Latest Features and Uses of Microsoft PowerPoint 2021

Microsoft PowerPoint is a program that is included in the MS Office suite and is seamlessly bundled with Word, Excel, and other office productivity tools. PowerPoint 2021 is a powerful slide show presentation program. MS PowerPoint implements slides to communicate rich information in multimedia.

PowerPoint 2021 lets you create engaging content with features including co-authoring, Ink Replay, improved support for SVG, and more rich media content from the Office Premium Creative Content Collection.

If you are upgrading from Microsoft PowerPoint 2019 to Microsoft PowerPoint 2021, you will still have all the features you are used to – and you will see some new features too!

What is PowerPoint used for?

Microsoft PowerPoint or MS PowerPoint is useful in creating presentations, where one can add animations, photos, videos, and sound effects to make it more readable. In this article, we will study in detail about Microsoft PowerPoint, features and functions of PowerPoint presentation, followed by information on how to work with MS PowerPoint, its benefits, and more.

What is a PowerPoint Presentation?

PowerPoint 2021 is a great presentation software designed by Microsoft which is sometimes abbreviated as PP or PPT. PowerPoint is used to create a slideshow of valuable information for a presentation through charts and images. It is usually done in business and school presentations.

It is a complete presentation graphics package that provides everything you need to create a professional-looking presentation. PowerPoint provides word processing, drawing, outlining, graphing, and presentation management tools.

PowerPoint was developed by Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin at a software company called Forethought Inc. It used to be identified as Presenter but was renamed to PowerPoint in 1987 due to trademark issues.

The first version of PowerPoint was released in 1990 collectively with Windows 3.0.

The initial version of PowerPoint allowed slide progression in only one direction.

Many other features were also added to PowerPoint in the later versions, which led to a huge increase in the demand and use of this MS Office program.

The default file extension of PowerPoint presentations is “.ppt”.

It is a presentation (PPT)-based program that contains slides that use graphics, videos, and other features to make the presentation more interactive and interesting.

How to start PowerPoint 2021 on a Personal Computer?

Follow the steps given below to open MS PowerPoint on a personal computer:

Click on the Start menu->Go to All Programs->Click on MS Office->Finally select the MS PowerPoint option.

A blank presentation will be displayed on the screen. As per the requirement, one can modify the template for the presentation and start working on the program.

Features of MS PowerPoint

MS PowerPoint is an application that allows users to create slides and run slide shows.

Home

First of all, PowerPoint consists of slides. Users need to add content to them to create a presentation. From the Home menu, users can add new slides, and decide their order, layout, design, and other word processing functions like font change, size change, etc.

Insert

From the Insert menu, the user can add media like pictures, symbols, audio, video, headers, footers, shapes, etc. to the slide to enhance the user's presentation.

Design

The Design menu provides the user with ready-made templates and background designs for slides that make the presentation look very attractive.

Slide Show

Finally, from the Slide Show menu, the user can view the final look of the slide show. Users can start the slide show from the first slide or the slide that users are editing. They can also set the display time for each slide from the 'Slide Show' menu.

Animation

During a slide show, slides appear on the screen one after the other. If one wants to add some animation to the way the slides are displayed, one can refer to the "Animation" category.

Transitions and animations are unique functions of PowerPoint. These menus provide different options in which text appears on the slide and takes the transition from one slide to another.

With the Animation Effect option, the animation effect is applied to the selected content. Then with custom animation, different options like entrance, emphasis, exit, and motion path will be given for the animation effect.

Slide Transitions: This group contains animation effects that are applied to the entire slide. During a slide show, the slide starts moving as soon as it is opened. This is called a transition effect.

PowerPoint Templates: Microsoft provides thousands of free, professionally outlined PowerPoint design templates. Many other sources of varying quality and prices are also available online.

Review Tab

The various tools that can be used under this tab are; Spelling, Research, Thesaurus, Translation, and Language. The Research button helps in online research in books and internet resources working on a topic or subject.

Thesaurus tool lists words arranged together according to similarity of meaning. By using thesaurus in PowerPoint from the Review tab one can easily find synonyms of the related words in the content.

Translate Language is used to convert English language words into another language. Next, there is the new Comment option which is used to write comment text related to a word or sentence on the slide. This comment can be further edited and deleted by editing the comment.

The next option is Protect Presentation, by which the presentation data is protected using a password, after which it cannot be changed.

View Tab

In the View tab, the user can see the normal view of the presentation. It is also called the default view. It contains slides, where content can be added to the presentation. Next is the Inline Slide Sorter view, where all the slides of the presentation are shown in a small form on the screen.

With the Notes Page tool, the slide is presented along with its notes. With the Slide Show option, the presentation/slide show/run full screen is done with animation effects.

The slide master is used in the presentation to add content like pictures at once on all sides with the same slide layout. Like slide master with Handout Master, the user can add content like text to all the handouts on the handout page applied to print the slide.

The next tool is Notes Master, using which one can write any common text on all the notes pages at once.

There are other tools like Show/Hide Group, in which the ruler bar can be hidden or shown with Ruler Tool, similarly, gridlines can be hidden or shown with Grid-Line Tool.

Message Bar is used to show or hide the message. Next is the Macro Tool, with the help of which any action in the presentation can be recorded.

Uses of PowerPoint Presentation

PowerPoint presentations are helpful for both personal and business practice. Below are some important uses of PowerPoint presentations.

In business, MS PowerPoint can be used to invite investors or to explain the rise or fall in profits.

With the advancement of e-learning and smart classes in the field of education becoming a common mode of education today, PowerPoint presentations play a major role in addressing education more interactively and drawing the attention of students towards the revised version of studies.

Since both graphics and text can be added to a presentation, showing the growth of a company, the profit of a business, the performance of a student through marks, etc. is very simple using PPT.

In the field of marketing, PowerPoint presentations can be extremely valuable, because by using graphs and charts, data as well as numbers, facts, and figures can be shown more clearly and precisely, which may be overlooked by the viewer while reading.