iPad Presentations Made Easy, Part 1

November 02, 2011 at 12:00 AM
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The iPad makes for an excellent presentation tool. It's light, portable and clearly made for delivering eye-catching visuals. Below are some tips for ensuring your presentations look their best when viewed on an iPad.

Things to consider before creating your presentation. First things first: You need to ensure your presentation environment is ideal for the iPad. If you're giving a talk in a small conference or lecture-style room, you can hook up your iPad to a projector. However, bear in mind that you will not be able to use a remote control with your iPad, so you will have to be sitting nearby to be able to tap the screen.

Not planning on using a projector? You can also show clients your presentation straight from the device. However, with the iPad's screen size, you will need to be seated close enough for them to see it. While this setup limits your presentation environment, it also allows you to present to your clients in an engaging and conversational manner.

Once you've determined that the iPad is something you can work with for your meeting, you can then go on to creating your presentation. The following are some things to consider:

Presentation size: First off, when designing your presentation, set the size to 1024×768, same as the screen size of the iPad, to avoid any viewer-compatibility issues.

Your presentation tool of choice: Creating presentations for the iPad is easy if you're a Mac user and use Keynote to create your slideshows and presentations. However, if your desktop computer uses Microsoft tools, bear in mind that PowerPoint is not supported by iPad.

Fortunately, there are solutions available for ensuring your presentation can still be viewed on an iPad:

Turn your presentation into a video

To preserve the animation, transitions, audios and video clips within your PowerPoint slides, there are PowerPoint-to-video converters that allow you to convert PowerPoint presentations to iPad-supported video formats: .m4v, .mp4, and .mov.

You can also use screen-capturing software to convert your PowerPoint presentation into video.

Convert your slides into pictures

If your presentation is made up mostly of charts, tables or photos, this is a great solution for you, since the iPad is equipped with a slideshow photo viewer.

Unfortunately, animations, transitions, sound and video clips will not be preserved when you convert your presentation to pictures. In that case, better stick to using video

Save it as a PDF file

If you have the newer versions of PowerPoint (2007 and 2010), you can create a .pdf copy of your slides. iPad supports .pdf files, so this works best if your presentation is mostly made up of graphic content.

Again, this method of conversion is not without its disadvantages. If your presentation has a lot of animation, audio and video, these will not be retained once your .ppt file is saved as .pdf.

The iPad was a groundbreaking device when it came out and for various reasons. Whereas it was once dismissed largely as an entertainment powerhouse, its usefulness in the office is proof that the iPad is a handy and multidimensional tool.

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 Kristen Luke is the principal of Wealth Management Marketing, a firm dedicated to providing marketing strategies and support for registered investment advisory firms. For more information, visit www.wealthmanagementmarketing.net.

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