Five novel ways to use PowerPoint

One of the cornerstones of Microsoft 365, PowerPoint has been around for so long—nearly 40 years!—that there are always new features being added to spark the imagination. No matter how long you’ve been using PowerPoint, there’s always something new to learn with the world’s most popular presentation software.

A person editing a PowerPoint presentation

You can use PowerPoint to go far beyond staid, boring slides and occasional flying text effects. Add live captioning and even translations powered by AI, create custom animations, and embed everything from nearly anywhere—it’s all possible with the latest versions of PowerPoint.

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Take your PowerPoint presentation to the next level

Make it interactive

If you want to show the progress of a project or explain the history and growth of your organization, consider adding an interactive timeline. Create an interactive timeline in just one slide so you won’t only avoid bloating your presentation with individual slides, but you’ll also keep things simple.

There are plenty of presentation templates to choose from when considering the design and features of the interactive timeline you’d like to show. In addition, you can add SmartArt to create a basic timeline, highlighting milestones within your time period and ending in the present. Learn how to use SmartArt to create simple and advanced timelines.

Add live subtitles and translations

You can add live subtitles to display as captions on your presentation, so no matter what you’re saying, you’ll be able to see your text displayed onscreen, even if you go off-script. This is an ideal solution for accessibility, and you can ensure that no matter who you’re presenting to, they won’t miss a word. You can even translate directly to another language, so nobody will miss a word in any language you choose!

To turn on live subtitles and translations in your presentation:

Select the Slide Show tab in the upper menu.
In the section on the right marked Captions & Subtitles, check the box that says Always Use Subtitles.
Select the Subtitle Settings dropdown menu to change options for subtitle placement, microphone device input, the language you speak, and the language to be displayed by subtitles.

This last option is especially compelling for translating your speech into one of dozens of languages supported by PowerPoint. Here, you can select the languages that you speak into your presentation—and PowerPoint can automatically translate these into another language when displaying captions. Through AI integration and an online connection to live language databases, you can overcome the common barriers of inaccessibility and language to anyone whom you’re presenting. It’s important to ensure that you have an online connection while you’re presenting, otherwise live subtitles and translation won’t work. Also, we recommend a microphone headset for the highest levels of clarity.

“PowerPoint comes with a robust library of animation effects for text and images. But you can take these eye-catching tools even further by creating your own custom animations, thanks to motion paths that you can tailor precisely to your own content.”

Create custom animations

PowerPoint comes with a robust library of animation effects for text and images. But you can take these eye-catching tools even further by creating your own custom animations, thanks to motion paths that you can tailor precisely to your own content.

To create a custom animation:

Select an object on a slide, then go to the Animations tab.
In the Advanced Animation section, select Add Animation and scroll down to Motion Paths.
Select Custom Path. Your cursor will now turn into a crosshair, and anywhere you click will be another point in your custom path.
You can hold down the left mouse button and draw a smooth, freehand path, or select specific intervals on the slide to create a series of lines.
Double-click the left mouse button to draw your endpoint and finish the path.

Embed everything

From YouTube and Windows Media Player videos to Excel spreadsheets, you can embed all kinds of files into a slide. Thanks to complete Microsoft 365 integration, you can insert document types from other apps like Excel, such as spreadsheets. This can be helpful to visualize data directly in your presentation, instead of having to pause and open another application.

These can all be added under the Insert tab on the uppermost menu. Select Media on the far right and you can insert URLs to online videos or downloaded video files. Select Table and its dropdown menu to embed an Excel spreadsheet.

Quiz the audience

Add a fun quiz with correct and incorrect answers to entertain your audience! You can place this at the end of a presentation to see how much information they’ve retained. Liven things up with animations and sound effects for right or wrong answers. To create a quiz:

Go to the Insert tab in the upper menu and select Forms.
Select New Quiz in the right-most panel that appears.
Select Edit, and you can directly write questions and answers in Microsoft Forms.

Microsoft Forms was developed to create surveys, quizzes, and polls that can be readily shared and embedded into different apps. Not only is it easy and effective, but it also unlocks design templates and versatile options. It’s just another example of how the Microsoft 365 ecosystem is all tied to each other.

When it comes to creating a unique PowerPoint presentation, the possibilities don’t end here. Check out our presentation tips and learn how to prep for and deliver a winning presentation, get inspired by design ideas, and learn how to incorporate visual aids into your speeches.