POWERPOINT FOR PHYSICIANS

Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful and versatiletool for creating outstanding multimedia pre-

sentations. Truly exciting slide shows and posterpresentations for use at scientific meetings and con-ferences—such as the upcoming Canadian Ophthal-mological Society (COS) Annual Meeting andExhibition—can be created thanks to the wealth of special features, like custom animation, thatPowerPoint offers. Nonetheless, despite the potentialof the program, we have all observed its limitationswhen well-prepared presentations fail to run asplanned and support staff are called into action at thelast minute to rescue the speaker. These experiencescan be awkward for presenters, audience, and organ-izers alike. We would like to offer a few suggestionsthat may help to prevent these PowerPoint disap-pointments and improve the overall quality of aPowerPoint presentation.

The slide master

The foundation of an engaging PowerPoint slideshow rests on the creation of a simple but effectiveslide master. Although PowerPoint does offer presetbackgrounds, many of these contain distractingimages or harsh color patterns that draw the audi-ence’s attention away from the author’s message. Agood master slide uses high contrast. White text on asolid dark green or blue background is suggested.Sans-serif fonts such as Arial are easier to read thanserif fonts like Times New Roman. Once a font ischosen, keep it consistent within the slide (i.e., titlesmatch text) and also throughout the show. Avoidunnecessary lines, images, and watermarks. Addbullets to highlight the different levels of text. Thestyle of bullets can be chosen from the wide selectionof special characters available with the font. Makethem slightly smaller than the text and change thecolor to stand out from the background and the text.Clearly, creating a functional master slide will requiresome initial time and effort; but once created, it won’tneed to be redone for subsequent talks.

Minimize text to maximize effect

Once a visually pleasing slide master has beendeveloped, the next step should be to eliminate asmuch text from your presentation as possible. Simplyreading sentences of text from a slide is the best wayto place the audience in REM. Your goal should be tominimize use of text (e.g., use point form) and max-imize use of graphics and video. Consider each slideas highlighting a few key words, which you will thenexplain and put in context for your audience. Andwith unnecessary text eliminated, there will be roomfor images to help illustrate your point. Simpleimages can be found in personal or academic slidecollections and on the Internet, or they can be createdusing the drawing tools in PowerPoint itself. Indeed,the Web can be a mind-boggling source of ophthal-mologic pictures—try redatlas.com, eyeatlas.com,emedicine.com, or the image search component ofgoogle.com. (But don’t forget that while some sites,like these first three, may permit downloading imagesfor personal, non-commercial use in conference pre-sentations or lectures, you need to check other websites for terms of use and copyright restrictions.Always assume everything on the Internet is copy-righted, whether it says so or not, and get properpermission before copying.)

Video

Even more than pictures, videos can breathe lifeinto a presentation and capture the attention of anaudience. Be aware, however, that PowerPoint incor-porates video differently from the way it does pictures.By default, pictures are incorporated directly into apresentation, becoming a permanent part of the show,whereas inserted video clips are not saved with thepresentation. Video files remain separate and must bebrought as independent files to the computer that isgoing to be used to give the talk. Furthermore, to playthe video, PowerPoint relies on whatever media playeris available on the computer running the [slide] show.Not all computers are capable of playing the samevideo clips, and as a result, a talk containing videoprepared on one computer may not work on another.

Essentially, there are two main reasons why moviesand sounds might work on your computer but noton others: i) broken links and ii) missing CODECs.

Correspondence to: Dr. Bernard R. Hurley, Retina Service, Wills Eye Hospital, Suite 1020, 840 Walnut St., Philadelphia PA 19107;hurleybr@hotmail.com

Can J Ophthalmol 2006;41:230–1

230 PowerPoint for physicians—Hurley & Ross

i) Broken links

Video and movies are always linked in PowerPoint.To avoid linking problems, try these suggestions:• Save the presentation and the video in the same

folder.• Insert the sounds and movies into your presenta-

tion from that folder.• When you move the PPT file to another com-

puter, be sure to move all the movie and sound files, too. If you put them in the same folder as the PPT file, the links will usually not break.

By following these steps, you force PowerPoint tocreate “pathless links”—links that point to just thelinked filename, not the path. When PowerPoint seesthese, it looks for the linked file in the current folder,which is the one where the PowerPoint file itself is.Result: the links don’t break. Note that it won’t workto copy the sounds or movies to the folder with thePowerPoint file after you’ve inserted them.

ii) Missing CODECs

A CODEC (COder/DECoder) is software thatcompresses sound and movie files. The ones you useon your system to create the files must also be presenton the system that plays them back. If your linkedsounds or movies won’t play on another system, itmight be that you’re using a file format or CODECnot supported on the other system.

Microsoft’s website states that if you want to showa video during your meeting, you can post the videoon a Web site, and then insert a Web slide to view thepage with the video during your presentation.

Other technicians have suggested that you save thevideo as a separate file and when you reach that pointin your presentation click on the video icon on thedesktop. This is cumbersome, however, and recom-mended only as a backup.

Custom animation

Once video, images, and graphics have been incor-porated into your slide show, the final touches tocomplete the project can be made with judicious use

of PowerPoint’s custom animation features. Imagesmay be placed in motion, text and figures made toappear and disappear in a variety of ways, and emphasisadded by changing size or color. Caution, however,must also be used: don’t animate a slide just because youcan. You risk distracting—and eventually irritating—your audience. Always animate with a specific purpose,for example, highlighting a key pathology in a figureor keeping text off the slide until needed.

Prepare in advance

The key to avoiding disappointment with your useof video and other advanced PowerPoint features is todo some strategic planning. Take the time to makesure your talk will work as planned on the computeryou are going to be using, otherwise your stunningpresentation could be ruined by a computer runningdifferent software versions. Email a copy of your filesto the organizers of the conference where you will bepresenting. Larger talks can be sent on CD ROM.This ensures that your talk is loaded and tested inadvance on a computer similar to the one you will beusing, and it is the practice required by the COS forthe Annual Meeting and Exhibition.

PowerPoint offers physicians many ways to produceengaging oral presentations. Many of its capabilities,including the ones described here, are covered in aPowerPoint course offered at the COS annual meeting.The content of this course is also available on CDROM, available from the COS, that comes with anaccompanying handout providing detailed step-by-step instructions for use of PowerPoint.

Bernard R. Hurley, MD, FRCSC

Retina Service, Wills Eye HospitalThomas Jefferson University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Kimberley Ross Manager, Continuing Professional Development

Canadian Ophthalmological Society Ottawa, Ontario

CAN J OPHTHALMOL—VOL. 41, NO. 2, 2006 231

PowerPoint for physicians—Hurley & Ross