PowerPoint Tricks

Q. During a presentation (from my laptop), how do I keep the notes section visible to me but not the audience?

A PowerPoint photo album is an easy solution when creating a personal scrapbook or presenting images to a ­client for approval.

Use the Action button to create interactivity in presentations. You’ll find the Action button in the Links group on the Insert tab.

Are your PowerPoint presentations essentially a script, chock full of every single detail you intend to present? Or, at the other end of the spectrum, is your “deck” just a set of discussion prompts meant to guide the session, not inform it? Before creating a PowerPoint presentation you need to make two decisions:

Placing your discussion bullet points in an intentional sequence is the perfect application for animation. Entrance and exit animation are good choices here. Here are two ways to apply entrance and exit animation:

“Would the father of the iPhone, iPad and Mac have been as successful without his other great achievement – the ability to communicate and convey his vision and passion?”

You know a presentation is going badly when audience members start tapping on their BlackBerrys. These days, especially, it isn't easy to capture and hold a group's attention. Keep your presentation clear and effective with these PowerPoint tips:

Heed these four tips when preparing a PowerPoint presentation: 1.  Keep slides clutter-free. 2.  Use one image to sell each idea. 3.  Follow the same color schemes, fonts and logos as your company’s website or brochures. 4.  Give the audience a break to prolong attention spans.

Use these 5 keyboard shortcuts to build better presentations: Shift between overlapping objects on slides easily...Select the previous object on a slide...Create duplicate objects...Type less text...Master Slide Masters. Here's how:

Office managers are constantly pressed for time and looking for time-management answers. The sad fact is, most timesaving “secrets” are the best practices you’ve been hearing about since the advent of paper clips. The trick is, you have to try them out to discover whether they match your work style. And then you have to stick with them to gain the benefits. Here are 9 timesaving tech tips recommended by office managers: