THE FANTASY LAND

POWER POINT

With PowerPoint, you can easily get your point across, and share your stories with your audience. Instead of verbally describing your product, you can simply show people an image of your product.

As the saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words. And with PowerPoint, you have the power to convey thousands of words with just a few slides in your slideshow!

In addition to being a powerful presentation software, PowerPoint is also very versatile. You can use it to create many other types of files, such as posters, infographics, videos, PDF, and more.

Before we go over all the outstanding features that Microsoft has programmed into PowerPoint, let's go over its history briefly so you can better appreciate its awesomeness!

A Brief History of PowerPoint (And The Pre-PowerPoint Era)

I probably won't be wrong if I say many people think Bill Gates created PowerPoint. After all, he did co-found Microsoft, the biggest software company in the world, and the software as we know it today is called Microsoft PowerPoint. But alas, he didn't.

Originally called 'Presenter,' PowerPoint was created by software startup company, Forethought, Inc. in 1987. It was originally programmed for Macintosh.

Upon realizing its full potential, however, Microsoft purchased not just the rights to use PowerPoint, but they bought Forethought as well. At the time, it was Microsoft's most expensive acquisition.

And the price tag? $14 million (that's about $30 million in today's money). I bet if Forethought, Inc. knew just how popular PowerPoint would become, they would have asked for a much higher price, maybe in the hundreds of millions or quite possibly, even billions of dollars!

Before PowerPoint came into the scene, people were doing presentations by hand. This meant spending not just hours, but days making the presentation design, working on it very carefully, and making sure the final output looked great.

People had to plan every aspect of their presentation very carefully. Mistakes could prove quite costly in terms of both time and money.

Here is an example vintage presentation from GE in the 1950s. Imagine creating this presentation by hand, cutting up cardboard and paper, and gluing everything in place!

Sample slide presentation before PowerPoint came into the picture. (Image source)

In the 1970s and well into the 80s, using overhead projectors (OHP) was a great option for giving presentations. You could write your presentation's main points on a transparent slide which the OHP will then project onto a screen.

You can write additional notes on the slides, cross out something, draw images, etc. Because you could do these changes while presenting, it made it easier for the presenter to engage with the audience.

For instance, you can ask your audience questions, and then write down their answers on the slide. While this might have been a great option back in the day, OHPs were quite heavy. Lugging it around from one venue to another wasn't really ideal.

But with the advent of PowerPoint, people can make presentations with just a few mouse clicks. And not just any boring static presentation either. But attractive and attention-grabbing slideshows!

Of course, the earliest versions of PowerPoint look nothing alike the most recent versions. But looks aside, the functionality was already there.

And over the years, Microsoft has developed PowerPoint to keep up with modern times.

Thirty years after it launched, PowerPoint is still a force to be reckoned with and has become synonymous with the word 'presentation.'

The Many Wonderful Uses Of PowerPoint

Now that you know what PowerPoint is and how it came to be a force in the Microsoft-era, it's time to go through the uses of this powerful software. This will be especially useful for you if you're ever tasked to create a PowerPoint project.

Over the years, Microsoft has designed and tweaked PowerPoint to be more user-friendly and more intuitive. Its interface may not be as sleek and as pretty as more recent presentation software, but it does give you plenty of granular control over your presentation.

If you know where to look, you can literally edit every aspect of your slides, right down to the last element!

Here are some popular uses of PowerPoint. Note that for best results, you'd need to follow some best presentation practices so you don't lose your audience's attention.

1. Use PowerPoint in lectures, seminars, business presentations, sales pitches, and similar activities

Great PowerPoint presentations are never boring. Get your audience to engage with you! (Image source: Unsplash)

This is the most popular use of PowerPoint. Instead of writing down their class lessons on whiteboards and blackboards, lecturers can simply prepare their slides in advance and present them in class.

This frees up the lecturer's time as writing down stuff on the board can take quite a while which leads to students losing interest in the lecture.

With a PowerPoint lesson, lecturers can go through each point on the slideshow and engage or interact with their students directly.

Make your PowerPoint lectures fun and memorable so your students are able to retain more information from your lecture!

With sales and business presentations, you're pretty much using your slides as a visual aid to support your speech.

Whether you're presenting your team or department's quarterly report, or you're presenting to a group of potential investors, you can use PowerPoint to drive your point home.

It's much easier, and more credible, to show people your actual results on a well-designed table or graphic than just simply verbally mentioning it.

Likewise, startups and salespeople can use attractive slide decks that accurately depict the product or service they are pitching to potential clients or investors.

In a business setting, the stakes are much higher, so you need to make sure your PowerPoint is as persuasive as possible.

Of course, you'd have to do your part as well. If you're a dynamic and highly engaging speaker (you better be if you are in sales!), then it will be much easier for you to grab your audience's attention!

Make plenty of eye contact, and put your audience at ease. Be confident – nothing can turn off investors faster than a presenter who doesn't seem to know what they're talking about!

2. Use PowerPoint to make tutorial slideshows and videos

People love visual tutorials because they can easily understand how something is done or made. They don't have to read through 10 pages of text to understand something. Instead, they can easily digest the information they need in just a few slides.

When making tutorials on PowerPoint, you can either use screenshots (static images of your screen), or you can record your activities on your screen.

Taking screenshots is relatively easy. In most cases, you simply need to press the PrintScreen button on your keyboard, and you'll have your screenshot.

If you don't know how to take a screenshot, check out TechRadar's article on the best screen capture software for your computer.

Screen recordings, on the other hand, is not quite as difficult as it once was. In PowerPoint 2013 and 2016, you can easily record your screen by going to Insert > Screen Recording.

Simply follow the onscreen instructions, and you'll have your recording in no time at all.

How to make a PowerPoint screen recording

Here are the screen recording options:

You don't have to record your entire screen. You just select a particular area you want to record. Any activity within that area gets recorded until you hit the Stop button.

You can choose to record your voiceover while you do your screen recording (this is great if you aren't presenting live). Otherwise, you can choose to put the microphone on mute and give your verbal walkthrough in a live presentation.

You have the option to record your mouse pointer. Turning on this option is great if you're not presenting live because it helps your audience understand what you're doing on your computer. If you're presenting live, you can use a laser pointer to help point people's attention to the right places.

You can use a combination of screen captures and screen recordings to make your PowerPoint tutorial as valuable as possible. Make sure all your points tie in well together. And that your audience can easily understand how the process or system you're talking about flows from one step to the next.

Moreover, if you want better video editing control, you can use PowerPoint add-ins from third-party software like Camtasia.

With tutorials, you can either present these in person, or you can upload this to the Internet. YouTube is a great place for people to find your content.

Many people go on YouTube to look for tutorials, and not just look at funny cat videos all day!

If you want to get more eyes to your content, then uploading your tutorial to your website, YouTube or any other video-sharing site is an absolute must!

3. Use PowerPoint to make infographics, visual resumes, and other graphics

The many uses of PowerPoint – sample PowerPoint slides and PPT model. (Image source: Hubspot)

This may sound surprising to some, but it's really quite simple to make infographics on PowerPoint! If you want to see what's possible, check out some awesome infographic PowerPoint examples or templates that you can download on Hubspot.

As I've mentioned earlier in this article, PowerPoint is a very versatile presentation software. You don't have to use Photoshop, Canva, or any other graphics software to create infographics.

Over the years, people have come to appreciate the many benefits of creating infographics.

Infographics get more shares on social media, get more backlinking opportunities, and people appreciate the fact that they don't have to read a thousand words when they can get all the information they need in a single infographic.

If you're going to be paying a graphic designer to create your infographic for you, expect to shell out hundreds of dollars!

That may or may not sound like a lot of money to you, but if you know how to make a PowerPoint infographic, you can save a lot of money.

Infographics come in many different sizes. If you want to post your infographic on as many platforms as possible, you'd have to check out the individual platform's size preferences.

No matter the size, however, you can easily change PowerPoint slide dimensions or slide sizes.

All you have to do is go to Design > Slide Size > Custom Slide Size. You can then set the Width and Height for your infographic.

How to change your PowerPoint or PPT slide dimensions for your infographic.

What follows next is strictly limited by your imagination. Think outside the box, and think about the kind of infographic that your audience will find useful.

The more valuable your content, the more people will appreciate you and your hard work.