You are presenting the sales trend of Product A, B and C. You have a line chart. Instead of showing all the 3 lines at once, you want to click and show the line graph of A, then talk about it. Then you want to go to B and then C. How do we do this animation? Here it is in a few simple steps (in PowerPoint 2010). The process is almost similar in 2007. In case you have any problems, leave a comment or send me an email. Step-1 Create the line chart in PowerPoint or copy paste from Excel Step-2 Left click on the chart to select it. Under Animations Tab on top -> Go to Add Animation . Step-3 Go to More Entrance Effects -> Wipe. Wipe is a good effect. During final presentation, the lines will come from left to right smoothly. Step-4 Under Animation Pane on your right -> Click on Chart -> Choose Effect Options from drop down. In PowerPoint 2007 choose this from 'Custom Animation' panel on your left. Step-5 Under Effect Options window there are three tabs (Effect, T...

Imagine your friend meets you after a gap of 5 years. He asks you: "Where are you working Manoj? What does your company do?" How will you answer that one question? Think about it. Better, write down in 2/3 sentences. What does your company 'exactly' do? This question is faced by every organization every single day. We meet bankers, vendors, potential investors or government employees who want to know what we do in few simple sentences. This question needs to be answered at various places; corporate brochure, corporate PPT, corporate website and one-on-one meetings. People who land on the website should be able to easily figure out what your company does. The issue at hand is: How to communicate what your company 'exactly' does in 1 minute? Communicate so clearly that everyone understands it without any difficulty. Seems easy! Let's see. Where do we start? Let's look at the Digital Marketing Companies in India. Let us see what they 'exactly' do....

I learned something new today and I am excited to share it with you. While I was making a logo in PowerPoint (using all kind of shapes and text), I wanted to zoom in and work with the various elements of the logo (shapes and text) more closely. To zoom in there is a simple option; under view tab -> zoom (in PowerPoint 2007). From the options, we need to choose. Say we choose 200% or 300%. That's it. But what happens is that the center of the slide gets zoomed in. So if my logo is on the extreme right side, I need to scroll to go there. This is a bit painful and can be easily avoided. Just take your mouse over the logo and select all the shapes and text. Then go to zoom and choose 300%. Voila! Only the logo gets zoomed in. I found this quite useful. Hope you do too.

Dear friends. I would like to have some inputs from you. I want to know what you would like to read on my blog. All you need to do is to visit the website ( click here ) and vote. The survey (poll) is placed on the top-right side of the web page. All it will take is probably 5 seconds. Thanks in advance.

When you want to explaining something, images/graphics tend to do a better job than mere text. For example, Samsung wants to conduct a market research on how many people are aware of Samsung Galaxy Tab (the new tablet). How did they become aware (word of mouth / TV ad / Print ad / etc.)? How many people have bought? Why or why not? What do they think about it? etc. etc. etc. (and the list goes on) Assume Samsung is explaining this to its research agency. It can do the standard way; which is to write it all down as bullet points. Something like this: They give this list and ask the agency to go ahead and conduct the survey. There is however another way, which brings clarity to their thinking and also helps the agency understand the work better. I am talking about converting text to graphics. Penning down your thoughts in the form of a flow chart. Something like this: In my experience, this comes out a clear winner. Provides a lot of clarity to you and helps your audience understand the ...

The first company I joined after MBA was Marico. Do you know why I joined Marico? Because their campus placement presentation was awesome. That is the truth. On campus, I did not know a great deal about the company. It was not one which hogged the limelight. They were coming to our college for the very first time. So there was no alumni (ex-student) from where we could gather much about the company. When they came on campus for placement, they gave an excellent presentation. The best campus presentation our batch had ever seen. The presentation became the talk of the town. Everyone was blown away. If I look back today, the presentation was spot on. The presenters knew what the students wanted and gave us that. Plus they delighted us. This is how: 1. They talked about the size of the company and compared it to some 'better' known companies on campus. We were all amazed that this company was as big as some other popular FMCG names and hence we should consider this 'new' c...

AAP has turned 2! It was born on Jan 14th 2009 and it is now 2 years old. On this awesome occasion all I want to say is THANK YOU to all you readers. It is all because of you. Love you! Image source: Salvatore Vuono

To check out the question click here . The first person to get it right was Amey Kinnerkar again. Well done Amey! He replied on Facebook within hours of my posting the quiz. Riz Mathani also got it right but was later than Amey. Hence the book goes to Amey (who else). Congratulations buddy! The correct answer in Amey's words: "Start off with the basic slide. Put a button on it which says "I accept the invite". This could be a simple rectangle as well. Now click on this rectangle, to select it. In MS PPT 2007, in the Insert ribbon, there is a "Links" tab, with "Actions" in it. click that, and u get the setting where u can specify that for mouse over, move to next slide. Then the next slide will have your button in the second place. Repeat for the effect :) Nice way of getting people frustrated." Riz Mathani has also explained it very well. Here is the answer" "Create 4 slides. The first 3 should have the button on the different po...

I received a PPT just before the new year from a senior colleague of mine. It was an invitation to his grand new year party. The invite was to join him on a cruise to an exotic island in the Pacific. I knew something was fishy but I was amused. The visuals were so inviting. In the end was a small button; "I accept the invite" (who will say No). The PPT asked me to click on the button if I wanted to join in. The moment I took my mouse over the button, it vanished. It moved to a new place on the screen. Again I chased it, it vanished again. The third time I chased it, it totaly vanished. Then the screen said, "You have lost your chance". I was so upset :-( He had got it as a forward and in turn he was sending it to everyone in office. The PPT made me curious as to how the animation was done. How did the button vanish when I took the mouse over it? Do you have the answer? If you do then leave a comment or send an email to vivek [at] allaboutpresentations [dot] com ....

Yesterday I talked about the stall my company is putting up in a large exhibition (consumer fair). Managing a stall in an exhibition is so much like presenting. Here are the challenges of putting up a cooking oil stall in a consumer fair: 1. How do we get noticed? People are not there to see us. 2. Generate curiosity and interest and make people come in. 3. Once in, share information about the brand without overloading them with info and without boring them. 4. Convince them to buy the product (call to action). If you are making a presentation, point 1 is ruled out. The audience sees you. But point 2, 3 and 4 are very pertinent. #2 Are you able to generate curiosity about the subject/topic and make your audience want to know more? Are you able to make them see what you want them to see? To do this, you need to stand out. We are making people curious by the design. Our stall front is attractive (or so it is supposed to be). If people like something they would like to check it out. That...

'Less is more' is almost a cliche. But every time I come across a piece of communication, I get reminded of this phrase. The greedy side of you wants to say everything, but the smart side should try restraint. Look at any form of communication around you. Hoardings (Billboards), TV advertisements, Posters, Presentations; they are all one and the same. You have so much to talk about. But your audience has less time. They get exposed to your message (eg. slide or hoarding) for a small amount of time. Their is so much communication clutter. So many messages, billboards, TV ads, SMS-es, emails. How can you get your message across and make sure people remember it? This is the biggest challenge for any communicator. We faced the same challenge when designing our stall. Every year around this time a grand exhibition (fair) is organised. Over 27 lakh (2.7 million) people in the city of Hyderabad visit the fair. My company has a stall here. A small stall among hundreds and hundreds of ...