Links to Other Web Pages With Guidance About PowerPoint
- How Much Text Should There Be on a Slide? with special thanks to Seahorses Consulting of Australia.
- The Effectiveness of MS PowerPoint: Take Your Presentation to the Next Level.
- Results of Study About the Most Annoying PowerPoint Practices.
- Ask E.T. PowerPoint Does Rocket Science—and Better Techniques for Technical Reports.
- “Report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board,” Volume I, implicates poor communication as a cause of the accident, including the use of PowerPoint. See page 191 under “Engineering by Viewgraphs.” “Viewgraphs” are transparencies projected by an overhead projector. At some point, there was a brand of transparency film named “Vugraph.” The overhead projector has been replaced by the digital light projector (DLP) to show visual aids formerly shown by the overhead projector. For more information about viewgraphs, see “Handbook for the Production of of Classroom Vugraphs,” published by the U.S. Army (1988) and A Snapshot in Time: Vu Vugraph, published March 20, 2018, by the National Security Agency (NSA).
- PowerPoint Quick Reference.
- Speaking PowerPoint.
- Death by PowerPoint.
- History of PowerPoint, by Robert Gaskins, one of the inventors of PowerPoint. This site contains many articles about the pros and cons of PowerPoint.
- Creating an Effective PowerPoint Presentation, George Mason Univeristy.
- Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. This is probably the leading book about PowerPoint and its effect on communication.
- Creating Visual Aids That Really Work.
- Presentation Magic.
- Microsoft Helps the Army Avoid Death by PowerPoint.
- Learning To Love PowerPoint.
- Modern Presenter.
- Extreme Presentation Method. This site contains a number of different articles about the use of PowerPoint.
- Tips for Making Effective PowerPoint Presentations.
Hidden PowerPoint Commands
PowerPoint has a number of keyboard commands and other features that are not that well known. This a list of a few of our favorites:
- Line break instead of a hard return: SHIFT + ENTER.
This command allows you to break a line without triggering spacing between elements in a list and creating a new bullet point. It's especially helpful when presented with a troublesome word division in a list. In contrast, a hard return (ENTER by itself) adds spacing between lines (as long as the general format settings call for that) and adds a new bullet point in a list. - Copying a shape on a slide: CONTROL + CLICK ON SHAPE + DRAG and
DROP.
Suppose you create a rectangle and want to use the same rectangle several times to create a flow chart. To create copies of the rectangle, hold down CONTROL, click on the rectangle (LEFT MOUSE BUTTON), and drag a copy away from the original. When you release CONTROL, a copy of the original rectangle will be where you “drop” it. This same technique can be used to copy almost anything on a slide.