How to make frosted glass in PowerPoint

Follow these simple steps:

1. Apply the “blur” photo filter to your background image
2. Create a very light grey box
3. Add 45% transparency

Aligning PowerPoint object around a circle

PowerPoint has useful tools to align and distribute objects. Spreading things around a circle is more tricky though. Here is one solution that works with an even number of objects circling the center.

1. Draw the rough configuration…

How to create a McKinsey-style waterfall chart

The “water fall” chart is an effective way to summarize the quantitative impact of a number of drivers. For example, you need to put the following story in a chart: “Our profits went up by 7, the positive effect of higher prices and lower cost was…

How to clean up PowerPoint slides

I sometimes help out clients to clean up a very large presentation. Incorrect PowerPoint use…

Putting a color overlay on an image in PowerPoint

Often, the colors of images do not fit the color scheme of a presentation. One solution to this is to “take out the colors” of the image and replace it with a monochrome overlay with the most important color of your color scheme.

How to align bullet points in PowerPoint

One of the PowerPoint annoyances is that bullet point paragraphs are not aligned properly when overflowing to the next line. It’s easy to fix.

Display the ruler (view menu), select the text, and move the little markers, leaving the…

Combining stacked and clustered columns

In PowerPoint, there is no standard option to create a combined stacked and clustered column chart. Here is a work around, taking the stacked column chart as the basis.

1. Set the gap width to zero (in the format data series menu) to…

McKinsey flashback: logic, rhetoric, and presentations