Troy Chollar is a Visual Communications Expert and co-founder of TLC Creative Services, which specializes in presentation design, dealing with live events, and a lot of utilizing PowerPoint technically. He has been a PowerPoint MVP since 2004.

Troy presented 18 settings for both your computer and PowerPoint app. Great ideas on how to set up your software to assist you, not hinder you. His presentation is jam-packed with useful insights, suggestions, and tricks for successfully preparing your presentation delivery on the technical side.

Read more to find some of the settings Troy shared and see how to prevent both your computer and PowerPoint from interfering with your presentation. If you want to discover all of the tips & tricks presented, just watch the Present to Succeed Public Speaking Track Recordings.

Troy began by offering advice on how to set up your computer and demonstrating a couple of configurations that he and his colleagues use on a regular basis. For example, his setup for presenting at our conference consisted of a laptop linked to two displays, a DSLR camera, a backup webcam, and the ability to switch to the laptop’s built-in Full HD camera if the first two fail. He also shared that he prefers to use a presentation remote even while presenting online, to keep his hands off the keyboard whenever possible.

When he was talking about computer setup, Troy described a couple of scenarios that our audience related to since they have seen similar things happen.

Have you ever witnessed a computer that went to sleep, launched a screensaver, or just died while the presenter was speaking? Well, if the presenter had simply taken care of it. How to avoid that? Don’t use the default power settings. Change the power settings to never go to screensaver, fall asleep or turn itself off when the computer is plugged in. Also, always keep your computer plugged in when using it for presenting.

Troy also mentioned a few things that we’ve all done, such as not having a proper desktop background or having an excessive number of icons. For background, he recommends an abstract image or a solid color, but not black. Black is the global something-is-not-working color, and you don’t want to stress out your AV team, right? A simple right-click and unchecking of the “Show desktop icons” option removes the problem with your desktop icons easily.

Troy shared the “broadcast stations” as they call the computers in his company, with which they present in their daily work.

Troy also shared some useful tips that you may not be aware of for presenting virtually. One of the things he shared was a great PowerPoint setting that is very useful when you have to use just one screen for presenting – the broadcasting option in PowerPoint. It broadcasts your presentation in one window, which you cannot move, but you can cover with another app window if you need the screen space without a problem.

Another tip that our audience appreciated was the fact that you can upload and present your PowerPoint presentation directly from Microsoft Teams. This way you have a minimal quality loss when presenting online and less hardware struggle.

Here Troy showed how to turn on the PowerPoint broadcast option, which can ease presenting with only one monitor if you need it. Our host for that session was Iva, and she loved this exact tip Troy gave because it is a solution that she has looked for,