Microsoft PowerPoint 2013 provides several useful tools for reviewing and collaborating on presentations before finalizing them. These tools allow presenters to share presentations with others to get feedback, track changes from multiple reviewers, compare different versions of presentations, and more.
Sharing Presentations for Review
Before finalizing a PowerPoint presentation, it is often helpful to share it with others for review and feedback. There are a few easy ways to share a presentation in PowerPoint 2013:
- Save the presentation to a shared location. You can save the presentation file to a location accessible by your reviewers like OneDrive, SharePoint, a shared network drive, etc. Then provide the link to the file.
- Email the presentation. Simply attach the PowerPoint file to an email and send it to your reviewers.
- Share a link. PowerPoint 2013 allows you to get a link to a presentation saved on OneDrive or SharePoint and share that. Right click on the file and select Copy Link to get the direct URL.
Once you’ve shared the presentation, ask your reviewers to add their comments and feedback directly within the PowerPoint file.
Reviewing Comments and Changes
When you get the presentation back from reviewers, PowerPoint 2013 makes it easy to see and manage all the feedback:
- Open the Review tab – The Review tab provides access to all of PowerPoint’s review and collaboration features.
- View comments – Comments from reviewers will appear in the Revisions pane on the right. Click on each revision to see details about the changes.
- Accept/reject changes – Check the box next to a change to accept it or leave it unchecked to reject the change. You can also accept or reject all changes at once.
- Navigate changes – Use the Next and Previous buttons to jump between changes.
Some types of changes like inserted slides will also show up directly on the Slides pane for easy review.
Comparing Presentations
The Compare feature in PowerPoint 2013 lets you see the differences between two versions of a presentation. This makes it easy to integrate changes from multiple reviewers. Here is the process:
- Open the original version of the presentation
- On the Review tab, click Compare
- Select the revised version to compare against
- Review the changes and check the box next to each change to accept or reject it
- When finished, click End Review to exit the comparison
Using the powerful review capabilities in PowerPoint 2013 makes it much easier to collaborate with others to improve your presentations before finalizing them.
Finalizing and Protecting Presentations
Before sharing your final presentation more broadly, take a minute to finalize it by doing the following:
- Check for personal information – Use the Document Inspector to remove any hidden personal data accidentally stored in the file properties.
- Protect the file – Mark the file as final and/or restrict editing and copying to prevent changes.
- Create a PDF version – Convert your presentation to a PDF file to preserve the formatting for sharing.
Best Practices for Reviewing Presentations
Here are some additional tips for smoothly reviewing and collaborating on PowerPoint presentations:
- Maintain version control – Save each draft with a new file name so you can easily reference or roll back changes.
- Use co-authoring – Take advantage of real-time collaboration features to work on presentations simultaneously with others.
- Set deadlines – Provide clear review deadlines so you can keep the project moving forward in a timely manner.
- Limit reviewers – Keep the number of reviewers small (2-3 ideal) so feedback doesn’t become unmanageable.
- Provide context – Give reviewers background on your presentation goals and target audience.
The review process might seem tedious, but it’s critical for creating a polished, error-free presentation. By leveraging PowerPoint 2013’s collaboration tools, you can simplify the process of gathering feedback from multiple reviewers to improve your slide deck.