how to make powerpoint presentation interactive

How to Give an Interactive PowerPoint Presentation in 2023

Presenting online is tough, yes. You can’t really connect with your audience. You often don’t even know whether those mute faces listen to you at all.

That’s why it’s important to go the extra mile and make your presentation interactive. 

But that’s easier said than done, right?

Being for 7 years in the game of interactive presenting, I’d like to share some of my tips on how to activate your audience , create meaningful interaction, and facilitate it during your talk.

Get inspired by these (or some of these) tips for delivering a  truly interactive PowerPoint presentation.

• Play music or do some chit chat while waiting
• Welcome people and properly introduce the topic
• Explain how people can interact with you
• Involve the audience from the very start
• Re-engage your audience every 5-7 minutes
• Use polls to trigger a discussion
• Take advantage of Zoom’s interactive features
• Simplify your slides: One idea/visual per slide
• Play around with virtual backgrounds
• Use breakout sessions for peer-to-peer learning
• Turn tedious numbers into a quiz
• Invite a sidekick
• Run mid-way Q&A sessions
• Give your audience something tangible to leave with
• Run a short feedback survey at the end

1. Play music or do some chit chat while waiting

Often it takes a couple of minutes before everybody jumps on a call. While you’re waiting for the rest of the crew to join, you can play some music in the background to set the mood and talk to the people who have already tuned in. “Has anyone discovered a good recipe lately?” or, “Did you do anything cool this weekend?”

You can share music during your Zoom call easily by clicking the ‘ Share computer sound ‘ checkbox.

As people are joining, you can also prompt them to turn on their cameras and unmute themselves for the time being, so that you can all see and talk to each other.

2. Welcome people and properly introduce the topic

Once everybody’s aboard, welcome your participants warmly, thank them for joining you, and tell everyone what you will be talking about today. You can even add an agenda slide to your presentation so you map out the whole session to your audience in advance. In the virtual environment, it’s even more important to navigate people through the talk.

3. Explain how people can interact with you

Always check that everyone understands the technical side of things – otherwise, people may not know how to interact with you. Tell them what tools you’re going to use during the presentation and explain how they can use them.

It’s all about setting the right expectations: Do you want your participants to share comments via Zoom or Webex chat? Sure, tell them that. Explain how Webex or Zoom reactions work in case not everyone is familiar with them. If you expect verbal input from your participants, ask them to use the ‘Raise hand’ feature, so you can call on them if they want to contribute.

Are you going to use live polls throughout your presentation? Explain how people can vote in a poll or contribute with their ideas.

4. Involve the audience from the very start

Now that you’ve made it clear to your audience that you want and expect them to actively participate in the upcoming session, it’s time to give it a trial run.

Start a conversation with them right off the bat. For instance, I was recently a guest at an online fireside chat series called ‘Living Online’, run by our former Head of Education and a great moderator, Zuzana.

Before she dived into the topic, she collected insights from the audience. She ran a series of polls, asking people, “How much has the online world changed your life?” or, “What helps you find a balance between the real and the online world?”

This way, she made the talk more about the audience, as opposed to just streaming information one way (while making sure people are familiar with the tech).

5. Re-engage your audience every 5-7 minutes

Keep the momentum and motivate your audience to “talk” to you throughout your presentation. Even if it is just in a non-verbal way.

We recommend using live polls or other forms of interaction every 5-7 minutes to pull people back in and involve them in a conversation.

Prepare several poll questions for your audience beforehand, and spread them out throughout your talk.

Is there a content-heavy part of your presentation that might be tough for your audience to process? At the end of it, use a rating poll to ask your audience how well they understood.

Are you about to propose an argument? Before you do, ask your audience what their viewpoint on the topic is first. (You can use live polls here too.)

Take inspiration from our Head of Internal Comms, Silvia, who – before giving a word to our CEO Peter who’d walk us through September highlights – began by using a word cloud to source highlights from the team.

6. Use polls to trigger a discussion

Live polls are invaluable for collecting real-time input from your audience. You can use that input effectively for starting a discussion.

For example, during our latest strategy meeting with our Brand team, I really needed to know whether the strategy points I presented to my team made sense, and I wanted to build up a discussion around them.

After each of the three presented areas, I ran a rating poll: “On a scale of 1-6, how important is this area in order to achieve our goals?”

When votes came in, I commented on the results and whenever there were votes lower than 6, I asked: “Okay, who put 5/4? Can you please share your thoughts with us?”

This really changed the game for me, because I collected some invaluable insights from my colleagues that would otherwise have remained uncovered. Very often, people don’t share until you nudge them a little.

Read also: 7 Interactive Poll Ideas for Your PowerPoint Presentation

7. Take advantage of Zoom’s interactive features

If you’re using Zoom, you surely know of its built-in engagement features such as ‘Raise hand’, emoji reactions, or the chat. Maybe your audience knows of them too, but they’re probably not going to use them heavily unless you encourage them to do so.

What I like to do the most is to encourage my audience to use emoji reactions. This gives me some sense of people’s emotions.

I often use emoji reactions for fast feedback: I ask people to press thumbs up as an indication that they understand or agree, or to express that they like something with a clapping emoji or the heart symbol.

8. Simplify your slides: One idea/visual per slide

Make sure your slides are visually appealing. When listening to someone speak online, the last thing you want is to read huge bodies of text on slides. So don’t copy-paste the whole script of your speech. Use just one idea, one sentence, one topic, or one number per slide.

Where appropriate, support what you’re saying with an image, a graph, a gif, or even a meme. Do you want to show a video during your presentation? Make sure it’s really short because a video, no matter how entertaining, is yet another content your audience consumes passively.

9. Play around with virtual backgrounds

Using a virtual background when presenting online can save the day if you need to quickly hide a messy kitchen or any trespassing relatives.

But, there’s more to it. You can tie it to the topic of your presentation and thus strengthen the message you’re trying to convey. For example, ever since our CEO Peter used climbing El Capitan as a metaphor for our company strategy, he uses an El Cap photo as his virtual background as a reminder for all of us that we still have a mountain to climb.

Need another great use of a virtual background? Pick a funny picture and use it as an icebreaker. For example, in several meetings, I put up a picture of a naked man chasing a wild boar, and believe me, there’s no better icebreaker !

People usually laugh and ask me why I picked this very image – it’s priceless to start a meeting with a smile on people’s faces!

Read also: 18 Best Virtual Icebreakers For Your Zoom Meetings

10. Use breakout sessions for peer-to-peer learning

This tactic is magic, especially with longer presentation types such as during all-company meetings, workshops, or training.

Propose a discussion topic or a challenge. Give your audience 1-2 minutes to think about it, before splitting them into smaller groups so that they can share their thoughts together and brainstorm solutions. You can do this elegantly, using Zoom’s Breakout rooms feature .

This is a great interactive exercise that helps you break the monotonous flow of one-way content broadcast and allow for some peer-to-peer learning.

You can also collect the learnings of your audience to include them in the presentation. For example, you can run an open text poll where you collect everybody’s key learnings and then display them on screen. Let’s say you have asked your audience to discuss your company priorities. Try a word cloud such as: “Submit which priorities you discussed in your group.”

11. Turn tedious numbers into a quiz

Presenting company updates or business results can get quite tedious and your audience may easily start zoning out.

Turn it around and present your numbers in a form of a quiz.

For instance, before you reveal the number, say something like: “Before we look at the numbers, why don’t you guys have a guess at how well we did?” Then run a poll with multiple options and wait for your participants to cast their votes.

You can use this technique on multiple occasions. Our CEO, Peter, usually does this at our end-of-year all-hands meetings when he presents our business results such as revenue, sales, or a number of Slido events.

12. Invite a sidekick

Virtual presenters are superheroes that need to juggle multiple tools. And every Batman needs Robin. Consider inviting another speaker to deliver the presentation with you.

It will freshen up your talk and break the stereotype of only one speaker talking. On top of that, she/he can also help you with technicalities such as keeping an eye on the chat or troubleshooting any technical issues.

You can take turns in presenting the content or even give your presentation in the form of a conversation between the two of you. This way, it’ll be even easier for you to involve your audience in the talk, as they’ll be joining what already feels like an ongoing discussion.

Having a sidekick is invaluable if you’re running a Q&A round at the end of your presentation – they can help you manage questions from the audience.

13. Run mid-way Q&A sessions

Always make sure to leave space for Q&A – answering questions from the audience is one of the most important engagement points. Your participants will have a chance to dive deeper into the topic of your talk, and eventually, learn much more from your presentation.

Don’t wait ‘til the end, but review the questions as they come in and take the most relevant ones continuously throughout your presentation (e.g. after each content block). If there any outstanding questions, address them in the Q&A round at the end.

For example, during our recent product event , our Project Managers, Juraj Pal, Martin Srna, and Mario Ceselka, ran several Q&A rounds after each product announcement that they made. (Almost 350 questions came in! This is why it’s priceless to have a sidekick.)

They also encouraged people to use upvotes, so the most popular questions can jump to the top and be answered with priority.

14. Give your audience something tangible to leave with

As you move towards the end of your talk, it’s good practice to reiterate the main message of your presentation to give your participants one concrete takeaway to remember.

You can make the ending interactive as well: Ask your audience to think about what they’ve just heard, then run a poll asking your audience: “What are you taking away from this presentation?” or, “What one thing resonated with you the most during this presentation?”

15. Run a short feedback survey at the end

Don’t forget to ask your audience for feedback. We’re always ready to rate our Uber drives or meal deliveries in order to help improve the experience. Why should presentations be any different?

Feedback is the best way for you to learn and find out what you can do better next time. Combine classic star rating with an open text poll so your participants can write more elaborate comments as well.

Two to three questions will suffice – you don’t want to wear your audience down with too long a survey (plus, you’ll boost the response rate!). Here’s an example that you can use:

• How would you rate today’s presentation? (Rating)
• What did you like most about this presentation? (Open text)
• Is there anything that could be improved? (Open text)

Over to you

Actively involving your audience in your content is key if you want to make your online presentation more interactive and engaging.

Using polls, quizzes, and collecting questions from your audience is one of the easiest ways to create more interaction during your talk.

With Slido for PowerPoint , you can add polls to your presentation and present seamlessly – all from one place. Watch this video to see how Slido for PowerPoint works. Click below to try it.

Add live polls directly to your PowerPoint presentation.

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Interactive PowerPoint: How to Make One for Free in 2023

Alternatives

Quynh Anh Vu • 03 Apr 2023 • 5 min read

Making a presentation exciting is a science, and science speaks volumes. So, is it difficult to make a PowerPoint for free? Like an Interactive Powerpoint? Yes

In several experiments, Salescrunch found that while the average engagement level for a presentation is 78%, that can increase to 92% with audience interaction .

The problem? Somehow, Interactive PowerPoint is yet to realise that. Its handful of interactive tools is limited almost entirely to its app integrations, which cost money and require downloads.

More Funs with AhaSlides

• Best Alternatives to PowerPoint
• Free alternatives to Google Forms
• Extension For PowerPoint
• How to add notes to PowerPoint

What if I told you there’s a way to make an interactive PowerPoint without downloads and for 100% free?

Get your engagement, anywhere.

Create a free interactive PowerPoint in minutes. Great for meetings, training, pitches and lessons - either online or offline

Table of Contents

• 4 Steps to go Interactive
• 5 Tips for an Interactive Powerpoint
• More on AhaSlides Alternatives

Tip #1 – Use an Ice Breaker

Tip #2 – end with a mini-quiz, tip #3 – try variety, tip #4 – space it out, tip #5 – allow anonymity.

• AhaSlides Alternatives

PowerPoint to Interactive PowerPoint

AhaSlides is a free online tool that helps presenters get more audience engagement. In the simplest terms – it’s like PowerPoint but interactive. So, of course, you can create quizzes on PowerPoint with AhaSlides!

You can import your PowerPoint presentation in one go to AhaSlides. After that, fit it with interactive slides in which your audience can contribute to opinion polls, word clouds , brainstorming sessions, and even a live quiz !

Here’s how it works…

How to Make an Interactive PowerPoint

Sign up for Free.

Get a free account with AhaSlides in seconds. No card details necessary.

Import your PowerPoint

On a new presentation, click the 'Import' button to upload a PDF, PPT or PPTX file. Once uploaded, your presentation will be separated into its slides in the left column.

Add Interactive Slides

Create an interactive slide in your PowerPoint presentation. Place a poll, word cloud, Q&A, quiz, or any of the 11 interactive slide types into your presentation when you want interaction.

Press the 'Present' button and take your audience through your presentation. Your audience join your presentation on their phones and submit their answers to your interactive slides.

5 Tips for Making a Great Interactive Powerpoint

All meetings, virtual or otherwise, could do with a quick activity or two to break the ice. This could be a simple question or a minigame before the real meat of the meeting gets underway.

Here’s one for you. If you’re presenting to an online audience from all over the world, use a word cloud slide to ask them ‘How do you say hi in your native language?’ . When audience respond, the most popular answers will appear larger.

💡 Want more Ice Breakers? You’ll find a whole bunch of free ones right here !

There’s nothing that does more for engagement than a quiz. Quizzes are greatly underused in presentations; flip the script to raise engagement.

A quick 5 to 10-question quiz can work at the end of a section to test what your audience has just learned, or as a fun sign-off at the end of your interactive PowerPoint presentation.

On AhaSlides, quizzes work the same way as other interactive slides. Ask a question and your audience compete for points by answering fastest on their phones.

Let’s face facts. Most presentations, through lack of creative thinking, follow the exact same structure. It’s a structure that bores us senseless (it even has a name – Death by PowerPoint ) and it’s one that could really use a kick of variety.

There are currently 11 interactive slide types on AhaSlides. Presenters looking to avoid the dreaded monotony of the standard presentation structure can poll their audience, ask an open-ended question, gather ordinal scale ratings , ellicit popular ideas in a brainstorm, visualise data in a word cloud and so much more.

Check out how a variety of interactive slides could work for your presentation. Click below to dive into an interactive presentation on AhaSlides 👇

While there’s certainly a lot more room for interactivity in presentations, we all know what they say about having too much of a good thing…

Don’t overload your audience by asking for participation on every slide. Audience interaction should just be used to keep engagement high, ears pricked up, and information at the forefront of your audience members’ minds.

With that in mind, you might find that 3 or 4 content slides to each interactive slide is the perfect ratio for maximum attention .

Have you ever wondered why you’re getting muted reactions even with a premium presentation? Part of the social psychology of crowds is the general unwillingness, even amongst confident participants, to speak up in front of others on a whim.

Allowing audience members to anonymously respond to your questions and suggest their own can be a great remedy for that. Just by giving your audience the option to provide their names, you’ll likely receive a higher level of engagement from all types of personalities in the audience, not just the introverts.

Or course, you can add more slides to PowerPoint, PowerPoint quiz, q&a slide in PowerPoint or q&a images for ppt… in any way you like. But, it would be much easier if your presentation was on AhaSlides.

Were you looking for More Interactive PowerPoint ideas?

With the power of interactivity in your hands, knowing what to do with it is not always easy.

Need more interactive PowerPoint presentation samples? Luckily, signing up for AhaSlides comes with unlimited access to the template library. This is a library of instantly downloadable presentations chock full of ideas for engaging your audience in an interactive PowerPoint.

Get started in seconds..

Sign up for free and build your interactive PowerPoint from a template.

Or, be inspired with our interactive PowerPoint template free !

Quynh Anh Vu

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40 + Presentation & Powerpoint Alternatives For 2023

At CustomShow , we like to think that everyone can use our presentation software to create better-looking presentations, thus serving as one of the best presentation & powerpoint alternatives for large corporate enterprises, educational institutions, design agencies, small-to-mid-sized businesses, and highly creative individuals.  

We cater to business organizations and individuals that need to deliver engaging and impactful sales pitches filled with videos, animations and other rich media as well as need real time collaboration between presentation designers and presenters.  We don’t usually promote our competitors. But at the end of the day, we want you to have a pick from the full list of presentation tools that are on the market and that could fit your needs.

I f you want to build a business case for a Presentation & Powerpoint alternative in your company then here is a great resource .

Selection criteria for presentation & powerpoint alternatives.

To be objective in our analysis of Presentation & Powerpoint alternatives, we use the following criteria:

• Ability to support high definition video, animations, 3D graphics, VR and other rich media to deliver an awesome experience.
• Slide library management to enable your sales team to easily customize and personalize each pitch.
• Brand and regulatory compliance by providing adequate control on what can and cannot be changed.
• Presentation analytics to see how well the audience engaged with your pitch deck when it was shared with them.

If you are truly serious about purchasing new presentation software and need some guidance, you should check out our buying guide to presentation software .

Presentation & Powerpoint alternatives give you plenty of options to choose from.  Each has its advantages and disadvantages and we hope you will find your perfect fit.  We’ll examine the presentation maker programs we believe would be great and even the ones that may not be but could still be another viable solution.

NOTE: This is a list of 40 plus different presentation software tools.  If you’re looking for only Free Presentation Programs, check our post on 9 Free Presentation Tools you can start using today .  Great for educators and students.

Presentation Software – CustomShow

Summary – presentation software program used mainly for businesses and companies with more than 25 employees that need a robust presentation software solution.  With over 40 years of rich presentation history, the presentation software was created out of close collaboration with design agencies and sales users who needed to deliver Wow!  The software allows companies and organizations to build better custom branded presentations that look light years better than your typical PowerPoint presentation.  We would consider ourselves a great sales enablement tool because sales professionals benefit a great deal from the software.

Perfect For – Marketing Teams, Sales Teams, Sales Professionals, Digital Marketing and Creative Design Agencies, Professionals, CEOs and entrepreneurs

Other Review Sources – Smart Selling Tools,   Techradar ,   TrustRadius, G2 Crowd , Finances Online

Website : www.customshow.com

No One is Binge Watching Powerpoint Schedule A FREE Demo With Us

Prezi (personal).

Summary  – The mothership of Presentation & PowerPoint alternatives, they’ve been around for many years.  Leveraging the concept of ZOOM and transitions to new spaces on a slide, they give the effect that the presentation has not moved to a new slide.  Prezi provides people with creating better style and effect in their presentations.  Prezi uses the concept of Pathway Points instead of slides to give the visual cinematic appeal of their presentations.  These guys just raised another $50 million in November in order to compete with Microsoft.

Advantages  – Present on multiple devices; can share with coworkers; can be used by practically anyone; easy to learn how to use; cost-effective; can work on the presentation offline; 

Disadvantages  – Very template-driven – always looks like Prezi; cannot easily customize slides or repurpose presentations; can cause motion sickness. 

Perfect For  – Educators; Keynote Speakers; Organizations; Students

Other Review Sources  – Erez Zukerman From PCWorld ;  Edward Mendelson of PCMag

Prezi For Business

Summary  – The mothership of PowerPoint alternatives, they’ve been around for many years. They decided to make a stronger push for the business market.  Thus, they came out with Prezi for Business.  Lots of companies already use Prezi for one-off presentations like conference keynotes, town halls and investor pitches, but this version is trying to target the managed and repeatable presentations of sales and marketing teams.

Advantages  – Better for teams; good for collaborating.

Disadvantages  – Very template driven – always looks like Prezi; hard to edit by non-designers; not easy to repurpose content.

Perfect For  – Medium-sized companies that require limited customization by the sales team.

Other Review Sources  –  G2Crowd ,  Medium

Summary  – This is a template-based platform that allows people to create elegant looking presentations.  The software comes with 35 many templates and over 35 million stock photos that can be used within the slide templates.  This platform is a step between a company like CustomShow and Powerpoint.  

Advantages  – easy to use; fast onboarding process

Disadvantages  – cannot do offline work with the App; cannot truly Customize presentations in anyway you want

Perfect For  – students; educators; presenters in general

Other Review Sources  –  Joel Mathis of MacWorld ;  JR Bookwalter of MacLife ,  PCWorld

Summary  – Known as a presentation launch pad, SlideDog mainly takes all of your documents, presentations, pictures, or video and places them into a play list that can be moved around and presented in a seamless way.  You can upload just about any type of file from  videos  down to other presentation software devices such as Prezi.

Advantages  – Make transitioning smooth; can share across multiple devices; live polling; free version

Disadvantages  – Not used for creating presentations

Perfect For  – People who want to present more seamlessly across multiple documents; individual presenters

Other Review Sources  –  FP PT Overview ,  The Balance

Powtoon – Animation Presentation Software

Summary  – Probably one of the leaders in the DIY presentation animation space, Powtoon allows consumers to create presentations and videos that are animated, interesting, and engaging.  It is not difficult to learn how to use and the software is a breath of fresh air to those looking to create presentations that are different and engaging.

Advantages  – Ease Of Use; Truly Customizable Animated Presentations

Disadvantages  – Not suitable to live presentations (but that’s OK)

Perfect For  – Educators (Check out their new app for educators); businesses that want to create a service/product video; small business professionals; trainers

Other Sources  –   Sarah Perez of TechCrunch ;  Brightcarbon Review

Keynote – Presentation & Powerpoint Alternative

Summary  – One of the standard bearers in the presentation software space,  Keynote  is meant to allow presenters to create customizable presentations.  It comes with 30 themes that you can start with and pre stock photos.

Advantages  – Present on multiple devices (Apple owned); easy to share; PowerPoint friendly; inexpensive; allows for animations.

Disadvantages  – Can only be used for MAC (ios systems); fairly template driven; no slide library

Perfect For  – Business owners and individuals

Other Sources  –  Joe Kissell of MacWorld ;  John Martellaro of The Mac Observer

Summary  – To switch things up a bit MediaShout is a presentation software tool for religious institutions and churches.  It is a powerful platform that can be utilized by churches of all sizes and combines.  The software works well with the team that is managing the media and productions during any religious service but particularly during the sermon.

Advantages  – Stage mirroring; announcement deck; great with video; add scripture from 65 different bibles; include sermon points; sound and music enabled

Disadvantages  – Hmmm…we’re not going there.

Perfect For  – Religious institutions and churches

Other Sources:  Church Tech Today

Summary  – Visme is a web based tool suitable for students and individuals who want a free tool mainly for one-off presentations or infographics design for social media.  The tool is actually relatively easy to use and comes with thousands of templates & graphics.  It’s relatively new software and is geared more toward infographics rather than presentations, but nonetheless, it’s a great tool and It’s have more features like  whiteboard creator , video maker, flowchart maker Etc.

Advantages  – Easy to use and get started with built-in templates and stock photos

Disadvantages  – No strong library management or brand control features. Not designed for rich media heavy presentations.

Reviews  –  CMSCritic ,  SelfMadeSuccess

Vyond – Video Presentation Software

Summary  – Previously known as GoAnimate, Vyond is one of Powtoon’s biggest competitors, Vyond is all about animated video presentations.  You can create DIY professional animated videos without having to hire a video producer.  It is integrated with other software sales apps and is a solution that can be interesting for budget-busting video animation companies.  Of course, there are other whiteboard animation companies, but GoAnimate does showcase another alternative.

Advantages  – Great For Video; Cost Effective; Think Product Videos

Disadvantages  – Only Animation Centered (Not a real disadvantage though)

Perfect For  – Business; Producers; Digital Agencies

Other Sources  – Joe Ganci of Learning Solutions Mag,  Editing Insider

Wink – Presentation & Powerpoint Alternative

Summary  –   Wink  is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS Word/Excel, etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.

Advantages  – Free; multilingual; good support 

Disadvantages  – No ‘undo’ feature, audio compatibility issues

Perfect For  – Individuals and small businesses who just need to create simple animated tutorials and software demonstrations.

Summary  –  Owned by TechSmith, it is useful for creating Windows based presentation for software training. Offers advanced features and extra tools for organizing, simplifying, and editing screen captures. If you produce Windows screen shots on a regular basis, SnagIt is a great tool for that.

Advantages  – Easy-to-use screen capture program, 

Disadvantages  –  Windows only

Perfect For  – Window’s screen shot-ers

Other Sources  – Tom Negrino of MacWorld

Summary  –  Also owned by TechSmith, Camtasia Studio is an integrated suite of applications for producing professional videos of on-screen activity. A good Presentation & PowerPoint alternative for customer training and onboarding.

Advantages  – 5 applications provide solutions for end to end video production, multiple output options 

Disadvantages  – Costly for the value

Perfect For  –  Creating Video demonstrations for  customer support , employee training, and product presentations.

Other Sources –   Daniel And Sally Grotta of PCWorld

Camstudio – Open Source Video Presentation Software

Summary  –   Free and simple, straightforward program to record screen activity to AVI or SWF format. 

Advantages  – Free. Video annotation capabilities

Disadvantages  – no movie editing, hard to use annotation tools

Perfect For  – Students and individuals who want to record and present basic activities for webinars and basic presentations

Other Sources  – Michael Muchmore of PCMag

Flipsnack – Evolved from Slidesnack

Summary  –   Started as a presentation sharing tool and has evolved into making flip books for online sharing and embedding from any PDF.

Advantages  – Simple and complete solution for turning presentations and print publications into flip books. 

Disadvantages  – not great for building presentations.

Perfect For  – Publishers who wish to transform their printed publications into digital ones.

Reviews  –  Ed Tech Reviews ,  Presentation Guru

Articulate Presenter

Summary  –  Articulate Presenter is a program that acts as an add-on to Microsoft PowerPoint. It capitalizes on what PowerPoint can do already, and provides several added features, such as  quizzing, narration, and other interactive features.

Advantages  – Supercharges the existing functionality in PowerPoint; narration syncs easily to screen animation; functionality is super intuitive

Disadvantages  – Content positioning is imprecise, takes ages to publish the content, and Published files are BIG

Perfect For  – Educators; Individuals

Windows Movie Maker

Summary  – Freeware video editing software by Microsoft. It is a part of the Windows Essentials software suite and offers the ability to create and edit videos as well as to publish them on OneDrive, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr.

Advantages  – Free, simple to use for beginners, great for photo slideshows

Disadvantages  – Only one video track, freezes and crashes randomly, lots of versions that aren’t compatible with each other

Perfect For  – Essentially Anyone; Video Production

Other Sources  –  Michael Muchmore of PCMag

Summary  –   Allows easy sharing of presentations between businesses and consumers

Advantages  – Easy embedding in websites, great for sharing audio and video, custom privacy settings

Disadvantages  – Must use other programs to create and edit material, atypical transitions, cannot track views

Perfect For  – Students, teachers, and small and large businesses that want public-facing content to reach consumers

Other Sources  – Tanya Lewis of PR Week US

R eviews  –  GetApp ,  BestCompany

Summary  – Automatic graphic designer for PowerPoint presentations that designs a Showcase automatically with just some clicks

Advantages  – Easy to Use, Fast, User-Friendly UI, Attractive Templates 

Disadvantages  – Getting appropriate images requires some selection by hand. Some features redundant to PowerPoint’s own.

Perfect For  – Individuals

Other Sources  –  Jill Duffy of PCMag ,  Indezine

Summary  – The Emaze user can easily build sophisticated presentations with little effort. The company’s vision was to free up users from having to spend time studying and preparing the presentation tool so that they can better spend their time concentrating on the actual content of the presentation

Advantages  – Cheap, designed for ordinary users,

Disadvantages  – More of web page designer and not fully focused on presentation.

Perfect For  – Basic user base, current PowerPoint users wanting better visualization

Libre Office

Summary  – Impress is the presentation component of Libre Office. It is a truly outstanding tool for creating effective multimedia presentations. Creating and editing slides is very versatile thanks to different editing and view modes: Normal (for general editing), Outline (for organizing and outlining your text content), Notes (for viewing and editing the notes attached to a slide), Handout (for producing paper-based material), and Slide Sorter (for a thumbnail sheet view that lets you quickly locate and order your slides).

Summary  – Now we’re in the world of conferences.  Preseria is all about presenters uploading their presentations and organizing your conferences.  This can be a nifty tool if you’re managing large conferences where you have several presenters .

Advantages  – Great for Sharing; can Organize and gather content seamlessly

Disadvantages  – Can’t create custom presentations.

Perfect For  – Event Coordinators; Conference Leaders

Proclaim – Church Presentation Software

Summary  – We’re back in the world of churches.  Proclaim is all about pastors and assistants uploading their presentations and having the functionality to make any changes to them in order to provide an experience to people listening and watching the sermon.

Advantages  – Incredible software for sharing and collaborating with teams of people who are working on the presentation; Organize and gather content seamlessly; Comes with a remote app that can be controlled by your iPad.

Disadvantages  – Can’t create super customized presentations, but they can be fairly unique.

Perfect For  – Churches; religious institutions

Reviews –  Church Tech Today

Summary  – Moving back into animation, this software is pretty nifty.  You can create animated figures for your presentation in a shorter period of time.  Great for presenters to quickly add animated avatars and comic effects into PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Doc and other presentation software.

Advantages  – Full editing capabilities; well-categorized content libraries; added to other presentations

Disadvantages  – Can’t create presentations within the software, however, Reallusion does have other software in its suite that can do this.

Perfect For  – Individuals; Business; Keynote Speakers; Designers

Summary  – Focusky helps mainly with creating animation presentations as well as presentations in HTML5 format.  

Advantages  – Full editing capabilities; can present from anywhere; animation capabilities; import PowerPoint slides

Disadvantages  – It May not have as much functionality as CustomShow but is great for individuals; mainly for animation, not traditional presentations. 

Perfect For  – Individuals; students; teachers

Reviews –  G2Crowd

Summary  – Slides.com is a cloud based simple presentation software.

Advantages  – Full editing capabilities; can present from anywhere; cloud based; comes with analytics; incorporate HTML and CSS in the presentations

Disadvantages  – It May not have as much functionality as CustomShow but is great for individuals

Summary  – Slidebean focuses on presentations for pitching  startup ideas , consulting and design projects.

Advantages  – Ease of use; quick to develop presentations; focused templates for the target audience.

Disadvantages  – May not have as much functionality as CustomShow but is great for individuals; not best for teams; not entirely customizable

Reviews –  Finances Online,   Ethos3

Summary  – Another graphics design tool that also allows creation of presentation.Mostly used by students, educational professionals and small businesses.

Advantages  – Lots of templates to get started.

Disadvantages  – Not a serious presentation software solution. Consider it for making infographics, etc. for social media posting.

Reviews –  PCWord ,  3hundrd

Summary – Part of Zoho OfficeSuite,  Zoho Show offers a great interface for people who want to design eye popping presentations.  Zoho is pretty broad in its software and service offerings ranging from document management tools to collaboration and sharing.  Their pricing on the document management side can be as low as $5/month/user.  Doesn’t really compete in the B2B space, but nonetheless is a great player with many benefits including transferring to PowerPoint, analytics, bulk file uploads, and much more.

Advantages  – Minimalist design, lots of templates, collaboration

Disadvantages  – Not suited for rich media presentations, does not provide great analytics

Perfect For  – Users who subscribe to Zoho solutions

Reviews –   PCMag

Summary  – Foleon, previously known as Instant Magazine allows you to create interactive publications which make your content come alive. It is one tool, for all platforms, for all devices. Get the best reading experience on smartphones, tablets and desktops. Personalized and fully measurable.

Advantages  – Rich-media support, analytics, easy web based publishing of content

Disadvantages  – Not powerful or flexible enough for sales teams to build presentations

Perfect For  – Digital marketers who want to create web based content

Reviews –  Crunchbase

Summary  – At Panopto, the company believes that video can have a transformative effect on learning. So they built a video platform that helps businesses and universities improve the way that they train, teach, and share knowledge.  Panapto acts as a video presentation software package that allows consumers to manage, live stream,  record screen , and share videos across your organization.

Advantages  – Powerful video capture and sharing tools

Disadvantages  – Not very useful if your presentations require text and support for other media.

Perfect For  – Corporate training and education

Reviews –  SteamingMedia ,  FinancesOnline

Summary  – Genially is a helpful tool for creating visual media, such as presentations, infographics, mind maps, and more. The focus with Genially is interactivity, and nearly everything created with this tool can include interactivity. It also includes real-time collaboration and animation. In addition, statistics help you measure whether your presentation is effective.

Advantages  – Easy to use and interactivity

Disadvantages  – Not a serious corporate contender, lacks its own analytics, not designed for rich media presentation

Perfect For  – Individuals, teachers

Reviews  –  Tutsplus

Summary  – FlowVella is another presentation app with several benefits and features including its being mobile first, offering privacy and security, analytics, autoplay videos, and a vast array of collaboration tools.  FlowVella has native apps for Mac, iPhone & iPad, yet presentations can be viewed via any web browser.  FlowVella is great for sales presentations, training,  kiosks , digital brochures, portfolios, product guides, formal and informal education, and much more.

Advantages  – Inexpensive, free version

Disadvantages  – Not designed with rich media support, collaboration or brand and compliance control in mind.

Reviews  –  TechCrunch

Summary  –  An easy-to-use graphic design tool made for nondesigners, thanks to its simple UI and Drag and drop feature to make fast and precise editing. Features like background remover, Image Animator, PDF Editor, and many more is free to use. with thousands of free templates, not only. It also has access to 125 million Shutterstock images. 

Advantages  – You can do it All in One Tool 

Disadvantages  – Some stock images are not accessible for free

Perfect For  – Students, Teachers, Non Designers, Everyone 

Summary  –  Scribe is a Chrome extension that captures your screen, instantly turning a process into a step-by-step guide with screenshots. A good PowerPoint alternative for customer or  employee training and onboarding .  

Advantages  – Free tool, simple to learn. Consistent and aesthetically pleasing guides for training.  

Disadvantages  – Not intended to replace large presentations, rather intended for sharing instructions or tutorials.

Perfect For  – Creating step-by-step instructions in business – onboarding, training, standard operating procedures, technical manuals, and more. 

There are probably an additional 50 – 80 presentation software tools we missed on this list.  We know there are others we likely left out, so we look forward to your comments and other Presentation & PowerPoint alternatives that can be useful for presenting or organizing/delivering presentations.

And if you believe you are a good match and should be added to this list, feel free to email us and we’ll consider adding you.

 Discontinued Presentation Software

We list the presentation programs that we had previously listed as Presentation & Powerpoint alternatives but are no available.

SlideRocket Marketing Software

Summary  –  Sliderocket was purchased by Clearside, which in turn was purchased by BigTinCan.  If volume sales is important to you, Clearslide could be a good tool for you.  There is more emphasis on sales and tracking than the presentation creation side of the software.  After going through a series C $50 million round of funding, the company is focusing more on sales enablement and less on presentations specifically.  Nonetheless, the tool is worth reviewing.  

Advantages  – Can upload files from Keynote, Powerpoint, PDF, Excel and other formats; good metrics; online delivery; slide sharing 

Disadvantages  – Interface is complex and limited in the ability to create a “better-looking presentation”; video isn’t seamlessly integrated into presentations.

Perfect For  – High Volume Sales & Marketing Organizations

Other Review Sources  –  Edward Mendelson from PC Mag ;  Jessica Still at Gigaom

Slidesharks

Summary  – Another discontinued product.  SlideShark was a mobile app used by sales professionals and other presenters worldwide to present and share PowerPoints via their chosen devices.  Its features include cloud storage integration, sharing and tracking views, broadcasting or presenting over the web, creating annotations on the slides, and of course presenter mode.

Advantages  – Can present PowerPoint slides anywhere; cloud-based; free but paid version is known as a Business pro; can be utilized for webinars

Disadvantages  – unable to customize presentations; primarily a delivery system (good and bad thing).

Perfect For  – sales and marketing professionals; individual business owners.

Other Review Sources  –  Dylan Herx of AppStorm ;  Phillip Michaels of ComputerWorld ,  EdShelf ,  Engadget

Another discontinued presentation software. Docketzoom helps you bring to life highly interactive presentations that enhance buyer perception. With DocketZoom you can easily create an appealing presentation that delights and engages your audience. Its inbuilt analytics helps you understand critical user insights to formulate better content strategies.

Totus Marketing

Another software business that has ceased operations and now absorbed by an experience design company. Instead of building presentations from scratch, users can compile pre-approved slides (individual or multiple) into a customized PowerPoint presentation that suits their needs. Users can construct presentations from a selection of approved slides and even add personalization and customization where allowed by site administrators.

Slide Bureau

Summary  – Shut down. Slide Bureau is an interesting software device.  It is mainly used for iPads, but it does allow people to create presentations that are more customized than your traditional  PowerPoint slide .  The interface is centered on pre-made templates but they are categorized to fit the profession and overall need of the slide.  

Advantages  – Easy to use this presentation platform

Disadvantages  – Limited to only iPads; cannot truly brand and create presentations more customized than the templates that are given

Perfect For  – Educators; Individual Professionals

Other Sources  –  Benjamin Romano of XConomy ;  Taylor Soper of Geekwire

Summary  – This is another presentation software company that went out of business. Built mainly for B2B salespeople, Kineticast is a cool presentation tool that enables salespeople to be more effective in their sales and  geofencing marketing  advertising.  Their process includes creating the presentation (uploading files),  emailing your list of contacts , and then tracking the results.  The purpose of this tool is to create customized messages with slides that are meant for specific prospects.

Advantages  – Enables sales professionals to improve the effectiveness

Disadvantages  – Cannot create customized presentations (wasn’t built for that anyway though).  

Perfect For  – B2B Sales Professionals; Possibly Marketers

Other Sources  – Rich Bohn of SellMoreNow

The world of presentation & PowerPoint alternatives continues to evolve and expand. With these options available, there is a wealth of choices to suit various presentation needs and preferences. Whether you’re looking for enhanced design features, collaboration capabilities, or interactive elements, these alternatives offer innovative solutions to help you deliver engaging and impactful presentations. Stay ahead of the curve by exploring and embracing these alternatives, and elevate your presentation game in the year ahead.

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How to Create a Video Presentation in PowerPoint

Have you ever gone on YouTube to watch just one video, only to find yourself stuck there a few hours later? You aren’t the only one. TechJury reports that last year the combined watch count on YouTube was 5 billion views per day.

People really love videos. According to a report by Forrester Research , they are 75% more likely to be engaged by videos over documents, articles, and other forms of plain media. This is the reason more and more companies are using them for their business tasks. One of the more popular forms of video is a video presentation. In this article, we’ll explain what a video presentation is, what it’s used for, and show how to create high-quality video presentations step by step. 

• What Is a Video Presentation
• Why Make a Video Presentation

How to Create a Video Presentation

The top 5 tools for making video presentations, how to turn your powerpoint presentation into a video, tips and best practices for making video presentations, faq on video presentations, what is a video presentation.

A video presentation is a popular format of multimedia content with a duration of several seconds or minutes that shows the benefits of a product, service, or any idea with the help of interesting graphic images, concise text, and appropriate narration.  People use it in various aspects of business: from marketing campaigns and generating customer leads, onboarding and training employees, B2B communication, all the way to presenting an enterprise at expos or conventions. 

Video presentations can take on a variety of formats. They can include fully animated explainer videos, cartoons, invitation videos, screencasts, tutorials, video ads, promo videos, marketing videos, product demos, or PowerPoint slides narrated by a talking head. Ultimately, the choice of format is yours.

Why Make a Video Presentation?

Besides being more appealing than a basic cut-and-dry content piece, video presentations are also:

• Persuasive. Video presentations are better able to persuade their target audience through audio-visual design, storytelling, bringing emotions, ideas, and sounds into the mix.
• Better for information retention. Invisia reports that viewers retain 95% of a message in video form, as compared to 10% when reading it in text. Thus, educators often use video presentations within the framework of the digital storytelling concept or when pre-installing new educational material. Here you will find detailed information about how you can apply digital storytelling in your lessons.
• Accessible anytime, anywhere. People love to spend time on their phones and tablets, and they prefer to browse videos on them. Emarketer found that 75% of all videos are played on cell phones and tablets. 
• Time efficient. Video presentations are meant to enable the maker to break down the data into smaller, easily processable chunks. This allows viewers to explore larger amounts of information quicker and easier.

Now, we’ll show you step by step, how to make a video presentation with the iSpring Suite authoring toolkit. Later, we’ll also provide you with the other tools and presentation makers that can help you author a video presentation fast.  

iSpring Suite is an easy-to-use tool – all that’s required to create stunning video presentations is knowing how to use PowerPoint. You can convert your slides that you’ve made in PowerPoint, record a separate video, or you can combine the two to make a picture-in-picture video. iSpring Suite works directly in PowerPoint and allows you to add narration to slides. You can use the built-in video editor to add a professional touch and apply captions, transitions, effects, and more.

If you still don’t have iSpring Suite, download the program for free and install it on your computer right now. 

Here are five steps you need to take in order to make a video presentation in minutes.

Step 1. Add a video narration Step 2. Synchronize video with slides Step 3. Switch layouts in slide properties Step 4. Customize your player template Step 5. Publish your video presentation

Watch the video tutorial or continue reading the article.

How to make a video presentation

Step 1. Add a video narration

Open your slides in PowerPoint. Then go to the iSpring Suite tab and click on Manage Narration .

Once the iSpring Narration Editor window appears, you can either record a new video narration or import an existing video file.

Importing a video file

To import an existing video file, click on the Video button in the Import tab.

Find the video file and click on the Open button.

Tip: You can insert multiple videos at once. To do that, press and hold the Ctrl key while choosing several files.

In the Import Video window, you have the choice of importing your video at the current cursor position or at the beginning of a slide of your choice.

Note: If you choose to import your video at the beginning of a certain slide, you will have the option of selecting the Adjust slide duration option. This will adjust the slide you have selected to the length of your video. 

Recording a narration

To record yourself narrating on a webcam, click on the Record Video button on the editor’s toolbar.

The Record Video Narration panel will appear.

You can add a video narration for one or several slides at a time. To record video for the current slide, mark Process current slide only.

Step 2. Synchronize video with slides

Now it’s time to synchronize your video with your slides and animation effects. The latter are displayed as yellow bars on the Slides timeline. The great thing is that you’ll be able to choose the exact moment when an animation will appear while watching the video. This way, the effects will perfectly correspond to the narration in your video presentation.

Note : This is only applicable if you have animation effects attached to your slides. 

The sync process is quite simple to use. Just place the cursor where the sync should begin and click the Sync button on the toolbar.

A Sync panel will appear above the timeline. Click on the Start Sync button to start the process.

The Start Sync button will be replaced with the Next Slide or Next Animation button, depending on the next element in sequence. Click on those buttons at the appropriate moments. Hit the Next Animation button at the point in the narration where you would like to start the next animation. For example, if you are listing information, you can have each new item appear when the narrator mentions it in the video narration.

Once you have finished, click on Done to quit the Sync mode. Then hit the Save & Close button in the upper-left corner.

Step 3. Switch layouts in slide properties

iSpring allows you to publish materials using one of two players: the highly customizable Universal player or the Video Lecture player, which displays the video presentation in a 50/50 layout and allows viewers to change the proportion between video and slides at any time.

The Universal player features three layouts for a video presentation:

• The Full layout displays the slide, sidebar, and navigation panel.

The No Sidebar layout displays the slide and the navigation panel only.

The Maximized Video layout displays the video in the center, the slide on the sidebar, and the navigation panel.

Your slides don’t have to have the same layout. You can highlight key points by changing the proportion between information on screen and the video for each slide. To do that, click on Slide Properties on the toolbar.

In the Layout column, pick the desired layout for a particular slide from the drop-down list.

The layouts for the Video Lecture player can be changed at any time during  playback. You can still preset them, and they will work as follows:

• The Full layout displays video and slides in equal proportions.

The No Sidebar layout displays the full slide with a miniaturized video.

The Maximized Video layout will show the enlarged video and a smaller slide.

It is insisted that you set slides to advance automatically for the entire presentation. To do that, in the Presentation Explorer , select all slides and click on the Auto button.

Step 4. Customize your player template

The built-in presentation player has flexible customization options: you can provide your viewers with the presenter’s info, a brand logo, outline, and more. First, let’s choose what player to use. Click on Player on the product ribbon, and choose whether to use the Universal or Video Lecture player , as shown in the picture.

For this guide on making a video presentation, we will use the Universal player . To customize it, click on Templates . There are a number of player templates to choose from. We will use the Online Lecture with Video template as an example.

You can also experiment with the settings, doing things like turning off the outline and notes by clicking on the Layout button on the ribbon. Here’s what our player will look like:

Additionally, you can customize a presentation to match your corporate branding colors by choosing one of the built-in color schemes or creating your own.

When you’ve finished customizing the player, click on Apply & Close in the upper left corner. Well done, you’ve put finishing touches for your video presentation. 

Step 5. Publish your video presentation

When your video presentation is ready, the last step is to publish it to web format so it can be easily accessed via a browser.

In the Publish Presentation window, select the My Computer tab from the left-hand menu. Enter the presentation title and select a Local folder where the presentation will be saved. Under Output Options , choose a format. We’ll be publishing to HTML5 format to make our video presentation play seamlessly across all platforms and devices. You can learn more about publishing presentations here .

In case you want to know more about other tools to make a video presentation, there are software solutions available that also come with a shallow learning curve. These apps range from video recording or video editing software all the way to animating your own cartoons. Here’s an overview of five of the most powerful yet still easy-to-learn video presentation makers.

1. Camtasia 

If you want to create a video presentation but don’t have the time to put layouts together, you can use the Camtasia video recorder software. Camtasia offers a library of templates and assets that users can use to build their own video projects. Users can also create their own templates and save them for later projects. Like iSpring, Camtasia allows you to record both screen and webcam. You can’t create slides in it, but it’s a good solution if you need to record and show yourself as well as everything you do on your computer monitor.

2. PowToon 

Animation is a universal language without limits: everybody loves it. Promotional cartoons are now available to everyone, thanks to software tools like PowToon . The service has an intuitive user interface and amazing comic graphics. You can start from scratch or use ready-made scenes and layouts that are editable with a drag-and-drop feature. The complete animated presentation can then be uploaded to YouTube channels or social media with one click.

3. Biteable

Biteable  is a video editing software that allows you to make professional-quality video presentations and animations online in minutes. It sacrifices the ability to capture video and record voiceovers for fully animated video. The ingredients are your own photos, texts, pre-made templates, and stock video footage. The styles of videos produced vary from animated graphics to live action. The really cool thing about this tool is the ability to create engaging video infographics.

4. Emaze 

With Emaze , spectacular visual presentations are at your fingertips. With an intuitive creator interface and a number of ready-made templates available, creating a video presentation is both easy and time-efficient. If you already have a PowerPoint presentation that you want to enhance, you can import it into Emaze and use its collection of tools – attaching photos, GIFs, videos, and 3-D images.

Animoto is an online video maker that allows you to create video presentations by simply dragging and dropping your own images and video clips into pre-built templates. To customize your videos, you can quickly adjust colors, fonts, music, add your company watermark, and more. No video editing experience is required.

If you’d like to know more about other tools for making video presentations, read our article on the Top 10 Video Presentation Makers for Promotion and Education . 

By default, you can make your PowerPoint presentation into a video by saving it as one. It can be a solid choice if you don’t need narration for this video. But if you need to, you’ll still be able to record narrations from that menu, without going back to the original PowerPoint presentation. 

Here’s what you need to do to download your slides as a video in PowerPoint:

• Click on the Create video tab to start downloading your video.

To make your presentation even better, consider the following tips for creating a successful video presentation:

• Make your videos short and sweet. Keep your video clips long enough to captivate your audience’s attention, but short enough to incite curiosity. Your goal is to maintain the viewer’s interest. Remember, the optimal length of a video presentation is no longer than 4-7 minutes.
• Keep to the point. Make your goals and objectives known at the start of the presentation and don’t stray from the message. Your text and visuals should relate to the subject matter and not detract from the goal of your video presentation.
• Add engaging elements. Enrich your video presentation with useful and interesting content. For example, add music, colorful infographic, embed YouTube videos, or insert interactive quizzes to effectively engage learners.
• End on a meaningful note. Leave your audience with something they can take away from the presentation. An idea, a short story, a visual representation of your product, or even a link to your website works to provide the strong ending needed to create a lasting impression.

Feel free to learn the answers to a few popular questions about making a video presentation.

How do I make an effective video presentation?

First and foremost, think about your audience. What are their ages, genders, and occupations? What is their prior knowledge on a topic or their level of proficiency? After you define this, choose the way you will present accordingly. You should connect with your audience emotionally and ‘speak their language.’ In this way, you’ll communicate knowledge and the right message to your learners. 

Second, it will be useful to prepare a script for your video. Of course, the slideshow will support you, and you can base your speech on its content. But if you write an intro, outro, some key points, and transition words in advance, you will feel more confident, and reduce rambling or unnecessary pauses. This will help you focus on the effectiveness of your words.

How can I prepare myself for a video presentation?

Make sure you’re physically and technically ready. When speaking, prevent your mouth and throat from getting dry. You can use a lip balm and have a glass of water nearby to refresh during pauses. This will make you sound better, and your recording will be clearer. For recording, it’s better to choose a smaller quiet space to avoid echoes, and check your microphone sound.

Also read : →  How To Record PowerPoint Presentation With Audio  

What is the best video format for a PowerPoint presentation?

PowerPoint allows you to save your presentation in these video formats: MPEG-4 (or MP4 / .mp4), Windows Media Video (.wmv) or MOV (if it’s PowerPoint on a Mac). MPEG-4 is the most common video format and is widely supported. Opt for this if you have PowerPoint versions 2013, 2016, or 2019. With PowerPoint 2010, the Windows Media format is preferable.

We hope this post will help you turn a PowerPoint presentation into an engaging video lecture. To start creating video presentations and other kinds of eLearning content, try iSpring Suite today. Get a 14-day trial and access all of its features without spending a cent.

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Content creator:

Helen Colman

She enjoys combining in-depth research with expert knowledge of the industry. If you have eLearning insights that you’d like to share, please get in touch .

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How to make interactive PowerPoint slides for eLearning

• Written by: Hannah Harper
• Categories: PowerPoint design , Effective eLearning
• Comments: 26

Want to build some interactivity into your PowerPoint slides? Here are two easy entry-level ways that you can turn your PowerPoint slides into dynamic and interactive material for eLearning.

How to hyperlink in PowerPoint

Hyperlinks sound a lot more complicated than they actually are. They work like any button or box on a website. By clicking that box you’re sent to another page. So from the ‘Search’ button on Google to the ‘Buy it now!’ on Amazon – you’re already pretty familiar with them.

But did you know you can build them into PowerPoint presentations? In the same way that you can link round a web page, you can link round a presentation.

The advantages of this are that your presentation is no longer linear. You can skip out whole sections and focus on the bits that are relevant. During a test you can link back to the theory for a recap. You can create easily navigable menus just like website home pages.

So how do you create such wizardry?

It’s probably best to hyperlink objects within your presentation. Technically you can hyperlink almost anything in PowerPoint: text (down to a single letter), pictures, objects etc. but it’s best to stick with what looks familiar to your audience (so that’s going to be boxes, arrows, and buttons).

Once you’ve chosen your element, right click and choose the option Link .

A pop-up window will appear and on the left hand side you want to choose the option Place in This Document . A list of your slides will then appear.

Choose the one you want to link to, hit OK and you’re sorted.

Remember – you can use hyperlinks in PowerPoint in all sorts of ways to navigate around your presentation. It might help to think of it like a web page instead of a presentation. A potential starting point is creating a clickable menu for your slides – find out how by using our guide .

If you’ve got a complicated PowerPoint presentation, your hyperlinks might get overwhelming. It can be difficult to know which slides are hyperlinked and where those links go. Our incredible, free add-in BrightSlide has a super useful tool for getting your links in order. Under the BrightSlide tab  select  Review  (under File & Master ), then click Hyperlinks > Tag Hyperlinks With Comments .

It does what it says on the tin, every hyperlink in your deck will have a comment attached telling you where that link goes. Download BrightSlide here !

Using triggers in interactive PowerPoints

The wonderful thing about triggers, is triggers are wonderful things! They, much like a hyperlink, are applied to a specific element on your slide, and you can add an animation so that something happens when you click that object. Think of this like an internal hyperlink on your slide. You’re staying within the slide itself, but you can click things and have them change in any order – the person viewing the presentation has control.

This can be really useful for building quizzes where your participants have multiple choice questions to answer.

So first of all make your elements (the list of possible answers). Animate them so they appear as you want, then add a Font Color  animation. Choose green for the right answer and red for the incorrect answer (if you’re going for the typical look).

Next go to the Animation tab at the top of the PowerPoint window and make sure you have your Animation Pane open. In the Animation Pane click on one of the  Font Color animations – you’ll then see at the top of the Animation tab that you have the word Triggers .

Click on this and you’ll see that you get the option On Click Of . When you select that, you’ll see that all the elements on your slide are listed. Click on the one that matches your element and there you have it. When you play your slide in show mode you’ll be able to click it and the answer will change colour according to whether it’s right or wrong.

Interactive PowerPoint: Taking it further

You should be able to do a lot in PowerPoint with just hyperlinking and triggers. I’ve given you a few very simple ways to use both of these tools, but as you start to use them for yourselves, you’ll see how many different uses they have.

There will inevitably be things that you want to do that are just beyond the limits of PowerPoint. But there are some great pieces of software that plug into your PowerPoint and give you that option of building more sophisticated interaction. Learn more about PowerPoint triggers in this blog post . Google Slides user? Learn how to create an interactive presentation in Google Slides.

Have any SOS interactivity needs? Post a comment below and we’ll try and sort you out!

Hannah Harper

Principal consultant; content marketing lead, related articles, how to write scripts for webinars, videos and elearning.

• Sales messaging / Effective eLearning
• Comments: 3

Webinars, videos and eLearning are excellent ways to push your content out to a wider audience. It’s really important, therefore, that the content we send out is engaging, and your script is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Here are five best practices to create compelling scripts.

Masking effects in PowerPoint: 3 simple animation tricks

• PowerPoint design / PowerPoint animation
• Comments: 8

Have you ever thought about what makes some PowerPoint slides look a bit too much like PowerPoint? The Wipe animation effect is a chief culprit with its soft gradient edge. But there is an alternative, and it involves one of my favourite PowerPoint tricks, called ‘the mask’. So without further ado read on to learn three masking effects in PowerPoint to tidy up your slides, and bring them into the 21st century.

How to make text superscript and subscript in PowerPoint

• PowerPoint design / PowerPoint productivity
• Comments: 7

If you need footnotes, or if you’re a prolific user of mathematical formulae, you’re going to need to know how to make your text superscript and subscript in PowerPoint. Here are three ways to do it, with some bonus productivity tips to keep you working efficiently!

Thanks Hannah for these tips and suggestions!

Thank you so much for taking the time to create this tutorial. I was chuffed to be able to create interactive buttons by following your instructions. 🙂

Loved your instructions. Made it easy to accomplish what I needed. Excited about exploring more options.

Thanks, great tips. Do you have any tips on embedding video and if possible, overlaying the video with text, pics etc?

It’s great to see you all having a go at interactivity in PowerPoint! Keep experimenting – maybe try playing round with some triggers. We’ve got a great tutorial for that too: https://www.brightcarbon.com/blog/powerpoint-triggers-make-something-happen/

And Lee, you can insert a video like you insert a picture in PowerPoint (just navigate to the’Insert’ tab) here’s a great tool for checking to see what formats work for you: https://www.brightcarbon.com/resources/powerpoint-help/video-embedding-tool-for-powerpoint/

I think this may be beyond powerpoint’s capabilities, but I didn’t know about triggers, either! So I’ll ask: is there any way that the program can keep track of the things a client clicks?

I.e. I want to show a slide for three seconds with an image. The next slide will come up with a set of five choices. I want the client to click on a choice, for the choice to be recorded, and then the next slide shows, regardless of the answer chosen.

I am pretty sure it doesn’t do this, but maybe? If powerpoint doesn’t, can you think of a program that does?

Sounds like an interesting project!

About 90% of that is possible in PowerPoint: you can do everything apart from record the answer. In the Transitions tab you can set your slide to come up for three seconds and advance automatically (uncheck ‘On Mouse Click’). This will them move to the next slide (with your five options). You can then make your five options hyperlinks (if you’re not sure how, just follow the instructions above), and these will navigate the user to a slide of your choosing (they can all be the same).

But if reporting the answer is important, I can recommend a programme called Articulate Storyline: it’s what lots of people use to build out full eLearning decks. You can download a trial version for 30 days if you want to try it out. When you publish in Articulate you can get results reported, the only catch is that you’ll need to upload it to a Learning Management System (or LMS), for the results to be reported to a specific location.

I hope this helps!

I don’t know if this is even possible…

I want to create an interactive calendar using jpeg images. Imagine a preK class using a pocket chart every day, adding that day’s date picture.

So using a trigger button the jpeg image would appear for that day, using a hyperlink you could go to another activity (song, months of the year review, etc.)

But can you tell the program to save today’s jpeg image so tomorrow you only add that day’s and so on?

(sorry, my email address was wrong in the first comment)

This article was excellent with detailed instructional pics. I’m interested in creating free response quiz and also a multiple choice to create a trigger for puzzle piece and melting candle timer. Qtns 1. How to know whether the free response is correct and hyperlink to that’s it slide? Is there a way to use visual basic for this kind of quiz? 2.How to create melting candle timer like word for word worm APP? 3. How to make trigger for multiple choice game where the correct answer will appear on the screen and player must assemble the puzzle pieces before the candle timer melts? 4. Is it better to create free response quiz separate fro multi choice. It should also trigger the puzzle piece to appear after a response is written. HOW to ensure silly answers are not accepted?

I am an experienced producer of powerpoint presentations. I teach languages and use PP to display pages that show objects that play a sound when they are clicked on. They work great on my laptops and students benefit from them. However the study centre’s computers reject any unauthorised software file saving. I cant solve this problem without admin clearance. So I am hoping that there is a way to make my ppp files interact and perform online just like the stand alone version. Any suggestions anybody ?

Hello from France !

First of all, thanks a lot for writing this complet tutorial. But here is my problem : after seeing Prezi, Powerpoint seems so platonic and past history now… But my boss doesn’t want to use Prezi, so here I am to found new options and new ways about using this tool. Can you help me on this ? I’m looking about more animated features.

Thank you again for triggers and hyperlink, I’ll surely use it soon.

Hi Benjamin.

We’re not totally convinced by Prezi .

If you just want to make stuff that looks really cool, check out the Morph functionality in PowerPoint 2016 .

Hi Benjamin, If you want to still have some of the benefits that you get from Prezi you can try Slide Navigator interactive and animated PowerPoint templates. The website is http://www.slidenavigator.com . Hope that helps.

I like this webpage, it is informative and concise. I published a website some years ago explaining how to make PowerPoint interactive for the college where I work. The problem I have found is the fear of PowerPoint and even more fear of trying to make the presentation interactive. Those who are interested seem to get a mental block once they see the work involved. I have felt for a long time that PowerPoint can go a long way to help in training and education when interactive.

I completely agree that interactive PowerPoints can go a long way to help in training and education when interactive. It is a lot of work. There is a website that helps to reduce the amount of work in making an interactive PowerPoint presentation called http://www.slidenavigator.com . I think it can really help college professors.

Or PowerPoint’s new Zoom functionality, if you are using 365. Probably easier.

One word of advice about making things interactive. You have to disable the slide forward clicking in the advanced animation selection. If this is not disabled the slide will advance to the next one. The check box has to be clicked and then you will only be able to move to the next slide or open up other hidden on the slide using the hyperlink. Other presentation programmes from other software organisations such as Libre and Open Office don’t have this disabling function which makes PowerPoint that much more powerful.

Thank you for the great info. Once I build this awesome document how Can I save it so my audience will only see the first page and then navigate using my links?

You can indeed! You need to highlight all your slides and then go to the Transitions tab at the top of the PowerPoint ribbon. On the right-hand side you’ll notice two ‘Advance Slide’ options (On Mouse Click and After 00:00.00]. The ‘On Mouse Click’ option should be checked. If you uncheck it here, the slide won’t advance, and you’ll only be able to navigate using the hyperlinks you’ve added!

You can then save it as a standard .pptx file, or you can save it as a PowerPoint Show file (.ppsx) if you just want your audience to launch the presentation (without seeing the edit view).

I hope this does the trick for you!

Hi Hannah, I’m a bit late to the party here, but am trying to save an interactive ppt. as an interactive PDF for upload to a training Sharepoint. However when the PDF launches it also has the option to scroll through all the pages, rather than only progressing via hyperlinks – how do I do set this up to only be able to move on via links?

I am designing quizes for pre-schoolers using powerpoint slides. I have created hyperlink of a text box to another slide. When I do a right click the textbox, it opens up to a list of options. I have to select open hyperlink. How to bypass this step? Is there anywhere to click on the text box and open up to another slide directly?

Thanks for these tutorials. It really enhances my skills in designing PowerPoint presentations.

Quite hapy with built in annimations but looking for different ready made Aware of companies like Envato but just want to buy animationsd (advance)

Thank you so much, this is great

When creating an interactive e-learning, how would you handle transitions to the next slide? Is there a way to set triggers for that as well (like clicking on an image that says “next”?)

How do I make shapes that my audience can click and drag around. I want them to virtually be able to complete a jigsaw puzzle.

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