Do you look closely at the slides of a presentation during a meeting? You need to! This will help you create even better presentations yourself. Each presentation you sit through is a chance to learn what works really well and what doesn’t.
One thing that bugs me is the use of footers. This is when each and every slide of the presentation has the date when the presentation was created, the number of the slide and often the name of the presenter. Oh wow! The presentation might have been created a long time ago and the audience is under the impression that you were giving them the latest news. What a giveaway that you are using an old presentation with updates. (Hopefully)
There is nothing wrong in having something at the bottom of every slide as long as it helps the presentation not distract from it. For instance, the use of slide numbers can only encourage some to start counting as you go through. If, like me, you hide slides that are not required for that meeting or to avoid answering questions on them, it means the audience know something is missing. You then run the risk of someone asking where the missing slides are and then you are forced to show them.
How to create your footer
- Select the Inset Tab and it will sho the Header and Footer Tool.
- Select the Tool.
This dialog box appears.
As you can see, all the settings here refer ONLY to the footer area of the slide. There is no header to insert.
If you want a date in the slide click in the box next to Date and Time. There are two options with dates – automatically updatable or fixed. An automatically updatable one means that the date shown is always the date you are presenting. A fixed data means you have to update it when you use the slide later.
If you want each slide to be numbered select the Slide Number box.
To add a footer click in the box next to Footer. You can type anything you like here but it is always advisable to keep it short.
Most important is the “Don’t show on the title slide”. Your title slide would hold most of this information already so repeating it would be over kill.
To ensure that all slides have footer information click on the Apply To All button. This will apply the settings to all the slides except the title one.
If you select the Apply button only the slide you are selecting will have the settings appear. This means that you could have a different footer at the bottom of every slide. But why would you want to?
If you are inserting a footer whilst in Slide Master then selecting ‘Apply’ or ‘Apply to All’ will result in the same thing. Every slide that uses this master layout will have the same footer.
So if you want to use footers in your presentation you now know how to apply them.
