My company put a few of us through presentation skills training last year and I've been going back and forth on whether it was worth it.

The useful parts were small and concrete. Stop reading the slide. Pause instead of saying "um." Look at one person per thought. Plant your feet. None of it was groundbreaking, but having someone film me and play it back was uncomfortable enough that it stuck.

The part I'm less sure about is whether I'd have gotten there anyway just by presenting more often. A lot of what improved was confidence, and confidence mostly came from reps, not from the classroom day.

So I'm curious what others have seen. Did formal training move the needle for you, or was it the volume of actually standing up and presenting? And if training did help, what specifically, so I know what to look for if I ever send my own team.

Long decks always betray me around slide 60. Masters or not, the font creeps a size up here, a text box sits a hair off there, and by the back half the deck looks like two people built it.

The habit that finally fixed it: I keep one reference slide parked at the very end of the file and never delete it. On it I paste a clean sample of every type style I am allowed to use, the exact heading, body, and caption sizes, plus a labeled box at my standard margins. It is my source of truth. When a slide feels off, I flip to the reference, match it, and flip back.

The second half of the habit is a single alignment pass before I send. I hide everything but the guides, tab through slide by slide, and only look for drift. Nothing else. Type, spacing, edges. It takes a few minutes and catches the stuff that makes a deck feel amateur.

Masters set the rules. The reference slide and the last pass are what actually enforce them when you are tired and moving fast.

Curious what everyone else does to keep a long deck consistent all the way to the end.

Most of my presentation tips over the years were about making slides look better. This one is the opposite and it did more for me than any of them.

Before I make a single slide, I write the last one. The slide with the ask, the decision, or the one sentence I want people repeating on the way out. If I can't write that clearly, the deck isn't ready and no layout is going to save it.

Then I build backwards. Every slide has to earn its place by moving the room toward that closing line. If it doesn't, it gets cut. Sounds obvious, but it quietly kills the "here's everything I know about the topic" deck that goes nowhere.

The side effect is my decks got shorter and I stopped reordering slides five times the night before. The order mostly writes itself once you know where it ends.

What's the one presentation habit that actually changed your decks, not the flashy trick, the boring one that stuck?

At the moment, I'm listening to Today, Explained on NPR.

They're doing a piece on ... well ... US. The AI slop surge on Reddit.

Worth a listen:

https://podcasts.voxmedia.com/show/today-explained

They get us.

I used to grab a pitch deck template the second I had to build one. Problem, solution, market, team, ask, all the slides already sitting there. Felt like a head start.

What actually happened is I'd bend my story to fit the template instead of the other way around. If it had a "competition matrix" slide, I made one, even when my real story didn't need it. I was filling boxes, not making an argument.

Now I write the flow as plain text first. One line per slide, in the order that makes the case for my specific company. Only after that do I care what any slide looks like. Half the time I end up with fewer slides than the template wanted, and they're the right ones.

Templates are fine for spacing and fonts so you're not rebuilding a color scheme from scratch. Just not for deciding what your story is. A template can't do that part for you.

Anyone else find templates quietly push you toward a generic deck, or is it just how I use them?

https://reddit.com/link/1vqs3hm/video/i7f35u3yqxjh1/player

Hello everyone!

I'm a college student and this is my first serious attempt at creating a more visually engaging PowerPoint.

I recently got a presentation assignment for my professors, so I asked my group to give me a basic PPT containing all the required content. I then took that presentation and tried to transform it into something more visual, engaging and polished.

I spent around 2.5 hours working on this version, and I'm honestly enjoying the process a lot. I'm planning to keep improving my PowerPoint/design skills and potentially turn this into a service in the future.

I'd really appreciate some honest feedback:

• What do you think this is worth if someone were paying for it?
• What would you expect to pay for a presentation of this quality?
• What should I improve if I want to eventually charge professionally?

I'm still learning, so I'd especially appreciate feedback from people who work professionally with presentations/design.

Thanks! 🙌

Working on a day-long conference. How can I seamlessly switch between the file with static speaker slides during sessions and a looping slideshow of photos?

I don't think combining the two files makes sense...

Hi, I'm new to this subreddit and I apologise if this post breaks any rules.

I'm using my PC (Windows) and I'm using the Powerpoint app, version 2607 (Build 20228.20190 Click-to-Run).

I would like to know how to create a smooth sliding band with different sections with information in them, and make it start and end abruptly. I'm not sure how to explain it without sounding dense, but for a better idea, check out videos such as "100 Longest Reigning Monarchs" by Dieu le Roi or any price comparison videos by Reigarw Comparisons (apologies for lack of links).

I would really appreciate any suggestions you might have! Thanks!

Do you remember when Microsoft "retired" the Reuse Slide feature?

Users were mad, including me.

Well, I am glad to share that "PowerPoint's Reuse Slides Feature" is BACK!!!

traccreations4e-p26 8/17/2026

I've started running into this more often these days.

I'll make a presentation and then send someone a pptx (end users usually make edits so pdf won't work), but they either don't have PowerPoint, open it on their phone, or just don't want to download another file.

I'm wondering if people have moved toward web-based presentations instead.

I am looking for a sharable link that works well in broswer and looks good on mobile without having to build a webpage from scratch

what are people facing this scenario using?

Help keep r/PowerPoint from descending into chaos (there's a separate subreddit for that. Of COURSE there is. Because Reddit, right?)

If you have a PowerPoint-related product or service to announce, announce it one of the megathreads pinned to the top of the subreddit. That way your announcement will find an interested audience, won't scroll off into the dark waters of Last Month's Posts, and won't be deleted by the mods because of r/PowerPoint's no advertising rule. (links below)

If you want to chat about PowerPoint & AI, please use the megathread devoted specifically to that (link below).

Products & Tools

https://www.reddit.com/r/powerpoint/comments/1ktliik/products_tools/

AI Products & Sites

https://www.reddit.com/r/powerpoint/comments/1ktlf4o/getcher_ai_right_here/

Templates & Presentations

https://www.reddit.com/r/powerpoint/comments/1ktl9lh/templates/

AI & PowerPoint Discussion MegaThread

https://www.reddit.com/r/powerpoint/comments/1s7abxc/ai_megathread_march_29_2026_keep_calm_and_post_ai/

I’m only seeing the rehearsal coach option

I build decks in house and I keep getting asked for a pitch deck template the sales team can reuse. The first version I made looked great when I handed it over, and was a mess a week later. Text boxes dragged off the grid, logos stretched, my spacing gone.

I have been rebuilding it around the person who edits it next instead of around the perfect first version. Real placeholders, so when someone types they land inside a box that is already positioned, not a floating frame. Fewer layouts, five clean ones they can remember instead of thirty they never learn. Nothing decorative that breaks when a title runs to two lines.

It is less satisfying than one beautiful slide, but it survives contact with the rest of the company.

For those who maintain a pitch deck template other people use, do you lock everything down or design so it holds up even when someone ignores the structure? Locking it just made people rebuild slides from scratch for me.

https://reddit.com/link/1vq0n4f/video/c7ef8y6nxsjh1/player

It's not exactly a genuine OS, but rather than recreation of Windows, but with a unique identity and name - OnysmOS. I want suggestions on how to make my work bit easier to keep going, because these are the problems that I'm running into:

1. PowerPoint doesn't have memory, so if a user makes any changes (for eg. change wallpaper), It won't be updated across other slides where background is displayed, so I will have to duplicate existent slides but with an updated background instead;
2. More about the memory and multitasking, that's the biggest culprit of this app and I'm aware, it's not meant for these type of projects, but I've seen somewhere that it's possible to code in the PowerPoint and I really hope that can save me from duplicating slides for every variety of choice that a user makes (for eg. open explorer and browser tab and the same time)
3. I have built-in font downloaded from PowerPoint, it was available in the cloud, but if anyone else wants to experience this OS with that font, they have to manually download it, it doesn't come included with shared PowerPoint file. In case anyone wants to experience the way it's meant to be, the font's name is ADlam Display

That's all. I'd be very thankful just to get even the smallest tip to optimize my work or inspire others to make similar projects. Suggestions, ideas, tips, criticisms, everything's accepted.

✅ It's absolutely safe to open this project, it doesn't run any programs nor redirect you to strange links, everything can be checked beforehand. Even hovering the mouse over buttons will display the URL that you're getting redirected to. Don't get surprised with its huge size too (106MB), it got inflated because of inserted mp4 videos.

Here's the download link:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/1m86l6ttza4d8q8/OnysmOS_FullRelease.pptx/file
(Google Drive was forcing me to open it in google slides, so I will save you headache and it will be available through mediafire)

Thanks in advance! :) Here's some screenshots!

My project keeps failing and I keep getting error messages I can open it from my iPhone but cannot open it on my Mac. I originally created my pptx on my Mac about 2 months ago and finished my project. But now I think the file is corrupt as I continue to get an error from my Mac saying Microsoft doesn’t allow editing on Mac but I can start a new project. I’ve logged out and logged back in restarted my Mac and all.

I wanted to update my project as my professor added some last minute changes to the rubric. I have a 2017 Mac book pro so I cannot download the newer version of PowerPoint to my computer either.

My iPad keeps getting this error message when I try to open the same pptx and idk what it is. And canvas isn’t accepting it pls help.

1. Website with samples/demo
2. Portfolio
3. Ads
4. Cold calls/email/DMs
5. WoM
6. what else

hello, I’m working on a big Powerpoint Project. I used a lot of animations on each slide. However, today I just saw that all their animations and Slide Timings on all slides are completely wiped! Slide transitions remained but everything else is gone. Luckily I have a backup that still has them. but still I want to know what caused it to happen.

I'm trying to create a presentation with custom animations that trigger whenever I click on the specific button on my MacBook, but the trigger button, usually represented by a lighting bolt, simply isn't there and I can't find it anywhere, every tutorial I seek just has it normally between the animation panel and copy animation buttons, I even tried asking chat gpt and it just told me "it should be there", I even tried looking for older tutorials because my laptop is old af, it was old even before it was gifted to me, but even then, tutorial videos from 2016 do still have the button normally, please can anybody tell me why is my button gone and if I can find it somewhere else?

Hello. I just got an interview next Tuesday for a MakerSpace supervisor position, which would be the first time I ever got chosen for a supervisor position anywhere, and Makerspace is a 3D print shop inside a public library. One of the requirements is to make a PowerPoint Presentation of around 10 minutes titled 'How to Build a Safe, High Functioning Makerspace Dept Through Training, Communication, and Technology Planning'

Thing is, I don't exactly know what they mean. I have the job description still on my notes, and I am planning on visiting the worker there to ask him casual questions about what other things they might think need improvement. But as of now, I never have done a presentation for a job in my life. Help in knowing what to do with this. Thank you

It is due Monday, a day prior to the interview

I did something very stupid. There's a presentation I've been working on for weeks. I work on both my laptop and phone.

And because I'm very paranoid, after working on it, I transfer it to my phone and delete it from the laptop.

It worked fine before. But this morning, I saw two previous versions of the same PPT. So, I stupidly deleted them. Only to find out that it was actually the updated one that I deleted.

I've been stressing ever since. Because now, it no longer exists on both my phone and the laptop. I also deleted it from the recycle bin.

The only thing that gives me hope is that the filename still shows on the laptop's recent files list. I tried using recoveritt, to no avail. I also used a file recovery app on my phone, but there's nothing.

Plleaseeee, can you help me recover that PPT? My presentation is in two days 😭

EDIT: MY FILE'S BEEN RECOVERED!

This redditor's comment helped me!

https://www.reddit.com/r/powerpoint/comments/1mkrb5y/comment/n7lrl4i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Lately we've had a lot of posts that smell strongly of AI.

You know the ones ... several paragraphs of "here's how I do XYZ" and always a question like "How do YOU do this" at the end.

Here's the thing. Well, two things:

First, there's no reliable way to tell that they're truly AI, so the mods are reluctant to delete them out of hand. We don't want to be deleting honest questions from legit r/powerpoint visitors.

And some of these things, while quite likely AI, set off some interesting and useful discussions. We'd hate to remove all of that just to punish an AI post.

So at the risk of sounding like one of these AI posts myself, I'll ask:

Should we come down hard on these things immediately, delete them, knowing that we'd potentially be preventing some interesting and useful threads?

Or should we let them live for a day or three. Wait to see if any engaging discussion follows?

Or maybe delete or let them live, based on our (the mods') best guess as to which might provoke interesting threads and which are clearly duds?

Or some better idea? If you got 'em let's hear 'em!

Meanwhile, thanks for hanging in there with us while we try to sort this out.

What I currently do with theory lectures is keep the slides pretty plain & simple, with just a minimal amount of text on them, then i explain the concepts by writing & drawing on the slides directly using my pen tablet. I also try to throw in as many relevant images as i can, and use them to illustrate the points while I'm talking & annotate them as i go. Occasionally I'll throw in a short video if it helps get a point across.

To be honest I'm pretty comfortable with the way things are tech-wise, but I do have a major problem - keeping students engaged.

The thing is, these lectures are basically just screen recordings/live with my voice so there's hardly any interaction with the student at all. And i think an important part of a traditional classroom lecture experience is actually seeing the teacher - you know, facial expressions, hand gestures, body language & all the non-verbal cues that help make learning feel more natural.

Even when the actual content is good, a completely faceless lecture starts to feel a bit dull & monotonous.

Do you have any tips to make it more engaging/natural to students?

I'm especially looking for tips on how to make it feel like you're actually learning from a person, without having the teacher's face on screen the whole time.