How to adjust the Aspect Ratio of you PowerPoint Presentation

More of you are using widecreen sizes for your PowerPoint Presentations.  When showing PowerPoints shows sized for the traditional projector aspect ratio of 4:3 on a wide screen you will typically see black bars on each side like this:

It is important to note that just because you get this effect on your widescreen laptop doesn’t mean that it will be an issue when you are actually running the finished presentation on a projector.  (As most projectors are not widescreen ratios).  The key is preparation.  You should always try it out on the projector or flat screen you actually intend to use first.

You may discover if you are going to run your presentation on a large flatscreen monitor e.g. a Plasma TV screen you may find that you have the dreaded vertical bars on each side.

The answer is to change the Page Setup of your PowerPoint file to match the height/width ratio of your screen.  We have created the Excel file below to calculate this for you.  I suggest you right click the link below and Save Target to where you want to save it (e.g. Desktop)

 PowerPoint_Screen_Size_Calculator.xls 42.50 Kb