Leaving on a Jet Plane

Often you will create a masterpiece of a PowerPoint and then you need to get it from where you are to where the computer is that will be projecting your presentation. This creates all sorts of problems with e-mail limits, attachments being forgotten, fonts not embedding, video clips being left behind. Sheesh, it's crazy.

It's important to keep the final destination of your presentation in mind before you begin and as you are creating it. If you know from the beginning that you will be transporting the file from your computer, try to avoid things that will make this difficult. Don't use fancy fonts that you downloaded. Stick to the classic fonts that will be on every system (or turn the text into a picture if it's just one or two instances). Avoid video clips since they cannot be embeded in a PowerPoint. You probably don't need the clip anyway.

If you do have a video clip that is essential to your presentation you need to include the video file along with the presentation file. A good way to make sure that no one gets left behind is to make a presentation folder on your computer and then copy the entire folder to your flash drive and then again over to the destination computer. As long as the relationship of the video file and the presentation doesn't change (i.e. they stay in the same folder with the same name) then the link between the video and the presentation will remain intact. However, if you have the files separate, all sorts of stuff can go wrong and you don't want to find out that your video doesn't work in the middle of your presentation.

Wired.com has put together a good little wiki on different ways you can get the ones-and-zeros from your computer to the destination. Warning it may involve the magic of the information superhighway and/or smoke and mirrors.