how many slides per hour presentation

• PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
• EDIT Edit this Article
• EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
• Browse Articles
• Learn Something New
• Quizzes Hot
• This Or That Game New
• Train Your Brain
• Explore More
• Support wikiHow
• About wikiHow
• Log in / Sign up
• Computers and Electronics
• Presentation Software
• PowerPoint Presentations

How to Choose the Right Number of Slides for a Powerpoint Presentation

Last Updated: July 12, 2023 References

Choosing the Right Number of Slides Based on Design Choices

Using time to determine the right number of slides, moving beyond formulaic answers to finding the right number of slides.

This article was co-authored by wikiHow Staff . Our trained team of editors and researchers validate articles for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow's Content Management Team carefully monitors the work from our editorial staff to ensure that each article is backed by trusted research and meets our high quality standards. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 220,351 times. Learn more...

• Keep the presentation about you, not the slideshow. [2] X Research source The slides are there to support what you have to say. They should be just one part of your presentation, not the whole thing.

• Go through your entire presentation and ask yourself if you really need a given slide. If the answer is no, or if you find you can deliver the info verbally instead, eliminate it.

• If your presentation ended well before the time limit you’ve been given, try to extend the amount of time you spend on each slide, or add extra slides to expand on the info introduced in the presentation.
• Solicit advice from family and friends during your practice presentation. If they feel there are too many or too few slides, or if they feel certain sections of the presentation felt rushed or slow, adjust your presentation to correct these deficiencies.

• One well-known formulation for PowerPoint presentations is the 10/20/30 rule. This rule dictates that you should use about ten slides for a twenty minute presentation, and each slide should utilize thirty point font. In other words, each slide should be about two minutes in length. [8] X Research source Perhaps the 10/20/30 rule works for you. If it does not, don’t feel as if you’re using the wrong number of slides.
• Others argue that an average slide should be onscreen for no more than two minutes, and can be onscreen for as little as 15 seconds. [9] X Research source

• If, on the other hand, you’re in a more intimate environment and can control the lighting, you might be inclined to utilize a greater number of slides. As always, however, don’t feel obligated to use many slides just because you can.

Community Q&A

• If your slide has embedded video, or you aren’t using one slide for each point of your presentation, you can spend longer on each slide. [11] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Treat each slide on its own merits. If one slide needs to be onscreen for two minutes, so be it. If it needs to be onscreen for ten seconds, that’s fine too. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you have a slide with no pictures but several bullet points, each of which you intend to talk about for fifteen to twenty seconds, you might spend well over a minute on that slide. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• When you take all of these factors (detail, technicality, audience size and awareness, etc.) into consideration, you can see that the only short answer to "how many slides should I use" is: "it depends." Thanks Helpful 3 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://www.virtualsalt.com/powerpoint.htm
• ↑ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2006-06-01/how-to-powerpoint-like-a-pro
• ↑ http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/7-design-tips-for-effective-beautiful-powerpoint-presentations
• ↑ http://www.mrmediatraining.com/2011/03/10/the-five-most-common-powerpoint-mistakes/
• ↑ http://www.free-power-point-templates.com/articles/how-many-slides-for-a-30-minute-presentation/
• ↑ https://owl.english.purdue.edu/media/ppt/20071016041310_686.ppt

About This Article

1. Break complex slides into several simple slides. 2. Include audio and video support only as needed. 3. Time your presentation. 4. Match the number of slides to the subject matter. 5. Tailor to your audience. Did this summary help you? Yes No

• Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

Jun 29, 2017

Is this article up to date?

M. Fernandez

Dec 19, 2017

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

Keep up with the latest tech with wikiHow's free Tech Help Newsletter

Email Newsletter

Newsletter signup, recent posts from zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance series.

• The importance of using the right tools (Nov 26, 2023)
• Bleeding my brakes (ZAMM series) (Nov 26, 2023)
• Main takeaway: How to incorporate intuitive thinking (ZAMM series) (Dec 1, 2023)
• Why I decided to reread Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM series) (Nov 26, 2023)

Recent posts from my AI tech comm series

• Use cases for AI: Synthesize insights from granular data (Aug 27, 2023)
• Use cases for AI: Arrange content into information type patterns (Jul 6, 2023)
• Use cases for AI: Develop build and publishing scripts (Jul 19, 2023)
• AI and APIs: What works, what doesn't (Sep 28, 2023)
• Use cases for AI: Summarize long content (Sep 6, 2023)
• Use cases for AI: Understand the meaning of code (Jul 25, 2023)
• Use cases for AI: Seek advice on grammar and style (Aug 4, 2023)
• Use cases for AI: Create glossary definitions (Sep 4, 2023)
• Use cases for AI: Distill needed updates from bug threads (Aug 6, 2023)
• Use cases for AI: Compare API responses to identify discrepancies (Aug 28, 2023)

Recent blog posts

• Upcoming conference: AI the API docs (Apr 3, 2024)
• Prompt engineering series: Gathering source input (Mar 20, 2024)
• Prompt engineering series: Error checking the output (Mar 20, 2024)
• Integrating AI with your content delivery platform and documentation: Zoomin Q&A with Keren Brown (Mar 18, 2024)
• Showcasing your API technical writer portfolio and projects — guest post by Peter Gustafson (Mar 12, 2024)
• Prompt engineering series: Reverse engineering the recipe for excellent documentation (Mar 4, 2024)
• Prompt engineering series: Populating documentation templates using AI (Mar 4, 2024)
• Prompt engineering: Task decomposition and complex tree diagrams (Feb 20, 2024)
• Prompt engineering: Creating high-fidelity, thematically organized notes from engineering meetings using AI (Feb 20, 2024)
• Visualizing APIs with tree diagrams, partly generated with AI (Feb 13, 2024)

Popular series

• Reflections on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
• Journey away from smartphones
• Trends to follow or forget
• Simplifying complexity
• Value arguments for docs and tech comm
• See all series

Search results

The ideal number of slides for an hour-long presentation, and other thoughts on preparing slides, comparing two recent presentations, the right number of slides, font size and bulleted lists, avoiding laundry lists, argument overview slide, a good essay makes for a good presentation.

These past two weeks, I gave two presentations — a keynote at an internal writers conference at SAP, and a keynote at an internal writers conference at Amazon. (Sorry that I can’t post the recordings.) Both presentations filled an hour time slot. Because I’ve been in presentation mode this past month, especially preparing slides, I’d like to share some thoughts I have about how to create slides for presentations.

Hands-down, the best advice for creating slides is Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 rule of PowerPoint , which says you should have just 10 slides , your presentation should last no more than 20 minutes , and your font should be no less than 30 points .

I have aspired to follow Kawasaki’s slide rule for a number of years, but one fear always gets in the way: if I have just 10 slides, what if I run out of things to say after 20 minutes? I mean, usually I have to fill an hour presentation slot, right? In order to guard against running out of time, I have a tendency to add more and more slides, helping me remember points I want to make and ensuring I don’t end early.

With my first keynote presentation, I unfortunately had 50 slides (and got through about 40 of them during the presentation). (Granted, many were “sub-slides,” but they were still slides.) For my second presentation, I had only 14 slides (and got through them all). I felt the second presentation went better than the first.

Here’s the problem with having too many slides: the slides lock you into a fixed, rigid presentation order. The more slides you have, the more locked in you are to a fixed set of topics in a predefined order — which may or may not be the right order you want while presenting. With 50+ slides, you won’t have the freedom and flexibility to flow in a more natural way. The more slides you have, the more fixed the order becomes. Instead of a crutch, these slides become a cast that restricts your movement.

The absolute best presentation I’ve ever attended was by David Crystal at UA Europe , and he had no slides at all. He simply had a stool where he occasionally sat, and he spoke for about an hour and a half. It was the most mesmerizing presentation I’ve ever attended, and much of it focused on grammar (and stories about the origins of language). Crystal is the author of some 100+ books on language , and after the presentation, it was clear to me that he was a complete language genius.

I once gave a 20-minute presentation with no slides at all (at a WordPress conference), and I felt a bit naked. It wasn’t a great presentation, but it didn’t tank either. At some point, I’d like to develop the ability to present with just a few slides. I think such a presentation would resemble that of a stand-up comedian or other performer (like the Moth). I don’t have stage performer skills, so I doubt the slide-less presentation will ever be something I pull off. Still, I think as a general rule, the fewer slides one has, the more knowledge and experience the presenter has. Lots of slides is a red flag that the presenter isn’t an expert.

Until I can go slide-less, I have compromised at what I feel is the ideal number of slides for an hour-long presentation: about 15 slides (including the title and conclusion slides). Kawasaki says to limit the number of slides to 10 because no one can retain any more than 10 ideas in an hour, and though I don’t know what data supports this, I generally agree. I bumped my estimate up from 10 to 15 because Kawasaki’s ideal time of 20 minutes seems too short for the hour-long time slot.

Limiting the number of slides to 15 provides the perfect balance between flexibility and structure. You can pursue your ideas in a more freeform, natural way without being locked into a fixed, rigid order that might not fit the idea journey of your presentation.

You might object and say that if you practice your presentation enough, the slides can exactly match the idea journey you want to tell. Hence, you wouldn’t be locked into a structure you don’t want — instead, the slides would help you follow that desired structure.

Well, maybe. But I’ve given about 90 presentations, and it never seems to work out that way for me. Consider the analogy of a conversation. You want to have talking points that allow you to move about in a more freeform way, not necessarily a rigid order in which each topic must be spoken. If you imagine yourself having a conversation with the audience (rather than presenting a presentation), the talking points idea has more merit.

Another Kawasaki principle is to limit the font to no less than 30 points. This is also key. When I see slides with extensive bulleted lists, I cringe. While these bulleted lists might prompt the presenter with details to say, what ends up happening is the presenter more or less reads the slides and presents the presentation rather than telling a story.

Whenever you present a slide with text, the first thing the audience does is tune you out and start reading the text. As an audience member, it’s impossible not to — the screen is huge and directly in front of you.

If you reveal the bulleted list point by point, it has the same effect as flashing multiple, separate slides on the screen: It locks the presenter into a fixed order that potentially interrupts the natural flow of the story.

Ideally, I think good slides should be idea diagrams or visual sketch notes that demonstrate your ideas. Some presenters just put photos from Flickr on their slides to generally depict an idea, but I like more purposeful concept diagrams that might have multiple ideas going on. For example, like this:

Or like this:

Granted, some font on these slides is less than 30 points, but you don’t see extensive bulleted lists here.

For my second presentation slides , I tried to include about 3 stories per slide depicting concept diagrams like this. My thought was that I could glance at the pictures, and each picture would trigger 3 points to cover for the topic. I could cover the 3 stories/points in whatever order I wanted, so I wasn’t locked into a fixed outline. It more or less worked.

I also had slide notes in the presenter view that I could fall back on, but these presenter notes are challenging to read while speaking, and I think most presenters end up ignoring them. Pictures that trigger thought without interfering with one’s language-speaking functions work much better (for me anyway).

I use The Noun Project and Illustrator to create my concept diagrams, as it allows me to more easily manipulate different objects into the slides I want. The images aren’t spectacular, and they’re mostly black and white, but they aren’t embarrassing either, and I have fun making them. I end up exporting these artboards into my presentation. Each artboard is basically a slide in my presentation.

I use RevealJS for my presentations (and have been for the past several years). RevealJS is an HTML/CSS/JS framework that lets you code your slides with simple HTML syntax. For my second presentation, I put the SVGs as slide backgrounds , leaving ample room on the sides to allow for visibility even when the slide show is not in full screen. This worked quite well.

I also put each RevealJS slide presentation into its own GitHub repo. This makes it easy to update the slides. Kawasaki doesn’t say anything about RevealJS, PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote. It really doesn’t matter which tool you use. (I just added some tool-related details here in case you were curious.)

I’ve given many presentations that turn out to be laundry lists of points — a format I regret. This was the problem with my first keynote presentation. After highlighting a trend, I started listing a number of points that could provide solutions to the challenge. These “laundry list” topics tend to be on a lower-level than topics that provide a fuller, richer argument throughout.

Here’s an example of what I mean by a laundry list. In my first presentation, my argument overview was this:

Technology is getting simpler on the front-end for end-users But the code underneath is becoming increasingly specialized/complex Tech writers are generalists, not specialists To provide value in specialist contexts, tech writers must exploit the gaps These gaps are (1) doc tools/processes, (2) understanding user feedback/experiences, and (3) information usability

Then within the “(3) information usability” section, I covered these points:

Give users a map Make information discoverable as needed Ensure harmony across all docs Reduce and distill to its essence Confirm to genre expectations Reduce language complexity Iterative design of docs

Can you see how the presentation just devolved into a laundry list of points rather than focusing on a more focused idea journey? The laundry list comes into focus with the “(1)”, “(2)”, “(3)” points in the last bullet, followed by the 7 bullets later. When I was a composition teacher, I docked student essays for presenting similar laundry lists of ideas rather than going in depth with one point.

For my second presentation, I decided to chop out this laundry list of ideas and instead focus more singularly on my trends argument. So my argument overview was as follows:

Technology is getting more specialized/complex. This complexity drives up the value of technical knowledge, making it more prized than writing skills. To handle the complexity, technical writers must play increasingly collaborative roles with engineers to create documentation

And that’s it. No laundry list at all. I instead spent much more time developing, supporting, and exploring each of these parts of my argument.

Speaking of arguments, I also recommend putting up an “Argument Overview” slide right after your intro hook slide (which usually comes after your title slide). In other words, after you introduce the relevance of your topic, present the audience with your overall argument, so they know where you’re going and what you’re arguing for.

Many presentations will omit this argument overview. When they do, I find myself wondering what the presenter’s overall point is, if they even have one, or if they just have a collage of lots of little ideas. People can often take 10-15 minutes working their way up to some point, which they articulate in fuzzy ways.

I think a good presentation mirrors the elements of an essay:

• relevance hook
• argument/thesis

Many other essay elements might be reflected as well.

Kawasaki says to limit your presentation to 20 minutes. His main scenario isn’t presenters at a conference but rather presentations from startups to venture capitalists (VCs), and he doesn’t really give much reason here for the 20-minute length except to sarcastically say that if you have a Windows machine, it will take 40 minutes to troubleshoot the display. My guess is that VCs are executive types who have a lot of questions and don’t want to be lectured at extensively.

For too many presentations I’ve given, I’ve filled the entire time slot, without leaving any time for questions. This has been a mistake, in part due to having too many slides in the first place. For my second keynote, I spoke for only about 40 minutes and then let Q&A dominate the remaining 20 minutes. Although as an audience member I sometimes dislike listening to other audience members ask questions, I do like to ask my own questions.

Further, very few people can sit patiently listening to a lecture for an hour without engaging with more interactive dialogue. My brain isn’t wired to listen to lectures this long, and neither are many other people’s. You have to be pretty interesting to retain my attention for a full hour in an engaging way.

Probably the biggest reason, though, is that the purpose of a conference is not to present lectures — it’s to confer . You come together to confer with other people, and so you need this space to allow time to discuss your ideas.

What if no one has any questions, and you’re done 20 minutes early? Won’t that feel like you didn’t fill the time, that you short-changed what you promised?

If no one asks questions, it might mean you didn’t make a real argument in your presentation, but instead focused on something everyone already agrees on.

Coming back to the essay comparison, a good presentation focuses on an argument. And an argument must be something that people can take different sides on. If everyone already agrees on the position you’re taking, why bother making it in the first place? Are you already telling people something they already know?

I realize that many presentations at conferences are more information-based rather than argument-based, and people come to “learn” rather than to “debate,” but I’d counter that almost every topic has areas of controversy or uncertainty, and I like to see someone taking a position and defending it with evidence. This shows my bias towards the essay format, as I think good essays reflect this focus as well.

At any rate, if you’ve focused on some argument that people can disagree about, then ending 20 minutes early for Q&A should be ideal, as you will have set the stage for a lively discussion — which is one draw to these gatherings in the first place. You’re setting up the discussion and then allowing for the audience to engage in critical thinking.

Additionally, note that as a presenter, you can also be the one to ask questions. A good teacher doesn’t just lecture to students for 20 minutes and then ask them what questions they have. The teacher asks challenging questions to students and invites them to engage. Why can’t presenters at conferences do the same?

A good essay and a good presentation share many similarities. For many presentations I give, I’ll often write out the content as a blog post or essay before hand. For example, for my second keynote presentation, my Tech comm trends - take two post was the essay form of the post. The essay was about 8,000 words, which is about right for an hour-long presentation. For my first keynote, the essay was an earlier version of the same trends topic .

If the essay doesn’t have a good shape and focus (no idea journey, no story arc, no argument, no evidence, no analysis of opposing views, no interesting questions, etc.), then the presentation will probably lack life as well.

The absolute best advice for any presentation is to structure the idea journey as a story. I don’t mean to pepper in anecdotes everywhere (though that is actually great advice). I mean presentations should follow the general story arc. You have some sort of goal, and you encounter challenges to that goal. The bulk of your work is in getting through these challenges, until you finally come to some realization or conclusion. This flow aligns perfectly with the essay format.

Although I’m not a professional presenter and I lack more training and polish, in the presentations I’ve given over the years, fewer slides work better than more slides. Overall, if I can shape the essay right in the first place, it usually eliminates most of the problems with presentations. That’s why I spend about 90% of the time writing the essay first, and then in the last couple of weeks create the slides.

About Tom Johnson

I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

If you're a technical writer and want to keep on top of the latest trends in the tech comm, be sure to subscribe to email updates below. You can also learn more about me or contact me . Finally, note that the opinions I express on my blog are my own points of view, not that of my employer.

© 2024 Tom Johnson

The Throughline Blog

Practical Media Training and Public Speaking Tips

Top 5 PowerPoint Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

You’ve surely sat through at least one, probably several, awful PowerPoint presentations during your life.

Perhaps you saw a speaker fly through 100 word-filled PowerPoint slides in 20 minutes. Maybe you had to listen to a speaker reading each slide to you verbatim. Or, perhaps you had to strain to see the cluttered slides, each filled with microscopic text.

PowerPoint mistakes can be a common problem for presentations large and small. Maybe you’re even guilty of committing some PowerPoint sins yourself.

Some of these unfortunate events might be symptoms of deeper problems – failing to identify, refine, or narrow in on your key message, not having (or not giving yourself) enough time to put together a memorable slide show, or forgetting that you are not a walking Wikipedia page .

For instance, have you ever seen a slide like the one below? It certainly gave lots of information to the U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, for whom it was prepared. But, it also is an apt example of why some people think PowerPoint is awful.

But PowerPoint is just a tool, which means it’s only as good as its users.

Used well, PowerPoint can be an enormously valuable tool, one that can help you communicate more effectively. An effective slide can make all the difference. The right visuals, displayed in the right way, can make your messages stickier and your key points more memorable. They can make your audiences feel deep emotion and drive people to action.

The following tips will keep your slides moving, your design compelling, and your content illuminating. We begin our Top 5 countdown with one of the more prevalent PowerPoint mistakes — loading up your deck with too many slides.

Mistake #1 – Too Many Slides

When you use too many slides, it’s easy to cause a case of collective information overload. Unless your slide truly helps your audience to better understand your main point, it probably hasn’t earned its spot in the deck.

It’s fine to parse through questions such as how many slides per minute, how many slides for an hour presentation, or how many minutes should I spend on each slide. However, when you are dealing with a visual medium, quality – not quantity – should rule your decisions. The most important question you must ask yourself is if a slide is absolutely necessary, and if it furthers your point in a way your words alone cannot.

As to your other questions, here are some answers that will keep you from making one of the more easily avoidable PowerPoint mistakes.

How Long Should Your PowerPoint Presentation Be?

What’s the magic number? Five, 17, 52, 76? How many slides should you have per deck? People want an easy answer, but it’s not that simple. Some presentations would be better with no slides at all, while some expert speakers can click through 120 simple slides in an hour.

Why the variation? Because this is not a PowerPoint presentation, but rather your presentation. Although some presenters must follow prescribed or institutionalized formats, the length of your talk typically is dependent on several unique factors, including the subject, the format, the intent (a training, a sales pitch, a fundraising appeal, or an educational lecture). Your visuals, including PowerPoint, are merely the tools you use to convey your message to your audience. You don’t say I have a “hammer” home improvement project. You have a home improvement project for which a hammer would be helpful.

How Many PowerPoint Slides Per Minute?

When we work with our clients in our public speaking classes and custom workshops , we often address the oft-cited “One Slide Per Minute” rule when it comes to their PowerPoint slides. A rule, of course, can be helpful in offering specific guidance and an easy guideline to follow when putting together your presentation. But, this not always a helpful rule.

Here’s why: The rule says nothing about how much information should appear on the slide. Presenters who pack 120 slides worth of information onto 60 slides for an hourlong presentation certainly follow the rule, but likely produce a cluttered mess. And, in all likelihood, no one wants to look at 60 packed slides in an hour. Your presentation is also about making a connection with your audience. That connection is established and re-established every time your audience turns their attention from your slides back to you.

A slower pace can help foster that connection, as well as allow your audience to better digest and process the information you are sharing.

How Many Slides for an Hour Presentation?

So, if you don’t go for 60 slides in 60 minutes, what is the proper “rule?”

It comes down to this question: “Do I absolutely need this slide?”

In other words, if delivering the information verbally would be as compelling, you don’t need it. Conversely, if the image is so visually arresting that it helps to make your message all the more memorable, then it’s earned its place.

Here’s an example: One client wanted to make a crucial point to his employees about increasing the cost of electronic storage for his firm. “This is how much data we’re storing today,” he said, as a giant black circle filled the screen. “Three years ago,” he continued, “this is how much we were storing.” As he delivered that line, he clicked again and an almost imperceptible white circle appeared in one corner, atop the giant black circle. The audience gasped.

He could have shared a clever analogy instead, but the audience’s reaction indicated that little would have been more effective than his two-part slide.

The proper number of slides per minute can best be answered like this: It should be the right amount to help you achieve your goals. That could be four or dozens.

How many minutes per slide?

The answer: As long as is necessary to make your point and as brief as possible to avoid losing your audience’s attention along the way. Say you head an international relief organization, and you want to convey the magnitude of a recent disaster and the individual cases of need. You might quickly click through dozens of images of devastated areas to show the massive degree of need and then settle for several minutes on a single image of just one family that is struggling to survive. Your slides help to personalize what might seem to be an overwhelming task.

Maybe, you want your audience to focus on a big-picture view, rather than dwell on minutia. So, you only show a half-dozen slides, with one or two words, writ large, that reflect your most important themes.

Mistake #2 – Too Little White Space

As presenters, we want to focus our audience’s attention on exactly the point we want them to focus on. But when speakers fill almost every centimeter of their slides with words, bullets, and graphics, they give the audience no sense of priority. Cluttered slides make it impossible for the audience to know where to look first.

Don’t fill every inch of the frame. White space — or “empty” space — is a critical component of guiding viewers to your most important point.

As Garr Reynolds writes in the excellent Presentation Zen Design , “White space is not nothing. It’s a powerful something.” Nancy Duarte echoes his point in her wonderful book slide:ology: “Whitespace is as much an element of a slide as titles, bullets, and diagrams.”

This slide, from one of our public speaking workshops , is a good example of a slide with plenty of white space.

Mistake #3 – Too Many Words

What is the goal of PowerPoint? The main goal — as with all communication — is to transfer information, knowledge, or inspiration from you to your audience.

Words on a screen can do those things, but not nearly as well as an inspired presenter who uses simple graphics and visuals to reinforce the most important points.

As an example, here’s an ordinary slide about the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO):

That slide isn’t terrible, but it’s not likely to reach the audience on an emotional level. The point of the slide is this: If you’re not visible when your audience is searching for you, it’s as if you don’t exist. Here’s a more conceptual slide that strips out everything that isn’t absolutely essential to the key point:

A great image teamed with a simple message is remembered far longer than a list of a half-dozen bullet points.

Mistake #4 – Slides Double as a Handout

Many presenters print their PowerPoint presentations and distribute them to the audience as a takeaway document. Because the presenters know their slides won’t make sense without explanation, they add a lot of text to make sure their slides can be understood months or years after their presentation.

The problem with that approach is that speakers end up developing what Nancy Duarte calls a “slideument” — a slide that is half written document and half presentation visual. Slideuments fail in both roles; they lack the detail required by a written document but are too cluttered to serve as an effective visual.

Slides are not meant for double duty. The best solution is to separate the two. For your presentation, design clear, concise, and captivating visuals that grab the audience’s attention and demand your explanation during the presentation. Separately, create a detailed document that people can take away from the presentation once you’ve finished speaking. There are exceptions, but handouts that are dense with material rarely make for gripping visuals.

For instance, say you are a nutritionist who is talking to an audience looking for tips to lose weight. The following slide would certainly be helpful as a take-home guide, but probably a bit much to take in during the presentation itself.

Mistake #5 – The Slides Are For The Speaker

Among the top PowerPoint mistakes, this is one that many presenters have been guilty of at one point or another. Many of our trainees confess to using slides as their personal speaking notes. “Without the slides,” they protest, “how am I supposed to know what to say next?”

If you see your slides as sticky notes for your presentation, your audience likely will, too. Slides are intended to help the audience remember your information — not to help you remember your own information.

Instead of using your slides as your speaking notes, print out your notes on paper or notecards. Place your notes on a small table set slightly to one side. When you forget what to say next, simply look down (while not speaking and remaining calm), look back up, establish eye contact, and resume speaking.

Returning to the nutritionist, instead of slides full of bullets, and low-cal menus, he might want to focus on key messages, such as the importance of shaving off 500 calories each day and making better food choices. The fewer words, the better, as these examples show:

In the following slide, he focuses on just one example of how to make the most out of your daily caloric intake. It is far more likely this slide will help the audience better understand the point he is trying to make about better food choices than the text heavy meal plan slide.

Get Help With Your PowerPoint Presentation

We’ve provided tips on how to counter the top five PowerPoint mistakes that are often encountered. Before we leave you, here’s one last element to consider: Your material is the star of the show. When you concentrate on creating clear, clean, and concise design – teamed with your words providing context – you help an audience focus on what it is you want them to see and understand.

Here are two final tips:

1. Know your color wheel. Carefully consider the colors you choose, as some combinations can be hard to read, whether you are colorblind or not. Some pairings can be hard on the eyes, such as red letters on a blue background or green on red. You can find professionally curated color schemes in the PowerPoint “themes” feature, as well as online resources – some free – that can guide your complementary color choices.

2. Keep it simple. Just because PowerPoint comes with special design effects doesn’t mean you have to use them. Transition and animation elements can quickly overwhelm the content. You don’t want your audience distracted by the method of how they are receiving the information. Make sure transitions and animations are tied to the narrative, such as a left-to-right movement to portray the passage of time.

When your PowerPoint strategy is focused on providing your audience with the most visually compelling images at a pace that most effectively conveys your key points, PowerPoint lives up to its name. When you learn how to avoid common PowerPoint mistakes, you wield a powerful tool that makes your messages sticker and your presentation far more memorable.

• powerpoint tips
• presentation training

Share this article

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on LinkedIn
• Share on Email

STAY UP TO DATE WITH THE THROUGHLINE NEWSLETTER

Join the thousands of professionals who receive our email newsletter. Improve your public speaking and media interviewing skills—and enhance your career— by signing up.

Public Speaking Skills Training

Since 2004, we have helped speakers prepare for the world’s biggest stages, including TED, the World Economic Forum, and a presidential announcement speech. We’re committed to your long-term growth, and we’ll be with you every step of the way.

Comments (13)

Thank you for the post – I think your are absolutly right about your points. Often when I attent meeting in my network then people are often just use a PowerPoint slideshow with a lot of text and no images. That is so boring to watch 🙂

I hate, despise, loathe PowerPoint slideshows with a passion! Entertain me with your wit, your stories painted with glorious vocabulary, your humor…but please, don’t show anymore PowerPoint slides! Let me use my own imagination.

I’ve worked for years as a speech writer in politics and at a university. Some PP conclusions: 1. Usually PP means speaker will turn off the lights…a portion of the audience will likely nod off, or at least want to. Seen it happen. 2. A few charts for the data driven are very helpful and PP is a good way to offer them, along with some duplicates as handouts as the audience is exiting. 3. PP is NOT a safety net for the speaker but most who use it hang off it with such dependence that it sucks the life out of the remarks. 4. Although he’s an academic and a bit overwhelming, Edward Tufte is an expert at the corrupting effect of PowerPoint. You can glimpse his point of view on his web site: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp 5. Imagine if Barack Obama or Marco Rubio used PP and weep.

Jill, Great feedback! Thank you for leaving the comment on the blog — I hadn’t thought to include your point about PPT meaning the lights are turned down, but you’re exactly right. To good speeches and great (e.g. short and minimalistic) PowerPoints. Brad

Most people don’t know they can press ‘.’ (dot) in Powerpoint to produce a black screen, and ‘,’ (comma) to get a white screen. Then press any key to get on with your presentation (exactly where it was). I _always_ use one of these (whichever color better fits my template and the surroundings) to turn off the image when I want people to look at me. I think leaving the last slide there, after it has been read by the audience, when you want to explain further, isn’t enough. It is still distracting. The more emphasis and emotion you put on a point, the more people will tend to avert your eye contact, out of shyness – and a projected image right next to you is an irresistible temptation… it’s better not to give them any. Another neat way to use this feature is save it only for your main point. Give people 20 minutes of slides, and then, when the moment comes, bam! black screen, slow down your voice, look someone in the eye and say “look, there’s one thing I really want you to think about today…” – tremendous effect! Pedro

When there is a PowerPoint presentation in the offing, part of me wants to be caught up in the visual underlining of what the speaker is saying. What happens each and every time is visual text only, handouts and the eventual recycling bin with no staying power to any of the information. I’m starting a new business and will be presenting, but without PowerPoint. I hope to engage everyone with splashes of color in props and handouts along with energy/information, leaving my target audience satisfied and interested in my services.

Pedro — “B” and “W” do the same thing (mnemonically easier to remember, at least for me). If you’ve had a really terrible experience with the audience — and who hasn’t, at least once? — you can just wail on these keys like you’re playing the world’s fastest rendition of “Heart and Soul”, probably causing more than one seizure in the process.

I’m sorry, I do so many presentations with different content that I’m guilty of using PP Slides as notes for myself and the audience afterwards. What I have started to do with the content I’ve taken over, though, is replacing slides with pictures, or glossing over slide content (it’s for future use after I’ve long gone) and go to a picture to make the point that the previous wordy slide detailed. Far from perfect, but moving in the right direction. And thanks for the ‘B’ ‘.’ and ‘W’ ‘,’ hints; I must look for more!

Great solid advice and I agree. I have found that audiences will comment on evaluation when no PPT is used with a negative comment “no visuals”. I feel that to off set that, provide them with a 1 page “take away” document written by you or someone else that compliments what was shared verbally. I personally feel better and more comfortable with a presentation if I simply talking. I may have a note with bullets of the flow/points I want to be sure and cover as a prop for me. Just did this recently to an audience of about 50 and at the end of my presentation, we had great dialogue. So refreshing.

Treating presentations as a one-way ‘lecture’ is often the problem. Presenters who interact with their audience are always more engaging. This could be just soliciting questions from audience members or something more interactive such as using a PowerPoint polling tool like http://www.participoll.com

After many years working with PowerPoint and witnessing presentations I could see, bad, average and good presentations. Unfortunately the bad and average presentations are the predominant but this can be coached and the tips you shared in this post are good reminders for any presenter who is trying to deliver a clear message to the audience. I’d also recommend to: create a consistent look and feel, limit each slide to express a single idea, adapt the number of slides beforehand to the duration of your presentation, keep your slides clean and uncluttered. On the other side, here are some “don’t” rules I follow: eliminate any element that do not sum to the presentation, try to avoid animations, avoid using too many words and replace them by visual aids, avoid little text on the slides.

Thank you for a very educative post. I have learned a few tips that I have been struggling with in my slide preparations.

Excellent article and tips! There is a definitely a delicate balance when it comes to slides and presentation. I also encourage presenters to remember that they are human and it is okay for them to have notes and not feel like they have to give the image of remembering every word! Heather Pincelli

More from the throughline blog

In Presentation Training How to Hide a Lavalier Mic Wire

In Presentation Training Are Your Stories Making You Appear Inauthentic?

In Presentation Training Why You Should Have Three Speech Opens

This website or its third party tools use cookies, which are necessary to its functioning and required to achieve the purposes illustrated in the privacy policy . If you want to know more or withdraw your consent to all or some of the cookies, please refer to the privacy policy. By closing this banner or continuing to browse otherwise, you agree to the use of cookies.

• Public Speaking Classes
• Corporate Presentation Training
• Online Public Speaking Course
• Northeast Region
• Midwest Region
• Southeast Region
• Central Region
• Western Region
• Presentation Skills
• 101 Public Speaking Tips
• Fear of Public Speaking

How Many PowerPoint Slides Should You Use in a Presentation?

Instead, you want to figure out what you want to say first . Then, after you have designed a great presentation, go back and figure out what visual aids you will need to better make your key points. The main rule of thumb is to provide only the number of slides that you absolutely need and absolutely no more than that.

So in this session, I’m going to cover a few examples for the right number of slides needed in short presentations, the long presentation, the best way to give corporate presentations.

The Max Number of Slides for a 15-Minute Presentation (or Less.)

Instead, especially for short talks, the first thing you want to do is make a list of the most important items that need to be covered in your presentation. Then, rank these items based on their list of importance. As you go down the list, you should notice that the level of importance for each item drops exponentially as you go down the list. So, instead of covering all of the items, just cover the three (or five) most important items in your presentation.

On your first slide, give an overview of all of the points. Just list them out for the audience so they can see what you will be covering. Then, create a separate slide for each of the three (or five) main points. Finally, on your last slide, just copy the content from your first slide and your introduction now becomes a nice conclusion as well.

By the way, for most business presentations, if you can deliver the important things in a 10-minute speech, you will be loved. If you require a 30-minute presentation time, the audience will like you about three times less.

For more details about how to design presentations or to use our helpful online presentation generator click here.

What If You Have an Hour-Long Talk? How Many Slides Do You Need?

Start with an introduction slide with an overview of all five bullet points. On your internal slides, just cover the single main idea for each bullet. You will have five internal slides. Then, end with your summary slide with the main concepts one more time. This repetition of the main concepts will increase the audience’s retention of the material. For the more seasoned presenter, you can use just three main bullet points but add an extra relevant story to each point. The more that you use this technique the easier you will find it to fit your content into the correct presentation length.

For instance, if you find yourself rushing at the end without enough time to finish, you can give fewer details in your stories. If you finish early, you can add more details into your examples and stories.

For a 60-minute presentation, use five bullet points and seven slides . This time insert a couple of different stories as evidence of each bullet point. I like to use the “bad example/good example” technique. On each of the internal slides, give your audience an example of yourself or someone else who did the opposite of the point. Then, follow up with a good example.

The “Bad Example/Good Example” Technique.

If I were to use the technique to prove the point that you need seven slides for an hour presentation, I could use the following…

Bad Example : A few years ago, I went to a three-day seminar where the presenter taught about how to market to universities. On the first morning, his team gave each of us a three-ring binder with hundreds of pages. I was actually pretty excited as I scanned the binder. It was full of a ton of great information. During the first hour, the speaker gave us over 50 great tips and techniques. In the next hour, he covered another 50. He did this over and over for two and a half days. Because I am a public speaking

However, a better example is…

Good Example : A few weeks ago, a long-time client asked me to design a custom workshop for his team. He had a team who were working on a project that had been discontinued. So, he wanted to help the team members have an easier time getting rehired elsewhere in the company. We created a short class for them on how to do well in a job interview. I started by making a list of the most important items they would likely want to know. Art the top of the list was how to reduce nervousness. I spent the first few minutes covering details on how to do this. Second, I gave them a simple process to help them answer questions with credibility. Finally, I gave them a list of questions they would likely be asked. I could have covered hundreds of other tips. However, these were the things that would give them the most bang-for-their-buck.

How Many Slides for a Longer Presentation

Basically, if you design a 120-minute PowerPoint presentation, start by creating two 60-minute presentations. Then, just insert a short break in between each session. When I created the two-day Fearless Presentations ® class, I didn’t start with two days of content. On the contrary, I started with an outline of the “most important” items just like what I suggested you do in your 15-minute presentation.

Here is the list that I started with:

• How to Reduce Public Speaking Fear.
• Designing Short Impromptu Speeches.
• How to Create a Presentation that Is Easier to Deliver.
• Adding Energy and Enthusiasm to Boring Topics.
• Ways to Add Impact and Interactivity to a Presentation.

If I wanted to, I could deliver the entire content of this speech in an hour-long keynote. I’d just need to insert a few examples for each point. That is pretty easy. However, if I want to turn the list into a 2-day seminar, that is pretty easy as well. I’d start with the first point, “How to Reduce Public Speaking Fear.” This becomes the topic of a new one-hour presentation. I use the same technique. “What is the most important thing I can teach the audience about reducing nervousness? What is the second most important thing? And the third thing?”

Basically, the entire two-day class is just a collection of five shorter presentations. In my entire slide deck, I use about 30 different slides in two full days.

The Guy Kawasaki 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

Guy Kawasaki created an interesting PowerPoint rule for entrepreneurs coming to him for venture capital. He calls it his 10/20/30 PowerPoint Rule . This general rule is what he requires presenters to use when they come to him for help. Basically, he noticed that presenters spend too much time blathering about unimportant things. So, he gave them a guide and set time limits for each presenter.

• 10 PowerPoint Slides
• 20-Minute Presentation
• 30 Point Font

Obviously, he created these criteria for a certain type of presentation. However, his logic is sound. In fact, the only thing I might argue with him about is the 10 slides rule. Kawasaki says, “Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting.”

Let me reiterate that. A normal human being cannot comprehend. He doesn’t say retain. The average person can comprehend more information than he or she can retain. For instance, if I read an entire book on accounting, I might comprehend all of the content. However, because the book covers so many concepts, I’m likely to retain only a few. Knowing this, reduce your number of slides and you will increase retention of your important points.

Podcasts , presentation skills

View More Posts By Category: Free Public Speaking Tips | leadership tips | Online Courses | Past Fearless Presentations ® Classes | Podcasts | presentation skills | Uncategorized

How Many Slides to Use in a Presentation? 5 Tips

There’s nothing worse than a presentation that goes over time or poorly-designed slides that cram too much information onto the screen at once.

While there are a lot of things that can dictate how many slides to use in a presentation, key factors include how long you have to speak, what content you are presenting, and the visual nature of the content. (Some speakers don’t need slides at all to keep audiences engaged!)

Here, we’re breaking down common presentation times with a guide for how not to overload slides, and use them well—no matter what type of talk you are giving.

2 Million+ PowerPoint Templates, Themes, Graphics + More

Download thousands of PowerPoint templates, and many other design elements, with a monthly Envato Elements membership. It starts at $16 per month, and gives you unlimited access to a growing library of over 2,000,000 presentation templates, fonts, photos, graphics, and more.

Modern PPT Templates

New & innovative.

Mystify Presentation

Maximus Template

Pitch PowerPoint

Ciri Template

Explore PowerPoint Templates

How Many Slides for a 5 Minute Presentation?

When it comes to short presentations, you probably want to keep the number of slides to a minimum. Think about the venue here in particular. How many people are you presenting for?

Often short presentations might be for a small group or on a small screen. That’s a major consideration when it comes to how many slides you need for a 5-minute presentation.

For most speakers that comes down to 5 to 10 slides, up to 2 per minute of speaking time .

• Design for screen size. If you’ll be presenting on a desktop or laptop screen, ensure that text is large enough to read for people standing or sitting a few feet away.
• Practice your timing. Five minutes might seem like a long time until you start talking.
• Put one point on each slide. (That’s probably all you’ll have time for.)
• Include a call to action at the end for the audience. This might include anything from an email address to answer a question or provide feedback to taking a survey or visiting a website.
• Don’t include a questions slide unless you will actually have time to take questions at the end of a short presentation.

How Many Slides for a 10 Minute Presentation?

With a 10-minute you have a little more flexibility in terms of slide count.

With more time, you can vary pacing and might have time to take questions at the end of the talk. (Your slide count will be less if you cut time from your presentation to answer questions.)

For a 10-minute presentation, you’ll probably end up creating 10 to 20 slides, but don’t feel like you have to move through two slides per minute. It really depends on the complexity of the information you are talking about.

Record your presentation as you run through it. Did you finish on time? And were you able to see each slide long enough to understand it during the natural flow of the presentation before moving on to the next one?

• Include plenty of white space for an organized, easy to read design.
• Use a mix of images and text to keep the visual flow moving.
• Use legible fonts that are consistent from slide to slide.
• If a slide looks cluttered, break the content into multiple slides.
• Don’t go crazy with bullets. The goal of each slide is to present an idea, not serve as notes for you.

How Many Slides for a 15 Minute Presentation?

There’s a fairly logical relationship between the time you have to present information and how complicated the content is. The number of slides you need for a 15-minute presentation might not be that much different than at 10 minutes.

That’s because what’s on each slide might need to sit with the audience a little longer. You need to leave a chart on the screen long enough for the audience to understand it. A photo, on the other hand, can flash up and go away quickly and still be understood.

Carefully consider your presentation topic and then use this recommendation as needed: Allow for 20-30 slides for a 15-minute presentation .

• Pick a theme for each slide: Image or text? Don’t expect the audience to “read” both on every slide.
• Use image based slides to connect a short text point (or no text at all) to an idea the audience can see.
• Use text-based slides without images for more complex information or to show bullet points, charts or numbers.
• You don’t have to have a new photo and image for each slide. Use the same image and change the text if you need to. Or don’t use an image at all. Nice typography is pretty awesome.
• Include more detailed information in the notes area for you as you are giving the presentation or to the audience to download and print later.

How Many Slides for a 30 Minute Presentation?

Once you get into the territory of longer presentations, you might want to use slides of varying types – some that are super quick and others that stay visible longer – to get different points across and fit the conversational flow.

This varying approach can be interesting for the audience but might require a little math and planning on your part to determine the exact right number of slides.

Start with this formula for a 30-minute presentation :

• 4 minutes: Amount of time for opening and closing (1 slide each)
• 2 minutes: Time for each point in your presentation (1 slide per point)
• 1 minute: Time for each sub-point in your presentation (1 slide per sub-point)
• 3 minutes: Deep dive for one or two key takeways (1-2 slides)
• Flash slide (quick on and off the screen): For transitions between large topic areas or polling the audience to keep them engaged

Now you can look at your content and do a few quick calculations to get a rough idea of how many slides you might need. For a 30-minute presentation with 5 points with two subpoints each and a takeaway, that’s in the neighborhood of 20 slides.

How Many Slides for a 45 Minute Presentation?

For longer presentations, pace and energy are key. Some presenters can go through an exceptional number of slides because of the way they speak.

Seasoned speakers, often giving a presentation that they’ve done a lot of times, can average 5 slides per minute. These are fast-paced quick hit images that really keep the audience thinking and engaged. It’s a fun style but can be difficult to pull off.

A more moderate estimate is 1 to 2 slides per minute at a varying pace. That’s what you commonly see in corporate presentations and talks. (The content is often complex as well.)

• Consider location with longer presentations. Will the slides be projected on a large screen? Design for that environment.
• Include mixed media clips if appropriate in longer presentations. Varying formats can keep the audience interested.
• Use a design theme for a consistent look and feel for the entire presentation.
• Don’t let slides sit on the screen for too long. Mix it up with a new photo even if the content theme hasn’t changed much. Once you set an expectation for the audience with visuals, you don’t want them to check out.
• Make the most of the top half of the slides. If you are in a big room, sometimes the lower portion is obscured for some audience members. Even if you need to use more slides to keep content toward the top, do it.

How Many Slides Does Your Presentation Need, Anyway: A No-Nonsense Guide

Hrideep barot.

• Presentation

It doesn’t matter whether it’s your first time giving a presentation or fortieth, a quintessential question that always pops up in a presenter’s mind is: how many slides should my presentation include? 

Well, this straightforward question doesn’t have a straightforward answer.

What I mean by saying this is that there is no magical number of slides that will guarantee you pocketing an outstanding presentation. Your decision on how many slides your presentation has shouldn’t be based on some rigid rule plucked from an instruction manual or the internet. 

Rather, decide the number of slides in your presentation based on your individualized requirements, as well as that of the presentation that you plan on delivering. 

However, this doesn’t mean that your presentation should drag on for hours, backed by an abysmal corpus of slides that fly past before the viewer has had the chance to fully comprehend the previous slide.  

While it’s important to be flexible in organizing your presentation, it is equally important to ensure that this flexibility doesn’t transmute into redundancy. 

Or vice versa: You don’t want to be tarrying over the same five slides throughout an hour-long presentation.  The dearth of visual cues will not only make the reader bored but might also make it difficult for the viewer to follow what you’re saying. 

So how to ensure that you hit the sweet spot every time? 

That’s what this article is all about! 

Here is a quick overview of how many slides your presentation should include:

SO, HOW MANY SLIDES SHOULD I USE ANYWAY?

To answer your question, I’ve listed out some guidelines below. However, remember that these are only guidelines.

 As I mentioned before, there is no fixed rule of thumb for the number of slides that are exactly right for any and every single presentation that you’re going to deliver over the course of your life.

Keep that in mind as you go through the rest of the article.

1 . So, what are you trying to say, anyway?

Is your purpose to show the audience X number of slides in X minutes? No!

Your purpose is to convince them. To persuade them. To make them listen and understand your message—whatever it may be.

So, the first and the most important point to determine how many slides your presentation should contain is to decide what message you’re trying to get across. If there is a particular topic that you have to speak on, stick to it.

If not, then ask yourself the following questions:

What is the purpose of my presentation or what is the main underlying message that I am trying to get across?

Who am I trying to get it across to & what is the best way to get it across to my target audience?

Once you’ve determined what you’re trying to say, move on to how you’re going to say it. Ask yourself:

Is there a time limit that I must stick to?

Is there a range or limit of slides that I have been asked to follow?

Is there a particular theme that I have been asked to follow?

What is the setting where the presentation is to be delivered?

The questions listed above contain few of the most important factors to consider before deciding upon the number of slides in your presentation.

Once you’ve determined what your main message is and if there are any guidelines that you must follow/have been asked to follow while delivering it, move on to the second guiding principle:

2 . Quality Over Quantity

As with most other things in life, when it comes to the number of slides in your presentation, quality trumps quantity.

The quality of the information included in your slide is a more appropriate determinant of its utility to your presentation than a random goal number of slides that you’re trying to hit.

Don’t just add a new slide for the sake of increasing your total number of slides or because you’re trying to meet a random number that you saw on the internet or heard an ‘expert’ on YouTube declare is the perfect number of slides to include in a presentation .

Rather, decide whether you want to include a particular slide in your presentation or not based on what value it adds to the latter.  

A rich corpus of information may impress your viewer, but might actually do nothing to expand their understanding of your presentation.

On the contrary, it might leave them confused about the actual message you’re attempting to get across, or straight up bore them and make them lose interest in the rest of your presentation.

An effective presentation should include only the key points or augment what you’re saying with the help of audio-visual stimuli.

You don’t need to list out every single thing that you’re saying in the presentation. You want the audience’s eyes to be on you and not on the screen behind you. Remember that the audience is there to see you present, and not to read what you’re trying to present.

3 . Space It Out

Imagine stepping into an over-crowded bus after a long day of hard work. The sweaty bodies brushing against you, the longing side-glances that you throw at seats that were unoccupied just yesterday but are swarming today, the arm that jostles you every time the bus slows down or lurches forward.

Now imagine stepping into the same bus the following day, only this time it is occupied by only five people instead of fifty, leaving you with an extensive array of empty seats to pick for day-dreaming upon on your way back home.

How do you imagine yourself feeling in both of the scenarios?

Most likely, the way you imagine yourself feeling in the first situation is drastically different than how you imagine yourself feeling in the second scenario.  

The first scenario probably made you feel befuddled, irritated, and overwhelmed. If you were on the bus in the second scenario, however, you would feel relaxed, comfortable, and maybe even pleasantly surprised.

Similarly, if your viewer is greeted with a presentation with a scanty number of overcrowded slides, most likely by the second or the third slide, they will find themselves annoyed, overwhelmed and unreceptive, or downright resistant to the message you’re delivering.

On the other hand, a spaced-out, attractive presentation will not only engage your reader’s attention but also make it easier for them to comprehend and retain your message.

So, make sure to space out your presentation and have appropriate ‘breathing room’ in individual slides, even if it means you have to add more of them.

For example, if there are eight comprehensive points under one topic of your presentation, instead of cramming all of them into a single slide, use one slide for one point.

Not only will this make your presentation look more physically attractive, but it will also allow you to add more visual stimuli like videos and pictures for a single point, thus helping to give a boost to your audience’s overall understanding of the material.

4 . Time Matters

Before the big day, make sure to practice delivering your presentation a couple of times. Again, there is no set rule for how many times you should practice.

Simply do it as many times as it takes for you to grow comfortable with what you’re saying and remember your topic well enough that you don’t have to keep re-checking the slides over your shoulder over and over again.

As you practice, keep a lookout for how much time it’s taking for you to reach the end of the presentation.

Are you finishing it well before your time limit? Doesn’t matter whether it’s been provided to you by someone else or is simply a target that you’ve set for yourself.

If that’s the case, then increase the number of slides in the presentation. Alternatively, if you feel like adding more slides is redundant, you could also increase the amount of time you spend explaining each slide.

Is your presentation transgressing your time limit?

In that case, you might want to go the opposite way and either decrease the number of slides in your presentation or the amount of time you spend on each slide.

If you find that you’re still struggling with timing your presentation, check out our article on 11 Steps To Help You Keep Time During Your Presentation for some killer tips on timing your presentation!

What is the speed at which you speak? Are you someone who speaks slowly, using eloquent words and slotting in substantial pauses between sentences for added impact? Or do you tend to breeze through your words, keeping your sentences brusque and the tempo of your speech swift?

What is the capacity of your target audience? Are they experts on the topic or novices—this is an important determinant of how much time you’re going to need to spend on each topic/slide.

If your audience is a complete newbie to the topic, you might be required to spend more time describing terms and topics that might have been otherwise familiar to a person who is already well-versed with what you’re saying. This will come into play for you to determine how many slides to include.  

You could also ask a mentor or a family member to provide feedback on your presentation. Ask them if they feel you’ve spent too long lingering over a particular slide or if you’ve breezed through a topic so quickly that they’re left confused.

Try incorporating their feedback in your presentation. However, remember that at the end of the day, you know your topic best and you’re the one who’s going to be delivering it. Don’t take their feedback as gospel, but as guiding principles.

5 . So, who are you presenting it to, anyway?

Everybody expert has a different idea about how many slides is the “correct” number of slides to have in a presentation. Some people believe that five slides are enough for a twenty-minute presentation, others believe that twenty slides are the best bet for a presentation of the same length.

However, as I’ve mentioned before, there is no set formula for the perfect presentation length. 

An array of different factors, and not a single rule, should be kept in mind while determining the length of an individual presentation.

One of the most important factors, besides the audience and the subject matter, is the venue of your presentation. Are you going to deliver your presentation in a workplace or for a school project?

Are you going to be delivering it to a large audience on a big screen or is the setting more intimate, with just a couple of important people as viewers?  

If you’re going to deliver a presentation to a big audience, it’s better to minimize the importance of the presentation and focus more on the speech part of your delivery. If the setting is more intimate (eg: if you’re delivering it to your colleagues), you could get away with utilizing a larger number of slides. 

6 . The Battle Of Slides: Low Count vs. Medium Count vs. High Count

All three types of slide use have their own advantages and disadvantages. 

Low Slide Count :

If you’re using a low number of slides (ranging from 1-10 slides, depending on the total duration of the presentation), then the focus of the audience will naturally be directed towards yourself.

This will increase the relative importance of not only what you’re saying, but also how you’re saying it, as the audience will be able to focus more on your gestures, your body language, and your expressions, all of which are important modes of communication. 

However, if you’re someone who’s not very comfortable with public speaking, this might turn out to be a disadvantage instead of an advantage, as too many eyes might make you feel self-conscious. If you like this type of approach but are afraid of having too many people looking at you , check out our article on Public Speaking For Introverts: The Why, What & Who (An A-Z Guide) , for some tips and tricks to deliver an awesome presentation!

Medium Slide Count:

If there is a lot of important information that you must include in the presentation, don’t cram it all in a few slides just to cut the length of your presentation. 

Instead, you could go with a more moderate amount of slides. Here, you’re looking at a range of about 1-2 slides per minute, which leaves you with about 30-60 slides for an hour-long presentation.

This is the average length of most types of presentations. This number of slides will allow you to spread out your topics and not force you to cram a lot of information in a handful of slides. 

On the other hand, if you’ve not practiced enough, you might end up losing track of time and spend too long on a particular slide, thus disrupting your time limit. Also, if you add slides just for the sake of increasing your slide count, your audience might pick up on this and you may end up losing their attention, which is crucial to delivering a successful presentation.

High Slide Count:

Many people also prefer using a high number of slides, firing through upwards of 5 slides per minute. This rapid-fire style keeps the audience riveted and engaged, as they have to keep be attentive and stay on the lookout for every new slide.

However, if you’re not well-versed or don’t have enough experience with delivering these types of presentations, your efforts might backfire and make your presentation seem too cluttered and your ideas too far-flung for them to make sense to your audience.

7 . Design Matters Too

The design of your presentation is another important determinant of how many slides it’s going to contain. If, for instance, your presentation involves a lot of visual imagery (for instance, if you’re presenting a new design of a product), the number of slides is going to be more.

This is because, in order to draw attention to the pictures, you might end up employing one slide for a single picture, thereby increasing your slide count, even if the actual points or written material is not as exhaustive.

On the other hand, if your slide involves a lot of textual material (for instance, if you’re giving a business presentation), then the number of slides that you use might be less, as a multitude of related points might be fixed on a single slide instead of being spread across multiple slides.

In this scenario, you might end up spending more time on a single slide instead of quickly firing through many of them as it contains more points to be explained and expanded upon.

Similarly, if your presentation contains an equal amount of pictures and explanations (for instance, if you’re doing a school presentation), then your slide count might fall somewhere between the two examples mentioned above.

GETTING A LITTLE MORE SPECIFIC…

I’ve listed below a general range that you can follow while laying down the skeleton of your presentation. Again—and I cannot stress this enough—remember that these are only guidelines.

• Five Minutes Presentation: In the exceptional scenario that you’ve been asked to deliver a presentation lasting under five minutes, you can get away with using fewer slides, somewhere between 5—10. After all, you simply won’t have the time to breeze through 20—30 slides (unless, of course, your presentation involves displaying a lot of pictures, in which case it’s generally wise to use one picture per slide).
• Ten Minutes Presentation: For a presentation that’s to be wrapped up in under ten minutes or less, you can stick to the general guidelines listed above. Anything between 5—20 slides is a good number to aim for.
• Fifteen Minutes Presentation: For a moderate-length presentation lasting somewhere around fifteen minutes, you might want to consider using more slides. A general range is something between 15—30 slides, although you can play around with the number depending on how much time you’re going to be spending on each individual slide and other factors listed in the article.
• Twenty/Thirty Minutes Presentation: Guy Kawasaki advocates a 10/20/30 rule i.e your presentation should have 10 slides, last 20 minutes, and not contain any font smaller than 30pts. However, you don’t necessarily have to follow such a rigid structure. As the length of your presentation increases, it becomes less and less important to ponder over how many slides it exactly has. You can aim for whatever number feels natural to you.
• Forty-Five/Sixty Minutes Presentation: As the length of your presentation increases, chances are that your audience’s attention span will begin to waver or reduce. While you can follow the above-listed guidelines for a sixty-minute presentation as well, for a speech of this duration, it’s important to give prominence to other factors as well. Keep your slides attractive and engaging. Try to include more pictures in each slide. Another important factor is to continue interacting with your audience or involve them in your presentation—this will keep them attentive and less susceptible to boredom.

The above-listed guidelines will help you lay down the structure of your presentation, however, the actual delivery of it is up to you. Choose whatever method suits best your goal and feel the most natural to you. Remember that it is your presentation. You get to decide how to present it.

Enroll in our transformative 1:1 Coaching Program

Schedule a call with our expert communication coach to know if this program would be the right fit for you

How to Negotiate: The Art of Getting What You Want

10 Hand Gestures That Will Make You More Confident and Efficient

Interrupted while Speaking: 8 Ways to Prevent and Manage Interruptions

• [email protected]
• +91 98203 57888

Get our latest tips and tricks in your inbox always

Copyright © 2023 Frantically Speaking All rights reserved

Kindly drop your contact details so that we can arrange call back

Select Country Afghanistan Albania Algeria AmericanSamoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Colombia Comoros Congo Cook Islands Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Honduras Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Rwanda Samoa San Marino Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Tajikistan Thailand Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Wallis and Futuna Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe land Islands Antarctica Bolivia, Plurinational State of Brunei Darussalam Cocos (Keeling) Islands Congo, The Democratic Republic of the Cote d'Ivoire Falkland Islands (Malvinas) Guernsey Holy See (Vatican City State) Hong Kong Iran, Islamic Republic of Isle of Man Jersey Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Lao People's Democratic Republic Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Macao Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Micronesia, Federated States of Moldova, Republic of Mozambique Palestinian Territory, Occupied Pitcairn Réunion Russia Saint Barthélemy Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan Da Cunha Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Martin Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Sao Tome and Principe Somalia Svalbard and Jan Mayen Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan, Province of China Tanzania, United Republic of Timor-Leste Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, U.S.

25 rules for a highly effective PowerPoint presentation

• Uncategorized

This is an extract from a book called  ‘Don’t say I never told you’.

Create a story  

Deliver the experience

Refine and rehearse

Comments are closed.

Recent Posts

• Choosing the right competing job offer
• Reporting progress to your manager – and why it should be done fortnightly
• The basics of reporting – getting to “YES”​
• How to write a report that people read and leads to a “Yes” #2 of 20
• How to write a report that people read and leads to a “Yes” #1 of 20

Recent Comments

• October 2021
• January 2020
• January 2019
• December 2018
• February 2018
• January 2018
• September 2017
• January 2017
• November 2015
• October 2014
• September 2014
• August 2014
• February 2014
• November 2013
• September 2013
• August 2013
• January 2013
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• February 2012
• January 2012
• December 2011
• November 2011
• October 2011
• September 2011
• August 2011
• September 2010
• September 2009
• February 2009
• October 2007
• Finance Team Issues
• KPIs and CSFs
• Management and Leadership
• Official Blog
• Planning and Forecasting
• Testimonial
• Time Management
• Entries RSS
• Comments RSS
• WordPress.org

Ace the Presentation

How to Effectively Manage Time During a Presentation? Short and Long Ones!

Slides are one of the best ways to engage an audience and nail a presentation. Nowadays, people use the most efficient and practical skills to make the slides clear, easy to understand. However, most people struggle to plan and manage time in their presentations.

How Many Slides are Suitable for Finishing a Presentation on Time?

The general rule says 1 to 2 slides per minute. However, it is critical to note that the presentation’s number of slides will vary according to the topic complexity, audience, available time, presentation structure and format, and goal. Good planning, rehearsal, and delivery skills are essential!

To be more specific, if you have too many slides in a presentation at the range of 3 to 15 minutes, you will end up confusing your audience or spending a significant part of your time explaining the slides. It does not mean you have to prepare a lot of information and squeeze it into few slides, and the best practice is to summarize your content to understand it easily.

From 25 minutes to 60 minutes, you can make a considerable number of slides. Some experts recommend 1 to 2 slides per minute, but as I said before, it will depend on the topic. Imagine that one of your slides contains graphs about some work you have been doing that can take more than 2 minutes, and it is important to explain it in detail to the audience.

It all starts with planning, researching, organizing all the collected data, prioritizing your key points, and making a structure. After this exercise, it will be easier to know how many slides you will have according to your given time.

To sum this up, there is no exact rule to set a number of slides for a given time frame, and it will vary according to the topic, your research, and your presentation skills. All you have to do is to balance the slides with your speech and time.

How many Slides for a 3-minute Presentation?

For a 3-minute presentation, the presenter should use four slides. Depending on how the slides are structured, 15 seconds to 2 minutes can be spent on each slide.

What really matters is not the amount of the slides but the quality. You can make three powerful slides and nail your presentation or make 5 with too much content and ending up having a boring presentation.

A good practice for a 3 minutes presentation is to keep it clean and straightforward. Keep in mind that slides are more engaging with visuals rather than texts. And on your speech, be as brief as possible, make a 15 to 20 seconds introduction, and do the same on the conclusion.

How many Slides for a 5-minute Presentation?

Five minutes is enough time to deliver your message and engage your audience with content that is straight to the point. The only thing you need to do is keep in mind that every second of your time counts a lot for your presentation.

How many Slides for a 10-minute Presentation? 

The Rule of Thumb for a 10-minute presentation is having 10-12 slides. Presenters with good skills use up to 30 seconds per slide to keep it nice and engaging. This time frame is suitable for elaborately introducing the subject or topic, diving deep into it, and highlighting the key points.

According to your topic, you can even make eight slides considering the fact that slides are only the guide of your presentation. That is why it is essential to make an excellent structure to organize your content on the slides properly; this will help you to put aside unnecessary data and focus only on what is essential for the audience.

How many Slides for a 20-minute Presentation?

According to  Guy Kawasaki , a 20-minute presentation should have ten slides where each slide utilizes a 30 point font. Using this rule of 10/20/30, the speaker would spend up to 1 minute per slide, which gives time for even allowing 1 or 2 questions from the audience.

To structure a 20 minutes presentation using the rule of 10/20/30 from  Guy Kawasaki , you have to use the first slide to introduce your subject, case study, or others, and from the second slide, start diving deep until you get to the conclusion.

In some cases, each slide has a different theme, and you will need to approach them differently. Having different themes per slide will require you to summarize each slide’s content in under a minute.

Although the Rule of Guy Kawasaki is suitable for a 20-minute presentation, you can set your own number of slides according to your subject and how much time you spend on a single slide as long as you deliver the message properly and engage your audience.

How many Slides for a 25-minute Presentation?

For a 25-minute presentation, the general rule is to use 20 to 30 slides. By spending up to two minutes per slide and focusing on the main subject, the speaker can keep the audience engaged for this period of time. 

Kawasaki believes that a human being can comprehend at least ten concepts in a meeting. In other words, you have to include in your topic or subject up to ten themes to be discussed. Any More than that can make your audience get confused or bored.

In this given time frame, you now have the opportunity to interact more with the audience, start with a quote, let them raise some clarification questions, and get more involved with them. 

How many Slides for a 30-minute Presentation?

Experts recommend 30 to 40 slides to make a memorable presentation. With 30 minutes, the presenter has more options compared to when the given time frame is short. Consider making the content as straightforward as possible. Also, make two paragraphs per slide at the most.

This technique will allow the audience to read all the information on the slide easily and quickly and move to the next one alongside you. If you add too much content on one slide, the audience will likely read something that you are not explaining yet or the opposite.

But you can make more than 40 slides and still have a memorable presentation in just 30 minutes, and I will explain to you how. Well, if you want your audience to understand clearly each content of your slide, make it one paragraph or one sentence, and use more visuals.

Using this method, you will spend 1-2 seconds per slide, and the audience will understand way better seeing the visual (which counts more than text). The explanation is gradual from the beginning to the end.

How many Slides for a 45-minute presentation?

As a general rule, for a 45-minute presentation, between 20 and 50 slides would grant a memorable presentation. Spending 1-2 minutes per slide, the speaker will have time to make a great introduction, interact more with the audience and have a questions and answers session.

A 45-minutes presentation is in the range of long times ones, and in these cases, you have to use the slides very carefully, making them proportional to your presentation time. Consider having a wristwatch to control your time.

A good practice is to use the slides only to guide your speech during the presentation, but you will need to master them. Rehearse the most important of each slide to make sure you spend the right time, or even less. This time management will give you an advantage because you will have enough time to make a great conclusion.

How many Slides for an hour Presentation?

Experts recommend 30 to 60 slides for a 60-minutes presentation. This period of time gives the speaker two main options: summarize the content in 30 slides or make a structure that allows one theme per slide. These two options also give more time to interact with the audience make a great introduction and conclusion.

Both of them are OK. But there are aspects that you have to consider; if you are preparing few slides, you will need to train how to summarize content to make sure you don’t spend too much time explaining all the points or having your audience stuck on reading your slide. 

And if you are planning to make one theme per slide to facilitate the understanding to the audience, make sure you spend 30 seconds at the most. But also consider having black screen slides to make pauses or small breaks and entertain or reengage your audience.

How many Slides for a 90-minute Presentation?

A 90-minutes presentation should have not more than 60 slides. In this situation, the speaker will need to know how to keep time on presentations. Experts recommend up to 2 minutes per slide, but depending on how the presentation is flowing, spending more than 2 minutes per slide is possible.

If you fail to make these pauses to double-check if the audience is on the same page with you, you will be running a risk of going back from almost the end of the slides to the first ones to explain something that the audience did not get very well.

How many Slides for a two-hour presentation?

A two-hour presentation would need 60-80 slides to deliver the message memorably. Some experts recommend one theme per slide to make it clear and easily understandable. Keep in mind that a presentation this long requires careful planning and a very well-organized structure.

Generally, a presentation with more than one hour of duration is for professional speakers who can deal with time management. The best way to not have your audience boring is to use the method of one idea per slide; it will make them easily understand each part of your content.

How many Slides for 2+ hours presentations?

Presentations with more than two hours should have not more than 80 slides. Long presentations with over 2 hours, the speaker can organize the information in order to spend 2-3 minutes per slide. 

120+ minutes is considered an extended time frame; a good practice is to keep the slides brief and clean to ensure your audience won’t get exhausted.

What are the skills needed to Deliver Long Presentations or Speeches?

For long presentations, several skills are required to ensure successful delivery, such as:  

• Time management;
• Engaging the audience
• Solid posture
• Good eye contact
• Controlling your voice, and more. 

All these skills will keep your audience engaged and entertained, and make sure you reserve 15-20 minutes for questions and answers after a long presentation or speech.

How to keep time in your presentation?

First of all, to have complete control of your time on stage, you have to write the schedule of time you will spend on each part of your presentation, something like setting time for your opening, how long time you will spend on the introduction, how long time you reserve for questions and answers, etc.

Make sure you start your presentation on time. If you fail this step, then everything that comes ahead may also delay and end the presentation after the scheduled time. You also need to plan how long your speech will take and have a clock to control it.

Planning is also crucial to keep time on your presentation. The main thing in the plan to deliver your message is the structure of your content. A good structure will allow you to know how much time you will spend on each point.

I have an excellent article with  a guide for outlining your speech , which should help you nail this part of the process. A  good speech outline  is key in managing presentation time.

And last but not least, you need to rehearse before you go on stage. It will allow you to know how much time you need for the presentation and practice to see if you need to remove or add something to your presentation to make it perfect.

Why do people usually fail to finish a presentation within the stipulated time?

Generally, people fail to finish a presentation on time because they do not make a good plan, underestimate rehearsing, and fail at an impromptu delivery attempt at the last minute. What commonly happens is that people make too many slides and fail to go from one to another on time. The rule of thumb says that 1-2 minutes per slide is enough using standards.

Another session that makes speakers fail to finish the presentation in time is the question and answers. This mistake happens when the speaker does not practice enough or predict questions that may come and end up thinking about the answer when the question is raised.

Not setting time for each session of your presentation also makes you not finish on time. This mistake will cause you to take longer at one point or another, especially if you don’t have a clock to keep track of the time.

How to keep your Presentation Brief and Clear

To keep a presentation brief and clear, organize your content to be only one theme per slide. To be more specific, consider having one paragraph or idea per slide, one that is concise, straightforward, and should also include minimalist visuals. 

The design is also essential to help you get a clean design. Choose a layout that comfortably suits your text and image. Another detail is the color, which has to be neutral to help the reader focus on the content only. 

For More Tips on Designing and Nailing a Presentation, open the recommended articles below.

Designing a Killer Presentation in 8 Steps

Planning and performing a presentation that meets expectations and involves the public requires a lot of care. The details involved in holding a talk will be super important to ensure her success and approval from those who participated. Therefore, we have prepared a post with a few crucial steps that you should follow to organize…

What Makes a Great Presenter? 9 Key Qualities to Look for!

Want to Stand Out? 15 Key Tips for an Awesome Presentation

In conclusion, the number of slides a presentation should have for a given time depends on who is presenting and the topic or subject. And also, it varies according to the methods that you use to deliver your message. As long as it reaches the audience properly and on time, the number of slides should be the least of your concerns. 

But you can follow the standards that some experts recommend for a presentation from 3 minutes to 120+ minutes. For example, Guy Kawasaki recommends the rule of 10/20/30 for a 20 minutes presentation. This rule of thumb allows you to have ten slides to be presented in 20 minutes, and the font should be 30 points. 

This example shows that you can follow the standards and still have a successful presentation. the main thing you have to do, is a good planning, a good structure, and make your content brief and clear, that will help them understand and enjoy your presentation 

References and Further Reading

How to Create a Killer 5-Minute Presentation (hubspot.com)

How Many Slides For A Whatever-Minute Presentation? (slidecow.com)

https://www.soappresentations.com/how-many-slides-should-be-used-for-a-60-minute-presentation/

The ideal number of slides for an hour-long presentation, and other thoughts on preparing slides | I’d Rather Be Writing Blog (idratherbewriting.com)

Presentation Slide Counts (duarte.com)

3 Ways to Choose the Right Number of Slides for a Powerpoint Presentation (wikihow.com)

Brevity, Clarity and Wit: 10 Commandments for a 10-Minute Talk | Cath Lab Digest | HMP Global (hmpgloballearningnetwork.com)

How Many Slides to Use For a 5, 10, 15+ Minute Presentation (tutsplus.com)

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint – Guy Kawasaki

How Many Slides to Use in a Presentation? 5 Tips | Design Shack

Similar Posts

How to bring up salary during the job Interview? (And when?)

If bringing up the subject of salary poses a problem for you during an interview, tell yourself that you are one of the 95% of candidates embarrassed by the question. There is a good chance that your interlocutor has already experienced what you feel… When and how to broach the subject of remuneration during a…

17 Ways to Help Your Child Develop Public Speaking Skills (Public Speaking Tips for Kids)

Speaking in public can be nerve-wracking for a lot of people, and is one area many people shy away from a lot. But if this important skill can be learned at a very early age, kids stand to gain a lot of benefits from it that can serve them well into adulthood. Therefore, today we…

Extemporaneous Presentation: Definition and Actionable tips

There are several forms or methods of speech delivery out there and it can be impromptu (with no warning, more improvisation required), or the most common case: extemporaneous presentations. EXTEMPORANEOUS PRESENTATION DEFINITION We need to define this properly and make sure people don’t get confused here. Because from a literal sense extemporaneous and impromptu have…

3 KEY Things For Delivering a Successful Speech

Have you ever had to give a speech and have no idea how to direct their thoughts or start talking? In this article, we will discuss in a straightforward way how to work the oratory to develop the ability to speak well with different audiences, arousing their attention, respect, and provoking reflections. Speeches are moments…

How to Give An Effective Special Occasion Speech? 2 Main Tips

Almost every now and then we attend special occasions, some organized by our friends, associates, colleagues, family members and some by ourselves. Most times, these special occasions would require us or other colleagues to deliver the so-called ‘special occasion speech’ or sometimes, or we might need to help a friend write a speech. When we…

A 9 Step Guide to Using Humor in Speeches

During a presentation, small touches of humor, added to the main subject, can attract and captivate your audience, helping, including forming ideas of people who are participating. Compelling speakers don’t tell jokes to get laughs. Instead, they use humor to illustrate their message; in this article, we will give you some tips to help you…

Services by software

PowerPoint presentation >

Remarkable Powerpoint presentations

Keynote presentation >

Presentations in software Keynote

Google Slides presentation >

Professional Google slides presentation

ALL SERVICES

• Pitch deck design
• Google slides redesign
• Investor deck design
• Marketing Presentation
• Sales Presentation
• Keynote redesign
• PowerPoint redesign
• Prezi presentation
• Executive Presentation
• Corporate presentation
• Pitch deck redesign
• Thesis presentation
• Investor Presentation
• Presentation For Event
• Branded email designs that convert
• Corporate Overview Presentation

My availability status:

Currently accepting work

Start a project

• January 8, 2022

Slides Count for 1 Hour Presentation – Here’s How Many Slides You Need

Written by Tom Caklos

Presentation designer

It doesn’t matter if you are a student, entrepreneur, or teacher.

At some point, you will stumble upon timing issues when it comes to your presentation.

You’re maybe asking: How many slides for a 60-minute presentation?

One slide in most cases takes up to around 2 minutes of your presentation time. With that being said, on average you will need around 30 slides to make your presentation 60 minutes long. But there’s no set limit on how many yours will require, as the length of the individual slides depends on the complexity of your presentation.

Some presentations require you to be quick, and their slides contain just a few punch lines – while some extensive research presentations will require you to get your hands dirty on slides that will take up anything from 5 – 10 minutes.

Overwhelming right?

But it doesn’t have to be!

I help individuals and companies to nail their presentations with remarkable design, so in case you need a hand, feel free to reach out!

How many slides for a 2-hour presentation?

For 2 hour presentation, you will need around 60 – 90 slides, depending on the complexity and nature of your topic. However, there’s no set limit on how many yours will require, but most of the time a good rule of thumb is 60 to 90 slides.

If I can chime in one tip in this article, it would be to take a bottle of water with you.

Two hours is a very long time – and as you will present, your mouth will get dry very quickly. Do not underestimate this part of the preparation as well!

Here is a longer list that you can always reffer to:

Just keep in mind, that the actual length of your presentation will be different. It really does depend on the topic of your presentation.

If you found this information helpful, feel free to check out my other articles:

• 6 Design Tips for Creating Remarkable PowerPoint Presentations
• How much do presentation designers charge? Updated rates 2022
• 4 Main Differences Between Good and Bad Presentation

Thanks for reading my article! When I write, I always try to bring as much value as I can. If you're having any questions, or if you need any help, feel free to reach out to me!

Did you learn something new? Share it with your network!

How Long Does It Take To Make a Presentation? (Answered)

Creating Titles for Your PowerPoint Slides: Tips & Tricks

Let's get to work!

Oravicka 423 027 12 Vitanova Slovakia

[email protected] +421 903 958 162 Linked In

@Tom The Designer 2021

How Many PowerPoint Slides Does a Presentation Need?

Maybe you’ve been in this situation: A colleague is giving a presentation. While he’s talking, you’re shown a huge number of slides; the information literally flies past you. While you’re still thinking about the third slide, he’s already moved on to slide seventeen. Or vice versa: A 60-minute presentation is supported by a few short slides. It’s difficult to follow the presentation and keep track of information because there is basically no visual support.

Neither of these two presentations makes much of an impact. And the presenter doesn’t necessarily do himself any favors either. This shows that choosing the right number of slides in presentations is pretty important.

Presenting with PowerPoint: How many slides are ideal?

First of all: there’s no magic number. Nobody can tell you, “A new slide every two minutes is the secret to success.”  Every presentation is unique. Every presenter has his or her own goals and needs. And, every presentation situation is different.

So, although it’s ultimately up to you to decide on the right number of slides for your presentation, there are a few guidelines you can follow.

Seven rules for choosing the right number of slides for your presentations

Quality over quantity.

Presentation slides should never be a constant flow of data and text. Your audience should be listening to you, not reading. When everything you say is also presented on your slides, it becomes pretty redundant.

A good presentation slide should provide an overview of the key points or augment them with audio-visual material. It should support the presentation, not become it. Keep it clear and brief.

Portion out your information

We’ve become used to everything coming to us quickly and automatically. But communicating information doesn’t always work like that. Compare it to a good meal. Instead of piling it all up and eating it in one bite, savoring every bite is a much more enjoyable experience.

And that’s exactly how you should communicate information during your presentation. It’s “more appetizing” and “easier to swallow” for the listener if it’s portioned out. Just because you have enough space on a slide for several important points doesn’t mean you have to use them all. Distribute important points over several slides to emphasize their importance and focus the audience’s attention on them.

For example, if you are referring to a product range, don’t list product A, product B and product C on one slide, but create a single slide for each. These can then be enhanced with pictures or keywords. This of course increases the number of your presentation slides, but it maximizes their impact.

As much as necessary, but as little as possible

This is where efficiency really comes into play. It’s all about making sensible cuts. Slides can and should support a presentation. They can provide a guideline, provide additional visual information or simply relax the presentation a bit. As already mentioned, text should not play too much of a role on your slides.

Always question the purpose of material, such as pictures or graphics, and how useful they are for your presentation. Ger rid of anything that seems superfluous or unnecessary or that can be communicated verbally.

What is useful and what can be cut is of course up to you to decide! Although a cartoon or caricature might not be relevant to your topic, it could be a fun way to loosen things up.

Also keep in mind that the number and detail of your slides will affect hoe flexible you can be during the presentation. You are locked into your slides and their content, and the more of them you have, the less chance you have to diverge from them. This can help if you are feeling a little shaky or nervous. But keep this in mind if you’re someone who likes a bit of leeway and to talk freely.

• Practice makes perfect!

We love telling kids to practice things they don’t feel confident about. So why don’t we that ourselves? A great way to see if a presentation works is to run through it at least once in advance – kind of like a dress rehearsal.

Doing this in front of friends or family can provide you with valuable feedback. But even alone in front of a mirror or with an imaginary audience can work. You’ll quickly see where the problems lie, whether you have enough time and whether the slides fit into the presentation.

If you find that your presentation is finished faster than planned, you can add additional information and slides. If, on the other hand, you had problems completing the presentation within the allotted time and couldn’t discuss individual slides or had to skip them, it’s time to make some cuts.

Naturally, the pace at which you speak plays a big role. Those who speak quickly can cover lots of slides in a short time. If you speak slowly, you will of course achieve less. Ideally, you should speak at a pace that is comfortable for the listeners and allows them to follow the presentation. Again, this takes practice! No matter how quickly or slowly you speak, you should be able to present your slides comfortably.

Less is more

Some presenters like to keep a few slides “on ice” just in case there is time left or they feel they haven’t covered everything. This is an option but not really recommended. If the extra slides in your presentation are skipped over, the audience can easily feel that you’re cutting things short and they’re missing something that may be important.

On the other hand, there are also presenters who opt for a minimalist approach to their slides to allow for flexibility or to simplify their presentation. Even this can be irritating or distracting to the audience, as they’re not getting enough visual content.

There should be neither too many nor too few slides. Obviously, this is easier said than done. What is important and what is unimportant, what is helpful and what impedes your presentation is ultimately your decision. Trust your instincts and rely on your expertise.

There’s always an x factor!

Another reason why there is no patent solution for the perfect presentation is that there are so many variables that can affect a presentation. Factors such as topic, audience and location should always be taken into consideration when it comes to the scope and structure of slide presentations.

Things to keep in mind:

• The topic. The number of slides that are required and helpful in presentations depends greatly on the topic. For example, pictures or graphics are best suited if you want to explain technical processes, discuss building progress or new products, or present business figures and statistics. It makes little sense to cut down on relevant content just to keep the number of slides low. If your topic is a bit dry, visual material can help keep your audience interested. If your topic relies more on verbal explanations and your slides are there to provide some visual guidance, it wouldn’t make sense to add slides.
• The audience. Who your audience is plays a factor in how many slides you need. Here’s an example: You probably won’t need slides that explain and illustrate technical terms when presenting to an audience of experts in that field. But, if you’re communicating the same content to non-experts or an inexperienced audience, you will definitely need the visual material to clarify and simplify these same technical terms.

The room. The best presentation slide is not worth much if the audience can’t see it. Bad lighting an/or poor sight lines may prevent important content from being effectively communicated. This can be frustrating for both you and your audience. If you know the room isn’t well let or half your audience may not be able to see your presentation, think about investing less work in the slides and focusing more on the oral presentation. On the other hand, a room that offers excellent technical equipment can be a major asset, allowing you to add more audio-visual material, such as background music, to your presentation.

Trust your own expertise!

This point summarizes something fundamental; opinions are everywhere. Even something as seemingly innocuous as the optimal number of slides for a presentation is open for debate.  There’s a wealth of advice from experts on how many slides are right for presentations.

Don’t forget that none of these expert opinions were formed with your exact presentation style and topic in mind. And the recommendations often vary widely. While some recommend 40 slides in ten minutes, others recommend just two slides in ten minutes. In the end, you are the expert; you know how many slides you need.

This also applies to the time spent on each slide during the presentation. Not all slides are created equal – some need less time, some need more. It always depends on the structure and content of the slide. Don’t worry if you spend several minutes on one slide, but only seconds on another – that’s perfectly fine.

Expert opinions: helpful, but not mandatory

You can of course reference well-known presentation methods if you feel more confident using a given guideline. But make sure it fits and works with your presentation. Here are some well-known methods for slide presentations:

10/20/30 – The Kawasaki method:

Perhaps the best known and most commonly used method is the 10/20/30 rule by Guy Kawasaki. It specifies that ten slides be used in a 20-minute presentation. A font size of at least 30 should be used for text. This equals to about two minutes per slide – a standard rule for presentations. This method can be great for beginners or inexperienced speakers. However, it’s not an iron-clad rule and can be adapted to fit your needs.

The Pecha Kucha method:

The Pecha Kucha method is becoming more popular. The method comes from Japan and translates to “constantly talking”. Pecha Kucha is based on very rigid guidelines regarding time and the number of slides. A Pecha Kucha presentation contains 20 images. Each image is shown for exactly 20 seconds. The speaking time amounts to exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds. The clear, simple rhythm seems to be what makes this method so successful. Here too, feel free to adapt the rigorous rules for yourself.

The Lessig method:

The Lessig method is basically a speed slideshow. This interesting presentation technique uses a large number of slides with a fast transition between slides. It allows 15 seconds (or even less) per slide, which is about four slides per minute. Due to the fast changes, the audience has little chance to drift off and is drawn into the presentation. Of course, the spoken part of the presentation needs to be perfectly synchronized with the slides. This requires practice and can make the method pretty challenging for the presenter, especially beginners.

 The Takahashi method:

The Takahashi method follows a similar principle as the Lessig method. Again, the slides only appear for a few seconds at a time. The special feature: all slides contain only one or a few words in a large font. They’re meant to underscore what the presenter is saying. Like the Lessing method, the audience’s attention is key. This method provides the presenter with key points which can make presentation tools, such as index cards unnecessary. Of course, this method is not recommended for presentations that require images, graphics or other similar visual material.

As you can see, there are many different approaches and ideas. Which method is the right one for you? The answer is up to you. It’s your presentation after all. If one of these methods and its defined guidelines works well for you, use it! Otherwise, pick and choose what you like from it and adapt it to your presentation.

Other useful PowerPoint tips:

• Your preparation should never start with your slide presentation – this should be one of the final steps. Many presenters take the opposite approach and design their presentation around their slides. This creates a false focus – the slides aren’t the focus, the presentation is. Prepare your content first and then decide how to present it in a meaningful way.
• When timing your presentation, remember to leave some room for questions, discussion or other delays. 80% of your time should be given to your actual presentation. If you take longer than planned and exceed your time, you’ll notice your audience quickly becoming restless and disinterested. If you finish a bit earlier, that’s ok. Never try to stretch the presentation unnecessarily by adding something or jumping back to a point in the presentation. Allow time to focus on your audience’s questions and comments.
• Expect the unexpected and be flexible. You may find that your audience is already pretty familiar with some of your content. If this happens, keep the presentation moving and focus more on other points. You may also need more time for questions or clarifications. This is normal during a presentation. Don’t let it throw you off balance.
• Take time to check whether all the technical equipment is working and familiarize yourself with the settings and operations. This is especially true if you work with embedded video or audio.
• Don’t give the slide presentation too much importance! Research shows that 90% of the impression a presenter makes depends on the way he or she speaks, particularly their voice and body language. It might be worthwhile to spend more preparation time on your delivery than on text and slides.
• Slide presentations are now so common in meetings that speakers feel obligated to use them. They really do offer wonderful possibilities and can be an asset to both the speaker and the audience. But this is not always the case. Not every topic needs audio-visual support via a slide presentation. And not every speech benefits from it either. Unless you’ve been explicitly told to use one, don’t feel you need to use a slide presentation if you don’t think it works for your topic.

A final word of advice:  

The biggest stumbling block in presentations is usually not the slide presentation itself, but the uncertainty of the presenter. Your listeners have probably given presentations themselves and are familiar with the challenges. They’ll most likely be forgiving of a few slides too many or too few. Stay poised and be yourself. A perfect but lifeless presentation often makes less of an impact than one with personality and a few rough edges.

Share this post

• share  
• save  

Design Thinking: Problem Solving with a Difference

Why Corporate Mission Statements Are So Important

7 Tips & Learnings from the Apple Keynote

How Many PowerPoint Slides Are Too Many? Here’s What You Need To Know

Presentations can be a great way to engage your audience and share important information, but too many slides can be a recipe for disaster.

From overwhelming your audience to distracting them from the key points, it’s essential to determine the ideal number of PowerPoint slides for your presentation.

In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of keeping slides to a minimum, the challenges of too many slides, and how to decide how many slides to include.

Plus, we’ll discuss tips for minimizing slides, what happens when you have too few slides, and the best practices for creating effective PowerPoint presentations.

Ready to get started? Let’s dive in!

Table of Contents

Short Answer

It is difficult to determine the exact amount of slides that is too many when using PowerPoint since it depends on the purpose of the presentation and the amount of information that needs to be communicated.

Generally, around 6-10 slides for a 10 minute presentation is a good rule of thumb.

However, if you are giving a longer presentation, it would be better to use fewer slides with more detailed information.

Additionally, it is important to avoid overcrowding the slides with too much text, images, or animation.

The Benefits of Keeping Slides to a Minimum

When it comes to presentations, it can be tempting to cram as much information as possible onto each slide.

After all, it is important to ensure that the audience has all the necessary information to understand the topic and make informed decisions.

However, having too many slides can quickly lead to information overload.

When dealing with a large number of slides, audiences can become overwhelmed and distracted, making it difficult to keep up or understand the message.

Keeping the number of slides to a minimum allows for a more focused and engaging presentation.

With fewer slides, the presenter can focus on each slide in greater detail, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of the topic.

This can also help to keep the audience engaged, as they can more easily follow the presentations content and understand the message.

By limiting the number of slides, the presenter is also able to leave more time to cover the details of each slide.

This allows for a more comprehensive presentation, as the presenter can go into greater detail on the topic and answer questions that may arise.

Additionally, having fewer slides can help to create a more natural flow to the presentation, as the presenter can more easily transition between slides and keep the audience engaged.

Overall, the key to a successful presentation is to keep the number of slides to a minimum.

By doing so, the presenter can ensure that the audience is able to keep up and understand the message, as well as leave more time to cover the details of each slide.

This can help to create a more focused and engaging presentation, allowing the presenter to communicate their message more effectively.

Challenges of Too Many Slides

When it comes to presentations, having too many slides can be a challenge.

Not only can it cause your audience to lose focus and become overwhelmed, but it can also make it difficult for them to understand your message and key points.

Having too many slides can also be distracting, making it difficult for your audience to stay engaged.

In addition, having too many slides can lead to a lack of clarity in your presentation.

With too many slides, it can be difficult to keep track of the main points and key messages, as well as any supporting evidence you may have included.

Furthermore, having too many slides can lead to a lack of structure, making it difficult for your audience to keep up and follow your presentation.

Finally, having too many slides can lead to a lack of consistency in your presentation.

With too many slides, it can be difficult to ensure that they all fit together and create a cohesive message.

As such, it is important to keep the number of slides as low as possible in order to ensure that you are delivering a clear and consistent message.

How to Decide How Many Slides to Include

When it comes to creating a successful presentation, deciding how many slides to include is essential.

As a general rule of thumb, aim for around 10-15 slides per hour of presentation.

This ensures that your audience has enough time to digest your message and not become overwhelmed with too many slides.

When deciding how many slides to include, it is important to consider the content of the slides.

If you are presenting complex ideas or data, you may need to include additional slides to ensure that your audience is able to understand the information.

Conversely, if you have slides that contain simple ideas, you may be able to reduce the number of slides in your presentation.

Additionally, try to include visuals such as graphs, charts, or infographics to make the data easier to understand.

It is also important to keep in mind the length of your presentation.

If you have more than an hour of presentation time, you may want to consider adding extra slides to ensure that your audience is able to understand your message.

Similarly, if you have a shorter presentation, you may want to reduce the number of slides to ensure that your presentation does not feel rushed.

Lastly, consider the audience for your presentation.

If you are presenting to a group of experts, you may need to include additional slides to ensure that they are able to understand the content.

On the other hand, if you are presenting to a group of novices, you may want to reduce the number of slides to make it easier for them to understand the information.

In conclusion, deciding how many PowerPoint slides to include in a presentation is an important step in creating a successful presentation.

Aim for around 10-15 slides per hour of presentation and adjust the number of slides depending on the complexity of the content, the length of the presentation, and the audience.

By taking these factors into consideration, you can ensure that your presentation is engaging and informative.

Tips for Minimizing Slides

When it comes to minimizing the number of slides in your presentation, there are a few tips you can follow to make sure your presentation is concise and engaging.

First, make sure to only include the most important information in your slides theres no need to include every detail.

Secondly, use visuals such as graphs, charts, or diagrams to make your point; this will help you reduce the amount of text on each slide.

Third, focus on one main point per slide; this will help your audience better comprehend the material.

Finally, if possible, use animations or transitions to create a more dynamic and interesting presentation experience.

By following these tips, you can ensure that your presentation is effective and engaging without needing too many slides.

What Happens When You Have Too Few Slides

Having too few PowerPoint slides can be just as detrimental to a presentation as having too many.

If the presentation feels rushed, it can be difficult for the audience to keep up with the content and understand the message.

This can lead to confusion and distraction, as audience members will be trying to catch up with the speaker and wont be able to absorb the material properly.

Additionally, the presenter might feel the need to rush through the presentation in order to fit all the content in the allotted time.

As such, it is important to strike a balance between having too many and too few slides.

When having too few slides, it can be difficult to properly explain concepts and ideas.

Even if the presenter is well-versed in the topic, if the slides are too brief, it will be hard for the audience to understand the material.

Additionally, having too few slides can make the presentation seem unorganized.

The presenter is likely to jump from one topic to another without providing enough context and explanation, which can be confusing for the audience.

Finally, having too few slides can make the presentation seem monotonous.

The presenter might end up repeating the same points over and over again in order to fit the content into the allotted time.

This can be boring for the audience and can cause them to lose interest and focus.

In order to make sure the presentation is engaging and informative, it is important to strike a balance between having too many and too few slides.

The presenter should be able to provide enough context, explanation, and examples for the audience to understand the material without feeling rushed.

Additionally, it is important to make sure the slides are organized and not too text-heavy, as this can be overwhelming for the audience.

Ensuring Quality Content on Fewer Slides

When it comes to creating a good presentation, it is just as important to ensure the quality of the content on each slide as it is to manage the number of slides.

After all, having 10-15 slides full of irrelevant information is just as ineffective as having too many slides.

So, when creating your presentation, it’s important to make sure that the content on each slide is relevant to the overall message you are trying to convey.

This means that each slide should contain a few key points, rather than being overloaded with text or images.

Additionally, it’s important to make sure that the content on each slide is organized in a logical and easy to understand manner.

This can help ensure that your audience is able to follow your presentation and understand your message.

Best Practices for Powerpoint Presentations

When crafting an engaging and effective presentation, it’s important to strike the right balance between having too few slides and having too many.

Too many slides can be overwhelming for the audience, leaving them struggling to keep up with the information being presented.

Too few slides, on the other hand, can make the presentation feel rushed and can leave the audience feeling like they didn’t get enough information.

The best practice for creating a PowerPoint presentation is to keep the number of slides as low as possible.

Generally, it is recommended to aim for 10-15 slides per hour of presentation.

This is a good starting point, but you may need to adjust the number of slides based on the topic and content of your presentation.

When creating your slides, it’s important to focus on quality over quantity.

Each slide should contain only the most important information, and should be well designed and visually appealing.

Try to avoid cramming too much content onto a single slide; instead, break it up into multiple slides.

Also, be sure to allow plenty of time between slides for discussion and questions.

Striking the right balance between the number of slides and the amount of time spent discussing each slide is key for creating an engaging and effective presentation.

By following the best practices outlined above, you can ensure that your presentation is both interesting and informative.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, deciding how many slides to include in a PowerPoint presentation is a balancing act.

Too many slides can overwhelm your audience, while too few can leave them wanting more.

By understanding the benefits and challenges of having a certain number of slides, as well as incorporating best practices into your presentation, you can ensure that you have the right number of slides for your audience, and that your content is engaging and high quality.

James Wilson

James Wilson has extensive knowledge in the information technology industry.His second love, besides dealing with computers, is smart home technology. He is continually updating information to better comprehend this problem and has a deep understanding of the apartment’s support system.

Recent Posts

Can You Create a Poll in Microsoft Outlook Email? Here's How!

Do you want to get feedback from your contacts quickly and efficiently? If so, then creating a poll in Microsoft Outlook email is the perfect solution! Polls are a great way to quickly collect data...

How To Fix Microsoft Outlook Cannot Connect To Server? (Here's The Solution)

Have you ever experienced the frustration of not being able to connect to your Microsoft Outlook server? It can be a major inconvenience when you need access to your emails, and it can be hard to...

• Presentation creation
• PowerPoint templates
• Presentation training
• Print design
• Pitch deck example
• PPT Template example
• Investor deck example
• Product deck example
• Presentation services
• Infographic design
• Pitch decks
• Investor presentations
• Marketing presentations
• Conference presentations
• Finance presentations
• Product presentations
• CPD presentations
• Training overview
• Virtual presentation skills training
• PowerPoint template training
• Storytelling training
• Our showreel
• Charity presentation example
• Conference presentation example
• CPD presentation example
• Investor deck example – Seed stage
• Investor deck example – Series C
• Marketing presentation example
• PowerPoint template example
• Product presentation example

Blog / Presentation Design / How many slides should I have in my PowerPoint presentation?

How many slides should I have in my PowerPoint presentation?

When you’re planning out your next big presentation, it can be hard to know what the slide count sweet spot is. How many slides to put in a presentation, to keep your audience’s attention, is a much bigger question than it may seem.

We’d love to tell you there’s a simple answer, but if you really want to create a persuasive argument, there are a few variables to consider when planning the number of slides in your presentation. And despite what other articles spout, it has nothing to do with time.

We bet you’ve heard a few conflicting theories on this subject, so we thought it was about time we weighed in. You might’ve heard  Guy Kawasaki ’s 10/20/30 rule. This rule states that the “perfect” presentation has ten slides, lasts for 20 minutes, and uses a 30pt font. Or you might’ve read that every minute you speak equates to one slide on display behind you. You might even have uncovered some more formulaic and intricate theories than those, where x = the perfect number of slides. To reach x, you simply divide the number of people in the audience by how many seconds you have to speak, times that by how many steps between your house and the venue, to the power of your height in centimetres. If you’ve already worked your way through a series of varying opinions, you might currently be crying out “just tell me how many damn slides I need!”

Just tell me how many damn slides I need! You

While a lot of these theories are rooted in intelligent thinking and, sometimes, even science, we can’t get on board. They’re just too damn limiting. The people behind the theories were probably trying to over-simplify this complicated question, just to give you an answer. But do you want any answer? Or do you want the right answer?

The right answer is: you’re thinking about presentations wrong.

Do you think Jack Kerouac, Graham Greene, or Dan Brown ever sat down to write with the sole intention of landing on 432 pages? No, they had stories to tell, and it didn’t matter how many pages they took to tell them.

What makes you so different from  Kerouac ?

How many slides until there’s purpose?

You’re writing a presentation with a purpose. There’s a change you want to make, and your task is to convey your message persuasively, to inspire everyone that hears it to want the same change. Your purpose is not to fill exactly 20 minutes with exactly ten slides. It takes as many slides as it takes.

No, we’re not just going to leave you with that. We’re not trying to lose friends, clients and beloved readers.

We understand that presentations do often have a time limit, and that limit is one we have to consider when writing. But that limit needs to influence the number of ideas you try to convey, not dictate how many slides go into your presentation to convey these ideas. Because that’s what we’re really talking about here: ideas. For a shorter presentation, you’re going to need to be cut-throat with your editing. To trim the excess, until all that’s left is the most impactful, delicious centre piece. 

That doesn’t mean, if you have the freedom of time, you should use it to reel off every idea you’ve ever had. But you can allow yourself the luxury to layer linked ideas that all point towards one conclusion. To build a nest of ideas. And to support those ideas with facts, figures, previous successes, as well as other people’s ideas.

Only once you’ve written your detailed  narrative structure , or your full script, if that’s how you feel most comfortable, should you even start to think about PowerPoint slides.

Give your ideas room to breathe

Each of your ideas deserves its time to shine. A dramatic pause works to let an impactful sentence sink in, giving the audience a moment to consider the gravity of the spoken word. Uncluttered slides have the same effect. If you try to include too many ideas on one slide, none of them are going to be understood, or remembered. 

If you’re just starting out in the world of persuasive communications, a good rule to follow is:  one idea, one slide . This will allow each idea to have its moment, without competing with any of the other ideas. This will also mean, visually, you’ll have more opportunity to enhance your message. With more slide real estate to play with, you can create presentation designs that hammer your ideas home, rather than confuse the situation further.

The journey of an idea:

• introduce it
• let it sink in

and signal the introduction of the next idea with a brand-new slide.

This is a great guide, for those lacking confidence, to use as a starting point. It is not a rule.

What counts as an idea?

Now, this is a much more complicated question, and one that will change for every presentation. In our role as guides in this scenario, we want to give you a tangible answer to your query, not simply introduce more questions, and more confusion, into the mix. After all, if your presentation is tomorrow and your search was the result of extreme desperation and maybe a little too much wine, well, you’re probably not reading this anymore because you’ve already poured said wine over your laptop in frustration. But if you are still with us, you’re probably really keen to get an answer right about now.

Frustration and confusion are not our goals. We just respect you too much to lie to you. We trust that you’ve caught on to the general theme that there are many considerations that go into the slide count of any presentation that comes through the Buffalo 7 studio doors. Now that we’ve addressed that, we can give you a template to help you along your way.

If you’ve read any of our other  storytelling blogs , you already know that every story – this includes your presentation – needs a beginning, middle and end . Let’s break down a very basic structure, and accompanying slide count, for these three key sections.

This is where you set the scene, pique the audience’s interest, give them a clue as to what’s in it for them, and establish common ground. It might look something like this:

• Title slide : give your audience something exciting to look at, as they’re waiting for the presentation to begin. One slide.
• Agenda: lay out the journey they’re about to go on, and why it will be worth their while. One slide.
• Current situation : describe the landscape as it currently stands, making sure everyone is on the same page before you set off. No man left behind. One slide.

This is where we get into the real juicy bit of storytelling. And it’s also where all hope you had of squeezing a definitive slide count out of us will come tumbling down. 

A persuasive argument needs to acknowledge your audience’s challenges, and propose a solution to each one of them. Your audience might have one challenge, they might have 50, which is where the ambiguity kicks back in. Each challenge needs its own slide, and each solution does too. 

If your audience does have 50 challenges, try to find common themes between them, so you can address them as a cohesive group, all under one idea umbrella. Human beings find patterns comforting, so they’ll appreciate the bundling, as well as the reduced slide count.

Appealing to emotion, by showing you have the answer to your audience’s problems, is just one part of landing a persuasive argument. You also need to apply to logic and establish credibility. Again, this could take one slide, or it could take nine, but here is some general guidance:

• Case studies: one case study per slide.
• How it works: if the technology, service, or process you’re proposing is simple, showing your audience how it works may only take one slide. However, if it’s complicated, you’ll need to break it into component parts and tell this story across multiple slides. Remember, it’s about clarity and comprehension. It takes as many slides as it takes for the information to be processed.
• About you: audiences don’t care that much about how you were formed, or where your CEO worked before he came to be with you. Edit your company information down to what actually matters to them, and what will establish credibility in their eyes. If you’ve won awards that prove your innovations are the best in your field, show them the accolades. If the technology partner you work with is exclusive to you, let them know. The most effective ‘About us’ sections are one or two slides at the most. Avoid the company timeline, at all costs.

To close, you’re going to want to sum your key points up in one slide. Just a gentle reminder of the immense benefits they will receive by working with you.

And finally, your end slide should be, as the name suggests, one slide with a powerful call to action. To find out more about how to leave a lasting impression on every audience you encounter,  take a look at this article .

Even if you’re still pulling your hair out, desperately grasping for a simple number, hopefully these guidelines have given you some food for thought.

And now we’re going to complicate the already-fuzzy rules we’ve put in place. 

At Buffalo 7, we never look at the number of slides.

Give a shit, that’s what we say. Slide count doesn’t mean a damn thing. Sometimes we spread one message across five slides, because that’s how you get the animation to work seamlessly.  Complicated navigation  often requires duplicating slides, so that you don’t confuse PowerPoint as to where action came from. In contrast, we can present really complicated messaging on just one slide by using animation builds to break up the story, instead of a series of slides. There are so many variables. All we’re trying to say is, stop worrying yourself about slide count. 

However, some things, to do with slide count, you should worry yourself about:

Bad advice  

This is a call back to some of those other articles you likely stumbled across in your search. If you’re basing your presentation on hitting exactly one minute per slide, you’ve already lost your audience and you’re not even stood in front of them.

If you’re basing your presentation on hitting exactly one minute per slide, you’ve already lost your audience and you’re not even stood in front of them.

Are all ideas created equal? No. Does your audience care about everything you have to say in equal measure? No. Even if you’ve taken the  “so what?” test , and all your messages have passed and are providing value to them, they’re not going to appreciate you skipping over important parts of the solution because the clock is ticking. 

Take time to explain the ideas with the greatest impact, and appreciate your audience’s intelligence enough to assume they’ll understand what an award means, without you describing it for a minute, just because the rule says so.

Do you need slides at all? 

Pick your jaw up off the floor. Just because we create next-level presentations day in, day out, and we absolutely bloody love PowerPoint, doesn’t mean we’re going to lead you astray. Sometimes, you just don’t need the support that slides bring. 

Slides are not there to remind you, as presenter, what your key talking points are. If you’re one of the – terrifyingly few –  people who practice adequately  ahead of a big presentation, you won’t need your memory jogged anyway. 

Slides are not there to tell the whole story for you. The slideshow is not the presentation. The words coming out of your mouth are what the audience came to hear. You are the star of your own presentation.

Before you start closing your laptop down in celebration, let’s take a step back and talk about why you (probably) do need slides.

What are slides for, anyway?

When  designed  and  animated correctly , slides enhance your spoken message so that it’s easier to understand, easier to remember, and more persuasive. You and your slides are a team. There are some things that a visual can just do better than you can. Take, for example, a chart. You could spend half an hour painting a word picture of a chart you saw once. Or you could whack an impactful piece of data vis up on the screen and move on.

So, back to the original question you never even asked:

When might you not need slides?

If you only have five minutes to influence that desired change in the minds, hearts, and actions of your audience, an emotional and well-told story, spoken directly from your heart, without the dilution of technology or the fumbling of a slide clicker, could be the best way to get your message across. No distractions, no gimmicks, just authenticity. 

In this instance, it wouldn’t matter how many slides are in your presentation, they’re never going to be more impactful than your honesty and vulnerability.

In this short amount of time, your audience is unlikely to suffer from information overload and forget any of your messages, so you don’t need the slides for their ability to enhance memory. They’re unlikely to lose the train of your narrative, so you don’t need the slides as visual guidance. And if your story is told right, speaking to their challenges, and wrapped up in a situation that’s personal to them, you won’t need the persuasive powers of PowerPoint either.

But, nine times out of ten, a PowerPoint can only better your spoken messaging. Fact.

Nine times out of ten, a PowerPoint can only better your spoken messaging.

Extra time means extra slides 

And not just because of the extra ideas. If you’ve been asked to speak for a long time, firstly ask yourself if it’s really necessary. Can your audience concentrate for that long? Could the session be split into smaller chunks? Is it even going to be valuable for them? Do you have that many relevant ideas?

If it turns out to be necessary, there are some extra slides you’re going to want to add to your deck. Consider adding regular breaks (one slide per break), recaps (one slide per recap), even quizzes (one slide per question-answer combo) to keep your audience engaged, check understanding, and give them a chance to stretch their legs.

And, with the freedom of time, comes the opportunity to use other people’s voices to enhance your own. Consider adding relevant quotes, audio clips, or videos from recognisable people who support your message. Of course, you could animate these elements onto your slide with a click, but if you’re not that confident using PowerPoint, creating a new slide for each is an easier option.

When we’re deciding what the most impactful way to tell a client’s story is, we bring brilliant minds from each department together to throw ideas around, consider workarounds for each limitation, and push ourselves to deliver the best solution for each client. And not once do we say “But is that the right number of slides?”

LIKE WHAT YOU'VE READ? WHY NOT share

Work Can wait

Put off writing that email just a little longer. Send your incoming calls to voicemail. Put your feet up, grab a brew and explore more presentation insight in the Buffalo 7 Library

• Speech Writing
• Delivery Techniques
• PowerPoint & Visuals
• Speaker Habits
• Speaker Resources

Speech Critiques

• Book Reviews
• Browse Articles
• ALL Articles
• Learn About Us
• About Six Minutes
• Meet Our Authors
• Write for Us
• Advertise With Us

How Many Slides Should You Have? How Many Slides Do You Need?

This article is part of the 12 Days of Ask Six Minutes . This event is over now, but you can send your questions anytime. Imagine yourself in these scenarios:

• You’re delivering a 1-hour keynote address on pursuing your dreams to high school graduates.
• You’re teaching a full-day corporate course on quality assurance processes.
• You’re giving a 10-minute pitch at your local service club to partner with Habitat for Humanity.

How many slides would you prepare for each presentation?

As this is a very common question, it seems like a great starting point for our 12-day event of answering reader questions.

Alex, a Six Minutes reader, asks:

Can you provide some guidance on deciding how many slides should be in my PowerPoint presentations? I’ve read that you shouldn’t have too many slides because it distracts from the speaker. But I’ve also read that having lots of slides keeps the presentation fast-paced and prevents boredom. What’s right? How many PowerPoint slides should I have?

Sometimes, the answer is zero.

Even if you are accustomed to presenting with slides, there are many situations when you should go without any slides at all. These include formal situations such as:

• a commencement address ;
• a presidential inaugural address ;
• a wedding toast; or
• a CEO delivering news of layoffs

There are many other situations when slides would distract more than aid your presentation. For example, I find that for very short presentations (10 minutes or less), I rarely need slides. If I do, then perhaps just one or two is required.

Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you must have slides every time you stand before an audience, regardless of the situation.

Usually, the answer is “Fewer than you think.”

Most presenters use too many slides.

Slide decks overflow when the presenter uses the slides as a crutch (so they can read bullets), or when the presenter tries to put everything  on the slides.

To combat this, let’s start with two core assertions:

• PowerPoint slides, like any visual aid, are support material for your message, not the message itself.
• PowerPoint slides are for your audience, not for you.

Instead of asking how many slides you should have, the right question to ask is “How many slides do I  need to communicate my message to my audience?”

Then how many slides do I need?

For each element of your presentation (major points, minor points, anecdotes, stories, etc.), ask yourself this simple question: Can I convey this idea clearly with words alone, or would my audience benefit from visual support?

• If the answer is no, then don’t add a slide. It’s redundant.
• If the answer is yes, then perhaps you need to add a slide (or two) or incorporate a prop into your presentation.

For each idea which needs support, craft a slide which conveys it in the clearest way possible. A diagram? A chart? A photograph? A table?

How many slides will fit in my 30 minute speech slot?

“ Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you must have slides every time you stand before an audience, regardless of the situation. ”

One lesson that I’ve learned the hard way is that adding slides to a presentation adds time to the presentation as well. It takes time for an audience to absorb the information from slides, and (often) it takes time for you to set the context and explain the meaning on slides.

So, when you rehearse, it is important to rehearse the entire presentation  including the slides with a sample audience.  This will help you to determine:

• How smoothly do your slides fit your narrative?
• How effective are the individual slides?
• How long does it take for each slide to be absorbed?

Not all slides are equal.

Technical diagrams (even well-designed, simple diagrams) take longer to absorb than photo-centric slides with a single phrase.

Similarly, slides will take longer to absorb if your audience is not familiar with your content.

Create your own rule of thumb.

“ Don’t worry about your slide count. Just make your slides count. ”

If you often speak in similar situations (audience composition, subject matter, and time frames), it is reasonable that you may find yourself needing about the same number of slides each time you speak.

For example, I deliver technical presentations of an hour or more. For these situations over many years, I have determined that I need approximately one slide for every two minutes of speaking, or about 30 slides per hour. That’s my rule of thumb for those situations.

You will have a different rule of thumb, depending on your speaking style, and the situation where you find yourself speaking. Just remember not to use that number as a goal (e.g. I must create 30 slides, or else ). Instead, use that number as a sanity check (e.g. Uh oh. I have one hour to speak, but I’ve created 72 slides. I need to take out some material .)

Video: Make Your Slides Count

The creative geniuses at Duarte recently addressed the same question in a wonderfully satirical puppet show video. It is only two minutes long, and well worth your time.

Original link: Duarte “Make Your Slides Count” video

Take out? Take out? No, no, no, no, no. I’m not taking anything out. This is corporate gold. I’m leaving it all in. I’m just going to talk four times faster.

That is absolutely perfect. And so is their summary statement:

Don’t worry about your slide count. Just make your slides count.

Your Turn: What’s Your Opinion?

How do you answer this question? How many slides works for you?

Please share this...

This is one of many public speaking articles featured on Six Minutes . Subscribe to Six Minutes for free to receive future articles.

Image credit: Few Slides 2 by FreeImages.com/Nick Winchester ( license )

Add a Comment Cancel reply

E-Mail (hidden)

Subscribe - It's Free!

Similar articles you may like....

• The 10-20-30 Rule: Guy Kawasaki on PowerPoint
• The 7 Deadly Sins of Public Speaking
• PowerPoint Design Wish List: 8 Modest Proposals
• How to Use Notes in a Speech: A Guide for Speakers
• How to Sequence Your Presentation
• How the Grinch Stole PowerPoint

Find More Articles Tagged:

Good article, Andrew.

The “Rules” should be considered guidelines.

The presenter is the presenter, not the slides.

Don’t forget the “B” Blank button or placing blank slides in the deck to put the audience’s eyes on you – the presenter.

Thanks for the Post!

I don’t know the rules about the number of slides you need for a presentation, but I’ve seen some elaborate slides on Slideshare.

Also, I’m reading Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte. This gives some great information and details on how to create slides. Who knew there was an art to creating slides?

Nice post on slides.

Slides & presentations, like life itself, rarely fit neatly into a set of rules. I’ve done a 45 minute presentation on slides and at the end an audience member asked me how many slides I’d used. We were both shocked to learn it was 145 slides! But the point for us in the room that day, as you indicate above, wasn’t about a rule or a guideline. It was what was needed to help the audience. 145 slides wasn’t too many for that talk.

Thanks again for the post!

I like to remind my presenters that people come to presentations to listen, not read. Many presenters use PPT as a planning tool, and load slides with everything they think they need to present. Some presenters know it’s too much, and intend to severely edit, but that rarely happens, and it ends up that there is a slide for every point. I recommend finding other ways to plan and hold off designing slides until content has been determined. Then, when it comes time to design slides, design three essential and well-designed slides first and only add more if a slide would be supportive. This is taking a building up approach, rather than a taking down one. I find this often results in fewer and more thoughtfully-designed slides.

I couldn’t agree more, Jason. I give the same advice in presentation courses that I teach. Delayed opening of slide software is key.

It all boils down to the individual speaker and the quality and usage of the slides. At a professional teachers’ meeting once, I saw a woman speaker, who entered the meeting place dressed in a plain, black skirt and jacket and with very little attention paid to her makeup. As she set up the slides, those of us who did not know her mumbled about another boring presentation to endure after our meal. Were we ever in for a surprise when this plainly attired woman began to speak! She was so excited about her topic that she had our attention immediately. Somehow, her aspect and demeanor changed before our eyes; and, the entire audience was leaning forward, listening attentively, and anxiously awaiting the next slide! She made her topic come alive with the use of her own enchantment with it and with the effective use of her slides. We usually made a quick escape after our presentation, but she had to leave for another commitment in order to get away from us. That took place many years ago, but we still recall that day and that speaker. I do not know how many slides she used, but they were just enough! (I don’t know how personal you want us be, so I will not reveal names. That speaker became a world-renouned, professional archeologist and professor, who later used her low-key charisma and talent to lead a state university to great strides of modernization and growth that will be remembered forever in that community, state, and beyond.)

You are right, Sharon. The speaker and what they say (and how they say it) is far more important than slides. Slides are meant to complement the presentation, not _be_ the presentation.

I was just asked this in a training session. The participant does sales presentations and his main customer has a rule that they are to use 6 slides only. Which is ridiculous and arbitrary because obviously with a small font you could fit a 1000-plus words on 6 slides. They should instead impose a time limit (10 or 20 minutes or whatever).

As you said, every presentation is different. Mine are not technical, so my slides are almost entirely visual. If there’s text it’s one to three words. So I may have 80 or more slides in a 50-minute session. (That includes builds.) So it all depends.

Recent Tweets

How Many Slides Should You Have? How Many Slides Do You Need? http://t.co/aMGq7IzM via @6minutes — Joanna Budelman Jan 19th, 2012

How Many Slides Should You Have? How Many Slides Do You Need? http://t.co/3eG8GrBp via @6minutes — IF_PUISSANCE Mar 14th, 2012

How many slides should you have in your slide deck? An answer to a very common question and very common mistake…. http://t.co/bfhoXQgp — Slideshop Apr 10th, 2012

How Many Slides Do You Need? Sometimes, the answer is zero. http://t.co/jF0Saoov #toastmasters #powerpoint — Brian Chow Jun 22nd, 2012

A trap we all fall into… How Many Slides Do You Need? http://t.co/bdR33esH — Sal Edmonds Aug 22nd, 2012

How Many Slides Should You Have? How Many Slides Do You Need? http://t.co/ZnQ561Wp via @6minutes — Sebastián Lora Nov 23rd, 2012

How Many Slides Should You Have? How Many Slides Do You Need? http://t.co/ZnQ561Wp via @6minutes — Nacho Arenas Nov 25th, 2012

How Many Slides Should You Have? How Many Slides Do You Need? http://t.co/XFXYWn0GTv via @6minutes — @KRYKSTAR Mar 19th, 2014

“Usually, the answer is “Fewer than you think.” http://t.co/qZHTHyNSB1 by @6minutes #publicspeaking #PowerPoint #Toastmasters — @JoelHeffner Oct 1st, 2015

Andrew Dugan from @6minutes answers the classical question, how many slides do I need?! #agile #productmanagement https://t.co/WcSa3UkPwC — @josephhurtado Sep 27th, 2016

Featured Articles

• Majora Carter (TED, 2006) Energy, Passion, Speaking Rate
• Hans Rosling (TED, 2006) 6 Techniques to Present Data
• J.A. Gamache (Toastmasters, 2007) Gestures, Prop, Writing
• Steve Jobs (Stanford, 2005) Figures of speech, rule of three
• Al Gore (TED, 2006) Humor, audience interaction
• Dick Hardt (OSCON, 2005) Lessig Method of Presentation

Books We Recommend

Six Minutes Copyright © 2007-2022 All Rights Reserved.

Read our permissions policy , privacy policy , or disclosure policy .

Comments? Questions? Contact us .

January 3, 2024

How many slides do I need for my presentation?

How many slides for a 10 minute presentation and the 3-2-1 rule for presentations

The 3-2-1 rule for presentations

Co-founder, CEO

Preparing for a presentation can be a daunting task for anyone. If you are presenting to an important client, a large audience, or a group of classmates, it can feel like it's impossible to figure out where to start.

However, with some planning and preparation (and help from wonderful blog posts like this one!), you can go into your presentation with confidence and deliver your message effectively. So don't worry, we've got you covered!

Here are some tips to help you determine how many slides you need for your presentation, based on the length of time you have to speak.

How many minutes per slide for a presentation?

A general guideline is to allocate approximately 2 minutes per slide. This means that for a 10-minute presentation, you should aim for around 5 slides, plus or minus 1 to 2 slides. Try the calculator below or read the 3-2-1 Rule for presentations for a more in-depth guide on how to budget the number of slides for your next presentation.

How many slides for a presentation? (Calculator)

Here is a calculator that can help you budget how many slides you will need for your presentation depending on the time you need to present for. Just type in how long your presentation needs to be in minutes, and it will give you a suggestion for the number of slides.

While this is a simple calculation, the number of slides in your presentation can vary widely depending on the complexity of the content, the type of presentation, and the goal of the presentation.

For example, a slide deck for an 18 minute TED talk might only have a few slides with very little text, while the slide deck for a ~18 minute research presentation might have 30 slides (although many of them could be backup slides in an appendix).

Here are some additional rules for thinking about the number of slides in a presentation: 

• When using this calculator, enter the amount of "presentation" that you will be actively presenting. Don't worry about time that will be spent in discussion or Q&A
• If you are presenting data, try to reduce the complexity of the presentation itself and put most of the charts and data in an appendix.
• If you are creating a presentation as a 'leave-behind' that can stand by itself, you should aim for the higher end of these recommended ranges. If you are creating a presentation that is a visual aid for you to tell a story, you should aim for the lower end of these ranges.

Follow the "3-2-1 Rule" for presentations

While every presentation is different, and everyone's presentation style is different, the 3-2-1 rule is a good rule of thumb to plan the overall structure of a presentation. This applies whether you are a management consultant advising Fortune 500 CEOs or if you're a student making a high school presentation.

Here are the three components of the 3-2-1 Rule:

• THREE takeaways for your audience
• TWO minutes to present a slide
• ONE idea per slide

As you create the outline for a new presentation or revise an existing presentation, you should ask yourself:

• What are the 3 things that I want my audience to remember from my presentation when I am done talking (or they are done reading)?
• How many slides will I have to make these points? Divide the time of your presentation by 2 to get a general idea for how many slides you will need in your presentation
• What is the main idea for each slide? A common refrain among professional consultants is that you should be able to understand the story of a slide deck just by reading the slide titles

Regardless of the length of the presentation, you should always start the planning or revision process by thinking about the key points that you want your audience to take away (that's the whole point of a presentation, really!).

Then, if you are making a 10 minute presentation, you probably need 5 slides plus or minus 1 to 2 slides depending on the style of presentation or depth of content. If these are slides to start a conversation, you probably need fewer. If these are slides to present your takeaways from a research project, you may need more (and maybe some backup slides in an appendix, too).

From there, write out the key idea for each slide. One great way to do this is to make the key idea of the slide the slide title itself. Then, you should be able to read all of the slide titles one after another and make sure that they deliver a cohesive story.

If you need a quick way to get started, try using an AI presentation maker to generate the first draft of your presentation.

How many slides do I need for a 5 minute presentation?

If you are making a 5 minute presentation, your goal should be for your audience to only remember one or two key ideas, so you should have 2 or 3 slides max.

• For work: Try to create 1 slide with your main idea, along with 1 or 2 backup slides that can present supporting data like a data visualization, customer quotes, or an execution plan.
• For sales: Try to create 1 slide to focus your discussion, along with 1 or 2 backup slides that can help answer customer questions.
• For school: Try to create 1 slide for each key point in a story or research idea and make sure the key points can tie themselves together in a conclusion.
• For storytelling: Try to create one slide with a poignant story, quote, or data point to help your audience remember the key message from your presentation. Then, you may also want to have 1 or 2 slides to build up to the idea or present conclusions from that idea.

How many slides do I need for a 10 minute presentation?

In a 10 minute presentation, you should aim for 5 slides, plus or minus 1 to 2 slides. Here are some suggestions based on the type of presentation:

• For work: Create 2 or 3 primary slides to present your key points (e.g., a framework slide, a key data visualization, or a plan of action), and 2 to 3 additional slides with supporting data or examples.
• For sales: Create 3 main slides that highlight the benefits of your product or service (e.g., problem statement, customer story, value proposition), and 2 additional slides for testimonials or data to help support the conversation if your customer wants to dive deeper on a specific topic.
• For school: Create 2 or 3 main slides for your key arguments or findings, and 2 to 4 additional slides for evidence or further explanation. A book report, for example, could have a slide with a plot summary and another slide with the key themes in the story.
• For storytelling: Create 3 main slides that build a narrative arc (introduction, rising action, conclusion), and 2 additional slides for impactful quotes or visuals. The key slides for a TED talk might be an image to tell a captivating story, a slide to present a shocking statistic, and end with a story about a hopeful new project to solve a key problem.

How many slides do I need for a 15 minute presentation?

For a 15 minute presentation, aim for 7 slides, plus or minus 1 to 2 slides. Here are some suggestions based on the type of presentation:

• For work: Create 3 primary slides to present your key points (e.g., a framework slide, a key data visualization, or a plan of action), and 4 to 5 additional slides with supporting data or examples.
• For sales: Create 3 main slides that highlight the benefits of your product or service (e.g., problem statement, customer story, value proposition), and 3 to 4 additional slides for testimonials or data to help support the conversation if your customer wants to dive deeper on a specific topic.
• For school: Create 3 main slides for your key arguments or findings, and 3 to 4 additional slides for evidence or further explanation. A book report, for example, could have a slide with a plot summary, a slide with the key themes in the story, and a final slide with how those themes apply to your life.
• For storytelling: Create 4 main slides that build a narrative arc (introduction, rising action, climax, conclusion), and 3 to 4 additional slides for impactful quotes or visuals. The key slides for a TED talk might be an image to introduce a captivating story, a slide to present a memorable statistic, a slide to with a story about a hopeful new project, and a slide with the results to-date.

How many slides do I need for a 20 minute presentation?

For a 20 minute presentation, aim for 10 slides, plus or minus 1 to 2 slides. Here are some suggestions based on the type of presentation:

• For work: Create 3 primary slides to present your key points (e.g., a framework slide, a key data visualization, or a plan of action), and 6 to 7 additional slides with supporting data or examples.
• For sales: Create 4 main slides that highlight the benefits of your product or service (e.g., problem statement, customer story, value proposition, evidence), and 5 to 6 additional slides for testimonials or data to help support the conversation if your customer wants to dive deeper on a specific topic.
• For school: Create 4 main slides for your key arguments or findings, and 5 to 6 additional slides for evidence or further explanation. A book report, for example, could have a slide with a plot summary, a slide about a key moment/decision in the story, a slide with the key themes in the story, and a final slide with how those themes apply to your life.
• For storytelling: Create 4 main slides that build a narrative arc (introduction, rising action, climax, conclusion), and 4 to 5 additional slides for impactful quotes or visuals. The key slides for a TED talk might be an image to introduce a captivating story, a slide to present a memorable statistic, a slide to with a story about a hopeful new project, and a slide with the results to-date. One thing to note here is that the length of a storytelling slide deck does not need to get much longer for 15, 20, or 30 minute presentations.

How many slides do I need for a 30 minute presentation?

At 30 minutes and above, it becomes increasingly likely that you won't be expected to present for 30 minutes straight, and the "presentation" itself becomes more of a conversation aid that can support a back-and-forth discussion about a topic.

For these types of presentations, you should calculate how much time is going to be used in a "single-sided" presentation and how much time will be used in discussion. If you expect 10 minutes of your 30 minute presentation (or more) to be a discussion, you should refer to the section on "How many slides do I need for a 20 minute presentation?"

If you think you will need to present for a full 30 minutes, here is our recommendation for the number of slides you need, based on the type of presentation.

For a general 30-minute presentation, aim for 15 slides, plus or minus 2 to 3 slides.

How many slides do I need for a 45 minute presentation?

45 minutes is a long time for a one-sided presentation, so it's more likely your presentation will be used to facilitate a back and forth conversation (which may use slides as support to make a strategic decision), or present an in-depth look at research data and conclusion (which may use slides with in-depth data analysis).

For these types of presentations, you should calculate how much time is going to be used in a "single-sided" presentation and how much time will be used in discussion. If you expect half of the time to be a discussion, you should refer to the section on "How many slides do I need for a 20 minute presentation?"

If you think you will need to present for 45 minutes, here is our recommendation for the number of slides you need, based on the type of presentation.

For a general 45-minute presentation, aim for 20 slides, plus or minus 3 to 5 slides.

How many slides do I need for a 60 minute presentation?

60 minutes - one hour - is a very long time for a one-sided presentation. For these types of presentations, you should calculate how much time you expect to give a "single-sided" presentation and how much time will be used in discussion or Q&A. 

If you expect half of the time to be a discussion, you should refer to the section on "How many slides do I need for a 30 minute presentation?"

If you think you will need to present for 60 minutes, here is our recommendation for the number of slides you need, based on the type of presentation.

For a 60-minute presentation, aim for 25 slides, plus or minus 3 to 8 slides.

How should I create slides for my presentation?

Staring at a blank page when you need to create a dozen slides for your presentation can be a nerve-wracking experience. One of the best ways to get a quick start on your next slide deck is to use AI to speed up your workflow.

To get started, install the Plus AI add-on. Enter a prompt or an existing text block (e.g., an article, a blog post, a document), and then ask Plus AI to generate a first draft of your presentation.

From there, you can use Plus AI's editing, rewriting, remixing, and design features to apply the perfect finishing touches on your deck to make it yours!

Latest posts

Latest post.

How to use ChatGPT to create PowerPoint presentations

Step-by-step guide to using AI tools to create presentations. Looking for ChatGPT for PowerPoint? Here's a guide to using AI in PowerPoint and Google Slides

A guide to all of Google’s AI products 

A comprehensive guide to Google's AI ecosystem, categorizing all of Google's AI products and analyzing the ways that Google AI products have evolved over time.

ChatGPT bots account for more than 12% of Upwork applications

An analysis of bot responses on the Upwork freelancer marketplace

Tome vs. Gamma: In-depth comparison, pricing, and recommendations 

In-depth comparison of Tome and Gamma with recommendations for which tool is right for you

More resources

How to convert a PDF to PowerPoint

Have a PDF that you want to turn into a slideshow? Here are a few ways to convert PDF to PPT to create your presentation in minutes.

The Best AI Presentation Makers of 2024 (with example outputs)

The best AI presentation software for Google Slides, PowerPoint, and other popular presentation apps. Read our assessments with real examples and user reviews

How to alphabetize in Google Docs

How to sort lists in alphabetical order inside of Google Docs and use AI to do other powerful text manipulation

• Data, AI, & Machine Learning
• Managing Technology
• Social Responsibility
• Workplace, Teams, & Culture
• AI & Machine Learning
• Diversity & Inclusion
• Big ideas Research Projects
• Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy
• Responsible AI
• Future of the Workforce
• Future of Leadership
• All Research Projects
• AI in Action
• Most Popular
• The Truth Behind the Nursing Crisis
• Work/23: The Big Shift
• Coaching for the Future-Forward Leader
• Measuring Culture

The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.

• Past Issues
• Upcoming Events
• Video Archive
• Me, Myself, and AI
• Three Big Points

How to Create Slides That Suit Your Superiors: 11 Tips

When you’re pitching ideas or budgets to execs in your organization, you need to deliver slides that fit those particular people just right. This checklist identifies the key considerations.

• Workplace, Teams, & Culture
• Leadership Skills

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images

I recently interviewed 20 of my customers, all in senior roles at Fortune 100 companies, and asked them their biggest pain point in presenting to higher-ups and even colleagues. What I heard consistently was that it can feel like Goldilocks bouncing from one option to the next, testing to figure out what’s “just right.” Does the audience want deep reports? Sparse slides? Something in between? Like … what?

Teams often come to presentation meetings with vast amounts of backup content just in case an exec wants to take a deep dive on any given point. There’s often a struggle to anticipate every direction attendees might want to go. It’s frustrating, and it’s not efficient.

Get Updates on Transformative Leadership

Evidence-based resources that can help you lead your team more effectively, delivered to your inbox monthly.

Please enter a valid email address

Thank you for signing up

Privacy Policy

There are many ways to build slides. I’m not just talking about crafting them well versus poorly. I’m talking about all of the important decisions regarding how to organize them, how much text to use, when to lean into a chart, the best ways to use bullets and color, and whether to include an appendix with additional information. Before you make your next proposal or request of the executive team, use this list of 11 tips for your next set of slides as a guide.

Four Things You Must Have in Every Exec’s Slides

Before we drill down into the harder aspects, the ones where your executives’ tastes may vary widely, let’s quickly cover four aspects that you can consider the building blocks — the basics you should never proceed without.

Start with an executive summary. Begin the slide deck with a tight executive summary that follows a three-act structure. First, start with stating the current realities. Second, clearly state the problem or opportunity your idea addresses and its potential impact. Third, explain how your recommendation solves the problem or exploits the opportunity and the next steps you’re proposing.

Have a logical organization. The arc of the deck — the package from beginning to end — should make sense. If your audience reads only the headline of every slide, the order should be coherent and make most of the case for you. The content below each slide’s headline must support the statement made in the title. Remove everything that doesn’t support your point; as writers will tell you, you sometimes need to “kill your darlings” when you’re editing.

Begin the slide deck with a tight executive summary that follows a three-act structure.

Make it skimmable. Help your audience to quickly grasp the point without getting bogged down in details. Create a clear visual hierarchy. Guide the reader’s eye through the content: Use bold headings, bullet points, and numbered lists to break down information into digestible pieces. Highlight key takeaways or conclusions in a different color or font size to draw attention to these critical points.

Focus on concise insights. Succinct statements with clear insights are everyone’s jam. Every slide should serve a purpose and contribute directly to the decision-making process. Distill complex information. Don’t use 100 words when 20 words will nail it. If you’re having difficulty trimming, consider using company-approved AI tools to help you take out the fluff.

Five Preferences to Confirm With the Person You Want to Reach

Now we’ll delve into what your particular audience does and does not want. If you haven’t yet, start by asking the person you’re presenting to what they generally prefer. They probably know themselves well but have not been asked to articulate how they like to receive information.

Ask how dense is too dense. Some executives prefer detailed slides with comprehensive data. Others favor a more high-level approach. You’re weighing how to balance informative content with readability, ensuring that slides are not overloaded yet are sufficiently detailed to support decision-making.

Confirm the delivery format and timing. Some execs like information presented to them. Others prefer a pre-read of the material followed by a discussion. I always recommend our tool Slidedocs (I’ve written a free e-book on them), which are visual documents using both words and images. The templates help presenters organize their thoughts into a document for a pre-read or a read-along. They are designed to be skimmable and able to travel through your organization without the help of a presenter.

I’m a huge fan of pre-reads and prefer to use my time in meetings to ask questions and build alignment. If your audience didn’t review your material in advance, ask at the top of the meeting whether they would like you to present it or would prefer to read through it and then discuss it.

Find out how much data visualization they prefer. Charts, graphs, photos, and illustrations often communicate complex data more clearly than words alone. When execs can see what you’re saying, they often can better understand the impact of your idea. Does the exec want to understand exact numbers? Bar charts allow them to move their eyes across a series of specifics. Does the exec want to know the shape of a trend over time? Line charts can show the pattern. (See “Classic Charts Communicate Data Quickly.”) Some prefer charts with annotations that draw attention to what you think is the most important point. Others want to make their own conclusions from the data.

One of my clients, the CEO of a massive commercial real estate company, doesn’t want anything visualized. He prefers numbers, only in a table, and only in two colors — black and red. You might think this is archaic. But the fact that he’s clear to his teams about what he wants takes all the mystery out of how to communicate with him.

When the stakes are high, have a conceptual thinker help with diagrams and concepts. If you don’t have one on your team, and when it’s high stakes, find an internal designer to help you or hire one. You can’t afford to have the baby (your idea) thrown out with the bathwater (terrible slides).

Identify which details need spelling out. How well do the people you’re presenting to know the landscape and function of the company and products you’re talking about? For example, if your engineering team threw a slide into a deck about an issue that requires executive approval, do the execs all speak geek? Or do you need to explain the technology so that they will really understand the ask? Either eliminate internal jargon and acronyms or unpack those bits, especially if your proposal deeply involves expertise outside of the executives’ domain.

Ask whether appendices will be useful. When you’re organizing a presentation, you often troll data, read through complicated reports, and even hire external experts to figure out what’s best for the company. Do your execs want access to that supporting data? You can add a document to the end of the presentation as an appendix to show all of the data and source material. This allows the main content of the slides to remain focused and accessible while still providing comprehensive background information for those who want more.

Two Tips to Improve Your Presentation Skills

Getting materials in place is the biggest step. They will be your best tools for selling your ideas. But there are two extra areas to pay attention to as a presenter: how you handle questions and how you use every experience to improve.

Anticipate questions, and practice your answers. Before you have your meeting, gather a small team to challenge every point you make. Invite colleagues you trust to role-play as “a rapidly inquisitive exec” or “the doubting naysayer exec” so you are prepared to present your idea well. They’re gonna grill you, and practicing will help you remain unruffled when it happens.

Related Articles

Ask for feedback after the presentation. Establish a feedback loop with those you presented to. Ask what worked well and how you can improve. If attendees don’t have the time, find people who have had their ideas funded and talk to them about what they did that worked. Advice and some perspective will help you nail your performance even better next time.

Empathetically understanding your audience members and how they process information, whether it’s executives or peers, sets up your ideas for success. Clarity creates efficiency. When a presentation fits just right, you’ve given your great thinking the best chance of moving through your organization and having maximum impact.

About the Author

Nancy Duarte is CEO of Duarte Inc. , a communication company in the Silicon Valley. She’s the author of six books, including DataStory: Explain Data and Inspire Action Through Story (Ideapress Publishing, 2019).

More Like This

Add a comment cancel reply.

You must sign in to post a comment. First time here? Sign up for a free account : Comment on articles and get access to many more articles.

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content
• Skip to footer

Laura M. Foley Design

Cheat Death by PowerPoint!

How many slides should my presentation have?

December 9, 2014 by Laura Foley 4 Comments

Do these quotes sound familiar?

“I only want to see three slides.” “My boss says we get one slide per presenter.” “We don’t want to go over 20 slides for this presentation.”

It’s very common to be restricted to a certain number of slides in a presentation. And it’s a very silly way to do things.

Comparing apples to oranges

Just as the stating the ability to do the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs (You’re welcome, nerds!) is a nonsensical description of speed, specifying the number of slides in a presentation in order to limit its duration is meaningless. The number of slides in your presentation actually can have very little to do with how long your presentation lasts. I once saw a 45-minute presentation that consisted of just one slide. Conversely, I usually develop about 60–75 slides for a 45-minute presentation.

The right question isn’t “How many slides should my presentation have?” it’s “How long does this presentation need to be?” Then you match that time to your presentation style and use that as a guide for how many slides you’ll need to create.

How can a presentation have just one slide?

The one-slide presenter worked the room like a master. He spoke to us like he was addressing a roomful of friends. He was animated and enthusiastic, moving back and forth to engage the whole audience. He wove in stories based on his own personal experience. The funny thing was that his subject matter—a specific type of industrial machine—could have been as boring as dirt, yet he made it seem like the coolest thing ever.

What was on his slide? His company’s name, his name, and his contact information.

Why would a 45-minute presentation need 60–75 slides?

So if this guy can get away with one slide, why do I need so many for my own presentation that lasts the same amount of time? Well, since I teach people how to get the most out of PowerPoint, my presentations tend to contain a lot of animation, slides with very few words, and slides that illustrate only one idea apiece. The effect for the audience is seamless: everything flows much like a film. But this style tends to require a lot more slides than a more static presentation style.

The next time somebody tells you to limit your presentation to a certain number of slides, push back and ask for more information about how long you have to present. If you’re unable to sway the opinion of the person who’s made this ridiculous request, then feel free to throw me under the bus by saying:

There’s a PowerPoint expert I follow named Laura Foley. She says that the number of slides in a presentation doesn’t matter, as long as you stay within the allotted time. And I wouldn’t argue with her, because she can make the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.

Share this:

How Many Slides for 45 minutes or 1 Hour Long Presentation

Last updated on August 24th, 2023

The duration of the presentation and the number of slides have always been related , but the glitch here is that your slides do not need to be analogous with time length of the presentation. There are numerous queries about how many slides for 45 minutes or 1 hour long presentation; these enquirers need to understand certain points to clarify their doubts.

Read articles on 5 tips for designing Presentation that don’t suck

Understand Your Topic

This is a vital requirement. It is obviously according to the importance of your topic that the time frame is allotted, hence it is also crucial that you carry out an in depth research to be able to select the appropriate sub topics that will be highlighted in the presentation.

Analyze the Content Requirement and Its Distribution

Your presentation may require extensive content, or just a few words might be sufficient. This is where your discretion is crucial. Avoid equating the length of your presentation with the amount of content; do not overload it with unnecessary details. Focus on including only the relevant material to keep your audience engaged. Additionally, consider how you plan to deliver your presentation: will you be using slides on a projector, or relying solely on your public speaking skills without PowerPoint? If you’re considering the former, you might want to explore some of the portable projectors for business presentations that are available in the market.

Practice to Ensure Proper Time Division

Do not judge without practicing; if you have allotted 2 minutes to every slide then make sure that the time is utilized properly. The time can vary according to the points covered in the slide.

Do not forget to carve out some time for discussions. The intelligent approach is to carry out some interaction with the audience at regular intervals. There are many extempore speakers who can speak on a topic for any given time, so they usually do not require too many slides. But do not forget your listeners will get bored if they are made to stare a slide for long.

Related:  How many slides for 30 mins presentation

So, how many slides for a 45 minute presentation?

Following the previous advices, plus the 10/20/30 rule , if a presentation of 20 minutes takes 10 slides, a 45 minute presentation would take between 20 and 25 slides .

Recommended reading: What is the 6-6 rule for presentations and how to apply it?

The presentation technique is your sidekick so make efficient use of it. Integrating some relevant and interesting video will be an intelligent effort. Furthermore, catchy captions and sharing of interesting facts also keeps the interest of the audience intact and you are able to add more subject to your demonstration. To make effective presentations and adhere to the required timing, you may use a timer widget or add-in in PowerPoint or learn how to set a 15 minutes timer for a presentation .

Most presenters take the interactive approach and arouse so much excitement in the audience that they too actively participate and portray their skills. Although not everyone can do that until highly experienced or talented, the neophytes must try to take one step at a time.

And, how many PowerPoint slides for a 60-minute presentation?

How many PowerPoint slides for a 60 minute presentation? If the presentation last for one hour, it may be considered as a long presentation for many presenters, and the audience. However, take in mind that in most 1-hour presentations, there is room for Q&A questions, so the exact number of slides to include in a 1-hour presentation may vary a lot, depending on the specific needs. We would recommend to stay with around 20-25 slides as much for a 60 minute presentation.

The ideal number of slides for a 45-minute or one hour-long presentation is a common question by presenters preparing a presentation for the first time. The key here is that the rehearsal phase of a presentation (the time you spend while rehearsing your presentation) will determine the optimal time to use in your final presentation, be it 45 minutes long, 60 minutes long, or any other length.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Sign up to our newsletter

We will send you our curated collections to your email weekly. No spam, promise!

How Many Slides For Presentations (10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 Minutes)

You should limit your presentations to one slide per minute at a maximum. Try to include the least amount of slides while trying to get your message across in a concise while still complete manner.

An alternative rule is the “10/20/30 Rule,” which suggests that a good presentation will limit itself to 10 slides, last 20 minutes in length, and include a font size no smaller than 30 points.

PowerPoint presentations can be overwhelming to the point that they put off people from learning new material and discourage them from taking in the presented information.

The purpose of this article is to help people make their presentations more exciting and easier to follow and discover how many slides are generally needed so you can time your presentations accordingly.

Of course, all of the below points are just suggestions and the number of slides that you will use for your own presentation will of course depend on the content as well your target audience.

How many slides for a 10-minute presentation?

How many slides for a 15-minute presentation, how many slides for a 20-minute presentation, how many slides for a 30-minute presentation, how many slides for a 40-minute presentation, how many slides for a 50-minute presentation, how many slides for a 60-minute presentation.

A 10-minute presentation would require no more than 10 slides. It’s much better to start with too few than too many, so users will likely appreciate the shorter list of bullet points. Your goal is to provide the right amount of information for your audience to understand the topic without overwhelming them.

If you are just giving an overview of something that you want the audience to remember in 10 minutes or less, then this is probably enough. Keep your slides simple and keep them limited to two-three bullet points per slide.

A 15-minute presention should have a maximum of 15 slides. This is the right amount of information for audiences to grasp without feeling overwhelmed or bored. If you can give this type of presentation in 10 minutes or less, it’s even better.

During a 15 minute presentation. These slides should be able to cover the basics of your topic, but if you try to make it too complicated, your audience will lose interest, and you will end up wasting their time.

A 20-minute presentation should require no more than 20 slides. On average, you should only be using 5-7 bullet points on each slide. You can also include one or two images on each slide to help facilitate understanding.

If you are giving an overview of something that you want the audience to remember in 20 minutes or less, this might be the perfect time to follow the 10/20/30 rule. This concept should relate to the audience or is a key part of your speech or presentation.

A 30-minute presentation would require no more than 30 slides. You can use 5-7 bullet points per slide or 8-10 bullet points if the presentation is necessary to convey ideas in great detail. If you are including lots of images and charts to help illustrate your point, then reduce the amount of bullet points used.

It’s a good idea to follow this rule because too many slides can make it challenging to keep track of all the points you are trying to make, and your audience will be more likely to lose interest in what you’re saying or miss important ideas as they go by quickly. It’s also easier for people to focus on your presentation when it’s broken up into smaller sections.

On 30 minute presentations, it is a good idea to leave a few minutes for Q&A. This will allow your audience to ask questions about things they didn’t understand or missed in the part of the presentation. It also gives your audience a reason to get involved in the session.

For a 40 minute presentation, you should try to keep it to 40 slides maximum, you can dole out some information in detail and leave a bigger chunk of time for Q&A. People will stay attentive when the material is broken up into smaller segments.

You should keep in mind that different people respond to different mediums and will better understand an idea when it’s presented to them in a way they are accustomed to receiving information (i.e. some people benefit from text and others from images, some people need the material broken up into small pieces while others prefer a long, steady stream of information).

It will also depend on the type of presentation you are doing. If it’s a demonstration or special event, then more slides are better (and less time per slide is good). If you’re there to present statistics, research, comparison charts, etc., fewer slides with more information per slide would be best.

A 50-minute presentation should include no more than 50 slides. You can have more slides than this if you have a very engaging visual presentation with limited amounts of information per slide.

Similar to a 40-minute presentation, a 50-minute presentation can allow you to go into a lot of detail in some places and remain at a high level. You should also feel free to leave out certain information if it is not essential in a particular presentation’s overall scheme of things.

As a general rule of thumb, experienced public speakers or subject matter experts are the ones who feel the most comfortable holding longer presentations and sessions, which allows them to go into greater detail in certain areas.

If you’re new to this kind of work, it might be best to keep your presentations between 30 and 40 minutes and leave the rest of the time slot open for questions from the floor.

A 50-minute presentation would require no more than 20-25 slides, as the only purpose they serve here would be just as a reminder for the speaker to stay on point as he conveys the story to the audience.

A 60-minute presentation should include no more than 60 slides. If you have a very engaging visual presentation with limited amounts of information per slide, you can have more slides than this.

If the presentation is going to be more interactive, then it’s better to cut down on the number of slides and instead focus on how much each slide will contribute to the overall story you’re telling. You must also leave plenty of time for a Q&A session at the end. 

The number of slides for a presentation varies. While too many can bore your audience, not enough will leave them wondering what you’re talking about.

Your slides can serve as visual reminders of your talk and also help you maintain a narrative flow in your presentation. You must know what you want to accomplish with each slide, how long it will take to read the text and absorb information from a chart or graph and how much time you have for Q&A.

Remember that slides can and should be used as visual aids, not as the main point of the presentation. The speaker needs to convey that information, not just read it from their slides.

Related Posts:

How Many Slides Do You Need For A Whatever-Minute Presentation?

Yousef "yoyo" abu ghaidah.

• May 9, 2018
• One Comment

“How many slides do I need for a 10 minutes presentation?”

“I have 30 minutes. Do I need 30 slides?”

“I have a 60-minute presentation coming up and I don’t want to bore my audience to death with slide-overload. What do I do?”

If I had a dollar for every time I get a question like these, I’d be a millionaire.

It’s time to put the age-old PowerPoint question to rest. How many slides do you  really need for your next presentation, regardless of the time set?

Here’s your answer: As many as you need, but within reason .

I know, I know. You’re looking for a quick and simple solution that you can use right now. But trust me, you’ll get what I mean after reading this post.

Rules Don’t Apply … Sort Of

There are so many rules out there that you’ve probably heard of.

“Only use five slides.”

“Keep it to one slide for every three minutes.”

Even presentation pros like Guy Kawasaki will advocate for the 10/20/30 rule (10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 point font).

These rules aren’t necessarily wrong, but I do feel they overlook one of the most important factors in your presentation: Your message.

When you apply a general rule-of-thumb to the content you want to present, you’re going to end up limiting yourself. That sort of practice can be bad for you, and even worse for your audience.

Look at it this way: Do you think J. K. Rowling was thinking about how many pages she would need to get Harry Potter out to the world?

Of course not. Her priorities were centered down to the plot, how the characters express themselves, the intricacies between the hero and the villain, and so on.

Rowling’s only true goal was to write a fictional novel so epic that it would appeal to the masses.

Do I need to tell you how hugely successful she was a result of that approach?

Take the same principle and develop as many slides as you need to capture every meaningful component of your message.

Remember, slides are empty canvases for your information. You can put a single word and a picture to demonstrate your point or 500 words and a chart to do the exact same thing.

But practice this approach with caution. Don’t just cram in slides for the sake of doing so.

Only bring the slides that express the value of your content. Nothing more, nothing less.

Time Allocation is Crucial

Time is the most precious thing we have in this world , and it is certainly the one thing you  NEED  to respect when it comes to your audience.

That said, there is a misconception about time limits in presentations that you need to be aware of.

Avoid going for the minute(s)-per-slide approach. Many presenters feel that sustaining this number is crucial for delivery. For example, if someone was preparing 10 slides for a 10-minute presentation, then that same person may feel dedicating 1 minute per slide is the way to go.

Don’t do this, because  how you allocate your time should be completely up to you.

I’ve witnessed presenters spend 10 seconds on one slide only to spend five minutes on another, and they were extremely effective in their delivery.

The slide that took five minutes to present was also the slide that needed five minutes of my time to understand. This highlighted that the slide in question was meaningful, insightful, and followed a pace that I was comfortable with.

That’s the key take away. Dedicate more of the time given to you to the content that matters most.  This approach should allow you to gauge just how many slides you need to bring in.

So, How Many Slides Do You Really Need?

All you have to do is answer two simple questions:

• “How many slides do I need to get my message across?”
• “What pace would my audience feel comfortable with?”

With the ‘right’ answers, you’re almost certain to get the perfect number of slides for your presentation, every single time.

You’re The Special Ingredient

Whatever number you go for, remember that your slides should only be seen as the tools you need to get your message across.

Sure, designing beautiful slides will help, but they won’t do the work for you.

Rely on yourself to get your message out there. Your tone, body-language, and passion are what truly can make or break your presentation.

Dang…I needed this LOL. Thank you for decreasing my stress.

Got a project for us?

© Slide Cow. All rights reserved.

Session expired

Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.