PowerPoint Tip – Slides Are Not The Same as Handouts!
I remember working with a team from a company to help them with their sales pitch presentation. As part of the day we reviewed the content and design of their PowerPoint Presentation and, unsurprisingly, their slides were very wordy, “corporate”, and dull.
When I asked them why they designed their slides this way, there was a long pause as they searched for a credible answer other than “That’s the way everybody does them”. Eventually one member of the group said “Because, we need to print them out and leave them with the clients afterwards as a handout.”
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not averse to leaving handouts but the BIG Problem is that, slides that are designed to be handouts, don’t make good visual aids because they contain too much text and tend to overload the audience when you are presenting from them.
Slides are slides and handouts are handouts – They have separate functions and need to be designed separately if they are to do their job properly.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that PowerPoint has a built in tool that allows you to build both without duplication of effort. It’s called the “Notes Page View” screen. You can find it under the “view” menu option along the top of the screen. If you can’t see it, its probably because you have never used it before and Microsoft Office had thoughtfully hidden it from you so as not to confuse you any further. Click on the little double down chevron at the bottom of the drop down menu and it will appear.
On this page, you see an A4 page with an image of your slide at the top and an enticing area of white space underneath. In this space you can type your notes. These can be used as speaker notes or prompts but better yet, use them as your handout notes. Once you have typed in appropriate notes under each slide, you can print out the presentation using the notes page view option and voila, you have really professional looking handouts to give out – if you really need them.
P.s. If you want help designing really powerful slides and handouts why not contact my friend and fellow communications coach Nicola Norris at impact presentations.
