CG PPT common mistakes
CG PPT · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Choosing a slide layout or theme based on how attractive it looks rather than on who will view the deck and in what setting, so a dense 30-slide deck is built for a 5-minute conference talk or a text-heavy deck is projected in a large auditorium.
Candidates treat presentation planning as an after-the-facts formality and jump straight into building slides; they also confuse 'content I want to say' with 'content the audience needs to see', so audience analysis never constrains design decisions.
What to do instead
Before opening the slide editor, write a one-line audience-and-context brief (who, room/device, time available, decision or action required) and a per-slide purpose statement. Then set a slide budget from the time available (roughly one substantive slide per 1-2 minutes) and cut content that does not serve the stated purpose. Re-check the brief against the finished outline.
Putting every point at the same visual weight: all text the same size, bullet lists with no hierarchy, and titles that describe the topic ('Q3 Results') rather than state the message ('Q3 revenue grew 12% on enterprise renewals').
The default placeholder layout invites flat bullet entry, and candidates equate 'including the information' with 'communicating it'. Without an explicit hierarchy decision, the software's defaults become the design.
What to do instead
For each slide, write the takeaway as a full-sentence headline first, then demote supporting detail to smaller body text or speaker notes. Enforce at most three levels of type size and use position, weight, and whitespace (not colour alone) to signal importance. Review the deck at thumbnail size: the intended focal point on each slide should still be obvious.
Editing individual slides when a change should be made on the slide master or layout, resulting in a deck where titles, logos, or footers sit at slightly different positions on different slides and later global edits break the deck.
Candidates are more comfortable editing what is visible on the canvas and do not understand the master/layout/placeholder inheritance model, so they never learn which edits propagate and which are local overrides.
What to do instead
Learn the three-level model (theme, master, layout) and the rule that formatting applied to placeholders on layouts flows to slides while direct formatting on a slide overrides it. Build recurring elements (logo, footer, slide number, title position) on the master or layout, use 'Reset' to discard local overrides, and audit with the slide master view before delivery.
Shrinking text or relying on autofit to squeeze long paragraphs into a fixed placeholder, producing 14-point body text on a projected slide, or letting a single bullet run to six lines.
Autofit silently rescales text and hides the overflow problem, and candidates optimise for 'it fits on my laptop screen' rather than legibility at projection distance or on a small device.
What to do instead
Set a minimum body size for the delivery medium (commonly 18-24 pt for projected slides) and treat autofit as a warning sign, not a solution. Edit the sentence rather than the font size: move detail to speaker notes or a handout, split the slide, or convert prose into a short labelled list or diagram. Check the deck in slide sorter and at reduced zoom to catch overflow.
Stretching, squashing, or upscaling a low-resolution logo or photo to fill a frame, or pasting a screenshot of a chart instead of inserting the chart object.
Candidates drag corner and edge handles interchangeably and judge image quality on a preview thumbnail, so aspect-ratio distortion and pixelation are not noticed until projection; screenshots feel faster than rebuilding data.
What to do instead
Always resize from corner handles with the aspect ratio locked, and verify pixel dimensions against the intended display size (a 1920-pixel-wide image for a full-bleed 1080p slide). Prefer vector formats for logos and native chart/table objects for data so they stay sharp and editable, and use the crop tool rather than stretching to fit a frame.
Building a pie chart with many small slices, a truncated y-axis on a bar chart, or a 3D chart, and choosing chart type by habit rather than by the comparison the data supports.
The default chart gallery and 'insert chart' wizard make it easy to accept an inappropriate type, and candidates focus on making the chart look finished rather than on whether it answers the question accurately.
What to do instead
Choose the chart from the question being asked: bars for category comparison, lines for trend over time, pies only for a small number of parts of a whole. Start value axes at zero for bar and column charts, avoid 3D and unnecessary gridlines, label directly instead of relying on a legend, and state the takeaway in the chart title.
Adding entrance animations and slide transitions to every element, using spinning or bouncing effects, or setting long transition durations, so content arrives late and the deck feels slow in a live setting.
Animation is treated as polish that signals effort, and candidates preview each effect in isolation rather than experiencing the full sequence at presentation pace or considering that the file may be shown on unfamiliar hardware.
What to do instead
Animate only to control the order of disclosure, one effect per element, fast and consistent (for example a simple fade or appear). Remove decorative transitions, keep durations short, and rehearse the deck end to end with a timer. Confirm animations still behave acceptably when the file is opened on a different machine or exported to another format.
Delivering the editable source file when a PDF, video, or image set was requested, or exporting without checking that fonts, embedded media, and speaker notes survived the conversion.
Candidates assume the file opens correctly everywhere and do not know which elements (non-standard fonts, linked video, animations, notes) are lost or altered by each export path, so format choice is made at the last minute.
What to do instead
Decide the delivery format from the audience's need (PDF for fixed review copies, video for asynchronous viewing, native file only when the recipient must edit). Before sending, open the exported file on a different device and check fonts, images, video playback, and notes. Embed or substitute fonts, and package linked media if the native file must travel.
Relying on colour alone to distinguish series or status, leaving images without alt text, and delivering a deck with no reading order or with text baked into pictures, so screen-reader users and colour-blind viewers lose the message.
Candidates design for their own eyesight and their own machine, and accessibility checks are invisible in normal editing view, so the problem never surfaces unless deliberately tested.
What to do instead
Build a routine check: add alt text to meaningful images (mark decorative ones as decorative), give every slide a unique title, verify reading order in the selection pane, keep contrast high, and pair colour with labels, patterns, or shapes. Run the built-in accessibility checker and review the deck in outline view, which approximates how a screen reader traverses it.
Submitting a deck with inconsistent capitalisation, mixed fonts from pasted content, leftover placeholder text, off-slide objects, and slide numbers that do not match the printed handout.
Content assembled from multiple sources carries formatting from each source, and candidates review slides one at a time as they build rather than doing a whole-deck pass at the end, so drift and residue go unnoticed.
What to do instead
Do a dedicated QA pass after content is frozen: clear formatting on pasted text, apply one theme font pair, run spell check, delete unused layouts and empty placeholders, and check the selection pane for objects outside the slide area. Review in slide sorter and in outline view for consistency, and confirm slide numbering matches the printed handout or PDF.