Resource/Misc

The Daily Struggles: Microsoft Teams with PowerPoint Frustrations


Microsoft Teams has become an industry leader in the world of remote work communication and collaboration. It is inevitable that some of you used Teams today!
Of course, our focus is presentations, and PowerPoint. When it comes to opening PowerPoint files, Microsoft Teams can be surprisingly touchy. There is open in Teams, open in PowerPoint for web, and open in PowerPoint desktop. Just clicking the presentation file name opens it directly inside Teams – and you have thought that same as us, why is this harder than it should be?
We polled the TLC Creative design team and this is our current list of complaints (we are really not negative, so we look at this as constructive input to the Microsoft Dev teams).

Teams presenting bandwidth is amazing
Let’s start this list with one benefit presenting with Teams PowerPoint has that Desktop PowerPoint cannot compete with (see, we really are a super positive group of people at TLC Creative!). Microsoft has done amazing work in optimizing PowerPoint presenting by up to 90% less bandwidth vs. screenshare of the slides! This is when presenting a Teams based file, through Microsoft Teams vs. screen sharing the presentation. See this Microsoft video (now 5 years old, so this is not a new technology improvement – May 16, 202o Post).

Multitasking is Tough
First, Teams in its current form, is horrible as multitasking. You’re viewing a presentation inside Teams and want to send a Teams chat to your co-worker to clarify a stat on a slide – and guess what – you can’t! We have to first close the presentation, then switch to Chat, and after getting the answer, go back to the Team, find the presentation file, and click to open it again – ugh! Teams just doesn’t handle multitasking well (yet)!


Teams Presenter View Has Limitations (vs. Desktop Presenter View)
The Teams version of Presenter View has some great improvements we hope to see integrated into the desktop app. But, it also is on our bad list. It is a web-based app, so it can, and does, change often. It does not align with the desktop version on all of its functionality, which is confusing. And it is run inside of Teams, which is just a different environment from the Desktop Presenter View (and for us the desktop version is the standard). Last, edits made to a presentation DO NOT update if the presentation is being presented in Teams – this is a huge issue for us, and our absolute love of co-authoring and making live edits to presentations (yes, even while they are being presented).

Custom Fonts Vanish
As we’ve mentioned in a previous blog posts [LINK], custom fonts need to be installed on the computer. The Teams app only recognizes web-based fonts (eg. Microsoft cloud fonts). So any custom font, even if installed on that computer, is not going to display when the presentation is presented through the Teams Presenter View. Best to stick with classic desktop PowerPoint Presenter View!

Embedded Videos Lose Styling
Here’s another topic we’ve talked about before (October 19, 2017 post). We leverage a lot of video in presentations. And PowerPoint’s ability to stylize, crop and customize videos is fantastic – until you play a stylized video in Teams Presenter View. Cropped video disappears and the full rectangle is displayed. Drop-shadows, rounded corners, and duo-tone color effects are also stripped out and not displayed when presenting in Teams Presenter View. If you added a custom styling, there’s a good chance it’ll disappear when the file is opened in Teams PowerPoint.
No Quick Access Toolbar (QAT), and different toolbars
When editing slides, there is no Quick Access Toolbar (aka QAT) in Teams PowerPoint (or PowerPoint for the web). And Teams PowerPoint (and PowerPoint for the web) have their own unique organization of the toolbars, tabs and menus. So many extra clicks to get things done!

Editing Is Slower
Editing presentations in Teams is simplified. There is different toolbar organization, lack of QAT, lack of plugins, and different interface in many areas. This translates to a slower, less efficient editing process.

The Best Way to Avoid These Issues
Our recommendation, instead of opening presentations with Teams PowerPoint, always use the “Open in Desktop” option! This ensures:

  • Full functionality of the desktop PowerPoint app
  • So many fewer formatting issues
  • The most common Presenter View experience
  • Fewer font and video display issues (hey we recognize this is PowerPoint, and the desktop version is not perfect)

Final Thoughts


While Teams is a powerful tool, opening PowerPoint files with Teams PowerPoint comes with more issues than benefits. To avoid frustration, always open PowerPoint files in the full function desktop app. It makes everything smoother and more reliable!

– Troy & the TLC Creative Team

By |2025-05-14T08:16:41-07:00May 12th, 2025|Resource/Misc|

New Podcast Episode Available! “CreativePro Week: Where Design Enthusiasts Unite to Innovate and Inspire! With David Blatner & Chris Converse”

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast is out – listen to it now!

In this episode of The Presentation Podcast, hosts Troy Chollar, Sandy Johnson, and Nolan Haims – along with guests David Blatner of CreativePro, and freelance designer Chris Converse – talk about design. They talk about the ever-changing landscape of design tools, as well as the importance of community and collaboration during the design process. It turns into a lively discussion about the evolving capabilities of PowerPoint, and how it’s still a serious contender in the design world! Listen on your favorite podcast app, or at The Presentation Podcast site here.

By |2025-05-05T13:13:43-07:00May 7th, 2025|Resource/Misc|

Presentation Co-Authoring with Teams, umm, SharePoint – it is confusing, but works great!

Microsoft Teams has become a core element of the TLC Creative Services design studio. As example, this blog post was a collaboration doc in our Social Media Team for me (Troy) to write, a few of our design team to access and prep the images outlined and finally accessed by our Social Media manger to transfer all to this blog post. No emailing files. No syncing files to a server and being uncertain if you have the latest version. We use Teams chat to ask each other questions, connect on Teams calls (sometimes with a webcam on, but more often with a screen share), and access project work files and fill in our timesheets.

Focusing on files stored on Teams, the important thing to know if Microsoft Teams is SharePoint – or at least a new interface for SharePoint. Or maybe a better way to say that is, SharePoint files are now accessed through Teams.

This is a good thing because Microsoft has spent years building SharePoint with features like, security, file history, and collaboration. And the collaboration feature is what we cannot function without (collaboration meaning multiple people can access the exact same file, and edit it simultaneously).

Here is a common workflow for our design team at TLC Creative

  • The project is added to Teams as a new Channel within our “Projects” Team (the concept of Teams vs. Channels is one of the more difficult things to understand and work with!).
  • The presentation(s) is then copied to the Teams folder (as noted earlier, this is really putting the presentation on SharePoint, but without having to deal with SharePoint)
  • The design team working on the presentation open the presentation from Teams – and this is important! Open the presentation in DESKTOP PowerPoint. In Teams click the 3-dot menu next to the file name > Open > Open in Desktop.
  • A presentation can seamlessly have 1-2-5+ people reviewing, editing or presenting.
  • Note: Teams is easy to setup and have people within the same company access files. It gets more temperamental when adding external people, or you being the external person being added to another company’s Microsoft Team (more about our process and some tips in an upcoming post).

How do you know if a presentation is on your local hard drive or on Microsoft Teams?

  • Look at the file name in PowerPoint
  • Local files literally tell you they are local. After the file name is “Saved to this PC”
  • There is a drop-down menu for local files, but it is informational and really of no value.
  • And if it is a Teams file, after the file name is “Last Modified: (time stamp)” and a drop-down menu
  • That drop-down menu for Teams files has a lot of options
  • Rename the file. And the name will be updated on Teams and to anyone that has the file open!
  • Version History. Click the “Version History” at the bottom of the file drop-down for a right action pane to open and provide details on every major update, how made it, and ability to open earlier versions of the file to reference or revived content!

Presentation formatting, and presenting, now evolves around Microsoft Teams for us at TLC Creative. We are focusing Microsoft Teams this month on The PowerPoint Blog.

-Troy @ TLC

By |2025-05-05T07:14:48-07:00May 5th, 2025|Resource/Misc|

Create Charts for Video and Print Projects in PowerPoint – Really!

Charts can be a powerful visual for any presentation to really make a memorable, or easily understandable, point. When you think about colorful bar, line and pie charts, everyone immediately thinks of PowerPoint slides. What about adding charts to a print or video project that is designed in Adobe InDesign or Premiere? While PowerPoint has robust chart and bar graph-building features, most print and video software do not.

InDesign is amazing for layout and print design, but it relies on charts and tables being important elements. The same for Adobe video editing software, Premiere. Charts, tables, and most all elements in a video are designed outside the app and imported.

And this need for externally created charts is where PowerPoint comes in. Whether you’re working on a print layout or editing a video that needs to look polished and professional, PowerPoint is ideal for building visuals that can easily be edited and exported for use in other software.

Step 1: Create a Chart in PowerPoint

All natively created charts in PowerPoint have a mini Excel sheet for the data.

And PowerPoint is truly one of the best tools for creating charts, including the option to use the data and instantly change from a bar chart to pie charts, line graphs, stacked or scatter plot. And all charts use the preset color scheme applied to that slide deck. Update the PowerPoint color scheme and all charts in the slide deck instantly update! It’s easy to style your data with colors, fonts, and labels. And since you’re doing it inside PowerPoint, it’s all very visual.

Step 2: Export the Chart as an Image for Print

Once your chart is sized and styled to what is needed in the print design, export it as an image for use in Adobe InDesign or Illustrator.

1. Click on the chart to select it.

2. Right-click and choose Save as Picture.

3. Choose PNG, which creates a static image of the chart with a transparent background.

4. Or choose SVG to create a static image of the chart that is a full vector format – great for pulling into an Adobe Illustrator project.

5. Import the new file into your InDesign layout like any other image.

The final result is clean and sharp, and you didn’t have to deal with other clunky chart-building tools and work-arounds.

Step 3: Using PowerPoint Charts in Premiere for Video

If you want to include charts in a video project using Adobe Premiere Pro, you’ve got a couple of options.

Option 1: Static chart image

Just like for print, export your chart as a PNG and bring it into Premiere. From here you can animate it with simple scale or opacity transitions to make the chart more visually appealing. But there is a bit more planning in the export process.

Option 2: Animate inside PowerPoint, export as video

PowerPoint has great animation capabilities, including animating charts. One option is to export the slide as a video (eg. 1920×1080 .MP4) to add to the Premiere video project.  In PowerPoint go to File > Export > Create a Video. Choose either an HD or 4K format.

But the exported video will be the full slide, including the background. If the video project needs to add the chart as a composited element with other elements in the video project, the above chart example was exported as a series of 6 PNG images, added to the Premiere project and each PNG animated with Premiere’s entrance effects. Plan the animation, then in PowerPoint duplicate the chart slide, in this scenario 6Xs. Then go through each slide, deleting the elements that are not part of that stage of the animation.

Using PowerPoint as a design tool is not part of video editing training, but as a someone that has created lots and lots of chart elements for successful print design and video projects, PowerPoint is the right tool. Next time a chart is needed as an imported element for a project, PowerPoint is a go to for both great visuals and saving design time.

– Mike, and the TLC Creative Services design team

By |2025-04-24T21:16:48-07:00April 25th, 2025|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

The Presentation Podcast talked about Data Viz in 2016

Throughout April The PowerPoint Blog is focused on charts and data viz in PowerPoint. From 2016 is this great conversation about data viz, episode 19 of The Presentation Podcast. It definitely is in line with the blog series and worth a mention and a relisten (or read through of the show notes outline)!

Original blog post announcing the podcast episode is here.

Episode 19 replay is available, with show notes, here.

By |2025-03-29T11:08:34-07:00April 18th, 2025|PowerPoint, Resource/Misc|

New Podcast Episode Available! “The Secret Sauce to Stunning PowerPoint Presentations – Navigating the World of Vector Graphics!”

In the latest episode of The Presentation Podcast, Troy and Nolan delve into everything PowerPoint and vector. What does PowerPoint consider a vector graphic? What types of vector files does PowerPoint recognize? What are PowerPoint limitations with vector graphics? This episode is a treasure trove of insights, practical tips, and expert advice on leveraging vector graphics, particularly .SVGs, for great presentation design. Have a listen to see where the conversation goes!

Listen to episode 220 here.

By |2025-04-11T18:34:29-07:00April 16th, 2025|Resource/Misc|

New podcast episode available! “Exploring Canva’s Presentation Power: A Conversation with Dani Watkins”

A new episode of The Presentation Podcast now available!

Have you wondered how Canva’s presentation features stack up against PowerPoint? This podcast episode we have enlightening chat with Dani Watkins, a “Canvassador” about all things Canva and Canva Presentation! Dani shared how Canva’s user-friendly interface and extensive design options have transformed her approach to presentation design.

From repurposing graphics across various formats to the seamless remote sharing capabilities. Plus, did you know Canva now offers offline capabilities for presentations? We didn’t either, but Dani gets us up to speed with Canva Presentation’s latest offerings.

Listen on your favorite podcast app, or at The Presentation Podcast site here.

By |2025-03-29T10:48:13-07:00April 2nd, 2025|Resource/Misc|

New Podcast Episode Available! Navigating the Data Visualization Landscape: Tools, Tips, and Techniques with Ann K. Emery

New episode of The Presentation Podcast now available!

Data visualization is an essential skill in today’s data-driven world. It transforms raw data into visual formats like charts, graphs, and maps, making complex information understandable and engaging. In this podcast episode, Troy, Sandy and Nolan talk with Ann K. Emery of Depict Data Studio about the nuances of data visualization tools and best practices – especially for presentations. Listen on your favorite podcast app, or at The Presentation Podcast site here.

By |2025-03-18T14:50:52-07:00March 19th, 2025|Resource/Misc|

Is Helvetica Bad?

Helvetica is a classic and widely used font known for its clean and modern appearance. However, when a PowerPoint presentation created on a Mac is opened on a Windows computer, the Helvetica font used might not display as expected. This issue stems from the differences between how macOS and Windows handle fonts.

On a Mac, Helvetica is one of the default Mac OS system fonts. This version of Helvetica is optimized for macOS and integrates seamlessly into the operating system – like how Aptos does for Windows OS (although Aptos is not locked to Windows and can be installed on a Mac!). But the Helvetica available on Mac devices is unique to the macOS, and only usable on Mac devices. A windows device does not see the Mac version of Helvetica as identical to any version that can be installed on Windows. The files available for Windows differ from the macOS version in subtle ways, such as variations in spacing, kerning, and glyphs. Like any time PowerPoint replaces a font not installed with another font, content is not displayed as designed and things like line wraps can change.

Because the version of Helvetica used Mac devices cannot be used outside a Mac (such as on a Windows device), it should not be used on presentations that will be open on a Windows system.

But I have Helvetica installed (on my Windows device)! Yes you do, but it is a different version of Helvetica, and PowerPoint sees the Mac version and the installed version on the Windows computer as different fonts (and they are; remember, different spacing, kerning, glyphs). Same name, but different…

While Helvetica is a widely loved and effective font, its cross-platform compatibility can cause confusion when switching between macOS and Windows. It is not that Helvetica is inherently problematic, it is a good font. But rather the Mac version is only available on Macs, and that makes it a bad choice for cross-platform use.

An opinion from the TLC Creative design team

By |2025-03-16T08:55:13-07:00March 17th, 2025|Resource/Misc|

New Podcast Episode Available! “Based on the PowerPoint template, is this Going To Be A Difficult Project?”

New episode of The Presentation Podcast now available!

In the latest episode of The Presentation Podcast, our three seasoned presentation designers: Troy Chollar from TLC Creative Services, Sandy Johnson from Presentation Wiz, and Nolan Haims from Nolan Haims Creative discuss PowerPoint templates from the perspective of evaluating client provided files – and the state of the template provided. A conversation with a wealth of knowledge on PowerPoint templates! Listen on your favorite podcast app, or at The Presentation Podcast site here.

By |2025-03-03T16:46:14-08:00March 5th, 2025|Resource/Misc|
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