Public speaking and effective presentation skills are two crucial steps for climbing up the corporate ladder. MS PowerPoint is one of the smartest tools to help and support you in excelling both. Powered with features such as SmartArt, Animations and Transitions, it not only helps with a visually better display of our subject matter, but also enhances our presentation skills and helps us express ourselves better.

While many of us do not think twice before adding MS PowerPoint to the skill column of our resumes, barely do we even explore all the available options, leave apart actually making use of them for our presentations.

So, while the PowerPoint pros claim to have used all the swivels, bounces and floats of the world, let’s us have a look at 5 power-packed PowerPoint tricks that can make a difference to your presentation!

1. What if the audience doesn’t look at you while presenting?

Audience not concentrating on you during a presentation is as bad/good as sending the PowerPoint presentation as an attachment to a mail. More often than not, we ourselves are to be blamed for making flashy slides that takes away the attention. In order to get the attention back, a single hit on ‘B’ or ‘W’ key works quite well. The screen completely goes black or white, respectively, thus allowing no distraction whatsoever.

1. Does repeated copy – pasting of screenshots annoy you?

Not long since you made a presentation with a lot of screenshots demonstrating varied processes? Snipping tool or ‘prt scr’, and copy-pasting them individually could be a mess, especially when the boss is on your head to send the presentation within minutes. In such a situation, this highly ignored button in the Insert menu is a life savior – Screenshot – that helps in quickly adding a screenshot of any of the windows open on your desktop.

1. Are you troubled by too many items on the same slide?

How many times have you manhandled the left button of your mouse or touch-pad by clicking it ruthlessly, trying to select an item, which was hidden behind another one on the slide? ‘Send to back/backwards’ might be a way to help it. But why do it, when we have the Selection Pane to take care of it! One click on this button under the Format menu opens a navigation pane on the right side of the screen, which helps in hassle-free maneuver across different items on the slides.

1. Do you also get irritated of returning to the first slide after the slideshow view ends?

One key that we most commonly hit while making a presentation is F5, trying every now and then to check how the slide would look on a bigger screen. Although an easy hit, the trouble is when it takes us to the first slide every single time, and not directly to the slide we were working on. Imagine being on the 20th slide! A way easier thing to do is to simply click on the Reading Viewbutton/icon, either under the View tab or on the Status Bar at the bottom. Not only does it help in quickly viewing the slide we are working on, on the bigger screen, but a single hit on Esc reverts us to the same edit view. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be!

1. Don’t lie; you did copy paste the same slide 500 times, didn’t you?

Being an Indian, finding solutions come naturally to us. Remember the last time you copy pasted the same slide multiple times to make it loop long enough for you to finish talking? But why do it, when you’ve got the option of Kiosk Presentation, which helps you put your presentation on a seamless loop. Just go to the ‘Set Up Slide Show’ option under the Slide Show tab, select ‘Browsed at a Kiosk’ under ‘Show type’; and your presentation gets ready to loop!

So, now when you go for your next big presentation, show them what you’ve got! Make sure to use these power-packed PowerPoint tips and power-up your public speaking. Remember, as you grow up the corporate ladder, and start fitting into those leadership shoes, it will more be about how you present yourself and the way you walk that talk. Cheers!