What Is Presentation Software?

Date First Published: 24th November 2023

Topic: Computer Systems

Subtopic: Computer Software

Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Easy

Difficulty Level: 3/10

CONTENTS

Features Of Presentation Software

Learn about what presentation software is in this article.

Presentation software is a type of productivity software to create and edit slideshows in order to present information to an audience. It is often used for board meetings, bulletins, annual reviews, project reports, and classroom lessons and is ideal for communicating messages to a group of people.

Presentation software is one of the core components of office suites, along with spreadsheet software, database software, and word processing software. Examples of presentation software are Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Slides, and OpenOffice Impress. Unlike other types of productivity software, presentation software is used more for presenting information in a graphical or visual format rather than a text format.

Features Of Presentation Software

Common features of presentation software are:

Prebuilt templates, used to give a starting point for creating visually appealing slides.
Slide master - Used to control the appearance of the presentation and keep all the slides in a consistent style.
Text editor for inputting, formatting, and manipulating text. Like word processing software, presentation software usually includes the ability to adjust fonts, and page layouts, and highlight words of importance, colour the text and background, and choose text styles.
A library of images, clip art, photos, icons, and animations for quickly accessing and inserting visual information into slides.
Transitions between slides to make moving between slides more interesting for the audience.
Animations and special effects when displaying elements to keep the audience interested.
Integration with external video sites, like YouTube or Vimeo.
Slidelayout controls, allowing the structure of the slides to be changed. This can include changing the page size or margins and adding columns, headers, or footers.
Collaboration tools - Presentation software can allow multiple users to work on the same presentation with changes updated in real time.
Speaker notes - Enables additional information to be displayed below slides that appear on the presenter's screen, but not the audience's. It is often used to remind the presenter what to say. It should not repeat the information on the slides.
Add-ons or plugins to enhance the presentation software.