Insert a Video 

There are two main sources of adding videos to your PowerPoint; from file or from YouTube. Below the pros and cons of each method are explained: 

Carefully consider your audience, environment and IT setup when choosing which method to use. 

Inserting video from file: 

You can move, resize and align your video like any other object. To delete a video, click the video and press Delete on your keyboard to remove it.Clicking on your video gives you access to the Video Tools Ribbon – use the Playback options to edit the length of the clip and how it starts. 

The Video Tools Playback Ribbon: 

Inserting video from the internet: 

Compressing Video Files 

Inserting videos to your presentation from your computer can lead to extremely large PowerPoint files. These files can be slow to load, and very difficult to send by email. 

If you have inserted several videos, but then trimmed those videos, it is possible to compress the video files to completely remove the trimmed areas. This can significantly reduce the overall size of your file. 

To compress video files: 

If you are unhappy with the effects of the compression, you can undo the last compression by going back to the Compress Media dropdown. 

Adding Sounds 

To insert an audio file: 

Your audio will be shown on your slide as a small speaker icon, which you can choose to display or hide when presenting. You can also choose to play the audio on one slide or to keep playing throughout the whole presentation. To delete a sound, select the audio icon on the slide and press Delete. 

More options below in the audio ribbon: 

How to Insert a Chart 

In PowerPoint it is possible to create your own graph or insert a graph from a file. 

To insert a chart on your slide: 

Chart Design Options 

The Chart options in PowerPoint are identical to the ones available in Excel, so save time by pasting the chart in using the ‘Use Destination Theme’ option. This will update the colours, fonts and style to match those of your PowerPoint document, often meaning very few formatting changes are then needed. 

If the chart needs further design tweaks, try to use the options in the Design Ribbon, as they allow you to update features of the chart very quickly and easily. 

Use the options in the Format Ribbon to edit each element of your chart individually. This is a much slower and more manual way to change chart design, so is only recommended if you need to highlight individual data points or a specific combination of design options.  

Presenter View 

Presenter view is a special setting that allows you to see a different view on your PC or laptop screen to the one on the presentation screen. 

To set up presenter view: 

Below is an example of the presenter view display, which provides very useful information for delivery: 

While in presenter view, you have the options to use some of the options shown at bottom left. Such as laser pointer, highlighter and others. 

Action Buttons 

Action buttons are used to create an action within your slide such as playing a movie or going to a specific slide. They are created in two simple steps 

The following actions are available: 

To place an action button on your slide, first click on Insert>Shapes. They are the buttons located at the very bottom. 

Click on the button you want to use and then just like a normal shape, click and drag on the slide to insert the action button. 

Action buttons chosen from this menu have a default action assigned to each one. The easiest way to see this is to hover your mouse over each button in the insert shapes menu for a description. 

After dragging to draw the shape a new dialogue box will appear, giving options for the action button. 

The two tabs offer the choice of activating the action by click or mouse over. Further options allow you to assign specific actions. 

You can also assign actions to any shape or picture you have put into a slide. To do this, select the shape or picture first, then click on Insert>Links>Action. 

The same dialogue box appears and you can assign an action, you also use this to edit an existing action. 

Infographics 

These are a perfect way to create an impactful visual to share a story. A key tip for infographics is to utilise templates from the web as there are simply loads. Much quicker to edit existing ones than create one from scratch.www.templatewise.comis an excellent free resource for infographics and many other goodies