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Stay Ahead of the Game: Why Every Professional Should Install the PowerPoint App

In today’s digital age, where presentations are a crucial part of every professional’s routine, having access to powerful tools that simplify and enhance the presentation-making process is essential. One such tool that has revolutionized the way professionals create and deliver presentations is the PowerPoint app. Available for various devices and operating systems, this app offers a wide range of features that can take your presentations to the next level. In this article, we will explore why every professional should install the PowerPoint app.

Enhanced Accessibility and Portability

With the PowerPoint app installed on your device, you no longer have to worry about carrying around bulky laptops or USB drives filled with presentation files. The app allows you to access your presentations anywhere, anytime, as long as you have an internet connection. Whether you’re in a client meeting or attending a conference, having your presentations readily available on your smartphone or tablet ensures that you’re always prepared to deliver a compelling presentation.

Furthermore, the PowerPoint app supports various file formats, making it compatible with different devices and operating systems. This flexibility allows professionals to effortlessly share their presentations with colleagues or clients who may not be using the same software or hardware.

Seamless Collaboration

Collaboration is key in today’s fast-paced work environment, and the PowerPoint app excels at enabling seamless collaboration among team members. Multiple users can work on a presentation simultaneously using real-time co-authoring features offered by this app. This means that colleagues can make edits or add content in real-time without having to wait for each other’s turn.

Additionally, commenting features allow for effective feedback exchanges within teams. Colleagues can leave comments directly on specific slides or elements within a presentation, streamlining communication and ensuring everyone is on the same page.

Interactive Presentations

Gone are the days of static slideshows that put audiences to sleep. The PowerPoint app offers a wide range of interactive features that can captivate your audience and make your presentations more engaging. From animations and transitions to embedded videos and audio files, this app allows you to add multimedia elements that bring your content to life.

Moreover, the PowerPoint app provides access to a vast library of pre-designed templates and themes, enabling professionals to create visually appealing presentations with minimal effort. These templates can be customized to match your branding or specific needs, saving you time while still delivering high-quality presentations.

Advanced Design and Editing Tools

The PowerPoint app is equipped with advanced design and editing tools that empower professionals to create polished presentations. With features like SmartArt graphics, charts, diagrams, and shapes, you can effectively visualize complex data or concepts in a visually appealing manner.

Furthermore, the app offers a range of formatting options for text, images, and other elements within a presentation. You can easily adjust font styles, colors, sizes, alignments, and more with just a few clicks. This level of control allows professionals to maintain a consistent visual identity throughout their presentations.

In conclusion, installing the PowerPoint app is highly recommended for every professional who wants to stay ahead of the game in today’s competitive business landscape. Its enhanced accessibility and portability features ensure that you’re always prepared to deliver impactful presentations on any device. The seamless collaboration capabilities enable effective teamwork among colleagues. The interactive presentation features help engage audiences and leave lasting impressions. Lastly, the advanced design and editing tools allow professionals to create visually stunning presentations effortlessly. So why wait? Install the PowerPoint app today and take your presentations to new heights.

This text was generated using a large language model, and select text has been reviewed and moderated for purposes such as readability.

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The best presentation software in 2023

These powerpoint alternatives go beyond the basics..

The latest presentation apps have made it easier than ever to format slides and create professional-looking slideshows without giving off a "this is a template" vibe. Even standard PowerPoint alternatives have updated key features to make it easier than ever to collaborate and create presentations quickly, so you can spend more time prepping for your actual presentation.

If, like me, you've been using Google Slides unquestioningly for years, it's a whole new world out there. The newest crop of online presentation tools go way beyond the classic slideshow experience, with new features to keep your audience's attention, streamline the creation process with AI, and turn slide decks into videos and interactive conversations.

I've been testing these apps for the past few years, and this time, I spent several days tinkering with the top presentation software solutions out there to bring you the best of the best.

The best presentation software

Beautiful.ai for AI-powered design

Prezi for non-linear, conversational presentations

Powtoon for video presentations

Genially for interactive, presenter-less presentations

Pitch for collaborating with your team on presentations

Zoho Show for a simple presentation app

Gamma for generative AI features

What makes the best presentation app?

How we evaluate and test apps.

All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog .

When looking for the best presentation apps, I wanted utility players. After all, slideshows are used for just about everything, from pitch decks and product launches to class lectures and church sermons. With that in mind, here's what I was looking for:

Pre-built templates. The best presentation tools should have attractive, professional-looking templates to build presentations in a hurry.

Sharing and collaboration options. Whether you plan to share your webinar slides later, or you just want to collaborate with a coworker on a presentation, it should be easy to share files and collaborate in real-time.

Flexibility and customization options. Templates are great, but top presentation apps should enable you to customize just about everything—giving you the flexibility to build exactly what you need.

Affordability. Creating compelling presentations is important, but you shouldn't have to bust your budget to make it happen. With capable free tools on the market, affordability is a top consideration.

Standalone functionality. There's no reason to use multiple tools when one can do it all, so I didn't test any apps that require and work on top of another presentation app like PowerPoint or Google Slides.

Familiar, deck-based UI. For our purposes here, I only tested software that uses slides, with the familiar deck-based editor you expect from a "presentation" tool (versus, for example, a video creation app).

While many apps now offer AI features in one way or another, I found many of these features to be lacking still—they're often slow, struggle to pull in relevant imagery, and yield wildly inconsistent designs. For that reason, I opted not to make AI features a strict requirement (for now!), and I've still included apps that don't offer AI. (Of course, if you opt for one of those, you can still easily get AI-generated images from a separate tool and copy them into your presentation app of choice.)

Beyond that, I also looked for presentation apps that brought something unique to the table—features above and beyond what you can get for free from a legacy solution like PowerPoint or Google Slides. (And I opted not to test any brand new apps that are still in beta, since there are so many established options out there.)

Here's what my testing workflow looked like:

I went through any onboarding or guided tutorials.

I created a new deck, scanning through all available templates, noting how well-designed they were (and which were free versus paid).

I added new slides, deleted slides, edited text and images, and played around with other content types.

I changed presentation design settings, like color schemes and background images.

I reviewed and tested the sharing and collaboration options.

I tested out presenter view (when available).

After my first round of testing, I went back into the top performers to test any unique or niche features like AI, brand settings, interactive content, and more. With that, these are the best presentation apps I found—each one really brings something different or radically easy to the table.

The best presentation software: at a glance

The best free presentation software, canva (web, windows, mac, android, ios).

Canva pros:

Excellent free plan

Tons of amazing templates for all use cases

Feature-rich

Canva cons:

The Magic Design AI tool is still inconsistent and not super impressive

Canva offers one of the most robust free plans of all the presentation apps I tested. The app delays account creation until after you've created your first design, so you can get started building your presentation in seconds. Choose from an almost overwhelming number of beautiful templates (nearly all available for free), including those designed specifically for education or business use cases.

Anyone who's accidentally scrolled too far and been bumped to the next slide will appreciate Canva's editor interface, which eliminates that problem altogether with a smooth scroll that doesn't jump around. Choose from a handful of preset animations to add life to your presentations, or browse the library of audio and video files available to add. And Canva also has a number of options for sharing your presentation, including adding collaborators to your team, sharing directly to social media, and even via QR code.

Present directly from Canva, and let audience members submit their questions via Canva Live. Once you share a link to invite audience members to your presentation, they can send questions for you to answer. As the presenter, you'll see them pop up in your presenter view window, so you can keep the audience engaged and your presentation clear. Alternatively, record a presentation with a talking head bubble—you can even use an AI presenter here—to share remotely.

Canvas has added a number of AI-powered tools , but I wasn't super impressed by them yet. When I asked the Magic Design tool to generate a presentation from scratch, for example, the result was a bunch of unrelated images, inconsistent design, and surface-level copy. These features will likely improve in time, but for now, you're better off starting from one of Canva's many great templates.

Canva pricing: Free plan available; paid plans start at $119.99/year for 1 user and include additional features like Brand Kit, premium templates and stock assets, and additional AI-powered design tools.

The best presentation app for AI-powered design

Beautiful.ai (web, mac, windows).

Beautiful.ai pros:

True AI design

No fussing around with alignment

Still allows for customization

Beautiful.ai cons:

No free plan

Generative AI features aren't great yet

If you're like me, editing granular spacing issues is the absolute worst part of building a presentation. Beautiful.ai uses artificial intelligence to take a lot of the hassle and granular design requirements out of the presentation process, so you can focus on the content of a presentation without sacrificing professional design. If I needed to make presentations on a regular basis, this is the app I'd use.

Many apps have recently added AI design features, but Beautiful.ai has been doing it for years—and they've perfected the UX of AI design, ensuring the tool's reign as the most streamlined and user-friendly option for AI design.

The editor is a little different from most presentation apps, but it's still intuitive—and you'll start off with a quick two-minute tutorial. When creating a new slide, scroll through "inspiration slides" to find a layout you like; once you choose, the app will pull the layout and automatically adapt it to match the design of the rest of your presentation.

With 10 themes, several templated slides, over 40 fully-designed templates, and 23 different color palettes to choose from, Beautiful.ai strikes a perfect balance between automation and customization.

While Beautiful.ai doesn't offer a free plan, paid plans are reasonably priced and offer sharing and collaboration options that rival collab-focused apps like Google Slides. And speaking of Google, you can connect Beautiful.ai with Google Drive to save all your presentations there.

Note: I did test the newly released generative AI feature (called DesignerBot) and felt it wasn't much to write home about. It's great for adding individual slides to an existing presentation—automatically choosing the best layout and matching the design to the rest of the deck—but as with most other apps, it struggled to generate a quality presentation from scratch.

Beautiful.ai pricing: Plans start at $12/month for unlimited slides, AI content generation, viewer analytics, and more. Upgrade to a Team plan for $40/user/month to get extra collaboration and workspace features and custom brand controls.

If you're a founder looking for an AI presentation tool for your pitch deck, Slidebean is a great Beautiful.ai alternative for startups. The app offers a number of templates; a unique, content-first outline editor; and AI design help that you can toggle on or off for each slide. I didn't include it on the list mainly because of the price: the free plan is quite limited, and the paid all-access plan starts at $228/year.

The best presentation app for conversational presentations

Prezi (web, mac, windows, ios, android).

Prezi pros:

Doesn't restrict you to standard presentation structure

Lots of customization options

Prezi Video lets you display a presentation right over your webcam video

Prezi cons:

Steep learning curve

Struggling to squeeze information into a basic, linear presentation? Give Prezi a try. Unlike nearly all other presentation apps on the market, Prezi Present doesn't restrict the structure of your presentation to a straight line. The editor focuses on topics and subtopics and allows you to arrange them any way you want, so you can create a more conversational flow of information.

With the structural flexibility, you still get all the same customization features you expect from top presentation software, including fully-editable templates. There's a learning curve if you're unfamiliar with non-linear presentations, but templates offer a great jumping-off point, and Prezi's editor does a good job of making the process more approachable.

Plus, Prezi comes with two other apps: Prezi Design and Prezi Video. Prezi Video helps you take remote presentations to a new level. You can record a video where the presentation elements are displayed right over your webcam feed. Record and save the video to share later, or connect with your video conferencing tool of choice (including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet) to present live.

Prezi pricing: Free 14-day trial and a free plan that includes up to 5 visual projects; paid plans start at $5/month and include additional features like private presentations and Prezi Present.

The best presentation app for video presentations

Powtoon (web, ios, android).

Powtoon pros:

Timing automatically changes based on the content on the slide

Can toggle between slideshow and video

Can orient presentation as horizontal, vertical, or square

Powtoon cons:

Limited free plan

Powtoon makes it easy to create engaging videos by orienting the editor around a slide deck. Editing a Powtoon feels just like editing a presentation, but by the time you finish, you have a professional video. 

You can edit your slides at any time, and when you hit play, a video plays through your deck—the feel is almost like an animated explainer video. Each slide includes the animations you choose and takes up as much time as is needed based on the content on the slide. Powtoon figures the timing automatically, and you can see in the bottom-right of the editor how much time is used on your current slide versus the total presentation. If you ever want to present as a slide deck, just toggle between Slideshow and Movie.

You'll likely need to subscribe to a paid plan to get the most out of Powtoon—like creating videos longer than three minutes, downloading them as MP4 files, and white-labeling your presentations—but doing so won't break the bank. Plus, you'll unlock tons of templates complete with animations and soundtracks.

One of my favorite Powtoon features is the ability to orient your video: you can choose horizontal orientation (like a normal presentation) or opt for vertical (for mobile) or square (for social media). When your presentation is ready, you can publish straight to YouTube, Wistia, Facebook Ads, and any number of other locations.

Powtoon pricing: Limited free plan available; paid plans start at $20/month and include white-labeling, priority support, additional storage, and more.

The best presentation app for interactive presentations

Genially (web).

Genially pros:

Don't need a presenter (it's interactive)

You can set universal branding guidelines

Unlimited creations on the free plan

Genially cons:

Free plan has some limitations worth looking into (e.g., can only make public presentations)

While many presentation apps are built for presenter-led decks, Genially 's interactive features and animated templates make it easy to build a self-led presentation. A variety of interactive buttons allow you to show viewers additional context on hover, have them skip to any page of your deck, and let them navigate to external links.

This presentation program offers a bunch of searchable templates, including some for business proposals, reports, social media presentations, and more (though most of those are available on premium plans only). Genially also includes Smart blocks —templated blocks of content for elements like data visualizations and image galleries.

My favorite feature is the brand settings. Premium users can set universal branding guidelines that include your logo, color scheme, fonts, images, and backgrounds, among other options. Think of them like a custom template, created and customized by you, that the whole team can use. Once set, your team can easily create on-brand presentations that automatically apply your brand settings, without even thinking about it.

Plus, Genially supports additional content like training materials, infographics, and interactive images—all subject to your brand presets.

Genially pricing: Free plan available with unlimited creations and views and access to templates; paid plans start at $7.49/month and include additional download options, privacy controls, offline viewing, premium templates, and more.

The best presentation app for collaborating with your team

Pitch (web, mac, windows, ios, android).

Pitch pros:

Google levels of collaboration

Assign slides to specific team members

Start live video calls straight from decks

Pitch cons:

User interface is a little different than you're used to

Need to collaborate on presentations with your team? Pitch is a Google Slides alternative that gets the job done. As far as decks go, Pitch includes all the beautifully-designed templates, customizability, and ease of use you expect from a top-notch presentation tool. But the app really shines when you add your team.

The right-hand sidebar is all about project management and collaboration: you can set and update the status of your deck, assign entire presentations or individual slides to team members, plus comment, react, or add notes. Save custom templates to make future presentations even easier and faster.

You can also invite collaborators from outside your company to work with you on individual decks. And if you opt for a paid plan, Pitch introduces workspace roles, shared private folders, and version history.

The "Go live" feature is a personal favorite—with just a click on the camera icon in the top-right, you can start a live video call. Any team members who open the presentation can hop in and collaborate in real-time. 

Pitch pricing: Free plan offers unlimited presentations, custom templates, and live video collaboration; paid plans start at $8/user/month for additional workspace features, presentation analytics, and more.

The best simple presentation app

Zoho show (web, ios, android, chrome).

Zoho Show pros:

Simple and easy to use

Version history and ability to lock slides

Completely free

Zoho Show cons:

Templates are pretty basic

If you're looking for a simple, yet capable presentation app that's a step up from Google Slides, Zoho Show is a great option. It's completely free to use, offers a clean, intuitive editor, and includes a number of great templates.

While the handful of "Themes" offered are on the basic side, Zoho templates boast a more modern and professional design than much of what Google Slides or PowerPoint offer. And I love that you can set the font and color scheme for the whole template, right from the start.

The app doesn't skimp on collaboration or shareability either. You can invite collaborators via email or shareable link, and comments and version history make it easy to work together on presentations. Once you're ready to share, you can even broadcast your presentation to a remote audience right from within Zoho. Plus, you can one-click lock slides to prevent any more editing or hide individual slides to customize your presentation for different audiences.

You can even connect Zoho Show to Zapier , so you can do things like automatically create a presentation when something happens in one of the other apps you use most.

Zapier is the leader in no-code automation—integrating with 6,000+ apps from partners like Google, Salesforce, and Microsoft. Build secure, automated systems for your business-critical workflows across your organization's technology stack. Learn more .

Zoho Show pricing: Free

The best presentation app for generative AI

Gamma (web).

Gamma pros:

Creates fully fleshed-out presentations from a prompt

Chatbot-like experience

Can still manually edit the presentation

Gamma cons:

Not as much granular customization

I tested a lot of apps claiming to use AI to up your presentation game, and Gamma 's generative features were head and shoulders above the crowd.

Simply give the app a topic—or upload an outline, notes, or any other document or article—approve the outline, and pick a theme. The app will take it from there and create a fully fleshed-out presentation. It's far from perfect, but Gamma produced the most useful jumping-off point of all the AI presentation apps I tested. 

Here's the key: Gamma is much more geared toward the iterative, chatbot experience familiar to ChatGPT users. Click on the Edit with AI button at the top of the right-hand menu to open the chat, and you'll see suggested prompts—or you can type in your own requests for how Gamma should alter the presentation.

Once you've done all you can with prompts, simply close the chat box to manually add the finishing touches. While you do sacrifice some granular customizability in exchange for the AI features, you can still choose your visual theme, change slide layouts, format text, and add any images, videos, or even app and web content.

Gamma pricing: Free plan includes unlimited users, 1 custom theme, 400 AI deck credits, and basic view analytics; upgrade to the Pro plan ("coming soon," as of this writing) for $10/user/month to get additional AI credits, advanced view analytics, custom fonts, and more.

What about the old standbys?

You might notice a few major presentation players aren't on this list, including OGs Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, and Google Slides. These apps are perfectly adequate for creating basic presentations, and they're free if you have a Windows or Mac device or a Google account.

I didn't include them on the list because the presentation space has really developed in the last several years, and after testing them out, I found these behemoths haven't kept pace. If they weren't made by Microsoft/Apple/Google, I might not even be mentioning them. They're pretty basic tools, they're behind the curve when it comes to templates (both quantity and design), and they don't offer any uniquely valuable features like robust team collaboration, branding controls, video, and so on.

Some of these companies (think: Microsoft and Google) are openly working on some pretty impressive-sounding AI features, but they haven't been widely released to the public yet. Rest assured, I'm watching this space, and the next time we update this article, I'll retest tools like PowerPoint and Google Slides to see what new features are available.

In any case, if you're reading this, you're probably looking for an alternative that allows you to move away from one of the big 3, and as the presentation platforms featured above show, there's a ton to gain—in terms of features, usability, and more—when you do.

Related reading:

8 Canva AI tools to improve your design workflow

The best online whiteboards for collaboration

How to share a presentation on Zoom without sharing your browser tabs and address bar

This post was originally published in October 2014 and has since been updated with contributions from Danny Schreiber, Matthew Guay, Andrew Kunesh, and Krystina Martinez. The most recent update was in May 2023.

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Kiera Abbamonte

Kiera’s a content writer who helps SaaS and eCommerce companies connect with customers and reach new audiences. Located in Boston, MA, she loves cinnamon coffee and a good baseball game. Catch up with her on Twitter @Kieraabbamonte.

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Best free presentation software of 2023

Find an alternative to PowerPoint

• The best free presentation software in full

Best overall

Best for speed, best for functionality, best for collaboration, best user interface, how we test.

The best free presentation software makes it simple and easy to create presentations as an alternative to subscribing to Microsoft PowerPoint.

The best free presentation software of 2023 in full 1. Best overall 2. Best for speed 3. Best for functionality 4. Best for collaboration 5. Best user interface 6. FAQs 7. How we test

While PowerPoint is the market leader when it comes to presentation software, some people may be unwilling to subscribe to a Microsoft 365 subscription, especially if they don't expect to need to use it very often.

However, there are plenty of great alternatives to PowerPoint available for free that you can use. While these won't have the same advanced features as PowerPoint, they still offer a very competent platform to design most any presentation that you need.

To help you choose, we've listed below the best free presentation software currently available.

Add images to your presentations using the best free photo editor .

Google Workspace : Collaboration + productivity apps There are many different presentation software packages but Google Workspace formerly known as G Suite remains the original cloud office software and one of the best business office suites, offering a huge range of features and functionality that rivals can't match, especially when it comes to presentation software. Try it free for 14 days .

Get in touch

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The best free presentation software in full:

Our expert review:

Reasons to buy

Reasons to avoid.

Prezi turns the traditional approach to presentations on its head. Instead of creating slide after slide, this presentation software gives you a single giant canvas. You can add blocks of text or images, or even create miniature slides. During your presentation, you can seamlessly fly around the canvas and zoom in to look at individual chunks of content.

For how complex Prezi seems, it’s impressively simple to use the platform. The only major divergence from Microsoft PowerPoint is that you need to add animated paths from one part of the canvas to another. The tools for this are fairly straightforward, especially if you’ve ever used an animation or video editing software.

Of course, this type of presentation structure isn’t always ideal. Prezi makes it hard to visualize structured data like financials, which can make it difficult to use in business applications. Some viewers also might not appreciate the fly-around animation style that’s inherent to the presentation software.

Read our full Prezi review .

Canva is perfect for making speedy presentations right in your web browser. This software offers a handful of free layouts to help you get your slideshow started, and it’s easy to customize the templates to fit your needs. There isn’t a huge variety of content elements to add to your presentation, but Canva makes up for this with a searchable library of more than 1 million images you can use.

Your Canva presentations live online, which makes it extremely easy to collaborate. You can invite colleagues to edit your slideshow (although simultaneous editing is not supported) or seamlessly share your finished presentation. However, beware that Canva can’t import presentations from Microsoft Powerpoint or export finished work to a Powerpoint-editable format.

Read our full Canva review .

3. LibreOffice

LibreOffice is a free alternative to Microsoft Office, and it includes a Powerpoint equivalent called Impress with nearly all of the same functionality. The only big difference you’ll find between the two slideshow creation tools is the LibreOffice lacks some modern features like built-in collaboration and integration with Microsoft OneDrive.

However, Impress does have a few advantages of its own. The software can import files from Keynote, the default presentation software on Mac computers. Plus, there are hundreds of free templates that you can download for free. Even better, there’s no limit on what fonts you can use with Impress, so it’s easy to change the look of your presentation from what Powerpoint typically allows.

On the whole, LibreOffice Impress is about as close as it gets to simply replicating Microsoft Powerpoint for free.

Read our full LibreOffice review .

4. Google Slides

Google Slides is part of Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), and it does a nice job of matching a number of PowerPoint’s capabilities. This free presentation software supports embedding videos, creating diagrams, and adding animations to your slides. While the selection of templates is somewhat limited, you can easily import hundreds of additional templates for free or create your own.

Even better, Google Slides supports the collaboration tools users have come to expect from Google. Multiple people can work on a slideshow simultaneously, and there’s a built-in group chat so you can keep track of what everyone is doing. It’s also nice that you can play your presentation in presenter mode, which allows you to preview how it will look to your audience and rehearse timing.

The only downside to Google Slides is that bloated slideshows can experience some loading delays. Also beware that while you can move between Slides and Powerpoint, the conversion often messes with the layout of your slides.

Read our full Google Slides review .

5. WPS Office Free

WPS Office Free is a Microsoft Office look-alike that fully support PowerPoint files without any layout issues during import. The WPS Presentation tool has all of the same capabilities of PowerPoint, including tons of animations, slide transitions, content effects, and video embedding. The selection of included presentation templates is also very impressive for a free software.

One of the best things about this presentation software is that the user interface will feel incredibly familiar if you’re coming from Microsoft. All of the tools are displayed in a top ribbon, with your slides shown on the left side of the screen for easy navigation. It’s simple to display your presentation right from WPS Presentation, which means there’s no unexpected troubleshooting when it’s time to show off your work.

There’s not much to dislike about WPS Presentation. However, keep in mind that the software is supported by ads. Some users find the ads annoying, but they’re not overly in the way.

Read our full WPS Office Free review .

We've also featured the best free office software .

Which alternative to PowerPoint is best for you?

When deciding which alternative to PowerPoint to download and use, first consider what your actual needs are, as sometimes free platforms may only provide basic options, so if you need to use advanced tools you may find a paid platform is much more worthwhile. Additionally, free and budget software options can sometimes prove limited when it comes to the variety of tools available, while higher-end software can really cater for every need, so do ensure you have a good idea of which features you think you may require.

How we tested the best free presentation software

To test for the best free presentation software we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, whether as a download or as an online service. We then tested the service to see how the software could be used for different purposes and in different situations. The aim was to push each software platform to see how useful its basic tools were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced tools.

Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar .  

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Michael Graw is a freelance journalist and photographer based in Bellingham, Washington. His interests span a wide range from business technology to finance to creative media, with a focus on new technology and emerging trends. Michael's work has been published in TechRadar, Tom's Guide, Business Insider, Fast Company, Salon, and Harvard Business Review. 

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Designing your PowerPoint Presentation decks within a stipulated time-frame with quality is one of the common  PowerPoint challenges . Without the right tools and apps to create a seamless process for making effective presentations in PowerPoint production, your projects will most likely fall way behind the proposed deadlines and come out as mediocre Presentations.

To get the process flowing, you may be using different third-party applications. For instance, an application for getting emails in place, another for storing files, and yet another for planning tasks and sharing ideas. But having them in so many locations is not a good idea and remembering passwords to these apps or where you kept them can be a nail-biting scenario especially when chasing the clock.

What if we have all these apps in one location and one password to rule them all. Yes, Microsoft Office 365 binds these apps in one place. It has all the necessary apps to make presentations quickly and efficiently. This will also aid in streamlining your PowerPoint Presentation Production Process. These are very basic but powerful apps that include SharePoint, Outlook, Yammer, Excel and PowerPoint Online.

Here is a look at how each of the apps mentioned above helps the PowerPoint Presentation Design team at Chillibreeze to meet customer deadlines effortlessly.

Here is a compilation of how we use Office 365 apps to achieve a smooth workflow that is a win-win.

Getting our emails sorted with Outlook

The first thing that starts the whole process is the customer emails describing requirements and their design expectations along with attached files. Office 365 has been equipped with Outlook for syncing all emails that can be sorted out in separate folders for organizing emails from different customers/organizations.

Sharing some few features of Outlook that can get answering and writing emails done quicker:

1. Tired of typing content from another source and opening a new item?:  Copy any text to your clipboard (Ctrl+C), then press Ctrl-V in Outlook. Outlook creates a new message with the text already pasted. So instead of creating a new item in Outlook, and then copying and pasting text in, you do both in one step.

2. Get to know Outlook's keyboard shortcuts:  Outlook has unique keyboard shortcuts that speed up your Outlook tasks. Among the most useful are:

• Ctrl+R : reply to the email
• Alt+R : reply to all in email or switch to the work week calendar view
• Alt+W : forward email or switch to the weekly calendar view
• Ctrl+M : F9 to Send/Receive all
• Alt+S : Send email

3. Access anywhere:  You can easily access your emails through your phone with the Outlook app available on smartphones.

Using SharePoint to manage, access and store files in the cloud

SharePoint is where we store files, organize them according to our preference using folders and restrict access to users. SharePoint offers easy management, enhanced security, and access from almost anywhere.

The benefits of SharePoint if you want to consider this for your business operations:

• SharePoint can be accessed anywhere online. With SharePoint Online, your users can access their e-mail, documents, contacts, from any browser on any device from any internet connection.
• Create a workspace for a particular company where access is restricted to only assigned users(customers)
• Store all files of a customer in the customer sites (workspaces) folder wise.
• Easy Maintenance: With SharePoint, IT managers can find relief in not having to perform backups, OS support, SharePoint patches, etc. By moving to SharePoint Online, your IT staff can free up hours that are spent on maintenance and focus on other important internal improvements which make everyone happy!
• Security: Here are seven points that will change your mind if you are hesitant on using SharePoint Online on the grounds of Security concerns:

• Physical Security – Microsoft doesn’t disclose locations of their data centers and provides multiple layers of physical security which include motion sensors, constant video surveillance, biometrics, and armed security at the data center.
• Encryption of data – Microsoft secures traffic with SSL over HTTP and uses disks with BitLocker encryption.
• No data mining  – Office 365 does not mine or access data for advertising purposes!
• Backups  – Microsoft employs multiple layers of redundancy and backups in their data centers
• Identity Protection  – Office 365 demands strong user passwords and multi-factor authentication.
• Data Protection Agreement – Office 365 is willing to sign with all customers the standard contractual clauses formulated by the European Union (“EU Model Clauses”). Additionally, it has become the only public cloud service to have implemented the meticulous set of logical, physical, process and management controls defined by ISO 27001.

Here is the process of file sharing used when we execute a project or task for a customer.

• Customer sends files through third-party platforms (Dropbox, google drive, etc.)
• The customers are introduced to their own SharePoint workspace.
• Files are stored and shared easily.

Yammer for Team Communication

When getting around with team workflow, we use the inbuilt Yammer app that makes internal communication a seamless interaction. How this app has made our team work efficiently and quickly is an immense treasure in our daily work process.

Have a look at the main features of Yammer

• Groups: Set up a group for your team and work together with anyone across the company on projects, initiatives, ideas, and events. Groups provide workspaces for a team by providing a central place for conversations, files, updates, and more.
• Collaborate externally:  Add partners, customers to group conversations for specific input. For ongoing collaboration, create dedicated external groups or external networks to foster deeper relationships and a sense of community.

These features helped us to share ideas in our particular groups, improving collaboration, productivity, communication, and ideation. Here are a few ways that we have been using Yammer that might show you how it can help you as well.

• You can update customer feedback on Yammer for the team to see their achievements or improvements.
• Share important updates from customers like preferences or customer broadcast
• Share customers concern
• Share tips and tricks in your profession
• Suggestions to improve customer service

Excel to create reports

During View mode, click on the " Edit in Browser " button on the PowerPoint Online toolbar, to switch into online Edit mode. The PowerPoint online Editor is a browser-based editing platform, which enables users to work on documents without losing accuracy.

To edit offline, you can click the " Open in PowerPoint " button on the PowerPoint Online toolbar which opens in the PowerPoint desktop app.

The online PowerPoint app although with its limitations compared to the desktop app still provides some benefits for PowerPoint designers. Learn some of its main features and how they can help you increase productivity while working with PowerPoint.

• Online Collaboration: The Office 365 online app allows users to see what other team members are working on in the same project or workspace. You can see what they are typing in real-time and share the workload or work on different sections of the same project. You can chat with them by using Skype for Business which saves time and gets the task done in a short period.
• Shared with Me:  The  Shared with Me  feature helps you locate the files others have shared with you. After someone has shared you a presentation, that presentation will automatically appear in the Shared with Me list.
• Use Tell Me to quickly do things:  You'll notice a text box on the ribbon in PowerPoint that says  Tell me what you want to do.  In this text field,  you can enter phrases or terms of what you want to search for and get features you want to use or actions you want to perform.
• Screen recording:  Need to show demonstrations to fellow users or customers, you can now include screen recordings in your PowerPoint presentation. Set up what you'd like to share from your screen, then go to  Insert > Screen recording , then you can select a portion of your screen to record, capture what you require to share, and then directly insert it into your presentation in one seamless process.

The whole process of receiving and organizing emails using Outlook, storing files in SharePoint, communication with the team through Yammer, creating reports with Excel and collaborating with team members using PowerPoint online app; and having these apps all in one place makes it a seamless process for any user to confidently create Presentations and concentrate on quality without worrying about completing deadlines.

Have you heard about the latest Microsoft app, " Microsoft Team "? It's worth a try.

What features or apps do you use to speed up your work process?

Leave a comment below.

Related posts:

• This Is Why We Love Office 365 and Its Applications
• Ways to Communicate Effectively in Your Business Emails
• Flexible Communication with Team – A Microsoft Productivity Application
• How to Use Think-Cell for Visualizing Charts Effectively

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