Session 6: PowerPoint
The final session, and the one that puts you in front of a room. You learn to build a presentation that supports a speaker rather than replacing one: slides, layouts, themes, text, images, shapes, icons, transitions, animations, speaker notes and presentation mode — then you deliver a 5–7 slide presentation to the class.
Learning objectives
By the end of this session you will be able to do each of these without prompting.
- Create a presentation and choose or build a coherent theme
- Use layouts instead of dragging text boxes around
- Write slide text that a room can read in three seconds
- Insert and position images, shapes and icons purposefully
- Apply transitions and animations sparingly and consistently
- Write speaker notes and present from them
- Deliver a 5–7 slide presentation confidently
The taught content
What a slide is for
A slide is not a document. It is a visual aid for a person speaking, and its job is to make the speaker's point land faster than speech alone could. That single idea determines almost every rule in this session. If your slides can be read and understood without you, you have written a document and should have sent it as a PDF instead. If your slides are unreadable from the back of the room, they are decoration.
The practical consequence: very little text per slide. One idea per slide. Large type — 28pt minimum for body, 40pt or more for headings, because a projection in a bright Nigerian hall with a weak projector loses more than you expect. Full sentences become fragments. And the speaker carries the detail, not the slide.
Slides, layouts and themes: structure before content
Every new slide should start from a layout (Home → Layout): Title Slide, Title and Content, Two Content, Section Header, Title Only, Blank. Layouts are pre-built arrangements with correct placeholder positions, sizes and inheritance from the theme. Beginners skip layouts and drag text boxes manually, which produces slides that are inconsistent with each other and impossible to restyle later. Choose the layout, then fill the placeholders.
The theme (Design tab) sets the colour palette, the font pairing and the background for the entire presentation. Choose one before you build anything, because changing it later restyles every slide. If you need a change to apply to every slide — a logo, a footer, a heading position — do not format each slide; use View → Slide Master and edit the master. One edit, applied everywhere. That is the difference between a presentation you can maintain and one you must rebuild.
Text, images, shapes and icons
Text on a slide follows hierarchy rules: one heading, one level of body text, bullet fragments rather than sentences, and no more than six lines. If you need more, you need another slide. Use bold for the key phrase in a bullet rather than making everything bold.
Images (Insert → Pictures) should be large and relevant — one strong image beats four small ones. Use Picture Format → Crop to remove the irrelevant parts, and Correct/Color to fix exposure. Always compress images (Picture Format → Compress Pictures) or your file becomes enormous and slow on a borrowed laptop. Shapes (Insert → Shapes) build diagrams, highlight regions and create simple flow charts; use Align (Shape Format → Align) to distribute them evenly rather than eyeballing. Icons (Insert → Icons) are vector graphics that scale cleanly and can be recoloured to match your theme — they look far more professional than clip art, and they are the modern replacement for it.
Transitions and animations: restraint is the skill
A transition is how one slide replaces the previous one. An animation is how an element within a slide appears or moves. Both exist to control the audience's attention, and both destroy attention when overused. The professional default is one subtle transition applied to all slides — Fade, applied via Transitions → Apply To All — and no animation at all on most slides.
Use animation deliberately for one purpose: revealing bullet points one at a time so the room listens to you rather than reading ahead. Animations → Add Animation → Fade or Wipe, then Effect Options → By Paragraph. Set the trigger to 'On Click' so you control the pace. Avoid bounce, spin, and anything that draws attention to the effect rather than the content. If the audience notices your animation, you have used too much of it.
Speaker notes and presenting
Speaker notes (View → Notes, or the Notes pane at the bottom) hold what you will say, not what the slide says. Write them as prompts, not scripts — a script makes you read, and reading loses a room. Three or four keywords per slide are enough if you know the material.
Then the delivery mechanics. F5 starts from the beginning; Shift+F5 starts from the current slide. Arrow keys and the space bar advance; Esc exits; the B key blacks the screen when you want attention back on you; Ctrl+P turns the cursor into a pen for drawing on slides. If you have a second screen, Presenter View (Slide Show → Use Presenter View) shows you the current slide, the next slide, your notes and a timer while the audience sees only the slide — practise with it, because it changes how you present.
Finally, the habits that make delivery work: arrive early and test on the actual projector; carry your file on a USB drive and in your email and as a PDF backup, because fonts and layouts do break on unfamiliar machines; keep it to one minute per slide; and rehearse aloud at least twice, timing yourself, because a presentation that has never been spoken always runs long.
Instructor demonstration
The instructor builds a seven-slide presentation live from a blank file, then delivers it — including two deliberate mistakes so the class learns to spot them.
- 01
Start from a theme, not a template
New blank presentation. Design → choose a simple theme. Explain why a plain theme with good typography beats a busy template that fights your content.
- 02
Build the title slide with the correct layout
Home → Layout → Title Slide. Type the title and a subtitle with your name and the date. Note that you typed into placeholders rather than inserting text boxes.
- 03
Add a section and content slides
New Slide → Title and Content, five times. Type one heading and no more than five bullet fragments on each. Read them aloud to show they are prompts, not sentences.
- 04
Demonstrate the too-much-text mistake
Deliberately paste a full paragraph onto one slide at 14pt, then walk to the back of the room and try to read it. Delete it and replace with three fragments. This is the lesson the class will remember.
- 05
Insert and crop an image
Insert → Pictures. Crop to the relevant portion. Resize by dragging a corner handle, never an edge. Use Picture Format → Align → Align Right to position precisely.
- 06
Add icons and a simple diagram
Insert → Icons, choose three related icons, recolor them to the theme accent, and arrange them in a row. Select all three, Shape Format → Align → Distribute Horizontally.
- 07
Edit the slide master
View → Slide Master. Add a small footer with the date and a slide-number placeholder. Close Master View and show that every slide now has it.
- 08
Apply one transition to all
Transitions → Fade → Apply To All. Set duration to 0.5 seconds. Show how the Bounce and Origami options look and explain why they are not used.
- 09
Animate bullets on one slide
Select the bullet placeholder, Animations → Fade, Effect Options → By Paragraph, Start → On Click. Advance through them in Slide Show to demonstrate the pacing control.
- 10
Write speaker notes and present
Open the Notes pane and write three keyword prompts per slide. Press F5, present the deck using Presenter View, use B to black the screen once, then Esc. Discuss what felt different about presenting from notes.
Guided practice
Final project: a 5–7 slide presentation, delivered
Build a 5–7 slide presentation on a topic you know well — your course, your trade, your business, your community — and deliver it to the class in five minutes, using speaker notes rather than reading the slides.
- 01Choose a topic you can speak about without research.
- 02Write your message as one sentence before opening PowerPoint.
- 03Choose a theme and build a title slide from the Title Slide layout.
- 04Build 4–6 content slides, one idea each, maximum five bullet fragments per slide.
- 05Add at least one image, one icon set or one simple shape diagram.
- 06Add a closing slide with a clear call to action or summary.
- 07Apply one transition to all slides and animate bullets on at most one slide.
- 08Write keyword speaker notes for every slide.
- 09Rehearse aloud twice, timing yourself to five minutes.
- 10Deliver to the class, then accept one round of feedback.
The standard we hold you to
Every slide is readable from the back of the room, no slide is a paragraph, the presenter speaks rather than reads, timing lands within five minutes, and the file opens correctly on a different machine as both .pptx and PDF.
Common mistakes and how to fix them
Your slides are full paragraphs
Fix: Cut to fragments. Move the sentences into speaker notes where they belong. If a slide needs a paragraph, it is a handout, not a slide.
Fonts change or the layout breaks on another computer
Fix: File → Options → Save → tick 'Embed fonts in the file', and always carry a PDF export as backup. The PDF will never break, and you can present from it in a pinch.
Images make the file huge and slow
Fix: Picture Format → Compress Pictures, choose 150ppi or 220ppi, and untick 'Apply only to this picture'. Also delete cropped areas, which otherwise stay in the file.
You stretched an image and it looks distorted
Fix: Always resize from a corner handle, which preserves aspect ratio. Dragging an edge handle stretches one axis only. If it is already distorted, use Picture Format → Reset Picture and start again.
Animations distract and slow the presentation
Fix: Remove all but the bullet reveal. Animations → Animation Pane makes it easy to see and delete everything you added. One subtle effect, applied consistently, is the ceiling.
You read the slides aloud
Fix: That means the slides hold too much text or your notes hold too little. Put fragments on the slide, keywords in the notes, and the detail in your head. Rehearse aloud — you cannot discover this problem silently.
Expert notes
The habits that separate someone who can do this from someone who does it well.
- Write the presentation on paper first. One sentence for the overall message, then one line per slide. Only then open PowerPoint. Building slides before you know your argument is why most presentations wander, and no amount of design fixes a structure problem.
- Use the 10/20/30 discipline as a sanity check, adapted: no more than about ten slides, no more than twenty minutes, no font smaller than thirty points for a projected talk in a bright room. Nigerian halls and projectors are unforgiving — test your smallest text from the back.
- Design for the worst room you will present in. Low contrast dies under fluorescent light, thin fonts vanish on a cheap projector, and dark backgrounds with light text often reverse badly when printed as handouts. High contrast, heavy weights, and a light background are the safe defaults.
- Always carry three copies: the .pptx on a USB drive, the .pptx emailed to yourself, and a PDF export. Presenters who present reliably are not lucky — they are simply the ones with backups.
Key terms
- Layout
- A pre-built slide arrangement with positioned placeholders. Choosing a layout beats dragging text boxes.
- Theme
- The presentation-wide set of colours, fonts and background. Set it before building content.
- Slide Master
- The underlying template controlling every slide. Edit here to apply a change everywhere at once.
- Placeholder
- A pre-formatted box on a layout that holds a title, body text, image or other content.
- Transition
- The effect used when moving from one slide to the next.
- Animation
- The effect controlling how an element within a slide appears, emphasises or exits.
- Speaker notes
- The private notes pane holding your prompts, visible only to you in Presenter View.
- Presenter View
- A dual-screen mode showing you the current slide, next slide, notes and timer while the audience sees only the slide.
Homework before the next session
Rewrite an existing presentation
Find any text-heavy presentation you own or have received, and rebuild it to the standard taught in class. Count how many words you removed. That number is the lesson.
Practise delivery twice, timed
Deliver your presentation aloud twice with a timer. Record yourself on your phone the second time and watch it. Note where you looked at the screen instead of the room.
Build a reusable master
Edit a Slide Master with your name or organisation in the footer and save the file as a .potx template for future presentations.
Assemble your course portfolio
Collect your Word document, your Excel report and this presentation into one portfolio folder with a PDF of each. This is the deliverable for the Microsoft Office course and the evidence you attach to applications.
Assessment rubric
How this session is marked. The certificate for Microsoft Office is awarded on the deliverable, not on attendance.
| Criterion | Passing | Excellent |
|---|---|---|
| Slide design | Slides use layouts, are readable and hold no more than six short lines. | One idea per slide, strong visual hierarchy, purposeful imagery, and a theme applied consistently through the Slide Master. |
| Visual elements | At least one image, icon set or diagram used correctly. | Visuals are aligned, proportionally resized, compressed and recoloured to the theme. |
| Motion | One transition applied to all slides. | Motion used only to control attention, with bullet reveals paced by the speaker. |
| Delivery | Presents the full deck within the time limit. | Speaks from notes rather than reading, manages the room, handles the technology confidently and accepts feedback professionally. |
| Course deliverable | All three artefacts submitted — document, spreadsheet, presentation. | All three are professional quality, exported to PDF, organised in a portfolio folder and presentable to an employer. |
Session questions
How many words should be on a slide?+
As few as will carry the idea — commonly under twenty, and often just a heading. The test is whether someone at the back can read it in three seconds while still listening to you. If they must choose between reading and listening, the slide has failed.
Should I use a template from the internet?+
Use one to start if it saves time, but strip it back. Most free templates are over-designed, use fonts your machine may not have, and put decoration where your content should be. A plain theme with disciplined typography looks more professional than a busy template.
PowerPoint, Google Slides or Canva?+
PowerPoint for anything presented through a projector in a Nigerian office or hall, because .pptx is the format every machine has. Google Slides when a team edits together. Canva when the output is a visual document rather than a spoken presentation. The design principles in this session apply to all three.
I am terrified of presenting. Does this course help?+
Yes, and deliberately so. The final project is delivered to a small supportive class, which is the safest place to discover what you need to work on. Preparation is most of the answer: knowing your material, having keyword notes, and having rehearsed aloud twice removes most of the fear, because most presentation anxiety is really unpreparedness.
What do I get at the end of the Microsoft Office course?+
Three artefacts and a certificate. A formatted document (letter or CV) as a PDF, a working spreadsheet with formulas and charts, and a presentation you delivered — organised in a portfolio folder. That portfolio is what you attach to job applications, and it is far more convincing than a certificate on its own.
This session is part of
Microsoft Office
3 weeks · 6 sessions · ₦30,000 · you leave with a formatted document, a working spreadsheet and a presentation