1. Slide design
Find the most appealing template — http://www.freeppttemplates.com

2. Slide Master
Format the whole presentation: View/Master/Slide Master or hold down the shift key as you hover over the mini-icons at the bottom left and click on the Normal view which becomes the slide master view.

3. WordArt
To jazz up the text boxes (eg, straplines).

4. Connectors
Invaluable for drawing lines and shapes that need to be aligned and connected: Autoshape/Connectors (Alt U/N)

5. Outline view
To produce a single slide that contains a summary of titles of the key slides, switch to the Slide sorter view (View/Slide sorter) and hold down the Ctrl key and select the key slides. From the Slide Sorter toolbar click Summary Slide.

6. Graphics and cartoons
The Microsoft Clip art gallery contains masses of images (Insert/Picture/Clip Art or Alt+I/P/C). There are also specialist websites such as http://christmas-clipart.net/

7. Spice up slides on the screen
For moving from one slide to the next, Show/Slide Transition (or Alt+D/T). To apply the effect only to selective slides, view them in Slide Sorter mode, hold down Ctrl key and select the required slides.

8. Jazz up the way the images appear
Use either pre-defined Animation schemes — Slide Show/ Animation Schemes or Alt+D/C), or customise your own — Slide Show/Custom Animation (or Alt+D/M).

9. To add a hyperlink within a slide
Insert/Insert Hyperlink (or Ctrl+K) and find the file in the Look in panel.

10. To add comments/reminders
Either make use of the Notes section: View/Notes Page (or Alt+V/P) or Insert/Comment (Alt+I/M).

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