Trap so i'm going to cover that in a second but in addition to this i decided to collect and combine a few things that many of us are doing consistently wrong in powerpoint i'm then going to show you.
The better way of doing it now some are productivity tips there are design tips and some are embarrassment saving clips let's start with that one first.
Mistake number one is to add external links for example external links to videos like this why is this bad well when you go to show the people this video and you click on.
This it's going to take them to youtube if you don't have anything to be embarrassed by it's fine but on the side here what youtube does is it recommends videos based on the topic that you're.
How you do that let's do it in a separate slide i'm gonna take this away then go to insert media video.
Online videos now just type the link to the youtube video and then click on insert now you're in a safe space you don't have to worry about whatever.
You've watched on youtube before you can just go ahead and play the video directly from here if i go into presentation mode i'm able to play this and then move on with my presentation.
Mistake number two is to copy your charts from excel and paste into powerpoint without understanding the implications let me explain so here in excel i have.
This excel chart that i want to bring over to my powerpoint presentation so i'm going to select it press ctrl c go over to powerpoint and press ctrl v that's the way most people do this.
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But what they might not be aware of is
That the entire excel workbook is now embedded in this presentation so if i send this over to someone i'm just going to close off my excel file.Someone else opens this they can click on this go here to chart design edit the data let's click on edit data and they're going to see that embedded workbook.
They can obviously see all the data so that's the data that's used for this chart and they have access to any other information or any other tabs that i have in this workbook now the good thing.
About this though is that it is dynamic so if the data in the underlying workbook changes you can come here and refresh the data and you're going to grab the latest data but if you're.
Embedding lots of workbooks in your presentation you're going to blow up the file size so what you want to do instead and what my preferred version is is to link the chart to your.
Presentation so let me just open up the excel workbook you're going to go and select your chart press ctrl c then go over to your powerpoint go to.
Paste special and you're going to paste the link take a look at this it's going to insert a picture in your presentation but it's going to be a linked picture so we're.
Going to go with ok and we get our chart in here all the formatting everything comes over from excel that additional chart button thing is gone we just have the shape format.
Because now we're dealing with a shape but the great thing is it is dynamic now if you have additional data that you want to copy over so let's say you want to copy chart and the data that i had on.
The bottom
You can do that by just selecting the region that you want copied so i'm going to go and select this press control c go over to my slide.Paste special and paste the link now everything comes over now all of this is dynamic and we can go and double check that so if something.
Changes here let's say this changes to f5 it pulls through here this let me just make formulas for this too i switch to my presentation and we can see.
These updated automatically now once you have these linked you are responsible to maintain those links if they change you can go and update them by going to file info and selecting edit links to files.
If you want to open up the original source you can double click on this object and it's going to open up the underlying workbook but this workbook isn't embedded so your file size is.
Going to be a lot smaller than if you were embedding these workbooks if you don't need to have the latest data and you just want to have everything as an image you go and copy.
Come back here and paste this as an image okay so it's important to understand the different paste options that you have mistake number three is poor design.
So another issue i often see is lack of consistency between the slides with different background and fonts this is distracting to the audience what you want to do instead is to keep the theme.
Of the slides the same with clean backgrounds you can use some supporting infographics and add an action title to each slide so the key message comes across right away in terms of fonts.
Avoid italics and narrow fonts also fonts that simulate handwriting because they're quite difficult to read instead use simple well readable fonts with good contrast.
And use that font throughout the presentation now what happens when you collaborate with your colleagues is that each person has their own favorite font and you may end up with inconsistent.
Fonts a great tool to fix this is to replace all fonts in one go you can find it in the home tab under replays just click on this drop down and go to replace fonts select if it's just for.
This slide or the entire presentation and then when you click on this first drop-down you can see all the different fonts that are used in your presentation you can search and replace specific.
Fonts or just replace all fonts with the default that you use throughout your company and then just click on replace this automatically corrects all your fonts to the correct font.
Now another quick fix that helps out with good slide design is the align objects feature in powerpoint this way you avoid misposition shapes like this and it's kind of difficult to try to get.
Them right all you have to do is select your objects click on this drop-down for a range go to align and decide on the alignment of your choice i'm going to go with align center in this case this.
Makes for a much more professional look and design so speaking of design a great platform to learn design and many other skills is skillshare who've been kind enough to sponsor this video what i like.
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For sponsoring this video and now let's continue with the next common mistake mistake number four is to use distracting transitions and animations so transitions and animations can be.
Great tools to emphasize certain points over others but most of the standard effects that we have in powerpoint are too distracting and they can come across as childish in business settings but.
Apply it with intent and in moderation they can be quite effective one of my favorite transitions is called morph you can create super smooth professional effects in seconds that are gonna look.
Like you spent hours creating i have a separate video on this if you want to learn more just check out the cards or the description box below the video next mistake is to fill up your slides.
With text when you put too much text on a slide the audience will focus on reading rather than listening to what you have to say and it's easy to lose the key points not to mention the more.
That you're trying to squeeze into a single slide the smaller your font gets and it becomes harder to read so often a combination of words and graphics is most effective in getting your points.