presentation summary

How to Summarize a PowerPoint Presentation: A Step-by-Step Guide

Summarizing a PowerPoint presentation is a skill that can come in handy in various situations. Maybe you’ve just watched a colleague’s presentation and need to report back to your team, or perhaps you’re studying for an exam and want to condense the material. To summarize a PowerPoint effectively, you’ll need to identify the key points, understand the presentation’s purpose, and distill the information into a concise format. By mastering these steps, you’ll be able to communicate the essence of any presentation to your audience efficiently.

Once you’ve summarized the PowerPoint presentation, you’ll have a handy reference that captures the main ideas and supporting details without the fluff. This summary can serve as a study aid, a quick refresher, or a tool to brief others who may not have the time to go through the entire presentation.

Introduction

Let’s face it, sitting through a lengthy PowerPoint presentation can sometimes feel like a chore, especially when all you need are the highlights. Maybe you’re a busy professional with back-to-back meetings, a student juggling multiple assignments, or just someone who values efficiency. Whatever the case, being able to summarize a PowerPoint presentation is a valuable skill that can save you time and keep you informed.

Why is this ability so important? For starters, it helps you to quickly sift through information and focus on what’s essential. In our fast-paced world, time is of the essence, and being able to distill a lengthy presentation into a few key points can be a game-changer. Moreover, it’s not only about personal convenience; summarizing skills are crucial when you have to convey the gist of a presentation to others. Whether you’re briefing a colleague, preparing notes for a study group, or delivering a report to a client, a well-crafted summary can make all the difference. So, let’s dive into the how-to of summarizing a PowerPoint presentation, shall we?

Step by Step Tutorial: How to Summarize a PowerPoint Presentation

Before we jump into the steps, let’s establish what we’re aiming for. A good summary of a PowerPoint presentation should capture the main ideas, the supporting details, and the presenter’s intended message, all while being brief and easy to understand.

Step 1: Review the Entire Presentation

Start by going through the entire PowerPoint presentation.

Reviewing the presentation in its entirety allows you to get a sense of the overall flow and the key themes. Pay attention to the title slides and the concluding slides, as they often contain the main message and summary points.

Step 2: Identify the Key Points

Look for the main ideas in each slide.

Each slide usually focuses on a single main idea. Look for bullet points, bolded text, or headings as clues to what the presenter considers important. Make note of these points as they will form the backbone of your summary.

Step 3: Understand the Purpose

Determine the purpose of the presentation.

Understanding why the presentation was created helps to frame your summary. Was it to inform, persuade, or instruct? Knowing the intent will guide you in deciding what details are crucial for your summary.

Step 4: Condense the Information

• Condense the information into a concise format.

Now that you have the key points and the purpose, start writing your summary. Aim to express the ideas as simply and clearly as possible, without losing the original meaning. If a slide’s content can be said in one sentence instead of three, do it.

Step 5: Review and Edit

Review your summary and refine it.

Go through your summary to ensure it’s coherent and that it accurately reflects the presentation’s content and purpose. Edit out any redundancies or unclear statements.

Additional Information

When summarizing a PowerPoint presentation, it’s essential to keep the audience in mind. Who will be reading your summary? What do they need to know? Tailoring the summary to the needs of your audience can make it more effective. Additionally, consider using visual aids from the original presentation, such as charts or graphs, if they help illustrate a point more clearly.

Remember, a good summary is not just a list of points but a coherent mini-version of the presentation. It should flow logically and be engaging to read. Lastly, practice makes perfect. The more you practice summarizing presentations, the better you’ll become at capturing the essence of the content. So next time you sit through a PowerPoint, why not give it a try?

• Review the entire PowerPoint presentation.
• Identify the key points in each slide.
• Understand the purpose of the presentation.
• Review and edit your summary.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if the powerpoint presentation is very long.

Start by breaking it down into sections, and summarize each section before attempting to summarize the whole presentation. This will make the task more manageable.

Can I include quotes from the presentation in my summary?

Yes, but use them sparingly and only if they emphasize a key point effectively.

Should I use the same slide titles in my summary?

You can, but it’s not necessary. The aim is to capture the main ideas, not to replicate the presentation’s structure.

Is it okay to leave out examples used in the presentation?

If the examples are used to illustrate key points, briefly mention them. Otherwise, focus on the main ideas and leave out specific examples.

How long should my summary be?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but a good rule of thumb is to make it as brief as possible while still covering all key points.

Summarizing a PowerPoint presentation is an art and a skill that can be honed with practice. Whether you’re a student, a professional, or simply someone who values brevity, being able to condense information efficiently is incredibly valuable. Remember, the goal is to capture the essence of the presentation, not to replicate it.

Use your judgment to determine what’s essential and what can be left out. With the steps and tips outlined in this article, you’re well on your way to becoming an expert summarizer. So next time you’re faced with a lengthy presentation, don’t despair. Embrace the challenge and flex those summarizing muscles!

Matthew Burleigh has been writing tech tutorials since 2008. His writing has appeared on dozens of different websites and been read over 50 million times.

After receiving his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science he spent several years working in IT management for small businesses. However, he now works full time writing content online and creating websites.

His main writing topics include iPhones, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Android, and Photoshop, but he has also written about many other tech topics as well.

Read his full bio here.

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Presentation Design Guide: How to Summarize Information for Presentations

By Midori Nediger , May 15, 2023

Bad presentations. We’ve all had to sit through them.  Heck, we’ve probably all given one or two. I know I have.

You know the type: twice as long as they need to be, slides chock-full of text, no visuals in sight. 

How can you ensure you don’t fall victim to these presentation faux-pas when designing your next presentation for your team, class, or clients?

In this blog, I’ll walk you through tips on how to design an impactful presentation and how you can deliver it with style to leave a lasting impression.

Let’s get started:

• Include less text and more visuals in your presentation design
• Identify one core message to center your presentation design around
• Eliminate any information that doesn’t immediately support the core message
• Create a strong presentation outline to keep you focused
• Use text to reinforce, not repeat, what you’re saying
• Design your presentation with one major takeaway per slide
• Use visuals to highlight the key message on each slide
• Use scaffolding slides to orient your audience and keep them engaged
• Use text size, weight, and color for emphasis
• Apply design choices consistently to avoid distraction
• Split a group presentation by topic
• Use a variety of page layouts to maintain your audience’s interest
• Use presentation templates to help you get started
• Include examples of inspiring people
• Dedicate slides to poignant questions
• Find quotes that will inspire your audience
• Emphasize key points with text and images
• Label your slides to prompt your memory

Watch: How to design a presentation [10 ESSENTIAL TIPS]

Tips for designing and delivering an impactful presentation

What makes a presentation memorable?

It usually comes down to three things:

• The main idea.
• The presenter.
• The visuals.

All three elements work together to create a successful presentation. Just like how different presentation styles serve different purposes, having a good presentation idea will give the audience a purpose for listening. A good presenter communicates the main idea so that the audience cares about it. And compelling visuals help clarify concepts and illustrate ideas.

But how the presenter delivers their presentation and what visuals they use can vary drastically while still being effective. There is no perfect presentation style or presentation design.

Here are some top tips to consider to help you design and deliver an impactful presentation:

Tip #1: Include less text and more visuals in your presentation design

According to David Paradi’s annual presentation survey , the 3 things that annoy audiences most about presentations are:

• Speakers reading their slides
• Slides that include full sentences of text
• Text that is too small to read

The common thread that ties all of these presentation annoyances is text. Audiences are very picky about the text found in presentation slide decks .

In my experiences speaking at conferences and in webinars over the past few years, audiences respond much more positively to presentations that use visuals in place of text.

Audiences are more engaged, ask more questions, and find my talks more memorable when I include lots of visual examples in my slide decks. 

I’m not the only one who has found this. We recently surveyed nearly 400 conference speakers about their presentation designs and found that 84.3% create presentations that are highly visual.

A great example of a high visual presentation is the iconic AirBnB pitch deck design , which includes no more than 40 words per slide. Instead of repeating the speaker’s script on the slides, it makes an impact with keywords, large numbers, and icons:

Learn how to customize this presentation template:

To help you take your presentations to the next level, I’d like to share my process for creating a visually-focused presentation like the one above. I’ll give you my top presentation design tips that I’ve learned over years of presenting:

• Class presentations
• Online courses

You can then apply this process to our professional presentation templates  or pitch decks , creating unique presentation decks with ease! Our user-friendly editor tools make customizing these templates a breeze.

To leave a lasting impression on your audience, consider transforming your slides into an interactive presentation. Here are 15 interactive presentation ideas to enhance interactivity and engagement.

We’ll cover the most important steps for summarizing lengthy text into a presentation-friendly format. Then we’ll touch on some pre sentation design tips to help you get visual with your slide decks. Read on for the best creative presentation ideas.

Tip #2: Identify one core message to center your presentation design around

We know from David Paradi’s survey that audiences are easily overwhelmed with lots of text and data, especially when presentations are long.

(You when you see a presentation with lots of text and data and it’s long)

So unlike in a white paper , report , or essay , you can’t expect to tackle many complex ideas within a single presentation.

That would be a recipe for disaster.

Instead, identify a single central message that you would like to communicate to your audience. Then build your presentation around that core message.

By identifying that core message, you can ensure that everything you include in your presentation supports the goal of the presentation .

As seen below, a great presentation tells you exactly what you’re going to learn (the core message), then gets right to the facts (the supporting information).

To ensure you create an asset that’s clear, concise, impactful, and easy to follow, design your presentation around a single core message.

Tip #3: Create a strong presentation outline to keep you focused

Think of your outline as a roadmap for your presentation. Creating a strong presentation outline straight away helps make sure that you’re hitting all of the key points you need to cover to convey a persuasive presentation .

Take this presentation outline example:

• Introduction and hellos
• Vision and value proposition
• Financial profit
• Your investment
• Thanks and questions

These are all things that we know we need to talk about within the presentation.

Creating a presentation outline makes it much easier to know what to say when it comes to creating the actual presentation slides.

You could even include your presentation outline as a separate slide so that your audience knows what to expect:

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

Tip #4: Eliminate any information that doesn’t support the core message

Next, use that core message to identify everything that doesn’t belong in the presentation.

Aim to eliminate everything that isn’t immediately relevant to the topic at hand, and anything remotely redundant. Cut any information that isn’t absolutely essential to understanding the core message.

By cutting these extra details, you can transform forgettable text-heavy slides:

Into memorable slides with minimal text:

Here’s a quick checklist to help you cut out any extra detail:

Get rid of:

• Detailed descriptions
• Background information
• Redundant statements
• Explanations of common knowledge
• Persuasive facts and figures
• Illustrative examples
• Impactful quotes

This step may seem obvious, but when you’re presenting on a topic that you’re passionate about, it’s easy to get carried away with extraneous detail. Use the recommendations above to keep your text in check.

Clarity is key, especially if you’re presenting virtually rather than in-person. However, Lisa Schneider (Chief Growth Officer at Merriam-Webster) has had plenty of experience making that adjustment. She recently shared her tips for adapting in-person presentations into virtual presentations on Venngage that you can check out. 

Tip #5: Use text to reinforce, not repeat, what you’re saying

According to presentation guru  Nancy Duarte , your audience should be able to discern the meaning of your slides in 6 seconds or less.

Since your audience will tend to read every word you place on each slide, you must keep your text to an absolute minimum. The text on your slides should provide support for what you’re saying without being distracting.

Never write out, word for word, what you’re going to be saying out loud. If you’re relying on text to remember certain points, resist the urge to cram them into your slides. Instead, use a tool like Venngage’s speaker notes to highlight particular talking points. These can be imported into PowerPoint — along with the rest of your presentation — and will only be viewable to you, not your audience.

For the actual slides, text should only be used to reinforce what you’re saying. Like in the presentation design below, paraphrase long paragraphs into short bulleted lists or statements by eliminating adjectives and articles (like “the” and “a”).

Pull out quotes and important numbers, and make them a focus of each slide.

Tip #6: Design your presentation with one major takeaway per slide

As I mentioned above, audiences struggle when too much information is presented on a single slide.

To make sure you don’t overwhelm your audiences with too much information, spread out your content to cover one major takeaway per slide.

By limiting each slide to a single simple statement, you focus your audience’s attention on the topic at hand.

My favorite way to do this is to pick out the core message of whatever I’m talking about and express it in a few keywords, as seen in this presentation slide below.

This helps ensure that the visuals remain the focus of the slide.

Using the text in this way, to simply state a single fact per slide, is a sure-fire way to make an impact in your presentation.

Alternatively, pull out a significant statistic that you want to stick in your audience’s minds and make it a visual focus of the slide, as seen in this popular presentation by Officevibe .

This might mean you end up with a slide deck with a ton of slides. But that’s totally ok!

I’ve talked to many professionals who are pressured by their management teams to create presentations with a specific number of slides (usually as few as 10 or 15 slides for a 30-minute presentation).

If you ask me, this approach is completely flawed. In my mind, the longer I spend sitting on a single slide, the more likely I am to lose the interest of my audience.

How many slides should I use for a 10 minute presentation?

A good rule of thumb is to have at least as many slides as minutes in your presentation. So for a 10 minute presentation you should have at least 10 slides .

Use as many slides as you need, as long as you are presenting a single message on each slide, (as seen in the lengthy presentation template below). This is especially important if you’re presenting your business, or delivering a product presentation. You want to wow your audience, not bore them.

Tip #7: Use visuals to highlight the key message on each slide

As important as having one major takeaway per slide is having visuals that highlight the major takeaway on each slide.

Unique visuals will help make your message memorable.

Visuals are a great way to eliminate extra text, too.

You can add visuals by creating a timeline infographic to group and integrate information into visual frameworks like this:

Or create a flowchart  and funnels:

Or by representing simple concepts with icons, as seen in the modern presentation design below. Using the same color for every icon helps create a polished look.

Using visuals in this way is perfect for when you have to convey messages quickly to audiences that you aren’t familiar with – such as at conferences. This would also make the ideal interview presentation template.

You can alternatively use icons in different colors, like in the presentation templates below. Just make sure the colors are complimentary, and style is consistent throughout the presentation (i.e. don’t use sleek, modern icons on one slide and whimsically illustrated icons on another). In this example, presentation clipart style icons have been used.

Any time you have important stats or trends you want your audience to remember, consider using a chart or data visualization to drive your point home. Confident public speaking combined with strong visualizations can really make an impact, encouraging your audience to act upon your message.

One of my personal favorite presentations (created by a professional designer) takes this “key message plus a visual” concept to the extreme, resulting in a slide deck that’s downright irresistible.

When applying this concept, don’t fall into the trap of using bad stock photos . Irrelevant or poorly chosen visuals can hurt you as much as they help you.

Below is an example of how to use stock photos effectively. They are more thematic than literal and are customized with fun, bright icons that set a playful tone.

The content and visual design of a presentation should be seamless.

It should never seem like your text and visuals are plopped onto a template. The format and design of the slides should contribute to and support the audience’s understanding of the content.

Tip #8: Use scaffolding slides to orient your audience and keep them engaged

It’s easy for audiences to get lost during long presentations, especially if you have lots of slides. And audiences zone out when they get lost.

To help reorient your audience every once in a while, you can use something I like to call scaffolding slides. Scaffolding slides appear throughout a presentation to denote the start and end of major sections.

The core scaffolding slide is the agenda slide, which should appear right after the introduction or title slide. It outlines the major sections of the presentation.

At the beginning of each section, you should show that agenda again but highlight the relevant section title, as seen below.

This gives audiences the sense that you’re making progress through the presentation and helps keep them anchored and engaged.

Alternatively, you can achieve a similar effect by numbering your sections and showing that number on every slide. Or use a progress bar at the bottom of each slide to indicate how far along you are in your presentation. Just make sure it doesn’t distract from the main content of the slides.

You can imagine using this “progress bar” idea for a research presentation, or any presentation where you have a lot of information to get through.

Leila Janah, founder of Sama Group, is great at this. Her  Innovation and Inspire  talk about Sama Group is an example of a presentation that is well organized and very easy to follow.

Her presentation follows a logical, steady stream of ideas. She seems comfortable talking in front of a crowd but doesn’t make any attempts to engage directly with them.

Tip #9: Use text size, weight and color for emphasis

Every slide should have a visual focal point. Something that immediately draws the eye at first glance.

That focal point should be whatever is most important on that slide, be it an important number, a keyword, or simply the slide title.

We can create visual focal points by varying the size, weight, and color of each element on the slide. Larger, brighter, bolder elements will command our audience’s attention, while smaller, lighter elements will tend to fade into the background.

As seen in the presentation template above, this technique can be especially useful for drawing attention to important words within a long passage of text. Consider using this technique whenever you have more than 5 words on a slide.

And if you really want your audience to pay attention, pick a high-contrast color scheme like the one below.

When picking fonts for your presentation, keep this technique in mind. Pick a font that has a noticeable difference between the “bold” font face and the “regular” font face. Source Sans Pro, Times New Roman, Montserrat, Arvo, Roboto, and Open Sans are all good options.

The last thing to remember when using size, weight, and color to create emphasis on a slide: don’t try to emphasize too many things on one slide.

If everything is highlighted, nothing is highlighted.

Tip #10: Apply design choices consistently to avoid distraction

Audiences are quick to pick out, and focus on, any inconsistencies in your presentation design. As a result, messy, inconsistent slide decks lead to distracted, disengaged audiences.

Design choices (fonts and colors, especially), must be applied consistently across a slide deck. The last thing you want is for your audience to pay attention to your design choices before your content.

To keep your design in check, it can be helpful to create a color palette and type hierarchy before you start creating your deck, and outline it in a basic style guide like this one:

I know it can sometimes be tempting to fiddle around with text sizes to fit longer bits of text on a slide, but don’t do it! If the text is too long to fit on a slide, it should be split up onto multiple slides anyway.

And remember, a consistent design isn’t necessarily a boring one. This social media marketing presentation applies a bright color scheme to a variety of 3-column and 2-column layouts, remaining consistent but still using creative presentation ideas.

Tip #11: Split a group presentation by topic

When giving a group presentation it’s always difficult to find the right balance of who should present which part.

Splitting a group presentation by topic is the most natural way to give everybody the chance to attempt without it seeming disjointed.

When presenting this slide deck to investors or potential clients, the team can easily take one topic each. One person can discuss the business model slide, and somebody else can talk about the marketing strategy.

Top tips for group presentations:

• Split your group presentation by topic
• Introduce the next speaker at the end of your slide
• Become an ‘expert’ in the slide that you are presenting
• Rehearse your presentation in advance so that everybody knows their cue to start speaking

Tip #12: Use a variety of page layouts to maintain your audience’s interest

Page after page of the same layout can become repetitive and boring. Mix up the layout of your slides to keep your audience interested.

In this example, the designer has used a variety of combinations of images, text, and icons to create an interesting and varied style.

There are hundreds of different combinations of presentation layers and presentation styles that you can use to help create an engaging presentation . This style is great for when you need to present a variety of information and statistics, like if you were presenting to financial investors, or you were giving a research presentation.

Using a variety of layouts to keep an audience engaged is something that Elon Musk is an expert in. An engaged audience is a hyped audience. Check out this Elon Musk presentation revealing a new model Tesla for a masterclass on how to vary your slides in an interesting way:

Tip #13: Use presentation templates to help you get started

It can be overwhelming to build your own presentation from scratch. Fortunately, my team at Venngage has created hundreds of professional presentation templates , which make it easy to implement these design principles and ensure your audience isn’t deterred by text-heavy slides.

Using a presentation template is a quick and easy way to create professional-looking presentation skills, without any design experience. You can edit all of the text easily, as well as change the colors, fonts, or photos. Plus you can download your work in a PowerPoint or PDF Presentation format.

After your presentation, consider summarizing your presentation in an engaging manner to r each a wider audience through a LinkedIn presentation .

Tip #14: Include examples of inspiring people

People like having role models to look up to. If you want to motivate your audience, include examples of people who demonstrate the traits or achievements, or who have found success through the topic you are presenting.

Tip #15: Dedicate slides to poignant questions

While you might be tempted to fill your slides with decorative visuals and splashes of color, consider that sometimes simplicity is more effective than complexity. The simpler your slide is, the more you can focus on one thought-provoking idea.

Tip #16: Find quotes that will inspire your audience

A really good quote can stick in a person’s mind for weeks after your presentation. Ending your presentation with a quote can be a nice way to either begin or finish your presentation.

A great example of this is Tim Ferriss’ TED talk:

Check out the full talk below.

Tip #17: Emphasize key points with text and images

When you pair concise text with an image, you’re presenting the information to your audience in two simultaneous ways. This can make the information easier to remember, and more memorable.

Use your images and text on slides to reinforce what you’re saying out loud.

Doing this achieves two things:

• When the audience hears a point and simultaneously read it on the screen, it’s easier to retain.
• Audience members can photograph/ screencap the slide and share it with their networks.

Don’t believe us? See this tip in action with a presentation our Chief Marketing Officer Nadya gave recently at Unbounce’s CTA Conference . The combination of text and images on screen leads to a memorable presentation.

Tip #18: Label your slides to prompt your memory

Often, presenters will write out an entire script for their presentation and read it off a teleprompter. The problem is, that can often make your presentation seem  too  rehearsed and wooden.

But even if you don’t write a complete script, you can still put key phrases on your slides to prompt jog your memory. The one thing you have to be wary of is looking back at your slides too much.

A good presentation gets things moving! Check out the top qualities of awesome presentations and learn all about how to make a good presentation to help you nail that captivating delivery.

Audiences don’t want to watch presentations with slide decks jam-packed with text. Too much text only hurts audience engagement and understanding. Your presentation design is as important as your presentation style. 

By summarizing our text and creating slides with a visual focus, we can give more exciting, memorable and impactful presentations.

Give it a try with one of our popular presentation templates:

Want more presentation design tips? This post should get you started:

120+ Best Presentation Ideas, Design Tips & Examples

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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How to Summarize a Presentation with AI

Saving time and effort with Notta, starting from today!

Over the past ten years, I've created hundreds of presentations on PowerPoint (and sometimes on Google Slides) — and I know how important these are for different uses. Whether you want to give a speech, present a product, or share finances in a board meeting, everything is typically possible with a PowerPoint presentation. 

But there's no point in watching a two-hour-long presentation only to know it does not contain any relevant information, right? Thankfully, that's where summarizing a presentation can help. It's like creating a short description that reveals what the viewers can expect from the long slideshow. 

So, how to summarize a presentation , especially when you don't have enough time for it? In this guide, I'll reveal my tried and tested tips to create a short summary. 

What is a Presentation Summary? 

A presentation summary is a short, sweet, and meaningful version of the long video in which you introduce the different components of the presentation and a few key points that you’re talking about. 

In other words, it typically includes the main points or key takeaways that'll provide you with the gist of the presentation — without you having to watch the presentation from start to end. 

Here, you're not trying to convey the entire business strategy or selling points — instead, your goal here is to help the attendees understand the core concept of the presentation. 

How to Summarize a Presentation  

As a freelance writer who wears all the hats of the business, I try to save as much time as I can. As much as I value my time, I look for ways to save energy and effort for my audience. Writing a summary of lengthy videos , articles, documents, interviews , and presentations is one method to help everyone get all the important information in a clear and concise way. However, condensing all information into a few paragraphs (or one page) isn't an easy task. 

Here's the process I follow to summarize presentations in a few paragraphs. 

Identify the Main Goal 

People love free stuff — but only if it's useful. Nobody wants to waste their time and/or effort watching a presentation that does not have the information they need. That's why your first step is to identify the main goal or objective . Here, you'll need to tell them what the presentation is about, what it includes, and what the key takeaways are. 

Write the Summary 

Your ultimate goal is to write the key points in the most concise, easy-to-read way possible. Before you're tempted to include everything in the summary, know that viewers are looking for specific information before they watch the presentation. Tell them why they should spend time on the presentation and fearlessly let them know who the presentation is not meant for. 

Use Visual Aids

While summarizing the presentation, write as though you're talking to someone whose attention you don't want to lose. Get your ideas with the fewest, most effective words possible — but don't forget to add visual aids that keep the audience engaged. It's a great practice for every writer to help their audience not feel overwhelmed with a wall of texts. 

Include Examples and Quotations 

Any presentation is incomplete if you don't include proper examples and quotations. When you write the summary, allot some space for writing examples (two examples per page). Remember, holding onto the reader's attention is very important — and quotations can help you do just that. 

Example of a Presentation Summary 

The presentation summary begins with a hook that draws the audience in, helps them understand the value you offer, provides some proof, and finally ends with a strong CTA. It's relatively easy to incorporate these elements and create a summary. But if you're still finding it hard, here's a real-life presentation summary example for inspiration. 

Today, we are excited to share with you our new Product X — the future of eyewear technology. At Company X, glasses aren't just for style — but it's a combination of comfort, innovation, and productivity.  That's why we developed Product X, which combines two top technologies — AI and AR. The users reported a 20% boost in productivity and a 40% reduction in eye fatigue. It's now available for everyone — and anyone can place their orders on the website. 

Tips for Summarizing a Presentation 

Summaries can be incredibly effective for both hosts and audiences — only if you know how to craft attention-grabbing ones. Here, I'll show you how I summarize a presentation that gets positive responses from almost all the attendees. 

Use Simple Language 

The best presentation summary should be clear, concise, direct, and descriptive . Your main aim is to use simple language and give the attendees what they want. 

My best tip is to: write for your audience, not yourself — and, for this, you need to put yourself in the shoes of a specific audience as you write. 

Be Scannable 

Use bullet points, numbers, and/or bolding to make your summary skimmable and digestible — that emphasizes the key points. The success of the summary will depend upon making the presentation's key takeaways easy for your readers to quickly process the main points. 

Use AI Presentation Summarizer 

If you struggle to condense information into a basic, short summary, give Notta a try. Unlike nearly all other AI presentation summarizer apps on the market, Notta is a more accurate transcriber and summarizer that can condense long audio/video files into an informative summary. 

What I really found useful is Notta's ability to structure a summary into an overview, key chapters, and action items. You can even share this summarized version with the presentation attendees once the meeting is over — helping them understand what was covered in the presentation and what the next steps are. 

Try Notta - the best online transcription & summarization tool. Transcribe and summarize your conversations and meetings quickly with high accuracy.

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How to Do a Good Summary on PowerPoint? 

PowerPoint has become synonymous with presentations — it's a free tool where you can make a slide deck and collaborate with your team. A good summary on PowerPoint can attract more audience to your presentation and even help the attendees get more clarity. Here, I'll reveal the three pillars of writing a good summary. 

Include Key Points: The first thing is to write the key (or main) points in a concise and focused way. You can even use bullet points or some visual aids to keep things clear and uncluttered on slides. 

Identify & Summarize Each Section: If you're giving a lengthy presentation, I'm assuming you've categorized it into different sections. While summarizing, you'll need to focus on each section and identify the key takeaway from it. 

Highlight the Main Takeaway: If the presentation focuses on any problem and offers a solution, it's time to highlight it. As a presenter, you'll need to introduce the problem in the first line, followed by the solution that's offered in the presentation. 

Is There an AI that Summarizes PowerPoint Slides? 

Yes, there are many AI online summarizers that can summarize PowerPoint slides. Copilot in PowerPoint, for example, can read through the slides and provide a bulleted summary with key points. If you've pre-recorded presentation recordings, you are probably searching for a dedicated way to summarize the slides. 

Notta is one powerful and popular AI note-taking application — and, that too, for a good reason. There's a summarizing feature for almost imaginable purposes: just upload the presentation audio/video, and Notta will automatically transcribe the spoken words and then summarize the content. 

Key Takeaways 

Once you discover the power of summaries, the temptation to create summaries for everything is real. But this can leave you with a new problem: a lot of manual work. So, how to summarize a presentation without much time and effort? That's where the third-party AI summary generators make it easy for you.

Notta is an AI note-taking and AI presentation summarizer tool, especially for people who are not making presentations for fun. It comes with a free generous plan and affordable paid plans that help you record, transcribe, and then summarize media files (including presentations) — with high accuracy.

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Home Blog Presentation Ideas The Best Ways for Summarizing Business Presentations

The Best Ways for Summarizing Business Presentations

Two things are the easiest to lose when delivering business presentations. The first is the context, and the second follows very closely, to that, in the interest of your audience. The best way to avoid death by PowerPoint during a business presentation is to summarize your content smartly, in what we call a presentation summary . This article will explain some of the best ways to summarize business presentations using several methods.

Table of Contents

What is a Presentation Summary?

Why should you summarize business presentations, what should be included in the presentation summary, how to summarize business presentations, methods of summarizing different types of presentations, examples of presentation summary, final words.

A presentation summary is an essential part of a talk, providing a brief and clear overview of the main points and key takeaways for the audience. It condenses the speaker’s ideas and any critical conclusions or recommendations, so the audience can easily understand and remember the presentation.

You want to add a summary slide for your presentations for the following reasons:

• A presentation summary emphasizes the core message of a talk that you want your audience to take away.
• Presentation summaries provide clarity on complex information.
• A presentation summary allows you, the speaker, to refresh your audience’s memory and improve retention.
• Lastly, a presentation summary is a helpful reference for the audience to review the presentation’s key points.

Overall, a well-crafted presentation summary is a valuable tool for ensuring that the audience fully grasps and appreciates the presentation’s key messages.

Summarizing presentations, especially business presentations, can be a great way to connect with your audience by sticking to what matters and avoiding losing the translation context. Summarizing presentations can also have many other benefits that can really help you shine as a presenter and take off some of that public speaking anxiety. Below are a few reasons why you should summarize your business presentations.

To Make Content Easier to Explain

Every now and then, we see a presenter who likes to create text-heavy slides and a confusing monotone. Summarizing a presentation can help prevent some of these issues. While some people might have issues due to fear of public speaking, making things easier to explain can’t hurt your chances of delivering a presentation without alienating your audience.

To Make Content Easier to Follow

When a topic is too complex for an audience, it does not help to use jargon outside their area of expertise. This happens more often during business presentations than presenters tend to realize. For example, a presentation discussing a new production process might not be easy to understand for people from the finance or sales department. To make the presentation easy to follow for everyone, a diagram or summary of the process might be easier to explain.

Summarizing business presentations, be it in the form of bullet lists, highlighted keywords in small paragraphs, or focusing on visual aids, can be a great way to make your content easier to follow for your audience. To make your presentation have the required impact, such a summary might actually be necessary rather than an option. Otherwise, you may end up with death by PowerPoint.

To Avoid the Context from Getting Lost in Translation

It is arguably easier to follow a summarized version of the context rather than information that might be too much to handle for an audience. Something that many presenters can tend to forget is the attention span of the audience. Research suggests that the average audience attention span has greatly reduced over the past few years amidst a digitized world. A 2015 research by Microsoft highlighted how the audience could lose interest as quickly as 8 seconds. A second less than the goldfish! More recent research has produced similar results, blaming social media for declining attention spans.

Understanding the need to keep your audience interested can help a presenter summarize their slides to avoid losing the context. This is not necessarily linked only to attention spans, as presentations that are lengthy, dull, and lack stimulation can produce the same negative result. Therefore, it is necessary to summarize your context and keep your audience interested using eye-catching visuals, interactive presentation sessions, and at times, short breaks.

Here are the essential components of a good presentation summary.

1. Key Points of the Presentation

The purpose of a summary in a presentation is to reinforce the key message or messages you want your audience to take with them. Since this slide will serve as a quick reference to the main points of your talk, you want to condense the key points of your presentation into bullet points.

2.  Call to Action

A call to action in the presentation summary can help solidify the main points and key takeaways of the presentation while also motivating the audience to take action. It is especially important if the goal of the presentation is to inspire change or promote a product or service. Without a clear call to action, the audience may forget about the presentation and not take any further steps.

If you’re presenting complex information, adding visual aids may help simplify your message to something your audience understands and remembers. Studies have shown that people remember and understand information better in visual formats such as graphs, charts, or images. You could even create a video summarizing the main points of your presentation in a visually captivating way.

4. Contact Details of the Presenter

Including your contact details in a presentation or summary has many benefits. It makes it easy for the audience to get in touch with you after the presentation and shows that you are willing to engage with them. It may help strengthen your brand.

Now that you know why let’s take a look at how to summarize business presentations in a manner that can help keep your audience interested. To create a presentation summary, you can:

Identify the Main Points of Your Presentation

The central idea of the presentation’s summary slide should be the key message or takeaway that the presenter wants the audience to remember. To identify the essential points of a presentation, you can ask yourself:

• What is the problem my presentation is trying to address?
• What is my goal in delivering the presentation?
• What insights do I want to leave my audience with?

By considering these questions and analyzing the presentation’s content, you can determine the central idea or main point you should highlight in the summary slide.

Create an Outline

It is best to start by collecting your thoughts and outlining what you intend to present. You can take notes and create a sequence that best suits your presentation context. This will also make it easy for you to make your presentation. Starting from the basics to the conclusion. You can use a tool like ChatGPT, which relies on generative AI technology , to create your summary too.

Use Key Highlights in Slides

If you are confused about what content to include in your presentation summary slides, you can pick the key highlights of your presentation. For example, when discussing a business forecast, you can discuss the key trends briefly in your slides. A chart, diagram, or table with basic information can help explain the context quickly and easily.

Emphasize Important Bits of Data, Trends & Analysis

There are some ways you can highlight key aspects of your slides. This can include bullet lists, diagrams, or using a different color for important bits of text. For the latter, you can highlight the names of areas, important financial figures, or other important keywords or phrases to make it easy to present and explain your context. Doing so can also help you quickly recall important information and focus on it, without the need to read your slide to remember where to discuss next.

Use Self-Explanatory Visuals

In economics, students are taught the fundamental concept of unlimited wants and limited resources, often by visualizations. You might see a sketch of a dragon about to eat the whole planet in his hands, with the dragon labeled as ‘wants’ and the planet labeled as ‘resources.’  Visuals like these can help explain complex ideas in a single image. Presenters can use similar visualizations with the help of visual slides or infographics . Not only can such images be downloaded from various websites offering stock images, but you can also use readymade PowerPoint templates to edit and create something similar by labeling infographics and diagram slides.

Use Appropriate Layouts that Support Your Content

A presentation discussing critical issues, losses, and failure can fall on deaf ears if the severity of the issue isn’t explained with a bit of emphasis. Not only does the presenter need to ensure this in his/her tone but also in visuals. Using layouts with colors in red or graphics indicating danger or loss can be a way to edge the message in your audience’s minds visually. Similarly, when discussing rosy prospects, a layout that gives calming visuals can be effective.

Many presentations related to improving the environment and reducing pollution use green layouts to encourage the audience to adopt something visually depicted as desirable and healthy. Similarly, presentations about vacations and tourism often have visuals of sandy beaches, water bodies, and people having fun. The use of relevant visuals and layouts can help support your context without saying too much.

Use Speaker Notes to Support Your Presentation

If you’re worried about losing sight of important information without cramming text in your slides, you can use speaker notes. These are hidden notes that the presenter can see when presenting their presentation. You can learn more about using this feature from our guide about using and printing speaker notes in PowerPoint .

There are a number of methods to cut down on text to summarize your slides. Different types of presentations might need various techniques to do this effectively. Here are a few suggestions to help you summarize different types of presentations using various methods.

Dashboards for Data-driven Presentations

A little-known gem for presenters is the use of Dashboard slides. With Dashboard PowerPoint Templates , you can design data-driven presentations by adding various bits of information in a single slide. This might include tables, charts, diagrams, and clipart in a single slide, divided into various sections.

Quizzes for Informative Presentations

Making your context memorable for an audience can be easier by using interactive sessions. If you’re a teacher, trainer, coach, or giving a product demo, looking to help your audience remember important parts of information, you can use quizzes. The use of quizzes can also help keep your audience attentive and make the session fun for them.

Infographics for Depicting Trends and Complex Data

Infographics can help sum up complex information with visual aids. A diagram about user preferences over the past decade in the form of stats might seem boring. However, the same presentation summed up using infographics can help explain the trends easily. For this purpose, a PowerPoint Template with Infographics can be a great way of quickly designing slides with relevant information.

Timelines and Roadmaps

Timelines and roadmaps are often used to discuss project progress, historical context, and forecasts. Using them can be a good way to summarize lengthy details in the form of a few milestones, dates, and labels.

Business Diagrams that can Help Summarize your Slides.

Business diagrams can be another tool to summarize your presentation. Be it a SWOT or PESTEL analysis, sales funnel, or other business diagrams, you can easily incorporate the entire analysis or discussion using a single visualization.

Making Content Memorable

In a previous article about presentation tips , we mentioned the rule of three. This is an age-old rule implying that anything used three times is ‘perfect’ or memorable. You can use this rule by mentioning key highlights at the start, the middle, and the end of your presentation. Such as perhaps something that triggers a call to action. Similarly, you can repeat a word or phrase three times to make it memorable for your audience. Other techniques that you can use include the use of Rhetorical Triangle and the Zeigarnik Effect .

Sales Summary

Here’s an example of a basic presentation summary for sales, which discusses the sales performance of a diet food manufacturer.

The important figures are highlighted using a graph, which clearly shows the company’s sales trends within a year. Below the graph are the conclusions or the key contributing factors to the success.

The speaker also acknowledged the audience (the employees and stakeholders) and left them with a call to action by encouraging them to innovate more.

Customer Journey Summary

Here’s an example of a customer journey summary for presentations. The horizontal map presents each stage of the customer journey, allowing the audience to quickly grasp the overall flow of the service experience.

The conclusions, on the other hand, highlight the critical lessons from the customer journey example. They provide actionable insights for optimizing processes from marketing to product delivery.

Business Proposal Summary

Here’s an example of a summary slide for a business proposal presentation . It encapsulates the prospect’s pain points with visualizations to create urgency.

The presenters’ implementation plan quickly follows, outlining key strategies and activities to be undertaken. There are also quantifiable expected results, which add credibility to the proposal.

The summary slide ends with a polite encouragement for further discussions, leaving the prospect with the specific contact person.

Project Launch Summary

This slide shows what a project/product launch summary looks like. Using a simple three steps diagram, it maps out the timeline of the website development project. The summary slide includes the project’s key milestones — from its early stage and project launch date down to the evaluation — giving the audience a quick reference of the entire process.

Including the project goal sets a clear expectation for the stakeholders and encourages them to explore opportunities for the future.

When summarizing presentations, it’s good to consider what questions to raise or what pattern to follow to make your presentation sequential and memorable. You can look at the potential good questions to ask, and paraphrase to summarize content while using relevant visualizations and layouts. Whether you’re someone afraid of public speaking or an experienced presenter, knowing that your presentations are brief and to the point can give you a sense of calm. It can also help boost your confidence as you look to grab the valuable attention of your audience while keeping them awake amidst short attention spans and critical details tied to what you are presenting.

1. Key Takeaways Concept Slides for PowerPoint

Use this eye-catching template to summarize the key takeaways from your PowerPoint Presentation.

Use This Template

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