For those of you at the start of their career or creative journey, or anyone who’s still skeptical about the Microsoft app, this article will give you a straightforward answer what PowerPoint is and which of its benefits make it the most popular presentation software worldwide. 

PowerPoint is one of the apps in the Microsoft Office suite used to create powerful presentations, but we’d rather look at it as a story-building tool. Just think of it – PowerPoint helps you create compelling stories and find more interesting ways to connect with your audience. It’s so full of potential that your mind may start to boggle but worry not – the deeper you dive into its features, the more confident and inventive you’ll grow.  

PowerPoint presentations are comprised of slides, which can be built from scratch or from pre-designed templates. You can do virtually anything with the slides of your deck – add text, imagery, sound and video, animation, animated transitions, you name it. 

According to Microsoft estimates, PowerPoint users exceed half a billion and more than 30 000 000 presentations are designed each day (that was 20 years ago, imagine the numbers now!) It’s mainly used in the business and educational world, but it’s also super helpful in publishing as it builds print-ready materials of the highest editorial quality. 

Let’s delve into the main reasons why PowerPoint is the top choice for making presentations. 

According to unofficial data, 120 million of all PowerPoint users come from the business field. HR and PR professionals, trainings and event organisers, investors and sales representatives, marketers and job seekers – they all use the Microsoft presentation tool to breathe life into their ideas and make an impact. Let’s face it, professionals are simply expected to be familiar with the app. If you want to connect with others, if you want to work with them and be an efficient communicator, PPT is like a language that both parties speak. There’s an enormous range of professions that has made Microsoft Office a baseline requirement when applying for a job and PowerPoint mastery on its own is essential for more than 25% of high-opportunity placements.  

This software is packed with tools like a Swiss army knife. Dare to open the blank presentation slide and start exploring the endless list of options: add text, insert images, clips or any graphic art you might have to amplify your ideas. Your slides can later be moved around (on a click or in an automated fashion) to animate your story.  PowerPoint is great for data visualisation (e.g. pie charts, graphs, tables), because we, humans, have a hard time processing digits and it’s much easier for us to perceive them graphically. Generally, the perk of PowerPoint is that it combines functionalities from a variety of other design applications but all in one place, no further licences or fees. 

The popularity of PowerPoint is partly due to Microsoft being the most common operation system in the world. (The PPT version for Mac is only subtly different from the one for PC, but Microsoft are constantly working to eliminate those small dissimilarities). The point is, everyone from subscribers of the Office bundle, through users of the standard version of the suite to people with the downloaded app, has access to the creative tool. PowerPoint owes a lot of its appeal to the fact that users from all levels of expertise can work with it, presentations ranging from the very simple and neat to the expertly designed high-end slides. To top that, the final deck can be shared in a number of widely accepted export formats and accessed from various locations. PowerPoint offers unrivalled flexibility which explains why it’s so coveted in almost any professional environment. 

Time and information are our most valuable assets and PowerPoint is very good at saving you time for life’s more important matters. It’s simple – you can always rely on the impressive number of presentation templates on the Home page menu.  

TIP: While you can hop online in search for a free template, this may not be a good idea as those random templates are available for everyone on the web and their design is probably outdated.  One of the services we offer at 356labs is to custom design top-quality, brand-consistent templates, so you can save hours for the tasks you’re best at.  

And if you, for example, are leading a company that has significant amounts of presentation work, you can outsource the whole presentation making magic to us and save your team a huge amount of time. You’ll thank us later. 

The time-saving commands and options don’t end here. Take, for instance, our PowerPoint shortcuts cheat sheet that helps you optimise your workflow. Hungry for more time-saving tricks? Consider the 356labs Quick Access Toolbar for PPT which will further increase your productivity. You’re welcome. 

There’s a plethora of things you can create with PowerPoint and there’s a chance you’ll never think of any other software for personal or business purposes again. You can produce so much more than a presentation. Imagine the range of marketing materials like brochures, flyers, invitations, business cards, social media ads. This list goes on with miscellaneous types of visuals like print-ready magazine layouts, gifs, logos, calendars etc. PowerPoint is also a top application used by both educators and students, as well as researchers. 

These five reasons should be enough to convince you how beneficial PowerPoint can be to your everyday life. Presentations are all around us and your story deserves to be told in a truly captivating way. PowerPoint is one great tool to achieve that. Of course, you don’t have to do it all alone, at 356labs we have the expertise to drive your message home in the best imaginable way. 

If this sounds like a good start, take a look at our very own course in PowerPoint Tips and Tricks which will teach you how to save hours thanks to some lesser-known hacks.