Microsoft PowerPoint Best Practices, Tips, and Techniques: Conversation with Chantal Bossé

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    Chantal Bossé, president of CHABOS, is a presentation & visual communication leader, TEDx speaker coach, Microsoft Office Apps & Services MVP and expert trainer on the LinkedIn Learning platform. She helps speakers and small businesses improve their PowerPoint presentations and public speaking, and their Microsoft 365 & Teams skills. Her goal is to help clients increase their bottom line by leveraging the power of their Microsoft 365 applications. CHABOS’ mission is helping small businesses and end-users be more empowered and efficient with communication and collaborative technologies.

In this conversation, Chantal talks about her new book, Microsoft PowerPoint Best Practices, Tips, and Techniques.

Geetesh: Chantal, please tell us about your new book, Microsoft PowerPoint Best Practices, Tips, and Techniques. What motivated you to write this book?

Chantal: Writing my book is part a long-time dream, and part being given the opportunity when I least expected it! Working in PowerPoint and creating presentations have been part of my life since the mid-90s when I was working as an instructional designer for a training company. Creating visual content became my passion and the focus of my business, CHABOS, created in 2004.

Through the almost twenty years working with clients, I have tested and refined my own content and visual creation process, which led me to dream about writing a book about it one day. I already had a 60-page guide given to clients or used for my training sessions. When Packt Publishing contacted me in June of 2022, I thought it was a sign that I could not postpone writing my book anymore. I submitted a 3-part outline with 13 chapters that would help readers plan, create, and deliver more impactful and engaging presentations with PowerPoint. It was accepted, and I was thrilled to embark on this new journey.

We could say that I made it my mission to prove that PowerPoint is not responsible for “Death by PowerPoint”, it’s the lack of knowledge. When people get some guidance on planning their content with their audience in mind, using the application’s tools and features to save time, and learn how to transform text slides in more appealing visuals, that is when presentations become more impactful and engaging.

Since the launch date, my book has been receiving great comments from reviewers and readers which makes me grateful. Reading about how it has helped some readers is very rewarding.

Geetesh: How can a reader benefit the most from your book? Do you recommend an approach? Also, is this book meant to be read from cover to cover?

Chantal: Oh, wow! This 3-part question brings me back to my personal goal before I started, while also recalling some reviews and comments I received so far.

Let’s start with my personal goal, the one that triggered writing about planning, creating, and delivering better presentations. The three most common challenges I heard from presenters through the years were:

1. I don’t know how to start my presentations.
2. I lack PowerPoint formal training or knowledge and I am crushed for time.
3. I feel uncomfortable when the time to deliver my presentation comes.

People in this category should definitely read from cover to cover. They will be taken on a journey that will help them use the right questions during their planning and structure their content more efficiently, keeping the audience’s needs in mind. From there, they will learn how to configure the various masters to automate their design before moving into the content creation chapters (AI-powered features, adding and modifying visual and multimedia elements, animations, transitions, flexibility and interactivity, and add-ins). Finally, readers will learn how to leverage PowerPoint’s tools to practice and better manage their delivery. Since virtual presentations are now common, the last chapter helps readers learn how to use the PowerPoint Live feature in Microsoft Teams.

Even though reading cover to cover will be very valuable, the other approach would be to first spend some time reading the table of contents to seek topics they want to learn more about. Then it is easy to simply jump to the various chapters or even some sections in chapters. Or there is the possibility to use the index to find exactly the content you need; many words have been tagged as keywords in the chapters. This means that the book can become a reference book for any tips and features you need to review.

Whatever method readers choose, they will learn to revisit tools that have been available for a long time, like starting with SmartArt and ungrouping it to speed up graphic element creation. Or how to unlock the secret to using a PowerPoint file with speaker notes AND notes for the handout (that’s in chapter 4 😉). And of course, there are step-by-step explanations to create beautiful text from an image:

Or using the Morph transition to create movement and a zooming effect:

I am confident that every reader will find something useful for their business needs. But to truly benefit from all the content, my best advice would be to try out the features they are less familiar with as they are reading the steps. My wish is that the book will inspire readers to start improving their presentations, one step at the time!

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.