PowerPoint is, hands down, one of the most powerful, yet an underrated tool from Microsoft. While it is still one of the most widely used software in the world, only professionals and savvy users have been able to dig deep in its understanding. While it can create graphs, statistics, and appealingly convey information, PowerPoint has also become notorious for ‘Death by PowerPoint,’ which has stirred debate on the use of PPT for pitches, etc.
To make active, use of PowerPoint, it is essential to understand each feature in the software and run several iterations to champion it.
PowerPoint has been nothing less than revolutionary for students, offices, and other institutes. It serves as a powerful tool to convey and supplement the speaker’s message to the audience. Since its inception, a lot has changed, and every time a new update comes in, it leaves us in awe! With the arrival of features like the Boolean tool and 3D rotation, it was thought PowerPoint has peaked at its ability to create compelling presentations, but we could not have been more wrong about it.
In 2019, PowerPoint has launched another set of updates among which one of the jaw-dropping ones has been the launch of AI tool and presenter coach, which we have already covered in one of our articles. There have been some massive improvements in the tool kits as well. Some are listed below:
1. Funnel Charts
Funnel chart could help you take your sales and finance presentation to the next level. It is the perfect tool to capture and depict trends.
2. Morph effect
Transitions are always fun to work in PowerPoint. They breathe life into presentations if added in the right amount. Morph effect is the best tool that one needed to take your presentations a level up. This transition effect adds energy to your presentation by animating objects you want to bring in focus on a slide. These objects can be made bigger from the background and thus can be altered accordingly.
3. Icons and 3D effects
Gone are the days when we had to deal with ClipArt tools. Icons and other 3D objects in PowerPoint are nothing less than a cherry on the cake. Options are available to add images from online sources or PPT stock. You can also add SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) images through this feature. It even goes further to the point where you can edit the picture by changing the color and texture. SVG files can be converted into shapes and hence become editable.
4. Zoom in
Zoom feature is a marvelous tool to help you improvise during the presentation. If you find your audience losing interest at some point, you may use this tool to jump between the slides and present only those slides which you deem important or are likely to redraw the audience’s attention. You can use this feature to take a glance at your slide deck and pick accordingly.
5. 4K or nothing
While PPT 2016 allowed you to convert your PPT deck into a video, 2019 goes one step ahead and enables you to export your video as an Ultra High Definition (HD) or 4K format for large screen displays.