how to combine powerpoint presentations

how to combine powerpoint presentations

The Art of Combining PowerPoint Presentations: A Comprehensive Guide

1. Introduction to Combining PowerPoint Presentations

Combining multiple PowerPoint presentations and slides into one file can be difficult, especially if you aren’t sure about the best way to proceed. However, skillfully merging presentations can be a big time-saver and make life much easier when creating PowerPoint slides. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover multiple different methods of effectively combining PowerPoint presentations.

Just about everyone has to make a PowerPoint presentation in their lifetime; for some, it’s almost a daily occurrence. And just about all of us have had to take information from one presentation and combine it with another at some point. Once you’ve learned how to do this effectively, you’ll save time, simplify your working process and greatly increase the impact and effectiveness of your final slide shows. Learning how to effectively combine PowerPoint presentations can be quite difficult. While combining presentations can save you time and make your life easier, there are a number of things you should be aware of to get the best results. For starters, you’ll need to have a pretty strong idea of what the content of your final presentation will be, and where it will come from.

2. Tools and Techniques for Merging Presentations

Tools and Techniques: Several tools and techniques are available for effectively merging two or more presentations. The primary method is by copying and pasting the required slides from each slide deck to create a new combined presentation. There are also advanced features provided within the PowerPoint software package, which are useful for merging slides. These include ‘reuse slides’ and ‘create from selection’. The reuse slides command, which is under the home tab, allows users to import a slide from another presentation in the form of a thumbnail.

The create from selection command, under the home tab, can be useful when a person only wants to import text, table, chart or diagram from another presentation, without taking the entire slide. The copy the required slide in the source presentation, and then click the drop-down part of the new slide command to choose create from selection, which will open a window to select the type of object that can be pasted. ‘Insert slides from’ is another effective method of combining two or more presentations. The user has to go to home tab and then click new slide drop-down command, then click reuse slides. The new window will open on the right of the screen. Click the browse tab, and then click open to locate one of the presentations that need to be combined.

In addition to these simple methods, there are several PowerPoint add-ins on the internet that enable users to merge one or more presentations. ‘PowerMerge’ is one such useful tool. It is an add-in for personal and professional users that enables them to merge four compelling presentations of PowerPoint into a new one with limited effort. To combine two presentations into one, users need to import the required presentations using the command: ‘start’-‘programs’-‘powermerge’-‘add-ins’-‘powermerge’-‘import’. Choose the ‘insert’ option to merge one presentation’s slide with another. The ‘update’ option helps to replace any unwanted slide in the new merged one with another presentation. With all these tools and techniques, users can easily merge two or more PowerPoint presentations into one.

3. Best Practices for Seamlessly Integrating Slides

When combining slides from several PowerPoint presentations, it is important to create a unified slide deck. Whereas you have the leverage to come up with a design for the deck in PowerPoint, you can choose to develop different variations and then send your deck through Digital Assets Management to have that style apply to all your slides. However, to enhance the overall design, you can download the different decks from Digital Assets Management and combine them in PowerPoint and either standardize them in Digital Assets Management or keep the varied styles.

Follow the design guidelines for all the assets presented. This can include creating balanced and readable presentations, best practices for charts, and many more. Once slides are combined, the design should be flawless. All the color and style elements must appear natural and universal. A merged presentation should have a consistent look and feel over all the slides. Although guidelines are important for that design consistency, some elements do not need to be a cookie-cutter throughout all the slides in a deck. Depending on the meeting or audience, message, and story, optional guidelines indicate that not all graphic elements must be consistent. Not all elements in a slide deck may be apparent when reviewing a presentation for the first time. Some may appear if presented in a different order, thus, highlight the essential message in your speaking notes. To transform presentations into a powerful narrative, you must guide your audience, therefore, by choosing whether to delete or keep slides to deliver an informed dialogue.

4. Collaborative Approaches to Combining Presentations

We all know that two heads are better than one. This applies to working with PowerPoint presentations as well. If you’re creating a super slide deck and you work in a group, there are collaborative solutions available. Don’t be afraid to team up! Here are a few options for you with their pros and cons. If you have a partner or a team, you can send presentation slides to each other so they will all be in the know, and then work as a team to make them cohesive. You can do that by having only one version of the entire combined deck, and if someone wants to edit, they have to communicate who has their hands on it. Or, you can use version controls, like in Google Slides, where everyone is working in the same file but individual changes are saved, and the slide deck transforms as a result of everyone’s edits. Teamwork to combine your slides can produce an exceptional deck of slides.

When working as a team, communicate as much as possible and leverage the strengths of each team member for an even stronger presentation. Because PowerPoint is part of the Microsoft we all know and love, we have both simple and complex solutions available for merging presentations. If you don’t have time or you’d like to keep it simple, the minimal approach could work for group dynamics; on the other hand, complicated solutions, like the one described here, can work in environments where protocols or standard operating procedures are required.

5. Advanced Tips and Tricks for Professional Results

Advanced Tips/Tricks for Professional Results

Though the basics could work without any further ado, unless you know about some advanced features of PowerPoint, you might never reach the perfection you are looking for. Hence, let us list down some further things you could do to make sure that the combination of your PowerPoint presentations lands well. This might include:

– Before you attempt to merge slides, you might want to customize them. This would necessitate the understanding of the ‘Slide Master’ feature of PowerPoint that controls the layout and look of your entire presentation. Mastering how to customize this layout would be essential. – In the advanced section, you could give some basic understanding about PowerPoint’s implications in the post-editing segment. That includes changing the layout, style, format, picture, and bullets. When it comes to formatting, you could stress the need for maintaining uniformity throughout the presentation. It is important to note that the entire presentation – be it section, slides, or images – should have a ‘body format’.

This can help in the following ways:

– Your learning style escalates beyond average levels. – Your presentations take a leap. – Your research-oriented dealings (other subject knowledge dealings) become more appealing. – Your designing skills (icons, images, stuff) get to a new level. – Your generalized focus on modern forwarding also enhances.