Online PowerPoint Presentation.com

Many web conferencing companies now allow you to upload your PowerPoint presentations and present them during your online meeting. It is important however, to make sure that your presentation is streamlined so that the conversion process from your PowerPoint slides into their format is seamless. Many presentations are artificially “bloated” with large image files and animations and video.

Most web conferencing companies that support online PowerPoint presentations actually convert each PowerPoint side into an image and then sequentially displays the images to look like a standard presentation. This conversion process however will render animations and video unusable, and will usually be displayed however it looks when the slide is first loaded. In developing presentations for the web avoid using animations or video.

Using standard fonts will ensure that the online version of your presentation will look the same as it does on your personal computer. Foreign fonts will often be converted to a standard font that might not look right with your design and theme. Arial and Times New Roman are fonts that are supported by all computers.

Finally, and most importantly, make sure that the images that you are using in your presentation aren’t larger than they need to be. Many people download an image from an email or the web that are very high resolution. When you insert this image into PowerPoint, it will reduce the picture on the screen, but they physical size of the picture is still very large and will make your presentation larger than it needs to be. If you have a very large photograph, use any photo-editing tool to physically reduce the size of the image before inserting it into your presentation.

Today, many people distribute a copy of their online PowerPoint presentation to the audience at the end of their web conference or webinar. To make sure that all recpients are able to flawlessly view the presentation on their own computer, here are some design tips that will help prevent viewing problems:

1. Use fonts that come pre-installed with Microsoft Windows, or better yet, standard cross-platform fonts like Arial and Times New Roman, which are pre-installed on both Windows and Macintosh systems. If you use special fonts that the recipient of the presentation doesn’t have, it will default to a different font that may not be as flattering or style appropriate when viewed on their system.

2. Avoid embedding video and audio files. These will not necessarily go from Macintosh to Windows (and vice-versa) systems gracefully. You have to be very careful about how you insert the files in order to get them to “travel” properly. These media files can make a PowerPoint presentation very large and difficult to send via Email. Media files may also have difficulty playing properly in a web conference.

3. Go through all of the slides in your presentation on a different platform (Macintosh and Windows); be prepared for slight visual changes and make sure they are all acceptable. If your presentation is complex, try it on multiple machines. Most importantly, if you are presenting the PowerPoint online, be sure to do a few run-throughs with your web conference software.