Microsoft PowerPoint - Tips & Tools to Add Power to Your Point

A change in job brings with it a lot of interesting challenges. Challenges drive one to explore ways to do things better and fast. Here is a result of my exploration with Microsoft PowerPoint. Hope it helps you add power to your point in your presentations and saves you from Death by PowerPoint

• File > Send To > Microsoft Office Word - Ever wondered how those handouts with slides and space for notes made? Use this and its as simple as that.

• Tools > Compare & Merge presentations - Compare slide-by-slide multiple presentations. Excellent feature to compare (and merge) original with multiple reviewed presentations.

• Slide Show > Custom Shows > New... - Add selected slides from your presentation and this is your custom show. Click the "Show" button to play the custom set of slides. Useful when you have a deck of slides used for different situations. Saves you of maintaining multiple files of same presentation for different occasions and audiences. When a presentation is a study material, I use this is create sub-set of slides which I might want go through later.

• Slide Show > Rehearse Timings - Keep this ON when you rehearse your presentations to get an idea of how long it takes. Also, you can save the timings as slide transition timings for auto runs.

• Slide Show > Set Up Show > Loop continuously until 'Esc' - Useful in situations where the presentation is to infinitely run in a kiosk or road show stall.

• File > Properties - This is the identity of the file, especially the Author & Company. We don't care most of the times, but this is good-to-know where your identity is embedded.

• Tools > Options > General > Recently used file list - Keeping it high is useful at times when one is unsure where a document was saved.

• Format > Replace Fonts - Changes font across the presentation.

External Tools:
• FlashSpring Lite - Converts Microsoft PowerPoint documents to Macromedia Flash (*.swf)

• Thermometer: Adds progress bar in the bottom of all slides indicating the progress and how much is remaining. This is extremely useful when going through study materials when I am waiting for it to complete :)

• PDF Creator - Converts Microsoft Office documents to PDF. (Use the "Read Out Loud" feature in acrobat reader to then listen to the presentations.) Link...

• Autorun Presenter - Lets you run PowerPoint presentation right from the memory stick. No need to copy the presentation to the system nor does the system needs to have PowerPoint installed.

• Templates:
o Microsoft Template Packs
o Free-PPT :

• CartoonStock.com - Library of cartoons. Useful to add a zing to your presentations.

Feel free to share other tips and tools that have helped you to make the most of PowerPoint, a software which Microsoft says is being used to make 30 million presentations a day!