Converting PowerPoint 2003 graphs to look good in PowerPoint 2007

About two weeks ago I switched from PowerPoint 2003 to PowerPoint 2007 when I got a new laptop. I’ve now delivered a few presentations using PowerPoint 2007 and I’ve noticed that the graphs I created in PowerPoint 2003 didn’t look very good when I presented them. The text wasn’t clear and the lines or columns were not crisp. I did some tinkering and discovered that PowerPoint 2007 needs to convert your PowerPoint 2003 graphs in order to display them well. Just click on each graph in the presentation and when the dialog box comes up asking you to convert the graph, agree to convert it to the PowerPoint 2007 format. You will see a noticeable difference in the quality of the graphs when projected.

The other issue I found after I converted the graphs is that some of them did not print very well on a black and white printer. I always create black and white handouts instead of colour because it is so much cheaper to print. But I could hardly even see some of the graphs when I printed them using the Pure Black and White print option. I ended up having to change the Chart Style to one that has borders around the bars in order to get the outline of the bar or pie wedge to be visible when printed. I also ended up having to change some of the fill colours in order to make the printout visible. After you convert your graphs, take a look at what they look like in the Print Preview mode to ensure that the handout will be readable.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #52: Layering the discussion of detailed data

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Often we need to present detailed data that has come from analysis. Instead of overwhelming your audience by putting all the data on a slide, use the ideas in this makeover to layer the discussion of the data so it makes sense and the audience can understand and act on it.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

Is it honesty or is it clarity that makes this commercial so popular?

Two respected presentation professionals, Jon Thomas and Garr Reynolds, have recently tweeted about how they think this commercial is a great commercial and they wish all advertising could be this honest. I agree that the commercial is good and it is honest. But many ads are honest. Not many are as clear as this one is.

The difference between clarity and honesty in my mind is that clarity makes things easy to understand and honesty is about level of truth. You can be honest, but be unclear and confusing. We see this often in presentations. The data is accurate, but they haven’t figured out the meaning for the audience, so what they present is unclear. These types of presentations are not effective.

Clear presentations, like this commercial, present information from the audience’s perspective. They are focused on what is going to help the audience make a decision or apply the ideas in their own life. Most people immediately recognize these as effective presentations.

I will always recommend that you be honest in everything you do. I would also ask you to be clear in your communication. When you are clear, you communicate effectively, and the audience, of one or many, understands immediately. As a business person, clearly communicating what problem I solve and who a potential client would be, is critical to attracting more business. So I recently wrote a page on my web site titled "How to know if we should chat". It is my attempt to be as clear as possible with prospective clients about how I can help them and whether we will work well together. The clearer we communicate, the more effective we will be. I’ll be discussing this business approach and many more ideas at my pre-conference workshop at the Presentation Summit. If you are a presentation consultant, you can participate in a survey that will help all of us - read more here.

Your takeaway: How can you increase the clarity of your communication?

Caution when animated PowerPoint graphs are delivered via Live Meeting

I recently delivered a webinar using the Microsoft Live Meeting system. I had not used this system before and it is one of the systems where you upload your slides to their site. My usual system is one where I share my desktop, so you are seeing my desktop exactly as I am presenting. The difference with the Live Meeting system is that they do some conversion of your slides to fit their system. And I found one type of graph animation that doesn’t get converted properly.

In one of my slides, I show a bar graph that has text in each bar explaining what that bar refers to. The text is actually a text box placed on top of the bar because it fit better that way and gave the look I wanted. In the animation, I animate each bar of the graph to come on one at a time so I can discuss each item individually. To have the text come up at the same time as the bar, I animate the text box and have it appear with the bar. In the Custom Animation task pane, I move the text box animation effect in the middle of the graph bar animation so the builds happen at the right time. And apparently that causes the problem.

Any time you have an object animate in the middle of a graph animation, Live Meeting does not convert it properly. It can’t handle splitting up the graph animation apparently. It resolves it by animating all graph elements at once and then the non-graph elements based on the timing set on those elements. In the bar graph, because the text box timing is set to happen with the bars, all the bars and the text boxes came on at the same time. In another graph, since the other object was set to appear on a click, I had to advance to get the object to appear. In both cases, I had advance warning because in our practice session the issue had cropped up. So I spoke to the slide as Live Meeting decided to present it.

The lesson for you is that if you are using Live Meeting to deliver your presentation over the web, make sure that you do not animate other objects in the middle of a graph animation, because it will not work the way you expect it to. Redesign your slide, use exit animation effects to reveal each part, or use multiple slides with one build on each slide to get around this issue. Now I know better for next time.

PowerPoint Tip: How to create a consistent look when many sources are contributing slides to a presentation

In a recent workshop, one of the participants raised the challenge they have when assembling slides from different sources in the organization into one presentation. They said that often you can immediately tell that the presentation has been drawn from different sources just by the look of the slides, even though they are all using the corporate template.

I asked them what tips them off when they look at the slides and we came up with a list of items I want to share in this article. Look for these formatting and content aspects of your slides to make sure you create a presentation that looks consistent and not like it has been thrown together from different presentations.

Length of bullet points: When some slides use a few words and other use full sentences, it is easy to tell that the source is different. Aim for an average of six words per bullet point and make sure that it is just a key idea, not a transcript of what you will say.

Punctuation on bullet points: If some slides have bullet points that end with a period and other slides have no punctuation at the end of bullet points, it is a clear sign of an assembled presentation. I don’t think that periods are necessary at the end of bullet points because they aren’t supposed to be full sentences or paragraphs.

Capitalization: When some slides use Sentence case (only the first letter is capitalized) and some slide use Title Case (the first letter of every word is capitalized), it is a giveaway. I suggest using sentence case for headlines and body text because it is easier to read.

Titles vs. Headlines: Having some slides with a two or three word title and some slides with a proper headline of six to ten words gives it away. I suggest you write headlines for each slide that summarizes the key point you want the audience to get from this slide (that is why writing a headline is the first step in the five-step KWICK method in my book The Visual Slide Revolution).

Look of the graphics: Some contributors will use simple graphics and others will use fancy graphics with shading, edges, and other effects. Standardize on one look and make it as nice as possible without it looking gaudy.

Pictures vs. ClipArt: When some slides still contain outdated clip art and others use high impact photographs, the difference is apparent. Replace the clip art that screams “outdated information here” with current photographs that make an emotional impact.

By paying attention to these aspects of the visuals in your presentation that is assembled from different sources, you can work towards having one consistent look for the slides. Some organizations have taken this further and created a style guide that sets organizational standards for these and other elements that give visual consistency to all presentations.

Calling all presentation consultants – survey now open

At this year’s Presentation Summit (formerly known as PowerPoint Live), I’ll be conducting a pre-conference workshop designed to help people build or grow a presentation consulting business. In this workshop, we’ll look at the business side of running your own presentation consulting shop. To support the information at the workshop, I am conducting an anonymous survey of presentation consulting businesses. If you own or run a presentation consulting business, please take a few minutes to complete this survey. The survey asks questions about your business and your results so that we can get a true picture of what this industry really looks like. To my knowledge, this is the first time that this type of survey has been done and promises to provide valuable insight that can help new entrants and established businesses.

The survey does not ask you to identify yourself or your company, so none of the information can be traced back to any one firm. The results will be shown only in aggregate so that we can all learn. The survey will close on June 30th and I will then start the analysis over the summer. I’ll release some of the results at the end of the summer and the full results will be discussed during the workshop at the Presentation Summit.

It only takes a few minutes to complete, and it will provide valuable information for all of us in this industry. If you are in the presentation consulting business, please complete the survey and let others know about it so we can get the broadest cross-section of responses as possible.

Thank you for taking a few minutes to help your business and others in our industry.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #51: Combining multiple comparisons

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. When we want to compare one items against two or more other items, we tend to put statistics on a slide to show each individual comparison. The ideas in this makeover show how to combine all the comparisons visually to make the point with greater impact.

This slide was submitted by one of the participants in a workshop - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Use these two techniques to get the exact shape you want in a diagram

PowerPoint has a wealth of drawing tools that allow presenters to create a vast array of diagrams to illustrate their points. It is clear from the questions I get in workshops that many presenters are under the mistaken impression that you need to use fancy graphics software or illustration package to draw diagrams. Not at all. PowerPoint has all the tools most presenters will ever need. In this article I want to share two techniques that can be helpful in creating the exact shape you want for an illustration.

The first situation is when you want to use shapes to illustrate the size of two items because you want the audience to see how much larger or smaller one item is compared to the other. Sometimes using proportional shapes is a better illustration than a graph. For example, you might want to show two rectangles that represent the size of a market in two different countries. You need the shapes to be properly proportioned because the illustration needs to be accurate.

You can create properly proportional shapes in PowerPoint by specifying the measurements for the shape. To do so, draw the shape first. Then select the shape and enter the exact dimensions (in PowerPoint 2003 you can enter exact dimensions in the Size tab of the Format Autoshape dialog box and in PowerPoint 2007 the dimensions are on the Drawing Tools Format ribbon). While you can enter the dimensions in inches, I have found that it is easier to do so in millimetres because you can scale the numbers more easily. For example, if I have one item that is 450 units and another that is 800 units, it is hard to convert those to inches that easily fit on a slide. But using millimetres that are a base 100 unit scale, I can easily divide by 10 and use 45 mm and 80 mm, which are good sizes for shapes on a slide. Just enter 45mm as the dimension and PowerPoint will convert the measurement to inches if that is your default unit of measure. Remember that if you are showing the area of a shape, you will need to go back to grade school math formulas to specify both height and width properly.

The second situation occurs when you are drawing a diagram that requires two or more shapes to fit together, like the pieces of a puzzle. One common example is using chevron shapes to illustrate a process. You want each chevron to fit together with the next one showing that the process flows smoothly from one step to the next. The problem with shapes that have angles or curves, is that PowerPoint uses default proportions that sometimes don’t allow your shapes to line up the way you need them to.

The secret is to use the yellow diamond handle on the shape. If you draw a chevron or a circular arrow shape, for example, you will see at least one yellow diamond handle. This yellow diamond handle allows you to drag it and alter the angle or curve of the shape. By doing so, you can make shapes fit exactly with the one next to them. I find it helpful to zoom in on the slide when making these adjustments to get the fit just right. What looks correct in the default zoom level sometimes is not actually correct when you display the slide on the large screen.

Instead of thinking that you need to learn a fancy graphics or illustration package, use these two tips to create diagrams that illustrate your point and make your presentation more effective.