Whether you're creating a storyboard, designing an eBook, or building an interactive eLearning course, PowerPoint can get the job done. However, you could be leaving money on the table by not employing some simple shortcuts to save development time.
As you’re watching the video below, keep in mind that you would normally be working with two screens—one screen for what you’re presenting and another for your working file. For the webinar, Andrew had both views layered on the screen he was sharing.
"CTRL - P" also opens up the pen. The "E" key erases notations you make. After you close presentation mode, you can also save any annotations you made to the project.
From any slide, if you know the number of the slide you want to jump to, press that number on your keyboard and then hit “ENTER” and the audience view will jump straight to that slide. You can also use this to create a sort of branching presentation out of a linear PowerPoint presentation.
You can click on the magnifying glass or use the "PLUS" and "MINUS" keys to zoom in and out on what the audience is seeing.
While in presentation mode, pressing the "B" key will black out the screen. This is a great way to quickly get your audience’s attention and focus them on what you’re saying.
One of Andrew’s top tips is to be sure to compress your images when you’re done editing. This will decrease the file size of your project, help your file run faster, and make it easier to transfer to other collaborators.
To compress an image, select a picture, go to the Picture Format tab, in the Adjust panel, select Compress Pictures. A dialogue box will open up with your options.
Another way to compress images is to open up your PowerPoint Options menu, go to the Advanced tab, find the Image Size and Quality section, and set a default resolution for all the images in your project.
Compressing images does cause you to lose some quality, so be sure to do it after you’ve made any edits you want on the images.
Want to try out these tricks and use some sweet templates at the same time?