It might come to you as no mystery that PowerPoint is currently the most complete and perfect destination for all your presentations, but did you know that with all this ease and perfection, come a few disadvantages as well?
Today in this article we will be discussing 10 disadvantages of PowerPoint presentations that you should be familiar with.
So without much delay let’s get straight into them:
Confined Thoughts and High Dependability
Probably one of the foremost disadvantages of PowerPoint is the dependability it creates for the audience regarding the presented information. Where this can be a good sign for the presenter, it certainly is not as effective for the audience as the doors for self-exploration and self-study are closed.
The gravity of this situation can be better understood in the case of academia where the teacher delivers the lecture slides via PowerPoint and the students instead of exploring the reference book and the primary source just go with the word of the presenter and the brief information on presented on the slide. This generates a huge learning gap ultimately leading to shallow and meager understanding.
Overwhelming nature
With the emerging technological advancements, the developers of PowerPoint are continuously adding newer and more advanced features to the software which can make it quite overwhelming for a new user to use the software unless they have prior training.
Even though it’s a great thing about PowerPoint that they stay up to date with the newest technologies, for a layman, getting exposed to so much information can become overwhelming very quickly.
Compatibility Issues
As a PowerPoint user, an issue that you will be facing a lot is the compatibility issue between different versions of PowerPoint. This issue can become even more complicated when PowerPoint slides are to be shared between 2 persons using different versions of the software. Where the advanced versions of PowerPoint have some updated features, its predecessors do not support them.
For instance, consider a user having the 2013 version of PowerPoint while another user has installed the latest Office 365 version. When the latter sends a PowerPoint file to the former some of the advanced features will cause disruptions for the old-version user. This is particularly true in the case of fonts where imported fonts to a slide can become distorted when sent to a different user.
Poor Reputation in some Big Companies
It might sound surprising at first but the fact is that PowerPoint has been banned in some of the world’s biggest companies.
Many top CEOs including Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Mark Cuban have discouraged using PowerPoint in their companies.
They feel that even though presentations benefit the presenters by reducing the amount of effort and turmoil but at the expense of chafing the audience.
Requires Expertise:
Even though PowerPoint is the one-stop solution to all your presentation problems, it requires experience and practice to achieve those desired results. PowerPoint allows you to benefit from tons of built-in and online resources in your presentations but without the necessary exposure to those unexplored options, it is difficult to use them.
While this versatility can be an excellent way to unleash your creative side, the lack of experience and practice can greatly hamper your reputation. This is probably why most of the great content delivered via poor presentations can end up in the trash without seeing its true potential.
Limited Features as compared to its Competitors:
Even though PowerPoint is the most complete software for presentations out there, there are still some loopholes that need to be countered.
When it comes to creating visually appealing and graphically mesmerizing presentations, PowerPoint is a stride short of its competitors like Pitch which has a much sounder and more professional interface for creating highly visual presentations.
Overshadows the Presenter
In today’s era where presentations have taken over the corporate world, conducting interactive and purposeful sessions with the audience has become a necessity. Unfortunately, PowerPoint has an undermining effect in this regard.
It’s complained oftentimes that PowerPoint slides overshadow the presenter’s performance and their words. The audience gets so entangled in the slides that they completely forget about the presenter and what he or she is actually trying to deliver.
This creates a void of confusion both for the audience and the presenter.
Complimentary Backup (Tech support/Battery/Internet)
For all PowerPoint presenters, there are certain complementary backups that they must have in store for their presentations.
These include the necessary gadgets and equipment for example a laptop, USB with the presentation file, projector remote, etc.
Secondly, they must be prepared with a battery backup in case the presentation takes too long or the device runs out of battery.
Finally, they must also arrange an internet connection beforehand if the presentation links out to an online source or has some embedded resource that requires an internet connection.
Large Presentations:
Sometimes the size of your PowerPoint presentation might be excessively large which makes it impossible to mail them where the size limit is 25 MB.
As PowerPoint is capable of embedding data from numerous resources the compensation is paid by the large size of those slides.
Therefore, you have to move on towards alternatives like Google Drive and other options to send your slides to the recipient.
Rehearsal and Practice Required
Due to so many new options and features, the chances of going astray also increase especially if you go to a presentation unprepared.
While using a certain feature for the first time, unexpected errors or unwanted situations may arise, and going unrehearsed can add fuel to the fire in this scenario.
This is why rehearsal and practice are so important. They can literally make or break your presentation.
Conclusion:
So, there we have our 10 disadvantages of using PowerPoint. The purpose of this article is by no means an attempt to make you stop using PowerPoint which is undoubtedly the best presentation software, but in fact, our purpose is to highlight some of the drawbacks on the part of the presenter and a few updates that need to be made in the software. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing them very soon in the future.
