Okay, so who would have thought that copying
and pasting is going to make this list of things you're doing wrong in PowerPoint? I didn't
have a clue about this for the longest time. I'm happy that nothing was unintentionally leaked
in the making and distribution of my PowerPoint presentations. I'm not sure I can say the same
about my ex-colleagues. So make sure you don't fall into that trap. So, I'm going to cover that
in a second, but in addition to this, I decided to collect and combine a few things that many of
us are doing consistently wrong in PowerPoint. I'm then going to show you the better way of
doing it. Now, some are productivity tips, there are design tips, and some are embarrassment
saving clips. Let's start with that one first. Mistake number one is to add external links,
for example, external links to videos like this. Why is this bad? Well, when you go to show
the people this video and you click on this, it's going to take them to YouTube. If you
don't have anything to be embarrassed by, it's fine, but on the side here, what YouTube
does is it recommends videos based on the topic that you're watching but also based on
the other things that you've watched before. And if you don't want that to show up
on your feed, don't do this. Instead, you want to embed the video on your slide. This is
how you do that. Let's do it in a separate slide. I'm going to take this away then go
to insert media video online videos. Now just type the link to the YouTube video and
then click on insert. Now, you're in a safe space. You don't have to worry about whatever you've
watched on YouTube before. You can just go ahead and play the video directly from here. If I go
into presentation mode, I'm able to play this and then move on with my presentation. Mistake
number two is to copy your charts from Excel and paste into PowerPoint without understanding
the implications. Let me explain. So, here in Excel, I have this Excel chart that I want
to bring over to my PowerPoint presentation. So, I'm going to select it, press Ctrl + C, go over
to PowerPoint, and press Ctrl + V. That's the way most people do this, but what they might
not be aware of is that the entire Excel workbook is now embedded in this presentation. So,
if I send this over to someone, I'm just going to close off my Excel file, someone else opens this,
they can click on this, go here to chart design, edit the data. Let's click on Edit Data, and
they're going to see that embedded workbook. They can obviously see all the data, so
that's the data that's used for this chart, and they have access to any other information or
any other tabs that I have in this workbook. Now, the good thing about this though, is
that it is dynamic. So, if the data in the underlying workbook changes, you can come
here and refresh the data, and you're going to grab the latest data. But if you're embedding
lots of workbooks in your presentation, you're going to blow up the file size. So, what you want
to do instead, and what my preferred version is, is to link the chart to your presentation. So, let
me just open up the Excel workbook. You're going to go and select your chart, press Ctrl + C, then
go over to your PowerPoint, go to paste special, and you're going to paste the link. Take a
look at this. It's going to insert a picture in your presentation, but it's going to be a
linked picture. So, we're going to go with OK and we get our chart in here. All the formatting,
everything comes over from Excel. That additional chart button thing is gone. We just have the Shape
Format because now we're dealing with a shape, but the great thing is, it is dynamic. Now, if you
have additional data that you want to copy over, so let's say you want to copy chart
and the data that I had on the bottom, you can do that by just selecting the region
that you want copied. So, I'm going to go and select this, press Control+C, go over to my slide,
paste special and paste the link. Now, everything comes over. Now, all of this is dynamic
and we can go and double check that. So, if something changes here, let's say this
changes to F5, it pulls through here. This, let me just make formulas for this too. I switch
to my presentation and we can see these updated automatically. Now, once you have these linked,
you are responsible to maintain those links. If they change, you can go and update them by going
to File Info and selecting Edit Links to Files. If you want to open up the original
source, you can double click on this object and it's going to open up the underlying
workbook. But this workbook isn't embedded, so your file size is going to be a lot smaller
than if you were embedding these workbooks. If you don't need to have the latest
data and you just want to have everything as an image, you go and copy, come back here and
paste this as an image. OK, so it's important to understand the different paste options that
you have. Mistake number three is poor design. So, another issue I often see is lack of
consistency between the slides with different background and fonts. This is distracting
to the audience. What you want to do instead is to keep the theme of the slides the same with
clean backgrounds. You can use some supporting infographics and add an action title to each
slide, so the key message comes across right away. In terms of fonts, avoid italics and narrow
fonts. Also, fonts that simulate handwriting because they're quite difficult to read. Instead,
use simple, well-readable fonts with good contrast and use that font throughout the presentation.
Now, what happens when you collaborate with your colleagues is that each person has their
own favorite font, and you may end up with inconsistent fonts. A great tool to fix this is
to replace all fonts in one go. You can find it in the Home tab under Replays. Just click on this
drop-down and go to Replace Fonts. Select if it's just for this slide or the entire presentation.
And then, when you click on this first drop-down, you can see all the different fonts that are used
in your presentation. You can search and replace specific fonts or just replace all fonts with
the default that you use throughout your company, and then just click on Replace. This automatically
corrects all your fonts to the correct font. Now, another quick fix that helps out with good slide
design is the Align Objects feature in PowerPoint. This way you avoid misposition shapes like
this, and it's kind of difficult to try to get them right. All you have to do is select your
objects, click on this drop-down for a range, go to Align and decide on the alignment of your
choice. I'm going to go with Align Center in this case. This makes for a much more professional
look and design. So, speaking of design, a great platform to learn design and many other
skills is Skillshare, who've been kind enough to sponsor this video. What I like about the
learning experience there is that you get short, condensed classes. Now, I love learning
new things, but unfortunately, like many of us, I can't afford to dedicate big chunks of time to
learning. The short classes make it super easy; I can use whatever time I have and learn something
new really fast. So, for example, a class I found particularly helpful for designing PowerPoint
presentations is the class "Slide Deck Design for Non-Designers" by Scott Shortly. In there,
he talks about the do's and don'ts when it comes to slide design and he shows a lot of different
examples which I really liked. It's classes like this that can help you improve your skills. You
can get the knowledge that you need to grow a side hustle if that's what you want to do right now or
to change the direction of your career. There are new premium classes launched each week, so there's
always something new to discover. And because Skillshare is sponsoring today's video, the first
1000 people to use the link in the description box below or use my quote "Leila Granny" are going to
get one month free trial of Skillshare. So, make sure you check it out. Thank you to Skillshare
for sponsoring this video and now let's continue with the next common mistake: mistake number four
is to use distracting transitions and animations. So, transitions and animations can be great
tools to emphasize certain points over others, but most of the standard effects that we have in
PowerPoint are too distracting and they can come across as childish in business settings. But,
if you apply it with intent and in moderation, they can be quite effective. One of my favorite
transitions is called "Morph". You can create super smooth, professional effects in seconds that
are going to look like you spent hours creating. I have a separate video on this if you want
to learn more, just check out the cards or the description box below the video. The next mistake
is to fill up your slides with text. When you put too much text on a slide, the audience will focus
on reading rather than listening to what you have to say and it's easy to lose the key points.
Not to mention the more that you're trying to squeeze into a single slide, the smaller
your font gets and it becomes harder to read. So, often a combination of words and graphics
is most effective in getting your points across. Infographics and icons help to graphically
accentuate your text and since we're on the topic of text, don't forget that you have proofing
tools built into PowerPoint. Go to the Review tab and run a spell check to avoid embarrassment over
typos. Now, honestly, whatever I tend to do, I managed to get typos across to my produced videos,
so I need to work on this bit too. The last mistake is poor use of images. So, while it's true
that a picture says more than a thousand words, you shouldn't overdo it either. When you
have too many images crammed into a slide, it becomes distracting and again, it
takes away from your main message. So, it's much better to use just one high-quality
image that sums up the main theme of the slide. Where do you get your images? Well, there
are lots of different websites that give you high-quality images that are also in creative
commons. You can also do a Google search for the image that you want. So, I'm just going
to type "pizza" and switch to images here. You're going to want to click on "Tools" > "Usage
Rights" and select "Creative Commons" licenses. Okay, so make sure whatever image you're using,
you are actually allowed to use it. Now, if you have Office 365, what you could do is go directly
to the "Insert" tab here, go to "Pictures" and go to "Online Pictures". Here, the default selection
is for "Creative Commons" and you can type in your search and you're going to find some high-quality
images that you can use. Now, in Office 365, you have more options if you go to "Icons". You
get to use a bunch of different icons, images, "Cut Out People", stickers (which you probably
don't want to use if you have a serious business meeting), videos, illustrations, and even cartoon
people. Now, sometimes when you insert an image, it has this background that you might want
to remove because it doesn't fit with the rest of your slide. You can also easily do that in
PowerPoint. You don't need to use a separate photo editing app. Just click on your picture, go to
"Picture Format" and select "Remove Background". This is automatically going to try and figure out
what background it is and it's going to remove it for you. So, this part that's in purple will
be removed if I click on "Keep Changes". If I notice that the wrong parts are selected, I
can mark areas to keep, it's going to keep that or mark areas to remove. Once I have done my
selection, I'm going to click on "Keep Changes" and I have my image without the background. I
could now go ahead and also crop this as I need. Now, if your image has a solid
background, it's even easier. You just have to click on the image, go
to "Picture Format" > "Color" down here, "Set Transparent Color" and then just click on
this background. It's automatically removed. Now, you can go ahead and place this
where you want on your presentation. Okay, so I hope this rundown of common PowerPoint
mistakes is going to help you improve your future presentations. Now, I can proudly say I've done it
all, I've made all six mistakes. What about you? Let me know in the comments. Also, if you have
any other mistakes that you've made or you've seen others make, please comment below and let us
know. Before leaving, do consider subscribing if you haven't yet. Give this video a thumbs
up and I'm going to see you in the next video.
