What to Learn After PowerPoint

PowerPoint is an incredibly versatile presentation design tool used across a wide array of industries. If you already know how to use PowerPoint, you might consider learning other Microsoft Office programs, such as Word or Excel. PowerPoint users who are more interested in the creative side of the application may want to learn graphic design skills. We’ll cover programs and skills below so you clearly understand what skill you want to tackle next. 

What is PowerPoint?

Microsoft PowerPoint is the most commonly used presentation software across almost all professional industries. PowerPoint is one of the most important parts of Microsoft’s Office 365 programs, alongside Word and Excel. PowerPoint lets users easily create vibrant and memorable presentations that quickly communicate meaning in a professional setting. Users can add animations, transitions, graphics, and other imagery to their slides, ensuring they produce both communicative and impressive presentations for their audience.

PowerPoint is a slideshow editing tool built to give users the tools they need to organize information, communicate effectively, and produce presentations to deliver through live address or without a presenter. PowerPoint makes the job easier and more efficient, whether you manage important information in advance of a meeting, prepare a sales pitch to a potential client, or compile important workplace policies and procedures in a single place. This versatility has made PowerPoint an industry-standard tool in almost all professional contexts.

Read more about what PowerPoint is and why you should learn it.

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What Can You Do with PowerPoint?

PowerPoint allows users to create vibrant and memorable visual presentations that can serve a wide variety of purposes. PowerPoint’s advanced features let users integrate dynamic animations and 3D modeled graphics into their designs, allowing them to create more complex presentations than simple text projected onto a screen. Whether you are attempting to keep an audience engaged during a critical seminar or make a sales pitch as memorable as possible, PowerPoint gives you the tools to wow your audience.

Some users will use PowerPoint to create informative slideshows that condense complicated information into a single, easy-to-digest presentation. This makes the program ideal for both instructors and professionals looking to host informational seminars regularly. In fact, many online classes you take will use PowerPoint to provide students with the main takeaways from a lecture. Some users, who need to persuade audiences, such as entrepreneurs meeting with potential investors, will use PowerPoint to create memorable and persuasive presentations that convince their audience to invest in their product.

Word

One of the reasons that PowerPoint has become so ubiquitous is that it is closely tied to the other primary Microsoft Office application, Word. As a fundamental word processor, learning to use Word is relatively straightforward and complements PowerPoint skills in most professional settings. Students may want to learn advanced Word techniques and functionalities, such as improving workflow by creating forms and templates or sending mass emails.

Excel

The second major Office program is Microsoft Excel, which creates spreadsheets and stores data. Advanced Excel training goes hand-in-hand with PowerPoint training, as users can freely import and format Excel data into their PowerPoint presentations. This makes the skill ideal for Business Analysts or other professionals who need to communicate complicated data findings to an audience of non-experts.

Graphic Design

Students interested in the visual elements of a PowerPoint presentation may find themselves interested in learning more complex graphic design concepts and tools. While you can do a lot with PowerPoint, the tools are built for more professional environments, limiting a creative’s ability to be fully expressive in the medium. These students may want to consider learning how to use design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, or even After Effects to help them produce more vibrant and evocative visual creations.

Learn PowerPoint with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

Professionals looking to learn PowerPoint may consider skills development training through Noble Desktop. These courses, available in person at Noble’s Manhattan campus and through live online instruction, will give students hands-on training in designing and organizing information using PowerPoint. These courses, which expert instructors teach, will provide students with the experience needed to build evocative and memorable presentations. Even in online courses, class sizes are kept small, so students can interface directly with their instructor to receive assistance and feedback. Plus, Noble offers free retakes on all its courses, giving students more opportunities to practice building presentations in a professional environment.

Noble offers a PowerPoint Bootcamp, which teaches students, even those without prior PowerPoint experience, how to design compelling and evocative presentations. In this certificate-granting program, students will learn how to work with PowerPoint layouts, add animations and graphics, and work with layers, charts, graphs, and other objects. Then, students will receive advanced skills training, such as creating reusable PowerPoint templates, utilizing multimedia features in a presentation, and recording a presentation for later use. These skills will take students from novices to PowerPoint experts and prepare them to use the program professionally.

Since PowerPoint is a design program, Noble also offers students a PowerPoint Presentation Design course. This class focuses on the rhetorical and theoretical side of communicating through PowerPoint. In this class, students will learn design principles related to color, typography, graphic images, and other visual design elements. Whereas a bootcamp course teaches students how to use the tool to build presentations, this course will teach students how to design them, giving them the composition and design theories they need to make their presentations memorable and effective.

Key Insights

• PowerPoint skills are versatile enough that once you have experience in the program, you can complement those skills with a wide variety of other training options.
• PowerPoint is popular partly because it is tied to the Microsoft Office suite of programs, so a logical next step would be to learn either Microsoft Word or Excel.
• Students who are more interested in the visual design side of PowerPoint may benefit from training in more complex graphic design tools, such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.
• No matter what training route a student chooses, Noble has them covered with in-person and live online training programs.