10 Cool PowerPoint Tips and Tricks You (Probably) Didn’t Know About
PowerPoint is a versatile tool capable of many amazing tasks. It has lots of great features but unfortunately, most users aren’t even utilizing half of the software’s capabilities.
Today, we’re going to change that. In this guide, we share some of the best PowerPoint tips and tricks for doing cool things with the presentation maker.
You’ll learn cool tricks like inserting QR codes in PowerPoint slides, converting presentations to videos, removing the background of images, and much more.
These PowerPoint tips will not only allow you to design presentations more easily but they will also help impress your audience. Let’s dive in.
19+ Million PowerPoint Templates, Themes, Graphics + More
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Third-Party PowerPoint Templates
We wanted to start the list with a bit of an obvious but important tip: Use third-party PowerPoint templates!
Microsoft PowerPoint comes with a set of default templates pre-packaged with the software. These free templates are pretty good but they have been used by everyone, over and over again, to the point that anyone could immediately recognize which template you’re using by looking at the slide design.
The worst part is that it will allow your audience to tell how little effort you’ve put into designing the presentation.
What most users don’t realize is that you can download templates from third-party marketplaces and use them to create unique presentations. These templates are made by professional designers and they will immediately make your slideshows look ten times better.
You can check out our best PowerPoint template collection for some inspiration.
Use ChatGPT to Write the Slides
ChatGPT is an AI tool that revolutionized the way we work and made our everyday tasks so much easier and simpler. Now, you can use it to write the slides of your presentations. Here’s how it works:
First, go to the ChatGPT website and start a new chat. Create an account if you don’t have one already. It’s free!
Now ask ChatGPT to write the slides of your presentation. Give it as many details as you can. Specify the topic, how many slides your presentation has, ask it to include quotes and statistics, break down information into bullet points, etc.
Once it generates the copy, you can simply copy and paste the text directly into your slideshow. Make any adjustments as necessary.
You can take this a step further and use AI art generators to create unique illustrations, icons, and infographics for your presentation. Midjourney and DALL-E are some of the top tools you can use for this task. Just be mindful of their copyright policies if you plan on using the images for commercial projects.
This tip is not exclusive to PowerPoint. But if designing presentations is part of your job, it will make your life so much easier. Don’t be afraid of the AI tools, learn to take advantage of them.
Experiment With Color Schemes
Colors play a key role in every presentation. It helps set the mood and tone of your slideshow and has a huge impact on the success of your presentation.
As you know, there are psychological effects behind the colors you use. With the right colors, you can evoke emotions in your audience to make each slide in your presentation more impactful.
Experiment with different color schemes for your presentation designs. You can use a tool like Color Hunt to find beautiful color palettes for your slideshows. But always keep in mind to pick colors that are appropriate for your topic, audience, and your brand.
Contrast Is Key
Speaking of colors, you can also use them to create a strong contrast between the content and the background. For example, using a dark color for typography on a light background will highlight the text much more effectively. Or you can use colored shapes to bring attention to specific parts of a slide.
The same can be said about fonts. Using unique fonts will go a long way to help create contrast in your presentation. Check out our guide on choosing fonts for PowerPoint to learn more.
Take Advantage of Add-Ins
PowerPoint has a built-in store full of add-ons (or add-ins as it’s called in the software). And it’s one of the most underused features of PowerPoint.
This store is filled with amazing third-party tools that can supercharge your work and slideshows. There are hundreds of tools in this store you can install and use for free.
Explore the PowerPoint Add-Ins store and see what you can find. One of our favorites is the tool for adding QR codes to slides directly from the slide editor. We’ll explain it more in the next tip.
Add QR Codes In Slides
Using QR codes in PowerPoint presentations has two great benefits. One, it will make things much easier for you to share links, apps, and resources with your entire audience. Two, it will encourage the audience to engage and interact with your presentation.
Normally, you have to use online tools or apps to generate QR codes. But you can use a PowerPoint add-in to create QR codes directly from the slide editor.
Simply go to Insert > Get Add-ins and search for the Personalized QR Code Generator.
After installing the QR code tool, you can instantly generate QR codes and embed them into your slides to share links. The free version of this plugin will leave a small watermark in the QR code but it’s barely visible. Using QR codes is much cooler and more effective than sharing links as plain text.
Design Cool Image & Text Masks
Image masking is a popular effect used in graphic design for making photos and images appear more creative. With image masks, you can give unique shapes to images rather than boring and old square shapes. You can use it to make your slides look more interesting.
We found a simple YouTube tutorial that shows you how to design liquid image masks in PowerPoint.
You can also use text masks to create cool typography effects in PowerPoint. And yes, there’s a YouTube tutorial for that too. Try using these effects in your next presentation.
Instantly Remove Image Backgrounds
Have you been using Photoshop to remove the backgrounds of images? Well, now you don’t have to. Because PowerPoint has a tool that lets you get rid of image backgrounds with just a few clicks. Here’s how it works.
Select an image in your slideshow and go to the Picture Format tab then select the Remove Background option on the top-left side.
This tool will automatically make a selection of the background. If it clips into areas of the main object, use the Mark Areas tool to fix the selection. Then click the Keep All Changes button to finish.
Now you have a PNG-style JPG image without a background.
Design Posters & Flyers
PowerPoint can be used to create many cool things than just presentations. You can use it for simple graphic designs, such as posters and flyers.
You can use pre-made PowerPoint poster templates to easily make posters or flyers in vertical layout using the app. We also have a step-by-step guide on how to make posters in PowerPoint. Check them out to learn more.
This can be a huge money-saver when you have to design a quick poster for a project and don’t have access to software like Photoshop.
Export to Video & PDF
If you want to share your presentation with a wide audience, one of the best ways to do that is to convert your presentation into video format. That way, your audience will be able to watch your presentation even if they don’t have access to Microsoft PowerPoint software.
PowerPoint has a built-in function to help you with that process. Go to the File menu and select Export. From there you can choose the Create a Video option to convert your entire presentation into a video.
It’s perfect for creating video content for YouTube, online courses, and schools too. You can also export your presentation in PDF format or even turn it into a Word document.
In Conclusion
These are just a few of the cool PowerPoint tips and tricks we’ve found to be quite interesting. It’s surprising how much you can do with an app like PowerPoint. If you want to learn more cool PowerPoint tricks, be sure to check out our other guides.
Start with 7 tips for finding the perfect PowerPoint template. Also, read our 10 pro PPT tips guide. And our how to give a fun presentation guide has some useful tips too.