Indie chose wisely. Can you?

When picking fonts for presentations or corporate PowerPoint templates, you need to be careful which fonts you choose. You may hate Microsoft’s default fonts (e.g., Arial), but if you’re considering using another font you’ll want to make sure it’s a commonly installed font. Why? When people go to view your file on their computers and they don’t have the same font, PowerPoint will substitute another font which may not be the exact same size or style as your original font (12 pt in one font can be smaller or larger in another font). As a result, all of your copy and labels may end up being misaligned or text-wrap in places you didn’t anticipate. In other words, your nicely designed slides can turn into an unintelligible, sloppy-looking mess simply because the computer you’re presenting on doesn’t have the right font.

In most cases, a non-standard or custom corporate font isn’t going to cause problems internally because theoreticallyeveryone at your company should have the corporate font installed. However, I’ve still seen problems with custom corporate fonts when your IT team fails to install these fonts on all new computers or re-imaged computers. When it comes to setting up a new computer or re-imaging an existing computer (i.e., restoring a computer to its default state typically after a bad crash or virus), fonts aren’t going to be the highest priority for IT. If you have both PCs and Macs at your workplace, it’s also common to run into font compatibility problems because PCs and Macs don’t share all the same fonts (e.g., PCs don’t have the Helvetica font by default).

PCs don’t have Helvetica by default like Macs. No, Arial and Helvetica are not the same.

While it can be an occasional problem for internal computers, it can be a serious problem when presenting on external computers or sharing PowerPoint files outside of your company. In my current role as an analytics evangelist, I’m not always presenting from my own computer. My company, Adobe, has its own set of corporate fonts, which is both good and bad. The corporate fonts are unique, clean, and professional. However, they can trip up employees when they present on external computers or share slides with another company.

In general, I’ve avoided using custom fonts because of the problems they create. I do use them from time to time, but I’ve learned to be very careful with them. At one industry event, I inserted a couple of slides from another co-worker into my slide deck. After joking about being the PowerPoint Ninja at the beginning of my presentation, I noticed to my horror that the inserted slides used the corporate font. I noticed it because all of the labels on one slide were a jumble of text (see below). Not only was I embarrassed, but the slide failed to communicate effectively to my audience. This experience highlights the importance of always checking what your slides look like on a different machine before presenting–something I failed to do and paid the price.

On the left, I’ve zoomed into part of the slide which is using the right custom font. On the right, you see what PowerPoint substituted when the computer didn’t have the same font. The substituted font messed up the text in several spots. Don’t make the same mistake!

If you present or share slides externally, here are some options for avoiding font problems:

1. Use your own computer: If you’ve used several custom fonts, you can insist on presenting from your own machine. In some cases, this may not be an option at a conference where the audio/visual team wants to standardize the hardware being used or at an organization that doesn’t allow outside computers (security precautions).
2. Provide custom fonts: If you need to present your slides on an external computer, you can provide the custom fonts along with your presentation. You then need to hope the audio/visual team for the event installs them, which can be a low priority for a very busy team. I’ve found you need to follow up prior to presenting to make sure the fonts are installed because it is a minor step that is frequently overlooked. Consider zipping the fonts and PPTX file together so it’s more obvious that they’re required. If you just want to share your presentation with people at another organization, you typically don’t burden them with installing a font on their computers (even though it’s easy). In addition, they may not be able to install fonts due to IT security restrictions.
3. 

   It’s simple to convert any custom text into an image, which removes font compatibility issues. You should only notice a small difference between the text and image.

   Convert custom font to image: If you’re only using a custom font in a few minor places, you can convert the text into an image. Just copy the text box, and then paste it as a picture. You remove the need to have the font installed and still produce the desired effect with the custom font.

4. Embed custom fonts: In PowerPoint, you have the option of embedding custom fonts. One drawback to this approach is that it can significantly inflate the size of the PowerPoint file. Sharing large files can be unwieldy and you may need to use Dropbox or some other file sharing tool. Most people don’t know that they can embed custom fonts or may view it as a hassle and skip the extra step in the process, risking how their presentations are seen by others.
5. PDF your slides: If you’re just sharing your slides, you can PDF your slides which will retain whatever fonts were used in the slides. However, if you PDF your presentation it will lose all its animations, which may not be a viable option.
6. Avoid custom fonts: If you’re presenting externally on a different computer or know you’ll be sharing the PPTX file externally, you might decide to avoid using any custom or corporate fonts. While this may freak out the brand nazis at your organization, the most important thing is to communicate your message effectively. Brand considerations (especially at the font level) should be secondary to the message in my mind.

We all get tired of Microsoft’s default fonts–Times New Roman, Arial, etc.–but you need to be careful when choosing fonts, especially if they are included in a corporate PowerPoint template. You can’t assume because a font is available on your computer that other people have the same font. Other software products besides Microsoft products also install fonts on your machine. For example, Myriad Pro is a non-Microsoft font that is installed if you use certain Adobe products (Adobe Reader 7 & 8). While a font might be common among your team or department (because you use the same applications), it might not be shared across your company or outside of your company.

Unfortunately, if you want to be safe with fonts, you need to take a less exciting, lowest-common-denominator approach, which means limiting yourself to just widely-available Microsoft Office fonts. While I’m sick of Times New Roman and Arial, I’ve enjoyed using Calibri, which was introduced with Windows Vista and Office 2007. Before you decide on what fonts to include in your corporate presentation template, consider reviewing the following Microsoft Office font lists:

Office 2003 Pro fonts

Office 2007 Pro fonts

Office 2010 fonts

Choose your fonts wisely

If you have a font that isn’t on one of these lists, then you have a custom/non-standard font. Depending on your presentation and audience, custom fonts may not be an issue. If you’re only going to present on your machine and aren’t going to share the slides, it doesn’t matter what font you use. However, it’s important to think ahead so you can avoid unnecessary font-related surprises that can interfere with how effectively your content communicates. Choose wisely and good luck!

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Have you ever sat through a PowerPoint presentation and the presenter had to apologize to the audience for not being able to read text on the slide? That’s what I experienced on my business trip. Often it is due to the font size being too small, but just as frequently it can be caused by sloppy color contrast. While the most common application of contrast in PowerPoint is color, contrast can be created by having different object shapes, object sizes, font types, font sizes, alignment, etc. The principle of contrast is dependent upon the surrounding elements being noticeably different from the focal point. Contrast fails when the difference is too subtle or weak.

There are lots of different ways of showing contrast besides color.

For the purposes of this blog post, I’m going to focus on color contrast, which involves the difference in lightness or darkness between a foreground and background color. The strongest contrast is black on white or white on black. Because most PowerPoint presentations aren’t just black-and-white, you need to be mindful of the contrast principle in your design. With color contrast you also need to be careful about the hues you’re using on your PowerPoint slides. If you look at a color wheel, colors on opposite sides of the wheel will have the most contrast; whereas, analogous hues that are next to each other have weaker contrast (e.g., red and orange, violet and blue). However, you also need to be careful with color blindness issues. Even though there is good contrast between red and green, not everyone in your audience can necessarily perceive the color difference. For a good, brief overview of effective color contrast, I recommend this Lighthouse.org article on the three perceptual attributes of color – hue, lightness, and saturation.

The Projector Curve Ball

Designers need to carefully consider color contrast in their design work. Presentation designers have an additional curve ball thrown at them – projectors and LCD displays can significantly lighten or even alter the colors of slides when they’re projected. All the time spent on getting just the right color combinations on your laptop can be completely destroyed by an old, overused projector that hasn’t seen a new light bulb in a couple of years. It can also be ruined by too much light in the meeting room or particularly near the projection screen. As a general rule of thumb for presentations (with white backgrounds), you should design your PowerPoint slides as though all of the colors will be seen 20-30% lighter than what you’re seeing on your laptop screen.

I’d like to share three common scenarios where poor color contrast can ruin PowerPoint slides. I’ll start by sharing the two contrast-related mistakes I witnessed on my recent business trip along with a third one I’ve seen on several occasions.

Gradient steps or blends

When you have a process or flow diagram, it’s common to color the objects with different gradients – going from light to dark. Problems occur on the side with the lighter gradients if you’re using a light text color consistently across all of the objects. The light font will have good contrast against the darker gradients, but against the light gradient it can become ineligible, especially when you throw the projector brightness wildcard into the mix.

As you can see below, the light gradient with light text was too difficult to read even with the text shading. Unfortunately, the presenter had to pause and explain to the audience what the label was on the first object when he realized it couldn’t be read. If you’re using gradients, you either want to ensure you start darker on the light side or have darker text on the lighter objects (switching to lighter text on the darker objects).

This is the picture I took with my iPhone when I spotted this contrast issue. On the far left, the text was impossible to read because the white text didn’t contrast with the light gray object.

On a laptop screen, the text on the left is still legible, but once it is projected then the white text doesn’t stand out enough to be read against the light gray object. Either the background color on the object needs to be darker or the text needs to be darker — more contrast is required!

Green text

When using a PowerPoint template with a white background, you should avoid using certain colors for text. I’ve found that green or light green are not handled very well by a lot of projectors. There’s probably some technical reason for this, but I’ve learned over the years that this particular color is problematic. In the presentation below, the title of the slides and key metrics were in a lime green color. While it looked okay on a laptop screen, it became almost invisible when projected onto a screen. As a result, the presenter had to explain the purpose of each slide to the audience and verbally highlight key metrics that couldn’t be seen.

Be careful about the text colors you choose, especially for key text such as slide titles or data points. I would recommend never using green text due to how unreliable it can be with some projectors. If you’re using a template with a white background, use only dark colors for text.

Here’s another snapshot I took with my iPhone. This meeting was actually before the previous one, and the disruption to the presentation was more dramatic.

The lime green was visible on a laptop screen, but disappeared when projected. Not good if it’s used for the slide title or a key metric.

Colors on a dark background

My last real-world example comes from the Sunday school teacher at my church who uses PowerPoint presentations for her gospel lessons. She has a tendency to use red or blue text on a black background, which causes the text to be washed out and almost indistinguishable from the dark background. If you’re using a template with a dark background, don’t use standard colors such as blue, green, or red because most projectors struggle to project those colors with the same vibrancy as what you see in your laptop screen. If you’re using a dark background, always try to use light colors that will stand out when projected. Don’t be tricked by your laptop or desktop screen that the colors will display the same way when they’re projected.

Okay, no iPhone snapshot for this one so I’ve tried to reproduce what happened. While the colored text looks vibrant on your laptop (left), it can appear washed out when projected (right).

Don’t make your presentations hard to read; use appropriate levels of contrast for your text. There’s nothing wrong with black text on a light background or white text on a dark background. I know it might be a little boring but better boring than baffling (it seemed to work for Steve Jobs). If you’d like to get creative with your text try a different font or more expressive language—but don’t use font colors that won’t provide enough contrast.

You can also run into color contrast problems with other parts of your presentation besides text. For example, I was saddled with a corporate template (white background) which used a light faded orange color for its bullets. What might have looked stylish on the designer’s laptop, failed in execution. Simply because a brand designer failed to consider how the light-colored bullets would look on most projectors, hundreds of employees were communicating less effectively with their bullets (except for a rogue PowerPoint ninja who edited his version of the corporate template to include bold orange bullets). Be kind to your audiences and remember the PowerPoint design principle of contrast!

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Remove the background from one picture so it can be layered on top of another. (c) Thinkstock

When you use images in your presentations, you might run into scenarios where you want to combine two images. In order to achieve the desired effect you may need to remove the background of one image so that it can sit in front of another image. In a past blog post, I explained how to do this in PowerPoint 2007. You can still use that approach in PowerPoint 2010 (Select image > Format > Color > Set Transparent Color). However, Microsoft offers you a new and useful option in PowerPoint 2010 to actually edit and remove the background of an image.

When I want a quick (and sometimes dirty) way of removing an image’s background, I use this new feature frequently. Sometimes I can’t achieve the desired effect and need to use Photoshop, but I’ve found it to be very handy in many situations. I’m going to step you through the process and share some tips that can help you when using this tool.

Step 1: Select image and format

The first step is to select the image you want to remove the background from by left-clicking on it. Once the image is selected, you’ll go to the Format tab and then go over to the far left side to the Remove Background button.

Once the image is selected, you’ll be able to find the Remove Background button under the Format tab.

Click the button and then the image will show sections of the image with a partially transparent pink/purple color. This color highlights the selected areas of the image that will be removed (i.e., transparent) when you’re done making your adjustments with the tool.

The initial selection will probably be garbled and will need to be cleaned up.

Step 2: Adjust frame

For some reason, PowerPoint has a frame that sits inside the image. I’m surprised the default isn’t the outer edge of the image, but by default it sits inside the actual image. The frame can be problematic because it can cause you to inadvertently crop a part of the image. The first thing you need to do is adjust the frame so that the area that you want to keep falls within this frame. In this example, I would have cut off the corners of the road map I’m editing so I adjust the frame outwards.

Position the frame around what you want to keep so the object isn’t cropped.

Step 3: Mark areas to keep

Now you’re ready to start editing which parts of the image you want to keep. If you look at the image above, you’ll see that PowerPoint auto-detected what it thought I wanted but didn’t get it completely right. Sometimes you’ll get lucky with the auto-detection and other times it will completely miss the mark (I’ve had it come up all pink).

In this case, I’ve got some work to do as the road map is missing some pieces and including pieces I don’t want. Click on the Mark Areas to Keep button which will enable you to draw lines within the part of the image you want to keep. You’ll notice the pink/purple space change as you draw lines. You may need to draw several lines to get close to what you want. If you want to remove a line, you click on the Delete button to select and remove a line you’ve added. Unfortunately, I find the pink/purple isn’t as transparent as I’d like, which can make it difficult to see the outline of the object. You may want to zoom in closer to make sure you get everything you need.

Note: You can draw a “keep” line outside of the frame, and PowerPoint will adjust the frame to include what you highlighted.

You may need to use several lines to include what you want.

Step 4: Mark areas to remove

Once you’ve included what you want, there may be parts of the image you don’t want to include that aren’t in the pink/purple area. If you click on the Mark Areas to Remove button, you can remove the parts that you don’t want to keep. In this example, I don’t want to include the shadow that came with the road map (Tip: you can create your own shadow in PowerPoint which will be transparent with the image below).

Remove the parts of the image you don’t want to keep.

Step 5: Touch up the edges

Often after you’ve defined the edges of the object, they might be a little ragged or they might have left out or included something that you didn’t want. You might need to refine and touch up the edges. I’ve found sometimes it can be helpful to have “keep” and “remove” lines on either side of the edge of the object. This way the line is more refined and straight. Unfortunately, the tool doesn’t give you the ability to curve a “keep” or “remove” line. That would be really helpful (hint, hint Microsoft). As a workaround for curved objects, you can stitch several small lines to the contour of the object.

On the left I added one “remove” line and the tool cut off a piece of the corner of the map and the edge is ragged. By placing “keep” and “remove” lines side-by-side on the edge of the object I can get a straighter edge.

You’re done!

When you have got all of the edges you want, you can click the Keep Changes button or just click outside of the image to apply the effects to the image. If you want to edit the image further, you can click on the Remove Background button and it will bring up all of your current edits.

Here’s my digital road map, which is a combination of two images from Thinkstock.

As you use this technique, here are some other tips for you to consider:

• It’s easier to remove the background when you have the object on a white background or at least a solid background. It is more difficult to pull an image out of a complex background. Typically, the edges end up being more ragged in these cases.
• Use images where the object(s) have clear, solid edges. Sometimes the object in the image might be blurry, and it’s going to be more difficult to define the edges.
• Remember you can simplify the object by leaving out unnecessary parts. Only you will know what you left out.
• Remove shadows when defining the object’s edge. You can add your own shadow in PowerPoint, using its shadow effects.
• Recognize when the Remove Background tool isn’t going to achieve the effect you’re looking for. I’ve had to revert to Photoshop when the edges were too ragged in PowerPoint.

As an added bonus, I’ve recorded my first tutorial video on this topic. Good luck with using this feature in your PowerPoint presentations!

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Ooops. I just closed the PPTX file I was working on that I hadn’t saved in a few hours. (c) iStockphoto / Thinkstock

You’ve been working tirelessly on a presentation. The creativity is flowing, you’re in a groove, and you’re masterfully pulling together what will be an epic PowerPoint presentation. For whatever reason as you juggle various files on your desktop, a part of your brain cramps up and you accidentally close (without saving) your presentation. This may never have happened to you, but it has happened to me a few times, including last Friday.

I was building a product demo presentation in PowerPoint, and I was incorporating multiple screenshot images from Photoshop. With multiple PowerPoint files and applications open on my desktop, I stared briefly at a window that I thought was an image I had already captured and cropped in Photoshop. I closed the “Photoshop” file, and then looked for my main PowerPoint file. To my disappointment, I realized I had just closed my PowerPoint presentation. Then my mind raced back to when I had last saved the file – surely I hadn’t been that stupid and had saved it recently. Right? Right?!!

To my horror, I discovered I hadn’t been diligently saving my presentation, and the last saved version was from a few hours ago. I had been “in the zone” previously, and now it was going to cost me dearly.

Don’t hit the panic button if you’re using PowerPoint 2010 (c) iStockphoto / Thinkstock

Panic started setting in because I really didn’t have time to redo what I had already done. Nothing feels as unproductive (and stupid) as reproducing something I had already created once before, especially when it would take me 2-3 hours I didn’t have. When your computer crashes or is unexpectedly interrupted, Microsoft displays recovered files when you restart PowerPoint. However, in this case the software wouldn’t know that user-error had caused me to lose the most recent version of my PowerPoint file. I then thought if PowerPoint’s AutoRecover feature is saving a temporary file of my presentations for when something unexpected happens, a more recent version of my presentation must be sitting somewhere on my computer. If I could just find it, a personal crisis would be averted.

Steps to recover a previously saved file in PowerPoint 2010

Step 1: The first thing you need to confirm is that you have AutoRecover enabled. If PowerPoint’s AutoRecover feature has been disabled, you’re royally screwed (sorry). Go to File > Options and a pop-up Options menu window will appear. Then go to the Save tab. Within the Save tab under the Save Presentations section at the top of the window, you’ll see some different AutoRecover options. Hopefully, you have the two options below enabled (they should be by default in PowerPoint 2010).

By default you should have these two options checked.

Step 2: In this same window, you’ll see that PowerPoint tells you where it saves the AutoRecover files on your computer.

Now you know where to find a more recently saved version of your PPT file

To find these files, I went to my local disk (C: drive) and then followed the folder structure listed below. I can’t recall if some of these folders are hidden so here’s a link to how to unhide folders in Windows 7 and Windows XP. Look for a folder that contains the name of your PowerPoint file and open that folder to find the most recently saved version of your presentation.

This folder looks like the presentation I was working on.

There’s the temporary file I need, saved 13 minutes prior to my ill-timed brain fart.

Steps to recover a new file in PowerPoint 2010

If you’re working on a new PowerPoint file that you never saved before such as a presentation from an email attachment, there’s a slightly different and easier approach for recovering those files. In PowerPoint 2010, just go to File > Recent and at the very bottom right you’ll see a link for “Recover Unsaved Presentations”, which will take you to a folder with PowerPoint files that were never saved when the files were closed.

If you didn’t know it was there, you’d probably never see the link.

Note: These files are temporary and will be deleted from your computer if you don’t retrieve them promptly. I couldn’t find any information on how long you have to grab the files, but assume you have 2-3 days max.

Happy Endings

Hooray! I don’t have to spend even more time in PowerPoint! (c) iStockphoto / Thinkstock

The first method worked for me, and I was able to recover all of the work I had lost. I wanted to share this tip in the hope that it helps other people who find themselves in the same situation as me (or may find themselves in the same situation in the future). There is hope! This new feature only applies to PowerPoint 2010 so while my heart goes out to you if you have a previous version, I don’t have any tips for the same situation with PowerPoint 2007 or 2003. It appears the temporary files for those versions were limited to only recovery situations where your system crashed unexpectedly and not user error situations. It’s a good thing I only recently started making user errors in PowerPoint 2010 and never in the other versions…

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Rise up against bad PowerPoint templates! (c)Thinkstock

If you work at a company with more than 100 people, you probably have an official corporate PowerPoint template. If you work in a company with more than 1,000 people, you probably don’t know the designer who created your presentation template. There’s a good chance that the graphic designer who created your PowerPoint template doesn’t use PowerPoint on a regular basis — in fact, they probably detest PowerPoint and never touch the presentation software other than to make sure the template looks okay every time the corporate branding is updated.

Does anyone see a problem here? It’s like a Mormon making your coffee or a vegan preparing your hamburger. Too many companies have templates that may look professional aesthetically but are basically impractical for daily use or have bad practices embedded right in them. I’m sure the designers put a lot of thought into the look-and-feel of the PowerPoint templates, but I don’t believe they ever considered doing any usability testing on their actual template designs. That’s too bad because all of their company’s PowerPoint users end up suffering. It forces people like me — who use PowerPoint on a daily and weekly basis — to modify the corporate templates to make them more practical and effective at communicating.

Most of the changes I make to the presentation templates are usually subtle in visual terms, but can save major headaches during the creation and presentation phases. However, most PowerPoint users won’t know how to fix their corporate templates, aren’t going to take matters into their own hands, and are essentially stuck with an impractical or ineffective presentation template.

10 mistakes to avoid in corporate PowerPoint templates

Working at different companies, I’ve run into various issues with PowerPoint templates over the years. I thought I’d share ten common template problems in hopes that template designers will avoid repeating these mistakes or empowering PowerPoint users to have them fixed. Most of these considerations are minor in nature but can have a big impact on the template’s usability and the effectiveness of the final presentations.

1. Font size is too small. I recently ran into a corporate template that has its slide title set to 24 pt. I guess the template designer wanted to make sure that the titles never went to two lines. However, by default the slide titles are now barely noticeable and almost confusing because the hierarchical importance of the slide title is lost (it’s almost the same size as the 20 pt. body text). I’ve modified the slide title to be at least 44 pt. so it commands more attention. The smaller the font size in the body or title text, the more you’re encouraging presenters to include more text which is generally not a best practice.
2. Weak contrast. On the same presentation template, there are a couple of problems with contrast. The slide title is set against a black background, however, the designer didn’t use white text but instead a shade of gray. When you combine the smaller text and weak contrast, the titles are essentially invisible and worthless. In addition, the designer chose a faded orange color for the bullets, which looks fine on your laptop but can disappear depending on the projector. I’ve changed the title text to white and the bullet color to a bolder orange that won’t be washed out by a bright projector.
3. Custom fonts. I’ve blogged about how you can add a custom font to your presentation. I like using non-standard fonts in certain situations; however, I’m against using them as default fonts in corporate PowerPoint templates. The custom fonts will work great internally as long as everyone has the fonts installed, but as soon as you present your slides on an external computer or send to someone outside of your organization without embedding the fonts, you’re hosed. When you present your slides on a computer that doesn’t have the same font, PowerPoint will insert another standard font (e.g., Arial) in its place which can lead to all kinds of layout problems, leaving your presentation looking more like a crossword puzzle. For those individuals who present outside of the organization (salespeople, consultants, executives, etc.) on non-company computers, having custom fonts in the presentation template is a bad idea. I’ve removed the custom font in my version of the corporate template and replaced it with the Calibri font, which is standard across most computers running MS Office and a little more interesting than Arial or Times New Roman (ok, only slightly). This approach is not as sexy, but it avoids unexpected text issues when presenting on external computers.
4. Large file size. If the template designers are sloppy, they’ll include a hi-res image for a background and inflate the baseline file size of all your presentations (much to the annoyance of your IT department). If your empty presentation template is over 1 MB, you’ve got this problem. You’ll want to have the designer save the background image at a lower resolution to reduce the file size of your presentation files.
5. Off-center bullets. Designers will often reduce the size of the bullet character as a percent of the text (e.g., 70%) when they want a smaller bullet. They don’t realize that changing the size of the bullet mark will create a bullet that is no longer centered on the line. The better approach is to find a smaller version of the same object (circle, square, dash, etc.) in one of the standard fonts (wingdings, webdings, normal text, etc.).
6. Default color theme. Each PowerPoint template should have a color theme that matches the corporate brand colors. If you just have the default PowerPoint colors in the template, you’ve missed an opportunity to help presenters choose colors from a palette that you control and influence. It’s a missed opportunity if you don’t, and you’ll see some interesting colors used across the company. You can create a custom theme for colors under the Design > Colors tab.
7. Mismatched shape formatting. Often so much emphasis will be placed on the slide background, layout, color themes, etc. that designers forget to create a standard format for shapes or objects that matches the overall presentation template (e.g., fill color, outline color, text font, etc.). It’s simple to create a default style by creating the desired formatting then right-clicking on the shape and selecting “Set as Default Shape” before saving the template file.
8. No blank slide. With the increased use of images in PowerPoint presentations, many presenters will appreciate a layout option for a simple blank slide. Template designers often neglect to include this option, but it should be a standard option in any good PowerPoint template.
9. No light/dark background options. Sometimes you might need a light background presentation for an internal meeting or you might need a dark background for a presentation at an industry conference. Good presentation templates should have both light and dark versions available for the presenter to choose from.
10. Uses standard footers. In PowerPoint 2007 and 2010, Microsoft mistakenly (in my opinion) made the footers editable when you’re designing your slides. This can be a major pain in the butt when you accidentally select a page number footer when you’re re-positioning different objects on a slide. I prefer to have any footer content immovable and embedded in the actual slide master. You can do this by avoiding the footer feature in the Master Slide and just use text boxes instead for page numbers, disclaimers, etc.

I’ve provided ten areas where PowerPoint templates can be improved. What other faux pas have you seen in PowerPoint template design? What have you seen in good presentation templates that I might have missed? Let’s put an end to the tyranny of bad PowerPoint templates that plague corporations today!

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While my first published book through Adobe Press/Peachpit focuses on web analytics, I do make the point that analysts and marketers need to be able to effectively communicate their optimization recommendations in order for their organizations to act on them. In fact, a significant part of the book’s sixth chapter focuses on this topic (you can see where my presentation and web analytics skills intersected). I feel you can have a sharp analytical mind and even a PhD in Statistics, but if you can’t communicate your insights effectively you’re not going to drive any action. No action, no value.

After writing my first book, I now have a new appreciation for authors and all the work that goes into publishing a book. After devoting a significant chunk of my 2011 to this project, I’m glad it’s done and excited that my life can return to being more normal.

Adding a new Twitter account: @AnalyticsHero

When I originally started blogging and opened my first Twitter account (@pptninja), I primarily focused on announcing new posts for this blog. Then I started blogging for my day job on web analytics topics  at Omniture/Adobe, and I decided to keep the same Twitter account. This approach created a small problem because I now had two sets of followers: people who like my PowerPoint presentation tips and people who work in the web analytics industry. While most web analytics professionals might be interested in my PowerPoint tips, any tweets on analytics wouldn’t necessarily appeal to my pure presentation followers.

Anyway, launching my new book has forced my hand to introduce a second Twitter handle @analyticshero that coincides with the book. Therefore, if you originally followed my @pptninja Twitter account for web analytics-related tweets, please switch over to the new @analyticshero handle. If you’re interested in PowerPoint goodness, stay with the current @pptninja handle (feel free to follow both). Now that all of my spare time isn’t consumed with writing a book, I hope to post more PowerPoint Ninja posts this year than last year.

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Ready for any PowerPoint emergency. (c) Thinkstock

Recently, I was a part of a university event where I needed to present along with a senior executive from my company and several student teams. Rather than switching out the laptops for each different presentation, I decided to load all of the presentations on to my machine beforehand. I hate it when you run into setup problems when one group’s laptop doesn’t work properly with the projector or some other issue — and it throws off the whole schedule. What I didn’t anticipate was that the presentation remote would only work with the desktop computer in the auditorium.

No problem. I had all of the presentations also loaded on to a USB flash drive so I could transfer the files on to the desktop. However, in its infinite wisdom, the university’s IT group blocked any files from being installed on the desktop including a font file that one of the teams needed. After explaining the situation to an IT “support” person, he indicated nothing could be done before our event started. Aaagggh. Luckily, someone had brought their own presentation remote so we could just run the presentations from my laptop.

Often it’s easier said than done “to be prepared”, but we often focus so much on the actual presentation itself and forget the other small technical details that can completely ruin our beautiful slides and well-rehearsed thoughts. In reflecting on this recent situation, I had several takeaways for presenters who want to be more prepared for PowerPoint emergencies:

1. Be early

Nothing defuses potential problems like having ample time to adjust or adapt. If I wasn’t early for the aforementioned event, I would have been scrambling and very stressed out right before I was set to present. Not ideal. It’s always a best practice to arrive early for important presentations to familiarize yourself with your environment, technology, audience, etc. Nothing says “I don’t care about my audience” like unnecessary delays or complications due to arriving last-minute and expecting everything to “just work” — and it doesn’t.

2. Have a back-up plan

As you’re building your presentation, anticipate problems before they happen and have a contingency plan in place. Common problem areas include needing internet access to show a website or displaying a live product demo. What will you do if you can’t access a website or the demo crashes? I often have screenshots of the website or product in my presentation if something goes wrong. While screenshots might not be as good as the real thing, they’re better than nothing. Panic from not having a back-up plan can throw off what would have been a great presentation.

3. Invest in a 16 Gig (or higher) USB flash drive

You never know when you’ll need a way to quickly transfer a file from one computer to another prior to a presentation. We frequently assume that we’ll have an internet connection available so we can just email files back and forth, but experience has shown that’s not always the case as Murphy’s Law will often kick in. What if the wifi reception in the room is spotty or the files are too big to email? Having a large-capacity USB drive overcomes these types of issues, and the USB drives are now fairly inexpensive. I picked up a new Kingston 16 GB flash drive from Amazon for less than $20.

4. Buy your own presentation remote

After this recent experience, I finally broke down and bought my own remote — probably something I should have done ages ago (I know, I know). Now I have one less thing to worry about from a technology and usability perspective. I love my new Logitech Professional Presenter R800 (about $60). It works flawlessly, and I don’t have to worry about figuring out an unfamiliar remote. I also hate being tethered to a computer, and the remote gives me the freedom I need to engage and interact with my audience (as well as a handy laser pointer built into the remote).

5. Apple Users: Get an extra VGA cable adapter

If you use a MacBook Pro, you’ll want to have a spare Apple Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter. When I’ve used an Apple MacBook, I needed to bring my VGA cable adapter for internal meetings; however, I often forgot to pack it for external meetings. I found it was better just to have one permanently in my laptop bag for external presentations in addition to the one I used in the office.

How else do you prepare for potential PowerPoint emergencies? Pack a spare CAT5 cable? An extension cord? I’m sure there are other tips and tools that may have helped you to be more prepared. Please share them!

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I love quotes. (c)Thinkstock

When you’re trying to add more emphasis or credibility to a key point in your presentation, a quote can come in handy. I’m a fan of a good, well-placed quote. I’ve even assembled a humble collection of PowerPoint-related quotes. However, just like inappropriate or tired images can detract from your content, so can poorly-chosen or over-used quotes. I thought I’d share some thoughts and tips on using quotes in PowerPoint presentations.

Two types of quotes

I’ve found that good quotes fall into two main categories:

1. Powerful quote because of who uttered it: Sometimes who stated the quote is just as important as what was said. If you have a quote by someone highly respected or highly relevant to your topic (e.g., your competitor’s CEO), the quote gains credibility and potency simply by who stated it. The opposite effect can also happen. For example, I found a great quote by Richard Nixon – but I decided against using it because it came from the disgraced former US president.
2. Powerful quote despite who uttered it: In some cases, the quote is so insightful or appropriate that it doesn’t really matter who said it. Generally, it’s hard to find quotes that don’t come from some reasonably respected source, but the quoted individual might be fairly obscure and not familiar to your audience. I like to do a Wikipedia search on the individual to find out more about their background and make sure that nothing in their past would conflict with the point I’m trying to make. In a few instances, I found a great quote by an unfamiliar person but when I researched the author I found they had a checkered past, which soured me on using their quotes.

Which type of quotes do you tend to use? Do you tend to favor one type over another? At the end of the day it comes down to the appropriateness or relevance of the quote to your content. If it’s credited to someone well-respected or well-known, then you don’t have to worry about explaining who the author is. In the case of the second option, you might need to indicate who they are (e.g., first female boxer, 18th-century English poet. etc.).

Finding good quotes

Two of the best sites for finding good quotes are Brainyquote.com and Thinkexist.com. Both have extensive selections of quotes. One of the challenges of finding good quotes is getting the right keyword. Without the right keyword, you might not identify the quote you need. Experiment with different synonyms as well as plural forms. For example, simply trying “tools” instead of “tool” opened up better quotes during a recent quote search I was performing.

In addition, some of the best sources of inspirational quotes are collections of quotes for particular topics (e.g., motivation, success, design, adversity, etc.). The advantage of these collections is that they don’t necessarily contain a specific keyword. Sometimes you can be limited by the terms you search for. I’ve found these quote collections by searching for the topic by including “quotes and sayings” in your search.  A good example of one of these sites is quotegarden.com, which has quotes by a variety of topics. If you’re a fan of using quotes, I also recommend keeping track of our favorite quotes as you find them by keeping them in a single document so you can easily find them when you need them.

Verify your quotes

Check out Ralph Keyes book!

When you choose a quote, you’ll want to be sure to get the right source. Sometimes a popular quote will be attributed to several different people. You might want to double-check who the most likely source was using Wikiquote or Ralph Keyes’ Quote Verifier book. I would also recommend checking on quotes that are deemed to be “anonymous” or “author unknown”. I found a great quote (“Words divide us, action unites us”) that was supposedly from an unknown author until I discovered it was actually the slogan of a South American terrorist group (Uruguay’s Tupamaros). Yikes. Finally, you may want to check the context of the quote (if it’s even possible to ascertain). You may interpret the quote differently than the way the author intended. Sometimes it won’t matter if you’re using the quote out of context, but in other situations the context may be critical.

Short and sweet

For presentations, I’d recommend using short quotes that are quick reads for your audience – say no more than a couple of lines (less than 15 words). Occasionally, I might use a longer quote but the payoff needs to be worth the increased text. Some quoted people have the talent to express things more succinctly (Albert Einstein – succinct, Bill Gates – verbose). Make sure you’re not passing up a more succinct quote simply because you’ve settled on the first relevant quote you’ve found.

The top quote is really short. The second quote is pushing the length limits (one of my favorite quotes BTW).

Quotes and images

Typically, I’ve seen quotes presented in three methods. First, you may choose to feature the quote without any images (e.g., white text on a dark background). With a minimalist approach your audience isn’t distracted from focusing on the key point or message within the quote. You can emphasize key parts of the quote with italics, bold, color, size, font, etc. (check out this blog post for some inspiration). If the author of the quote is well-known and important to the quote, you may decide to include a picture of the individual who stated it (see below). Third, you may choose to emphasize the message (and not the author) by tying the quote to a descriptive image. There is no preferred way, and the best approach will depend on your audience, your message, and what you’re trying to achieve.

Here you see three versions of the same quote using different approaches (text, author image, and topic image).

Interestingly, the often-quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson once stated, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” Quotes aren’t substitutes for good content, but they can reinforce good content. You can quote me on that!

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Paste options . . . it was love at first sight. (c) Thinkstock

Whether you’re building a PowerPoint presentation from a few other slide decks or creating charts in Excel to add into your slides, you’re constantly copying and pasting things into PowerPoint. One of the most frustrating things is when you copy something – a slide, chart, or table – and paste it into PowerPoint 2007, all of the formatting changes. Grrrrr. More work that you didn’t need. One of my more popular blog posts is actually how to retain the formatting of a slide when it is inserted into another presentation in PowerPoint 2007.

You'll see other options depending on what you're pasting.

In PowerPoint 2010, Microsoft has combined the Paste Special dialog box with Office Paste Recovery feature so you have easier access to different paste options. In addition, if you’re not sure which paste option to use, you get a live preview so you can see what the end result will look like. It’s definitely a great user-centric enhancement to PowerPoint. In fact, it’s my favorite new feature in PowerPoint 2010 so far because I use it so much (Office 2010 for that matter because it works in Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.). It was love at first sight when I found it. (Is there such a thing as love at first paste? It sounds weird).

Pasting entire slides into PowerPoint 2010

When you’re pasting slides from another presentation, you’re going to have three options:

1. Use Destination Theme: The slide will be reformatted to work with the theme and template of the presentation you’re pasting into. Depending on how different the two templates are, you could notice significant differences when you use this paste option.
2. Keep Source Formatting: The slide will retain its original appearance, including the background template. Tip: If you want to keep the same color theme for objects within a slide but not retain the slide’s original template, copy the guts of the slide (instead of the entire slide) and then paste them into a new slide using this “keep source formatting” option. That way your template will be consistent across all of your slides, and you don’t have to spend extra time restoring everything to its original color scheme.
3. Picture: The slide is inserted as an image within the presentation. I think there are limited applications for this option.

In PowerPoint 2007, you had these same options but they were a little buried in the tool and hard to find. Note: When you’re pasting an entire slide, you don’t get the live preview option. The live preview feature only works when you’re pasting objects (e.g., charts, text, tables, etc.) into a slide rather than an entire slide.

Pasting charts or tables into PowerPoint 2010

When I paste this chart, the colors have changed (left). Whereas if I keep the source formatting (right), it will match what I originally created in Excel.

One of the most frustrating things is to create a nice Excel chart and paste it into PowerPoint, and watch all of your formatting and colors change right before your ideas. You then have to go in and reformat the stupid chart to the way you originally had it in Excel or paste it as an image.

Subtle differences between your PowerPoint template's theme colors and the default colors will cause problems.

You may be wondering why this happens. If you’re using a corporate template, the designer will have adjusted the theme colors to match corporate brand colors. However, all of the other Office applications (Word, Excel, etc.) will still have the default color theme. When you bring over a chart or table, the colors will align with the color theme of the presentation rather than staying with the default colors. The good news is with Office 2010 you no longer have this problem as you can easily retain the source formatting using the enhanced 2010 Paste Options. Hooray!

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Localize (localise) your slides! (c) Thinkstock

If you present in various locations around the world or even within your own country/province/state/county/city, you might want to consider localizing your slides for your various audiences. The path of least effort is to make one generic version of your slides and just present the same version to all audiences. With the generic slides, you pass up any advantage you would gain from making the slides more relevant and meaningful to a specific local audience. There are some real benefits to localization as local examples can really pique the interest and attention of your audience.

In order to capture some of these benefits, you might tailor your presentation for your most important audience. But you may decide to not put the same effort into subsequent presentations for other less important audiences. Alternatively, you might not realize ahead of time that you’d be presenting the same presentation in another location so you weren’t anticipating having to localize the slides for another audience. If your slides are tuned for one audience (e.g., USA), then they will be suboptimal for another (e.g., Canada). In your mind, you might argue that Americans and Canadians are similar enough that the Canadians will “get” the US-centric slides. No big deal, right?

Localize and Put Your Audience First

Well, you’re essentially putting yourself ahead of your audience. Rather than tailoring the slides to each audience – showing them that they are important to you – you send the opposite message that you don’t care enough about your audience to spend the time localizing your slides for them. It’s not a great message to send your audience. You’re also making your audience work harder to understand your message. They have to see past the content that is tailored to a different part of the world, country, city, etc., and hopefully the localization efforts for one audience don’t impede the ability of other audiences to comprehend the slides.

In Nancy Duarte’s most recent book, “Resonate”, she argues that you (the presenter) are not the hero/star of your presentation, your audience is. Localizing your slides to a particular audience can really help you to connect with that audience, and make them feel like they are the heroes of your presentation. From what I’ve seen as both a presenter and an audience member, audiences really appreciate the extra effort to connect with them through their culture, values, traditions, history, language, etc.

Congrats to ManU on its 19th league championship. Good luck in the Euro Cup!

Last week, I presented at a conference in London. One of my presentations was a repeat of one I delivered in the US. One of the core themes in my presentation was related to sports — specifically the Jordan-era Chicago Bulls dynasty. At first I thought it might be too difficult to tailor the slides I had created for the US to another geographic region. However, after recruiting some help from local co-workers in the United Kingdom, I was surprised at how well the concept translated over to another sport and sports team (football and Manchester United).

While it did require some extra time and effort, I believe it was worth the effort as I felt better connected to the local audience. In addition, I received positive feedback on the presentation from several audience members, and they enjoyed the localization of the slides even if they weren’t Manchester United fans. They indicated that too often American presenters fail to make any effort at localizing their slides for European audiences. That’s a missed opportunity in my mind and may even put a wall between you and your audience (especially when nationalism is involved).

You don’t have to present overseas to run into this problem. It can be as simple as presenting slides featuring one team (e.g., Michigan) to an audience based near a bitter rival (e.g., Ohio State). In this case, you not only look ignorant, but you can actually aggravate your audience. Don’t risk losing your audience! Localize (localise if you’re in the UK) your slides accordingly to have a greater impact with your audiences.

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