PowerPoint For Dummies, Office 2021 Edition

Chapter 22

Ten PowerPoint Commandments

And the hapless Windows user said, “But who am I to make this presentation? For I am not eloquent, but I am slow of speech and of tongue, and my colors clasheth, and my charts runneth over.” And Microsoft answered, “Fear not, for unto you this day is given a program, which shall be called PowerPoint, and it shall make for you slides, which shall bring forth titles and bullets and, yea, even diagrams.”

—PRESENTATIONS 1:1

And so it came to pass that these ten PowerPoint commandments were passed down from generation to generation. Obey these commandments and it shall go well with you, with your computer, and yea, even with your projector.

I. Thou Shalt Frequently Savest Thy Work

Every two or three minutes, press Ctrl+S. It takes only a second to save your file, and you never know when you’ll be the victim of a rotating power outage (even if you don’t live in California).

Note that if you store your presentations in Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud storage, PowerPoint will automatically save your work every few seconds. However, I urge you not to rely on this feature. Instead, stay in the habit of frequently saving your work.

II. Thou Shalt Storeth Each Presentation in Its Proper Folder

Whenever you save a file, double-check the folder that you’re saving it to. It’s all too easy to save a presentation in the wrong folder and then spend hours searching for the file later. You’ll wind up blaming the computer for losing your files.

III. Thou Shalt ...