The 12 tips in this feature are written specifically for people using PowerPoint, but many of the ideas are equally applicable to other presentation graphics programs. (Continued)

7. Speed through adaptation

Go to View/Master/Slide Master and all the elements of the template become editable. You can change the size and shape of graphic elements on the master and remove or add extra objects. Any changes you make will be reflected in all slides using that master so it becomes a very quick way of creating original layouts.

By adding different color schemes to PowerPoint's Design Templates, you have a wide range of different combinations. By default, there are 34 design templates in PowerPoint and 12 color schemes, giving 408 combinations in all.

If you run the Microsoft Office XP installer, however, you can add more, for a total of 76 design templates or over 900 design and color combinations. These broaden your choices and make it less likely that you'll be using the same designs or color schemes as other people in your organization.

8. Over-busy transitions

In PowerPoint, you can browse through available transitions by moving to Slide Sorter view and clicking on the Transition button in the button bar.
As you click through the list of transitions in the Task Pane, the selected slide thumbnail previews how it will look.

As with many things in a presentation - fonts, colors and graphics on a slide - less is often better. Although you can keep interest by using interesting transitions, don't be tempted to use a different one each time.

PowerPoint offers a huge range of transition effects, but you're much better choosing one, or maybe two, for the whole presentation. Pick a transition that offers some visual relief and use it between most slides, saving a second, more zany transition for a slide of particular importance.

Transitions are to a presentation what punctuation is to a sentence. They are there to make the breaks between themes obvious and to bracket the most important parts of your talk.

9. Small slide, big video

Part of your presentation may well be a promotional video and using this could save you several slides worth of explanation. You can, of course, display a video from within a PowerPoint slide.

To do this, add a slide to your presentation which contains a frame for media. There are plenty available in the Design Templates list in the Task Pane. You can then import your video file directly into the frame on your slide and run it during your presentation.

If you have developed any kind of flow or storyline running through your presentation, the screening of a video in the middle of it will disrupt this and you'll be back to a standing start again after it has run.

Even if you have enlarged the video frame to the full size of your PowerPoint slide, you are likely to see some degradation in the quality or frame rate of the video. You'll be better off running it from a second projector or as a separate video file from a dedicated video player on your PC.

10. Timing is everything

If you spend too long on one slide you may have to rush through others to complete your presentation on time. As with any show, the key to getting this right is rehearsal.

PowerPoint can help with your timing by recording how long each slide is displayed as you rehearse your presentation. Go to Slide Show, Rehearse Timings and a small timing bar displays in the top left-hand corner of each slide.

To advance from slide to slide, you click on the Advance button with the right-facing arrow, and this triggers a recording of the time. At the end of the run-through, a set of timings is available, reflecting how long you spent on each slide.

11. Pay attention to attention

You'll often be asked to prepare a presentation of a specific length, but you should bear in mind the typical attention spans of the people in your audience. School lessons are never much more than one hour long and university lectures are often only 45 minutes. It's hard for people to remain attentive over longer periods than this.

In PowerPoint terms, if you need to keep going for some while, introduce more humor into your slides. This is your chance to make full use of zingy transitions and perhaps short video clips, if you can find one relevant to your subject. To include video in a PowerPoint slide, simply select or create a new frame and import a 'movie' (video) into it.

12. Hide your flexibility

Talking of Q&A sessions, they should be an essential part of any presentation. Prepare slides in PowerPoint to cover all the 'extras', as well as the core topics of your presentation. You can put the extra slides in their logical places in the context of the slideshow, or group them at the end.

Right-click on a slide in normal view and choose Hide Slide - it won't then display during your normal presentation. If you want to show a hidden slide during the course of your presentation, you right-click the mouse, select Go and then Slide Navigator.

This shows the list of all slides in your presentation, including the hidden ones with brackets around their numbers. Select the slide you want to display from the list, by referring to its title, and double-click on it to display.

Using hidden slides, you can tailor a presentation to suit a particular audience by covering more specific subjects that aren't necessarily of general interest.

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