Now this next tip may not seem like a Business Powerpoint concept at first glance - however I know from experience the number of times I’ve used PowerPoint to paste in a load of images or screenshots from a particular project to distribute to people. I wish I’d used this technique more often.

Typically, you go to a slide, insert > image from file > browse to the image > insert > resize it, align it on the page and then move on to the next one. If you’re doing this for 20 images - it’s going to take 20 minutes. If you then need to go back and change the style for each of them - there’s another 5 mins gone from your day.

I’ve just created a deck with 50 images in it, neatly sized, framed and aligned in 10 seconds… Let me show you how it’s done using PowerPoint 2007 (although the same functionality is in PowerPoint 2003:

Create a new deck and then choose Insert > PhotoAlbum > New PhotoAlbum.

Add a new PhotoAlbum

A pop-up window opens. Select the photos you want to insert in the album. After adding the photos, you can rotate them or change brightness/contrast if you wish. You can also choose how many to place on each page. The full screen option is really useful.

Photo Album dialogue

You can also select a theme for the photo album from the theme folder which should open by default.

Once completed, click “create” and your photo album is ready for distribution.

The finished product

You can now prepare for that 21st birthday speech or board presentation and worry about the jokes, rather than the formatting.