Week of PowerPoint (3) - Professional looking presentations with ease

It’s been around for a while, but it’s a tool that I use all the time, especially when creating a new presentation from scratch. The Design feature in PowerPoint works in the background to match your content to professionally designed layouts, as you are putting your ideas onto a slide. As you start adding content such as pictures and charts, the designer will pop up to the right of the screen and show you different designs, that change as you start adding more. If you don’t see design ideas you may need to turn it on. 

1. To turn on Designer go to the File menu, click Options.

2. In the PowerPoint Options dialog box, click the General tab on the left, then scroll toward the bottom and check the Automatically show me design ideas checkbox.

Once turned on, try adding some content to a page and see what happens.

Here are the type of designs the Design feature suggests from a blank slide with some text and a few images.

If you close the designer at any point you can always open it by selecting Design from the ribbon at the top and then Design Ideas. If you find that the designer can’t suggest anything for your slide it may be that there is too much content, or if you have drawings or videos on the page that it cannot incorporate into a design.