Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is a piece of presentation software produced by Microsoft for Windows operating systems and Mac OS X. Presentation software is designed to bring a visual element to public speaking – A bit like an up-to-date slide projector. In fact, just like a slide projector, PowerPoint allows the user to divide up their speech or presentation into a number of slides. These slides are flicked through during the presentation, which helps to emphasize the presenter’s points.

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Death by PowerPoint

PowerPoint Templates

Among other things, PowerPoint is often used for:

  • Presentations
  • Public speaking
  • Military planning

PowerPoint is hugely popular in business and government organizations. It’s estimated that PowerPoint has been installed on over a billion desktop computers, so if you’re looking for work it could really benefit you to become familiar with the program. In fact the program has become so popular that an estimated 350 PowerPoint presentations take place globally every second. With an audience that big it must be good, right? Well yes, actually, but it also suffers from a lot of misuse.

If you work in a corporate environment you’ve probably seen a fair share of terrible PowerPoint presentations - These are usually characterized by slides that are stuffed full of words in tiny font that fly in from every direction! This phenomenon is often referred to as Death by PowerPoint. For a cynical view have a read of Bob Parks’ Microsoft PowerPoint article at businessweek.com, fittingly named ‘Death to PowerPoint’.

Over the following pages I’ll be covering how to use PowerPoint, including most of the functionality. There will be downloadable resources and step-by-step instructions, and I’ll also be writing about my own thoughts and experiences.

I hope that the information provided in these pages will be useful to you, but either way please let me know what you want to see in future. I will routinely put up polls to find out what people want to see, and you can always send me an email.


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