Microsoft PowerPoint Training Courses

Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation software package created by Microsoft. Users can create a presentation by designing a series of slides. It is also simple to import documents from other Microsoft Office applications such as Microsoft Word or Excel into PowerPoint. Presentations can be built by selecting from the available templates or starting from a blank page. Users can import audio, video, graphics and text into PowerPoint to make more interesting and dynamic presentations to help engage the audience.

PowerPoint is almost ubiquitous in the business world as it can be used in virtually any environment where presentations are required. Users can include conference keynote speakers, team leaders, sales professionals, training facilitators and many more.

Microsoft PowerPoint can be used to create just about any kind of presentation you can think of. This might be sales presentations, brainstorming sessions, keynote presentations, or team reporting to name just a few. Any of these presentations can be created in PowerPoint.

Some significant features of Microsoft PowerPoint are:

• Thousands of Templates
• Themes for consistent formatting
• Animations and transition effects
• Presenter View

These are just some of the features of PowerPoint, but of course, there are many more. If you need to create just about any kind of business presentation then you will probably need to use Microsoft PowerPoint.

Have you ever wondered why the Dummies books are so popular? Well, it’s probably because so many of us are self-taught, using Google to find out how to use a function, or we are shown how to use software by someone at work. Although this can be useful, it also means we tend to spend a lot of time with trial and error, or we are just picking up somebody else’s bad habits. Trial and error, unfortunately, involves a lot of error, and the bad habits you pick up will probably be passed on to the next person, so soon they spread across the business, meaning entire teams can end up working inefficiently.

At this point, you might head to the bookstore or do an online search to find a PowerPoint for Dummies book to help solve some of those tricky issues. That’s a step in the right direction, and we sometimes use reference manuals ourselves. The problem is that it still takes time to find the information you need.

Our Microsoft PowerPoint courses are designed to target the key features and tools included in the applications to help you get back to work and apply them right away.

A training course with Keystroke Learning can set you up to take full advantage of your software. We want Microsoft PowerPoint to work for you, not the other way around. We also make a point of passing on the best of our knowledge and experience to help you save time in your daily work. We know lots of shortcuts for your software applications, and we want you to know them as well.

Typically, one of our experienced trainers will walk you through the features and functions of the software, then you will try them out on your own, with tips and guidance on getting the best out of the features. We also encourage participants to ask lots of questions to help you get the most out of your learning experience.

You’ll receive a manual to take away at the end of the course, as well as exercise files so you can practice later, or just to jog your memory when you need.

Absolutely, you just need to be using the slide masters. We find that many people go to each slide and format the headings one by one. This is a slow and cumbersome way of doing things. In PowerPoint, you need to go to the slide master view, select the heading on the slide master and modify the formatting. Changes made to the slide master include font formatting and alignment, colours, spacing, and more.

Once this is done, return to the presentation slides and the headings for every slide based on the slide master will be updated accordingly.

PowerPoint has some useful collaboration features built in, however, the specific options will depend on the PowerPoint version you are using. Any version of PowerPoint will give you the ability to add comments to slides. Once added, comments can be saved with the slide if needed.

If you use a tablet device you can use a stylus to write directly on to the screen, and you can also save your comments with the slides.

Finally, if you are using Office 365 you can save your presentation to OneDrive or SharePoint Online for Office 365 and then work on a presentation at the same time as your colleagues. If someone else views or works in the presentation, their thumbnail picture appears in the top-right corner of the ribbon. If someone makes changes in the presentation, you can easily choose the changes you want to keep.

Of course, you can. You may need to follow a different branch depending on the audience, or when you are anticipating extra questions at various points of your presentation. If this is the case you can build custom shows. These shows draw from the same pool of slides while allowing you to branch for the different situations.

For example, you might have some extra slides that you want to use to provide more detail about particular topics. If you get a question from the audience, you can quickly jump to the custom show and display your extra slides. If you don’t get a question you can choose to bypass the extra content and continue with the regular slides.

Yes, you can. First, build your presentation as normal. Then, once you are done, you can save your file as a PowerPoint Show. By saving as this format instead of a regular presentation, your presentation will automatically open in presentation mode. The recipient will not need to run the show and it will close automatically once the last slide has been viewed.

The problem is that the default view in PowerPoint is slide view. This gives you a large view of the slide and for most people, that’s a trigger to immediately start thinking about the design of their slides instead of the content. But as Bill Gates suggests, “Content is King”.

To resolve the problem, you should probably be using outline view. This gives you an overview, or outline of your presentation, allowing you to focus on the content, structure, and flow of your presentation before you start worrying about how it looks. This method can save you a huge amount of time and will give you a simpler and more efficient way of reordering your content to get the best result. The time you save can then be used to rehearse your presentation so you can really get your message across during that important keynote.

Your learning doesn’t stop once you have completed your course. We hope you will continue your experience by taking some time to practice what you have learned and apply it to your own situation and environment.

If we have done our job well, you may be inspired to learn even more by attending another course. If you are looking for something other than Microsoft PowerPoint, we have a comprehensive range of courses available for you to choose from.

We are here to help, so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you need any further advice.