How to Do an Outline for a Powerpoint Presentation

Before writing a PowerPoint presentation, plan what you are going to include. Because the program makes use of a variety of audio and visual presentations, it is vital to know where you are going so you do not veer away from our planned course and end up with something entirely different, thus wasting valuable planning time.

A plan utilizing slides that will be used can be drawn up either by hand or with word processing program such as Microsoft Word. Word is a better option because you can copy and paste what you wrote into your final version of the PowerPoint presentation.

Open your Word program. On the opening page, draw a series of tables in one column. For the number of tables, draw it in a single column to begin with, for example, draw a 10-row by 1-column table. These will be your slides in the PowerPoint presentation. You can add or subtract slides as the need arises.

Decide what text and or pictures you want on each slide and type or insert them. Use the features of the program to alter the font and pictures to give you the effects you want in your PowerPoint. You will later be able to copy and paste individual rows into each slide as needed, so any work in the planning stage will not necessarily be repeated.

Decide on and choose backgrounds, fonts and pictures that you will use in your final PowerPoint slides. If you have already written out a speech, read through it carefully and use your plan to summarize it and pick out the salient points that you can highlight in your presentation.

Finally, open a blank copy of PowerPoint and use the menu to select the number of slides that you wish to use. According to the plan you made, you can select the background for each slide separately or have the same background for every slide. Use the copy and paste feature in Microsoft programs to transfer the content from the Word program to the PowerPoint program.