Ch23: Reviewing Presentations

Introduction

Before delivering your presentation, you might ask someone else to review it and give you feedback on your slides. You might even work with a collaborator to create a presentation together. If you were revising a hard copy, you could add comments in the margins or compare your rough and final drafts side by side. You can do these things in PowerPoint using the Comments and Compare features.

Optional: Download our practice presentation.

Watch the video below to learn more about PowerPoint's reviewing features.

Commenting on presentations

When revising or collaborating on a presentation, you might want to make notes or suggestions without actually changing the slide. Leaving a comment allows you to take note of something without altering the slide itself. Comments can be added and read by the original author or any other reviewers.

To add a comment:

Select the text or object (or click the area of the slide) where you want the comment to appear.

Go to the Review tab, then click the New Comment command.

The Comments pane will appear. In our example, it contains an existing comment by another review (Javier), plus a space for your comment.
Type your comment in the box, then press Enter or click anywhere outside the box to save the comment.

The comment will be represented by a small icon on the slide.

Viewing comments

You can view or reply to any comment—including other reviewers' comments—by returning to the Comments pane. Simply click a comment icon on the slide, or click the Show Comments command on the Review tab.

To edit a comment:

In the Comments pane, select the comment you want to edit.

Type your desired changes, then press Enter or click anywhere outside the comment box. Your changes will be applied.

To reply to a comment:

In the Comments pane, click Reply below the comment you want to respond to.

Type your response, then press Enter or click anywhere outside the box. Your comment will appear below the original comment, and an additional icon will be added to the slide.

Deleting comments

To delete a comment, select the comment you want to delete, then go to the Review tab and click the Delete command.

To delete multiple comments, click the drop-down arrow below the Delete command. You can delete comments from your current slide or from the entire presentation.

Comparing presentations

There are situations in which you might end up with more than one version of the same presentation. For instance, you could create multiple drafts, or a collaborator or coworker could save their own unique copy.

You can easily compare and combine multiple versions using PowerPoint's Compare feature. This allows you to see the differences between two versions of the same presentation, so you can decide which changes to include in the final version.

To compare two presentations:

In this example, we'll be comparing two versions of the Internet Safety for Everyone presentation. To follow along, you'll need the original practice presentation (powerpoint_reviewing_practice), plus a version that's been slightly altered: internet safety - tim's edits.

Open one version of the presentation you want to compare. In this example, we'll start with powerpoint_reviewing_practice.
From the Review tab, select the Compare command.

A dialog box will appear. Select the second version of the presentation you want to compare, then click Merge. In this example, we'll choose internet safety - tim's edits.

The Revisions pane will appear, allowing you to compare the two presentations.

Heading

Challenge!

Download our original practice presentation (powerpoint_reviewing_practice) and a slightly altered version (internet safety - tim's edits). If you already downloaded our practice files, be sure to download fresh copies.
Open powerpoint_reviewing_practice. On slide 9, add a comment somewhere on the slide that says Should we make this text larger?
When you're finished, slide 9 should look something like this:

On the last slide, delete the comment.

Page updated