Ready for any PowerPoint emergency. (c) Thinkstock

Recently, I was a part of a university event where I needed to present along with a senior executive from my company and several student teams. Rather than switching out the laptops for each different presentation, I decided to load all of the presentations on to my machine beforehand. I hate it when you run into setup problems when one group’s laptop doesn’t work properly with the projector or some other issue — and it throws off the whole schedule. What I didn’t anticipate was that the presentation remote would only work with the desktop computer in the auditorium.

No problem. I had all of the presentations also loaded on to a USB flash drive so I could transfer the files on to the desktop. However, in its infinite wisdom, the university’s IT group blocked any files from being installed on the desktop including a font file that one of the teams needed. After explaining the situation to an IT “support” person, he indicated nothing could be done before our event started. Aaagggh. Luckily, someone had brought their own presentation remote so we could just run the presentations from my laptop.

Often it’s easier said than done “to be prepared”, but we often focus so much on the actual presentation itself and forget the other small technical details that can completely ruin our beautiful slides and well-rehearsed thoughts. In reflecting on this recent situation, I had several takeaways for presenters who want to be more prepared for PowerPoint emergencies:

1. Be early

Nothing defuses potential problems like having ample time to adjust or adapt. If I wasn’t early for the aforementioned event, I would have been scrambling and very stressed out right before I was set to present. Not ideal. It’s always a best practice to arrive early for important presentations to familiarize yourself with your environment, technology, audience, etc. Nothing says “I don’t care about my audience” like unnecessary delays or complications due to arriving last-minute and expecting everything to “just work” — and it doesn’t.

2. Have a back-up plan

As you’re building your presentation, anticipate problems before they happen and have a contingency plan in place. Common problem areas include needing internet access to show a website or displaying a live product demo. What will you do if you can’t access a website or the demo crashes? I often have screenshots of the website or product in my presentation if something goes wrong. While screenshots might not be as good as the real thing, they’re better than nothing. Panic from not having a back-up plan can throw off what would have been a great presentation.

3. Invest in a 16 Gig (or higher) USB flash drive

You never know when you’ll need a way to quickly transfer a file from one computer to another prior to a presentation. We frequently assume that we’ll have an internet connection available so we can just email files back and forth, but experience has shown that’s not always the case as Murphy’s Law will often kick in. What if the wifi reception in the room is spotty or the files are too big to email? Having a large-capacity USB drive overcomes these types of issues, and the USB drives are now fairly inexpensive. I picked up a new Kingston 16 GB flash drive from Amazon for less than $20.

4. Buy your own presentation remote

After this recent experience, I finally broke down and bought my own remote — probably something I should have done ages ago (I know, I know). Now I have one less thing to worry about from a technology and usability perspective. I love my new Logitech Professional Presenter R800 (about $60). It works flawlessly, and I don’t have to worry about figuring out an unfamiliar remote. I also hate being tethered to a computer, and the remote gives me the freedom I need to engage and interact with my audience (as well as a handy laser pointer built into the remote).

5. Apple Users: Get an extra VGA cable adapter

If you use a MacBook Pro, you’ll want to have a spare Apple Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter. When I’ve used an Apple MacBook, I needed to bring my VGA cable adapter for internal meetings; however, I often forgot to pack it for external meetings. I found it was better just to have one permanently in my laptop bag for external presentations in addition to the one I used in the office.

How else do you prepare for potential PowerPoint emergencies? Pack a spare CAT5 cable? An extension cord? I’m sure there are other tips and tools that may have helped you to be more prepared. Please share them!

Popularity: 3% [?]

I love quotes. (c)Thinkstock

When you’re trying to add more emphasis or credibility to a key point in your presentation, a quote can come in handy. I’m a fan of a good, well-placed quote. I’ve even assembled a humble collection of PowerPoint-related quotes. However, just like inappropriate or tired images can detract from your content, so can poorly-chosen or over-used quotes. I thought I’d share some thoughts and tips on using quotes in PowerPoint presentations.

Two types of quotes

I’ve found that good quotes fall into two main categories:

1. Powerful quote because of who uttered it: Sometimes who stated the quote is just as important as what was said. If you have a quote by someone highly respected or highly relevant to your topic (e.g., your competitor’s CEO), the quote gains credibility and potency simply by who stated it. The opposite effect can also happen. For example, I found a great quote by Richard Nixon – but I decided against using it because it came from the disgraced former US president.
2. Powerful quote despite who uttered it: In some cases, the quote is so insightful or appropriate that it doesn’t really matter who said it. Generally, it’s hard to find quotes that don’t come from some reasonably respected source, but the quoted individual might be fairly obscure and not familiar to your audience. I like to do a Wikipedia search on the individual to find out more about their background and make sure that nothing in their past would conflict with the point I’m trying to make. In a few instances, I found a great quote by an unfamiliar person but when I researched the author I found they had a checkered past, which soured me on using their quotes.

Which type of quotes do you tend to use? Do you tend to favor one type over another? At the end of the day it comes down to the appropriateness or relevance of the quote to your content. If it’s credited to someone well-respected or well-known, then you don’t have to worry about explaining who the author is. In the case of the second option, you might need to indicate who they are (e.g., first female boxer, 18th-century English poet. etc.).

Finding good quotes

Two of the best sites for finding good quotes are Brainyquote.com and Thinkexist.com. Both have extensive selections of quotes. One of the challenges of finding good quotes is getting the right keyword. Without the right keyword, you might not identify the quote you need. Experiment with different synonyms as well as plural forms. For example, simply trying “tools” instead of “tool” opened up better quotes during a recent quote search I was performing.

In addition, some of the best sources of inspirational quotes are collections of quotes for particular topics (e.g., motivation, success, design, adversity, etc.). The advantage of these collections is that they don’t necessarily contain a specific keyword. Sometimes you can be limited by the terms you search for. I’ve found these quote collections by searching for the topic by including “quotes and sayings” in your search.  A good example of one of these sites is quotegarden.com, which has quotes by a variety of topics. If you’re a fan of using quotes, I also recommend keeping track of our favorite quotes as you find them by keeping them in a single document so you can easily find them when you need them.

Verify your quotes

Check out Ralph Keyes book!

When you choose a quote, you’ll want to be sure to get the right source. Sometimes a popular quote will be attributed to several different people. You might want to double-check who the most likely source was using Wikiquote or Ralph Keyes’ Quote Verifier book. I would also recommend checking on quotes that are deemed to be “anonymous” or “author unknown”. I found a great quote (“Words divide us, action unites us”) that was supposedly from an unknown author until I discovered it was actually the slogan of a South American terrorist group (Uruguay’s Tupamaros). Yikes. Finally, you may want to check the context of the quote (if it’s even possible to ascertain). You may interpret the quote differently than the way the author intended. Sometimes it won’t matter if you’re using the quote out of context, but in other situations the context may be critical.

Short and sweet

For presentations, I’d recommend using short quotes that are quick reads for your audience – say no more than a couple of lines (less than 15 words). Occasionally, I might use a longer quote but the payoff needs to be worth the increased text. Some quoted people have the talent to express things more succinctly (Albert Einstein – succinct, Bill Gates – verbose). Make sure you’re not passing up a more succinct quote simply because you’ve settled on the first relevant quote you’ve found.

The top quote is really short. The second quote is pushing the length limits (one of my favorite quotes BTW).

Quotes and images

Typically, I’ve seen quotes presented in three methods. First, you may choose to feature the quote without any images (e.g., white text on a dark background). With a minimalist approach your audience isn’t distracted from focusing on the key point or message within the quote. You can emphasize key parts of the quote with italics, bold, color, size, font, etc. (check out this blog post for some inspiration). If the author of the quote is well-known and important to the quote, you may decide to include a picture of the individual who stated it (see below). Third, you may choose to emphasize the message (and not the author) by tying the quote to a descriptive image. There is no preferred way, and the best approach will depend on your audience, your message, and what you’re trying to achieve.

Here you see three versions of the same quote using different approaches (text, author image, and topic image).

Interestingly, the often-quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson once stated, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” Quotes aren’t substitutes for good content, but they can reinforce good content. You can quote me on that!

Popularity: 7% [?]

Paste options . . . it was love at first sight. (c) Thinkstock

Whether you’re building a PowerPoint presentation from a few other slide decks or creating charts in Excel to add into your slides, you’re constantly copying and pasting things into PowerPoint. One of the most frustrating things is when you copy something – a slide, chart, or table – and paste it into PowerPoint 2007, all of the formatting changes. Grrrrr. More work that you didn’t need. One of my more popular blog posts is actually how to retain the formatting of a slide when it is inserted into another presentation in PowerPoint 2007.

You'll see other options depending on what you're pasting.

In PowerPoint 2010, Microsoft has combined the Paste Special dialog box with Office Paste Recovery feature so you have easier access to different paste options. In addition, if you’re not sure which paste option to use, you get a live preview so you can see what the end result will look like. It’s definitely a great user-centric enhancement to PowerPoint. In fact, it’s my favorite new feature in PowerPoint 2010 so far because I use it so much (Office 2010 for that matter because it works in Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.). It was love at first sight when I found it. (Is there such a thing as love at first paste? It sounds weird).

Pasting entire slides into PowerPoint 2010

When you’re pasting slides from another presentation, you’re going to have three options:

1. Use Destination Theme: The slide will be reformatted to work with the theme and template of the presentation you’re pasting into. Depending on how different the two templates are, you could notice significant differences when you use this paste option.
2. Keep Source Formatting: The slide will retain its original appearance, including the background template. Tip: If you want to keep the same color theme for objects within a slide but not retain the slide’s original template, copy the guts of the slide (instead of the entire slide) and then paste them into a new slide using this “keep source formatting” option. That way your template will be consistent across all of your slides, and you don’t have to spend extra time restoring everything to its original color scheme.
3. Picture: The slide is inserted as an image within the presentation. I think there are limited applications for this option.

In PowerPoint 2007, you had these same options but they were a little buried in the tool and hard to find. Note: When you’re pasting an entire slide, you don’t get the live preview option. The live preview feature only works when you’re pasting objects (e.g., charts, text, tables, etc.) into a slide rather than an entire slide.

Pasting charts or tables into PowerPoint 2010

When I paste this chart, the colors have changed (left). Whereas if I keep the source formatting (right), it will match what I originally created in Excel.

One of the most frustrating things is to create a nice Excel chart and paste it into PowerPoint, and watch all of your formatting and colors change right before your ideas. You then have to go in and reformat the stupid chart to the way you originally had it in Excel or paste it as an image.

Subtle differences between your PowerPoint template's theme colors and the default colors will cause problems.

You may be wondering why this happens. If you’re using a corporate template, the designer will have adjusted the theme colors to match corporate brand colors. However, all of the other Office applications (Word, Excel, etc.) will still have the default color theme. When you bring over a chart or table, the colors will align with the color theme of the presentation rather than staying with the default colors. The good news is with Office 2010 you no longer have this problem as you can easily retain the source formatting using the enhanced 2010 Paste Options. Hooray!

Popularity: 15% [?]

Localize (localise) your slides! (c) Thinkstock

If you present in various locations around the world or even within your own country/province/state/county/city, you might want to consider localizing your slides for your various audiences. The path of least effort is to make one generic version of your slides and just present the same version to all audiences. With the generic slides, you pass up any advantage you would gain from making the slides more relevant and meaningful to a specific local audience. There are some real benefits to localization as local examples can really pique the interest and attention of your audience. More…

Popularity: 10% [?]

You can bedazzle your presentations with new transitions in PowerPoint 2010. But should you?

If you’ve used slide transitions in PowerPoint, you’ll be happy to know that Microsoft has upgraded the transition effects in PowerPoint 2010. They’re slicker and smoother than the stale ones that you’ve seen in recent versions of PowerPoint. In fact, if you’ve seen any presentations done on Apple’s Keynote presentation software, you’ll recognize some similar effects in PowerPoint 2010 (e.g., the “cube turn” transition). I believe the 19 new transitions were a direct response to Keynote’s more cinematic, professional-looking transition effects, which put to shame PowerPoint’s transition effects. More…

Popularity: 20% [?]