What is Presentation Software?

Professionals and students all give presentations at one time or another. A presentation is an informative talk, such as a lecture or speech, that usually includes visuals. These visuals are often slides that are projected onto a screen while the speaker talks. For example, a sales representative for a clothes hanger company visits dry cleaners and gives a presentation on why their hangers are the best. The sales representative uses slides to outline and emphasize the most important points of the presentation. Some slides contain graphics and charts which convey information that would otherwise be difficult to describe in words.

In the past, the visuals for a presentation were overhead transparencies, paper flip charts, or slides in a slide projector. Producing these visuals was often complicated and costly. Now, professional looking visuals can be produced quickly on a computer using a presentation application such as Microsoft PowerPoint, the presentation application in the Microsoft Office package. A PowerPoint presentation is a collection of slides stored in a slide file with each slide as an individual screen of the presentation. The presentation can be viewed on a screen by connecting the computer to a special projector or viewed on a large monitor.