Presentation
Presentation tests slide creation and delivery: layouts, text placeholders, themes, master slides, transitions, animations, notes and handouts. CCC favours “what does this feature do?” and “which view should you use?” questions.
Core rules
- A slide layout arranges placeholders (title, content, picture); a theme controls colours, fonts and effects across slides.
- The slide master stores design and placeholder formatting for all slides using it. Editing the master changes many slides at once.
- Transitions are effects between slides; animations are effects on objects within a slide.
- Slide Sorter view reorders and copies slides; Notes view holds speaker notes; handouts print slides for the audience.
- Rehearse Timings records slide durations for automatic playback.
Worked example
A presenter wants every slide to fade in, but only the bullet list on slide 5 to appear one line at a time. Apply the Fade transition to all slides, then go to slide 5 and apply an appear animation to the bullet list with “by paragraph” settings. This separates the two features correctly: transition = slide-to-slide; animation = object behaviour. Applying the animation to all slides would not create a slide transition.
Traps
Do not apply an animation and call it a transition. Changing a slide’s layout can move placeholders but does not delete content automatically. A linked video may fail on another computer; embedding is safer for portability. Fonts not installed on the presentation computer may be substituted, changing line breaks. Check Slide Show mode, not just edit mode, before presenting.