PowerPoint

Question: looking at this slide, does it look okay?

How does the slide look when all of the objects on it are selected?

Let’s zoom in and focus on just one of the description text boxes. Argh!

What we are looking at are text boxes stacked on top of shapes. And when you format a slide like this, everyone remembers the best practice is for text to always be INSIDE the shape. Everyone, please repeat this at least 3 times, “I will place text inside PowerPoint shapes and not stack a text box on top of the shape.”

BAD
What are some of the reasons the TLC Creative presentation designers say it’s bad to stack a text box on top of another shape?

• Alignment is more difficult
• Animation is more difficult
• Keeping text inside the shape is more difficult
• Working in the Selection Pane is more difficult
• Moving content on the slide, or to other slides, is more difficult

To be direct, the “shortcut” of adding a text box on top of a shape ultimately creates more steps when formatting the slide in the long run – don’t be part of the Microsoft PowerPoint ongoing formatting problem!

As example, let’s demonstrate a few of the formatting issues encountered with the stacked text scenario. Even if the shape and text are grouped, when scaling the 2 grouped together the text doesn’t wrap and will bleed outside the shape.

BEST PRACTICE

The best practice is simple – stop stacking text on top of shapes. Click the shape and add the text directly as part of the shape.

• Formatting is easier and more time-efficient.
• When scaling the shape text now wraps inside the box without any issues.
• When the text alignment, top-middle-bottom is updated, it aligns to the shape automatically.
• When animating, there is not double the number of shapes to manage because the shape and text are 1 object.
  

FORMAT SHAPE, TEXT OPTIONS
Of course, saying what to do is easy, but only if you know how PowerPoint formats text inside a shape. Virtually every visual styling need can be achieved with text as part of a shape – virtually every animation effect can also be achieved, but that will be another post. For visual styling, we need to get into the Format Shape dialog and the Text Options section.

Vertical text alignment determines the position of text up and down within the defined space. The adjustment can either be determined as solo or text or text within a shape. There are a few places to access the vertical alignment settings, in this case we’re working through the ribbon: Ribbon Home tab > Paragraph group or Format Shape > Text Options > Text Box settings (example we are using).

PowerPoint has 3 text auto fit options:

• Do Not Autofit does what it says; the text in the shape is not automatically updated for any reason – it leaves the font size and formatting to you.
• Shrink text on overflow means if the shape is made smaller, the text automatically gets smaller. If the shape is made larger, the text automatically gets larger.
• Resize shape to fit text means you set the font size and the shape automatically resizes to fit the text (+ the interior margin settings).
• Overall, the TLC Creative design team opts for the Do Not Autofit option.

Every shape is like a mini-Word document with its own interior margins, and every shape added to a slide applies the default interior margins. However, the margins can be modified to be larger, smaller, or completely removed as shown above. Experiment with different values. Overall, the TLC Creative design team opts for 0-0-0-0.

TIP: The Brightslide PowerPoint add-in has a shortcut to apply zero margins to a shape in 2 clicks!

TIP: “Wrap text in shape” can be turned OFF on circles and triangles to allow text to fit easier. You will need to manually add line breaks so the text “fits” inside these shapes.

As example, here is a circle shape and triangle shape, both with the text as part of the shape. With “Wrap text in shape” turned off, things do not look correct.

By manually adding the line breaks (using shift + enter to maintain the paragraph line spacing), everything fits!

The theme of this post series is Behind-the-Scenes PowerPoint Issues. Stacking a text box on top of a shape may look good when presenting but is a true formatting issue when editing the slide. Let’s all work together to eliminate this bad formatting shortcut.

~Thanks to Christie on the TLC Creative design team for assisting with the content for this post.

How would you animate this slide if the request was “Make the left and center images disappear on click.”? 

BAD 

Here is one solution, the one I see a lot – but not the way I recommend accomplishing the request. The goal is to have the left and right images disappear. A common solution I see is adding a white box added that has a “Fade In” animation.  

This does accomplish the request, make images disappear. The disadvantage is what the presenter reviewing the slides in slide sort or a PDF sees. 

It is difficult to know the slide content, know content is missing from the printout, and prepare for the talk. Using the “cover it with a white box” option also makes formatting the slide much harder (move the white box, use Selection Pane to turn off the white box, send to back, etc. just to adjust the images you can’t see). 

BEST 

So, what is the “better” way to accomplish the request? Let me propose the best way would be to build this as 2 slides: 

In a printout, or slide review in slide sorter, it is 100% obvious what the audience will see. This helps enable the presenter to plan their talk. Using a Fade transition would accomplish the exact same visual as the white box that animates on. 

EFFICIENT 

To stay with 1 slide, a more efficient and better way to do this is to animate the left and center images*. Easy, select the left image, shift+click to select the center image and add a Fade Out animation. Note, this is the “EXIT” animation, Fade Out. This means that the images will be removed from the slide during the slideshow “on click”.  

This sets up exactly the same visual as the above options. But within the slide sorter review or printout, the deck looks like this: 

Yes, it is not completely clear that the left and center images will disappear when reviewing the slide deck. But the presenter does see what the content is on the slide vs. being surprised there is more to the slide than they saw in the printout! 

-Troy @ TLC 

Fonts play a crucial role in PowerPoint design:

• Visual Appeal: Fonts contribute significantly to the overall aesthetic of a presentation, enhancing visual appeal and making the slides more engaging.
• Readability: The right font choice ensures that text is easily readable, even from a distance, improving audience comprehension.
• Consistency: Using consistent fonts across all slides helps maintain a uniform look, adding to the professional feel of the presentation.
• Tone and Branding: Fonts can convey different tones and moods, aligning with the message and branding of the presentation. For instance, formal fonts are suitable for corporate presentations, while playful fonts may be ideal for creative projects.
• Emphasis and Hierarchy: Different font styles and sizes can be used to highlight key points, create a hierarchy of information, and guide the audience through the content logically.
• Accessibility: Appropriate font choices, such as those with clear distinctions between characters, enhance accessibility for all audience members, including those with visual impairments.

BEHIND-THE-SCENES MAYHEM

Embedding

• PowerPoint has the option to embed custom fonts (eg. non-microsoft fonts). My recommendation is, don’t.
  

Invisibly Adding Fonts

• One of the strengths of PowerPoint is the ability to pull in slides from anywhere to make developing a presentation easy. This also means fonts used in those other slides are still used in the new deck – even if those fonts are not available on the computer.
  

Default Fonts

• When a font is set, but is a non-Microsoft font, and not installed on the computer that opened the PowerPoint file, PowerPoint does not warn us that the presentation needs fonts not available (which is a much needed dialog box!). PowerPoint silently replaces all unavailable fonts with Microsoft fonts, called “Default Fonts”.
  Note: the default fonts are at the whim of PowerPoint, we do not get to choose what font is used. The Default fonts used may be different on each computer, so there is no way to assure what others will see.

Each of these behind-the-scenes issues can lead to presentation disaster with slides not displaying as designed, or in the case of embedded fonts, the presentation being locked and no edit options available! Awkward line wraps, missing text, text overlapping other content, and all kinds of bad things can happen when fonts needed are not available.

AUDIT

• But, did the presenter know they did not have a custom font installed and what they see is PowerPoint assigning a random replacement font? Do you know that any slide deck you have most likely inherited many custom font needs?
• For presentation makeover projects, fonts are just one element of the project. And it is almost always a surprise when we inform someone that their slide deck had 20+ different fonts in use (which the TLC Creative presentation design team then cleaned up to just the 2-4 approved fonts per their branding).
• We accomplish this audit with Neuxpower’s Slidewise PowerPoint add-in.

Below are screen captures from a real client presentation. While this is somewhat extreme on the number of fonts, it represents what we commonly see in provided PowerPoint decks. This example is from a corporate client, using their corporate template.

HOW MANY FONTS!?

The slide deck we received had 28 fonts used across the 50ish slides! That’s just too many fonts in Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.

The image above is the Slidewise audit that shows us every font used in the presentation. It also lets us go to every slide that a font is used on. An important note is that Slidewise’s replace font functionality is far superior to PowerPoints font tools.

TEMPLATE FONTS
Let’s look at the template of this corporate presentation (which is often another behind-the-scenes issue to be dealt with, see post #1 in this series; here). Our goal is to identify the preset template fonts.

This template uses custom fonts (eg. non-Microsoft fonts), and as often happens, the custom “Aspira” fonts were not supplied with the slide deck…

Interpreting the Slidewise font audit:

• Black fonts are Microsoft fonts or custom fonts that are installed on the computer
• Orange fonts are fonts used in the presentation that are custom fonts (eg. not Microsoft fonts) and NOT installed on the computer.
• Note: all text using the orange fonts (custom fonts that are not installed) are displayed by PowerPoint with Default Fonts. PowerPoint does not provide any indicator that text seen in the presentation is displayed with replacement Default Fonts. This is a missing component that has lead to unchecked and unknown fonts in presentations.

REPLACE FONTS
While PowerPoint does have a “replace fonts” feature, we are not going to use it. Here is a summary of how the TLC Creative presentation design team uses Slidewise to “clean-up” the fonts in a slide deck.

1. Select a font that is not needed/wanted
   
2. Optional: expand the font to show each slide the selected font is used on. Click SHOW IN POWERPOINT or double-click to go to that slide – the text box where that font is used will be indicated!
3. Note: Orange fonts in the list are fonts not installed on that computer. For this presentation the template is based on the Aspira fonts, so we are going to NOT remove these fonts.
4. With the Verdana font selected, choose REPLACE FONTS. The REPLACE FONTS dialog opens. Ultimately, we are going to replace the fonts with a selected replacement font.
   • TIP: select all fonts to be replaced at the same time, then choose the replacement font (vs. doing this process for each font one font at a time).
     
5. From the REPLACE WITH drop down, select a specific font, or chose the “Theme Font (Body)” or “Theme Font (Header)” option.
   • Because our goal is to consolidate all fonts to the template preset fonts we used the “Theme Font (Body)” option.
   • This also sets all of the text boxes to the template theme font so the fonts will automatically update when those slides are pasted into a new slide deck (this is the way PowerPoint works best!).
   • Note: in this example, the template is using a custom font, Aspira Light, which is not installed on the designer’s computer. But Slidewise will still assign all of the selected text boxes with the custom font even though it is currently not installed on the computer.

RESULTS
In under 3 minutes we identified the presentation used 28 fonts! Then consolidated (#6) using Slidewise, to 5 fonts. Why 5 fonts? There are 4 different weights, or versions, of the template assigned Aspira font. We kept all of the fonts in this font family. And the 6th font, Wingdings is used for text bullets and icons, so it should never be replaced without carefully investigating what it is being used for.

NEXT STEPS
Consolidating the fonts was easy and quick (under 3 minutes!). But that sets us up for the next step; manually reviewing each slide to look for text formatting and updating (fixing) needs. Changing to a different font can mean the following things need to be checked/updates: text box sizes and positions need to be updated for the fonts to display properly in the slide layout, line breaks need to be adjusted, line spacing, font sizes, or font styling all could need updating so the text displays as intended.

FINAL NOTE
What fonts, and how many fonts, used in a slide deck is somewhat a hidden mystery. But slides using fonts that are not available is a disaster in the making. What in years past was a manual process of hunting down missing fonts has become a streamlined and easy process with the Slidewise PowerPoint add-in! But it has also brought to light how bad PowerPoint’s font management is, and how common slide decks with too many fonts are, for example: 10-20-40-112 (that’s our # of fonts record)!

-Troy and the TLC Creative design team

Presentation files sizes can be large. They can be massive. Often the bloated file size is from videos that are too large (aka Massive Videos) for what is needed. Because bigger is not always better. Microsoft PowerPoint makes it easy to add videos to presentation slides. Videos are embedded in the .pptx file by default. Which means if a 100 MB video is added to a slide, the file size goes up 100 MB. And massive presentation files with massive video files embedded sometimes can ruin a presentation (aka – PowerPoint, or even the computer, crash!).

The TLC Creative team is blessed/spoiled/has an unfair advantage – use the phrase that feels right. But our team, including accounting and project coordinator roles work on computers with 32-64 MB of memory and Nvidia 30X or 40X series graphic cards. In addition, the TLC Creative computers have multiple video CODECs installed and continuously updated. Presentations and videos of all sizes work when we play them. But we know that not everyone has robust content creation spec’d computers – but we also know that videos in presentations can be optimized to allow them to run on lower powered computers, but often are not.

Designers should know how identify and optimize embedded videos to ensure smooth play by everyone. Note: the focus of this blog post is embedded video. Linked and online video have the advantage of not increasing the file size, but have other inherent playback issues not covered here.

AUDIT
Let’s start with knowing there are videos in a presentation. My favorite tool for this is Neuxpower’s Slidewise add-in (https://neuxpower.com/slidewise-powerpoint-add-in). Part of Slidewise’s presentation audit is a section that highlights if there are videos in the slide deck, what the file size of each is, and exactly what slides the videos are on.

• Slidewise is a 3rd party add-in that is purchased separately (and in my opinion, worth the expense!)
• The audit for the demo slide deck reports there is 1 audio file and 3 video files embedded in the presentation.
• The OTHER section of the slide deck audit will show linked videos.
• Note: when media is embedded in a presentation, the original file name is replaced by PowerPoint with a generic name, “media#”.

OPTIMIZE
Microsoft PowerPoint has all the tools needed to optimize videos (and audio) built directly into PowerPoint (at least on the desktop PowerPoint app) and avoid the need to use an external video editing app or website. Go to (1) FILE > (2) INFO

If there is a video not in the .MP4 file format, or an audio file not in the .MP3 file format, the (3) OPTIMIZE COMPATABILITY option is available. Click this to transcode all embedded videos to an industry standard .MP4 file format. You can also do this to transcode audio files to industry standard .MP3 files.

Note: The .MP4 file format for videos is the recommended video format as there are video playback engines universally on Windows OS, Mac OS, web browsers, mobile devices, tablet. While other video file formats have benefits, the high quality and ability to natively play on virtually every device make .MP4 the current best option.
The (4) COMPRESS MEDIA option is available any time embedded media is in a slide deck. The good news is, running the compress media function first reviews the media files and only optimizes if compression is possible. In other words, always run this process, it will only help and never hurt your files. Just remember to select the high res setting!

Notes about video file formats and CODECS:

• .MP4 is not the ultimate file format for quality. But it is the best for file size to quality with guaranteed playback. As example, Apple ProRes has incredible quality, but it also has incredibly large file sizes. They also cannot be played on many Windows OS devices or web browsers.
• CODECs are the technical aspect of the video inside the file format. As example, not all .MP4 videos are the same. The CODEC applied to the video, inside the .MP4 may not be an industry standard, which at this time is H.264 with LAME audio. We at TLC Creative really (really) like the newer H.265 video CODEC and use it on many projects. But PowerPoint is not one of them (yet).
• TIP: Even if the video added to a slide deck is a .MP4, run PowerPoint’s OPTIMIZE and COMPRESS tools. If the video is formatted with a non-standard CODEC, the embedded video will be converted to the safest, industry standard file format and CODEC, ensuring it will play on almost any device the presentation is run from.

FINAL NOTE
Bottom line, don’t be intimidated by adding videos to a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. Being aware of the need to optimize videos will eliminate potential issues before you begin. Focus on creating PowerPoint presentations that are both attention grabbing and reliable. This will ensure a smooth experience for both the presenter and the audience.

– Troy and the TLC Creative design team

Presentation files sizes can be large. They can be massive. But not all large files need images that are overly large. Often the bloated PowerPoint file size is from images that are too large (aka Massive Images) for what is needed. Because bigger is not always better.

As example. If the presentation is being shown on a 1920×1080 pixel (“HD”) screen, it does not need 8000 pixel wide images. Technically PowerPoint uses 96 DPI, most everything is based on 72 DPI, and the TLC standard is to work at 150 DPI. But inserting “print resolution” 300 or 600 DPI images is not going to project better than an optimized image, it just make the file size larger than it needs to be.

Large PowerPoint file size takes longer to open, longer to save, and depending on the computer specs, those large images can affect PowerPoint’s performance, especially with animations and slide transitions. Motion glitches, animation lag, slide advance lag, all the way to PowerPoint freezing or crashing are real concerns from large file size created by massive images.

SOLUTIONS

At TLC Creative, we are not fond of Microsoft PowerPoint’s native image compression tool. In general we find it does less than our preferred third-party solution (see below), overly compresses images to the point of visual quality loss, and is a clunky interface.

Neupower’s NXPowerlite add-in is our go-to solution for optimizing images in a presentation. TIP: setup customized compression preset profiles for tailored results.

There are many options and hacks for updating a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation with optimized images. The key is to have optimized presentations with images optimized for the intended use. Our presentation projects vary and our optimization (eg. NXPowerlite profile) varies to match. The above example is an HD, 1920×1080, presentation, which is probably the most common presentation need. But another presentation project was a presentation that spanned 3 LED walls and was 8448×1024 px for the PowerPoint. Different optimize needs for each project, but we can assure that each presentation included only optimized images to avoid massive presentation files.

Troy @ TLC

Hidden slides are very common in Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. However, PowerPoint’s built in UI doesn’t do a great job at making the hidden slides apparent. The slide sorter view has a small slash through the slide number, and the slide is subtly greyed out which can be easy to miss when scanning through a large number of slides. Identifying hidden slides becomes a “Where’s Waldo” search!

[image generated through Midjourney]

Microsoft PowerPoint’s latest interface is stylish, but the small, subtle, almost imperceptible slash indicating the slide is hidden is not obvious when reviewing slides.

Here is the sample slide deck for this post:

At TLC we add a .png “hidden” image to the help the hidden slides standout (download the Hidden ping at this September 2006 blog post).

Same thing when printing slides. In a slide sorter/light table layout, there is NO indication of a slide being hidden.

This can cause problems when presenters review the presentation. Do they know the slides are hidden and not part of the slide show? This scenario is a regular occurrence during onsite meetings, and we hear from the stage – during the meeting – “Well, some of my slides are missing”. Because the presenter reviewed a printout, or PDF, of the slides and had no way to know some of the slides are hidden and not part of the slide show.

Again, the TLC solution is adding a hidden overlay image, which makes it easy to identify slides that are NOT part of the slideshow.

Hidden slides are an amazing option. But the interface is not designed to aid presenters. When a hidden slide is noted in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, confirm with the presenter they know it is hidden (and not part of the slideshow)!

Slide page numbers are a nice feature to utilize in Microsoft PowerPoint for the speaker to keep track of the presentation. But are the page numbers in your presentation setup and used as designed?

Page numbers are an easy automated element in PowerPoint when setup correct.

While page numbers may display on slides, that does not equate to setup correct. And not being setup correct is something the TLC Creative presentation design team spends literally hours fixing (time that does not need to be added to the project invoice if setup and used correct) if not set up properly.

Before talking about setup and use issues, let me address this common question – should page numbers be used at all?

The conversation is generally about how page numbers take up unnecessary space, they don’t benefit the audience, and often are not formatted consistent throughout a presentation. Ultimately, it is up to the presenter. But if the presentation template is preset for page numbers, which also enables them to be turned on/off in 3 clicks, then TLC Creative finds the value in page numbers. We like to keep page numbers active on all slides during the design and rehearsal phases for easy reference to what slide has revision requests. Then we turn them off for the actual presentation.

 Page Number Problems
Problem 1: Manually adding a text box with the page number to a slide. This is short term thinking. What if the slide count changes? What if the real slide numbers are turned on and now the slide has two different slide number text boxes on the slide?

Problem 2: Slide numbers are added as hard-coded text boxes “<#>” that are not linked to the slide number footer. While this works, it is also short term planning. What happens when slides move into another presentation and have hard-coded text boxes?

Problem 3: Slide number text is in different position and text formatting across slides. This goes back to properly setting up the master slide within Microsoft PowerPoint. Using the preset slide number text placeholder position and formatting is the best way to maintain consistency throughout the presentation. Then resetting the slide will update text boxes to be consistent (Microsoft – why is there not an option to just reset the footer placeholders formatting and not the full slide!).

The key is being able to use Microsoft PowerPoint’s HEADER AND FOOTER feature that instantly can add, or remove, slide numbers from a selection of slides or the entire slide deck in 3 clicks. Remember, a text box will display the page number; however if that text box is not linked to the master slide footer placeholder for text boxes it is more of a problem than help, because only slide number footer text placeholders are programmed to function with the header/footer dialog options.

How Does It Work?

The good news is, it just works. There are no options or settings. Just go to INSERT > HEADER & FOOTER (or SLIDE NUMBER) > on the HEADER AND FOOTER dialog > check or uncheck the “Slide Number” box > click “Apply” to change just the selected slides, or “Apply to All” to change all slides in the presentation*. Done!

TIP *: “Apply to All” only applies to all slides that use that Master Slide. If the presentation has multiple master slides (see Issue #1 in this series on multiple masters) slide number formatting and just turning on/off requires more effort.

TIP: Turn off slide numbers on all slides, using the HEADER AND FOOTER Apply to All. Then review slides to identify which still show a slide number. It is either a manual text box on the slide, a slide number footer that has lost its link to the placeholder (Microsoft, why is not possible to reconnect slide text boxes to master placeholders!), a master slide that has multiple slide number text boxes, or the another master slide that needs to have page numbers turned off (and then on when review complete).

Page numbers can become a burden in slide formatting, or if setup correct, that can become a valuable asset (or at least not a frustration!).

“16×9″ is an aspect ratio, not a size (although, if it is 16″ x 9” it can be a size…). “16×9” is the current standard HD rectangle shape, or aspect ratio used by almost all computer monitors, projectors, TVs, etc.

When coordinating presentations for a multi-presenter event, the goal is to string all of the Microsoft PowerPoint presentations into a single master presentation. The behind-the-scene-settings of the actual page size of each presentation is really-really important. And the industry standard is PowerPoint’s standard page size for “16×9″ which is 13.333″ wide by 7.5” tall.

As example, there are 5 presenters. The 5 presentations are all “16×9” but they have the following page sizes:

1. 13.333×7.5″ (Microsoft PowerPoint standard page size)
2. 16″x9″ (a literal interpretation of “16×9”)
3. 10×5.625″ (legacy PowerPoint widescreen page size – this is old!)
4. 10×5.625″ (Google slides presentation converted to PowerPoint – why is this the Google setting?)
5. 26.667×15″ (Apple Keynote presentation converted to PowerPoint)

While all of these files are a 16×9 aspect ratio, combining them into a Microsoft PowerPoint single file can become a nightmare. Merging different page sizes will create issues such as text boxes changing size and changing text line wraps, content being out of position and alignment, master slide logos and other art becoming distorted, and overall creates a situation where slides do not display as expected.

There is no easy fix for this scenario, it’s a manual process of updating the presentations page sizes and reviewing for edit needs before merging – ugh.

The takeaway for presenters is that the behind-the-scenes presentation setup can have big impacts on how your slides are displayed. And for presentation designers, be aware of checking presentation page sizes, because miss-matched sizes can create many content layout issues.

Troy @ TLC