Ms – powerpoint : outlining & structuring a presentation

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2.  Think of a movie that has breathtaking special effects but no
storyline. Does it have any chances of becoming a blockbuster? Of
course not. The same is true with a PowerPoint presentation. No
matter how beautiful the visuals of your slide deck are, it will never
be a success if it doesn’t follow a logically sound structure.
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3. Why Is Structuring a Presentation
Important?
 A sound deck structure is crucial for audience understanding. When
the information is presented logically, it’s much easier for a viewer to
get the message. The research supports this idea – it shows that
people are 40% more likely to retain structured information than
unstructured information.
 If you’re going to accompany your slideshow with an oral
presentation, a good structure is also important for you as a speaker.
It will help you feel confident, stay on topic, and avoid any awkward
silences, so you’re more likely to win your audience over.
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4. What Is the Typical Presentation
Structure?
 A good presentation always has a story to tell and, like any narration,
it consists of three basic parts: introduction, body, and conclusion.
Let’s look at each part in greater detail with some examples.
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5. Introduction
 The introduction sets the tone for the entire presentation and explains what the
audience will come away with after viewing it. Here are the slides you may need to add
in the intro:
 The title. Introduce the topic of your presentation and provide a brief description.
 A table of contents / main menu. You can make it interactive by using hyperlinks.
Viewers can choose a chapter to navigate there.
 Objectives. State your presentation’s objectives to let your audience know what new
knowledge they will acquire.
 Definitions (optional). You will need this slide if you want to introduce some new terms
and concepts and provide their definitions.
All the slide examples above are taken from the iSpring Suite Content Library. To get
into more details, continue reading .
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6. The body
 This is the main part of your presentation, which should keep the
promises you made in the introduction. This is where you explain your
topic and present all your information.
 Depending on the nature of your presentation, divide it into
segments/points. Arrange your points in a logical order and then provide
information to support each of them. There are many different ways to
organize your key points, for example:
 Number your points according to their priority (1, 2, 3, …)
 Place the points in a time frame (past, present, future)
 Use narration (tell a story from beginning to end)
 Present the points with a problem-solution dynamic (state a problem,
describe its impact, offer ways to solve the issue)
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7. Conclusion
 A good conclusion summarizes the key points you made or highlights what
the audience should have learned. It clarifies the general purpose of your
presentation and reinforces the reason for viewing it. Here are the slides
you may want to include:
 Summary. List what goals your audience have achieved, what knowledge
they got, and how this information can help them in the future.
 Conclusion. Here you can thank your audience for viewing the
presentation.
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8. Tips for Structuring a Presentation
in PPT
 Now that you know which parts a typical presentation should consist
of, let’s see how to structure it in PowerPoint.
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9. 1. Combine slides into sections
 When working with a large PowerPoint presentation (PPT), you can create sections that can be
collapsed and expanded. This will help you keep slides organized and facilitate navigation in editing
mode. To do that, follow these steps:
 In the list of slides, right-click on the one where you want the new section to begin, and select Add
Section from the drop-down menu.
 Now right-click where it says Untitled Section, and select Rename Section. Then type in the name of
the section. If necessary, repeat the process to create and name other sections.
 To shift a section, right-click on its name and use the Move Section Up and Move Section
Down options.
 To collapse or expand a certain section, click on the collapse icon to the left of the section name. You can
also minimize and maximize all sections at once by right-clicking on the section name and
choosing Collapse All or Expand All.
 As well, you can access these settings by choosing Slide Sorter under the VIEW tab.
 This kind of segmentation is a great way to overview the logical flow of your slides all at once and see if
there are any changes required. For example, you may decide to break one slide into two or three, or the
other way around.
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10. 2. Use the Outline View
 One other way to structure a PowerPoint presentation in the editing mode is to use Outline
View. You can choose it from the VIEW tab.
 This view doesn’t display sections, but it shows the title and main text of each slide, which
can give you a quick overview of the presentation contents. Here you can go through the
entire text and edit it instantly. You can also work with text (on the left) and slides (on the
right) simultaneously, as the latter is shown on the right side of your screen.
 Note that, to be displayed in an outline, text needs to be typed in a text placeholder, not a
text box. A text placeholder is a box with the words “Click to add text” or “Click to add title”,
and it appears when you choose a standard layout.
 You can also use Outline View to promote bullet text to titles and the other way around. To
do that, right-click on a relevant title or text and select the Promote or Demote options.
 Be attentive about demoting a title, as this will delete the original slide and move its title and
text to the adjacent slide.
 PowerPoint only allows users to promote and demote text, not entire slides. Therefore,
there’s no possibility to change the hierarchical order of slides.
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11. 3. Create a table of contents
 All the aforementioned tips help you organize a presentation when formatting it. However, it’s crucial that your
viewers can easily navigate through the presentation too. One sure way to provide them with this opportunity is
to create an interactive and structured table of contents.
 Though there’s no native automatic outline in PowerPoint, it can be created manually:
 Insert a table of contents into the title slide or a blank one. To add a slide, click on New Slide on the ribbon. Then
select all the objects on the slide and delete them.
 For the chapters, you will need to use the titles of the slides. This is where the now familiar Outline View comes
in handy. You can access it from the VIEW tab. Right-click anywhere on the outline pane, choose Collapse,
then Collapse All. This way, only the titles are displayed.
 Press Ctrl+A to select all the names, and Ctrl+C to copy them.
 Then Press Ctrl+V to paste the copied titles on the desired slide. In case there are too many titles and they don’t
fit onto a single page, you can divide the table of contents into two columns or place it on two slides.
 Now select and right-click the title of the first slide and choose Link.
 In the open window, click on Place in This Document on the left-hand menu, then choose the corresponding
slide and click OK.
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12. How to set up navigation
 As you can see, the new presentation has a pop-up outline and a navigation panel,
which make it possible to move to any slide at any time without leaving the slide
show mode.
 To create navigation in your presentation, follow these simple steps:
 Open PowerPoint and switch to the iSpring Suite tab. Click on Slide
Properties on the toolbar.
 Here you can see the slide titles. Unlike in PowerPoint, you can give a slide any
name regardless of the text in the placeholder. You can also organize slides into a
hierarchy by changing their nesting levels. To do that, select any slide(s) and click
on the Promote or Demote buttons on the toolbar.
To collapse or expand nested slides, use the “-” and “+” icons to the left of a top-
level slide. The arranged slides can also be easily minimized and maximized during
presentation playback, since they appear as menus and sub-menus in the outline.
 PowerPoint doesn’t have a specific panel where you can simply set up the
navigation of all the slides – you need to configure it manually for each slide, which
is awkward and time consuming
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13. How to configure an outline
 Whereas PowerPoint requires the outline to be designed manually, iSpring
Suite has already prepared it for you. At the same time, you don’t have to
stick with the standard outline template, as you can easily customize the
player’s final look and feel:
 On the iSpring Suite toolbar, click on Publish.
 Find Player and click on Universal
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