When you think of technical writing, I’m sure you think of instruction guides, operations manuals, and other technical documents, but do you also think of PowerPoint presentations? These are a useful tool for teaching new material and many of our ASCENT guides have Instructor resources that include PowerPoint decks to help instructors teach the material. Starting with our Autodesk 2023 guides, we have been converting these decks to a widescreen format to better fit the screens more people are now using for their presentations.
This blog isn’t going to discuss how to change the size of your slides (a quick internet search will let you find those instructions), but I will talk about some potential errors to watch out for if you are converting the size of your PowerPoint slides.
Use a Theme
We use themes with our decks, so these tips are coming from that assumption (if you want help developing your own theme, please reach out to us!). When we began the conversion process, we started with converting our theme to the correct size and proportions. This will give you a base to work from and make it easier to transition your slides.
If you have a widescreen theme that you want to apply, you will need to change the size of the slides first. This is important! If you apply the theme before changing the slide size, your elements will size down to fit the standard size and will then be too small when the slide is changed to widescreen. This is the case in the image on the top – the title and heading copy is too small compared to the correct version on the bottom where the size was changed before applying the theme.
Watch Your Graphics
If you have logos or other images included as part of your master slides, you will want to make sure these are sized properly on your new template. If you don’t have an updated template to use, keep an eye on these when changing the slide size – images on your master slide will stretch to fit the new slide size and may become distorted, as shown in the image below where the ASCENT logo has been stretched.
Be sure to replace or resize any stretched logos to the correct proportion when converting your slides. You can do this in PowerPoint by selecting the image and either selecting the Reset Picture & Size option from the ribbon or using the Reset option in the Format Picture panel, as shown below.
Reset Slide
After you have applied your new template at the correct size (remember: change the size first, then apply the template), you will want to check that your slides have adjusted correctly. If they haven’t, you will want to use Reset Slide so that elements adjust accordingly. Something to watch out for: If you have a lot of text formatting on your slides (italic or bold text, for example), this may be lost when resetting the slides. A trick I found is that if I reapply the same layout instead of resetting the slide, the elements will adjust while still maintaining the original formatting. Such a time saver! The example below shows the difference between the two methods.
Original slide after applying widescreen theme:
Slide after using Reset Slide:
Slide after reapplying the layout using the right-click menu:
Keep in mind that if the slides were not built correctly following the template in the first place, resetting them might not fix them as you’d hoped. In some cases, adjusting a slide manually is the only solution – though in these situations, I will usually redo the slide using set template elements to avoid any conversion problems in future.
Work with the Space You’ve Got
When converting to widescreen from standard, you may also find that you have more room than you had before. Make use of it! Instead of simply resetting the slide to fit the new size, consider what adjustments you can make to the content itself. Would something work better in two columns now that you have a wider area to work with? Can images be bigger or moved around to give more breathing space to your elements? Keep this in mind as you go through your slides – sometimes some easy layout adjustments can make a big difference.
I hope you’ve found these tips for converting PowerPoint slides to a widescreen helpful. If you’d like assistance with converting your own slides or developing templates for PowerPoint, please email Tech.writing@ASCENTed.com to find out how we can help!
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