Powerpoint presentations

The PCs in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology run Microsoft Office, which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

In each lecture theatre (New Museums Site building) there is a computer linked to a data projector which you may use for presentations. The PCs are set up with the same version of Windows and Microsoft Office as the PCs in the PC suite. If you put a file on your PWF network filespace you will be able to see it from the lecture theatre PC.

It is a good idea to have a run through before your presentation

  • check that the colours look the same when projected
  • check that the text is big enough to read from the back of the lecture theatre
  • check that it works
    • if you've created the presentation on the same version of PowerPoint as in the lecture theatres it will be fine
    • if you've created the presentation on a lower version of PowerPoint it should run, but there will be slight differences (e.g. text moved around)
    • if you've created the presentation on a Mac and transferred it to a PC, it should run, but there may be slight differences (e.g. text moved around)
    • if you have any animations, check that they run and don't need any extra plug-ins

Computer services run taught courses on PowerPoint and there are also teach yourself courses for PowerPoint from Computer Services.

File size

It is very easy to import lots of pictures into a PowerPoint file and then find that the file size is enormous.  If the file is huge, it will be difficult to work with and slow.

If you have an image from the digital camera, or one that you've scanned in, it might be several megabytes in size. You could put that file straight into PowerPoint. It's bigger than a slide, but you could rescale it by dragging the resize handles. With a few images that size, the PowerPoint file would very quickly become enormous.

It is much better to scale the image to the size you want it to be before importing it into PowerPoint.

Don't copy and paste images into Word and PowerPoint
Always use
  Insert
    Picture
      From file

Research project presentations

For research project presentations, or any others where several groups have to present their material, one after another, in a very limited time:

if each group has to logout the previous group and login to the network, there will be a pregnant pause between presentations. To save time, I suggest that before the presentation session, someone from each group logs in, copies the group presentation file to a temporary folder, for example C:ppttemp, and then logs out again. At the start of the session, one group logs in and the PC is left logged in throughout all the presentations.

Running all the presentations from the local C: drive will also make them run quicker and mean that if something disastrous happens to the network, you are not affected.

Please delete any files you put on the C: drive when you have finished with them.