Goal
You’ll practice reviewing existing presentations for common design mistakes, applying diagnostic thinking from across this entire course to spot problems in a presentation you didn’t build yourself.
Learn
Reviewing a presentation is a genuinely different skill from building a new one — it requires actively checking for specific known problem patterns, not just glancing at whether it looks reasonable. A structured review checklist, pulling together this whole course:
- Chart type mismatches (Part 3.2): Is a pie chart being used for data that isn’t genuinely parts of one whole?
- Overloaded Blank-layout slides (Part 1.3): Is a slide manually recreating structure that an appropriate existing layout would have provided automatically?
- Unreliable linked content (Part 3.3, Part 5.3): Does the presentation depend on linked Excel data or online video that might not be accessible wherever it’s actually opened?
- Inconsistent manual branding (Part 5.1): Is a logo or consistent element manually placed on each slide individually, rather than added once via the Slide Master?
- Animation overload (Part 4.3): Does every single animation require a manual click, creating unnecessary live-delivery friction?
This kind of review reveals that a presentation can look completely polished at a glance while still containing genuine structural problems — a linked chart looks identical to an embedded one until the presentation is actually opened on a different computer and the connection breaks.
Decision Task
You’re reviewing a presentation and notice a distorted, stretched-looking photo on one slide. Before reading on: what specific mistake from Part 1.4 does this most likely represent, and what would the correct fix be?
Show Answer
This is most likely the side-handle resizing mistake from Part 1.4 — dragging a side or top/bottom resize handle instead of a corner handle, stretching the image in just one dimension. The fix is undoing the distortion and resizing again using a corner handle instead, which preserves the image’s original proportions correctly.
Common Mistake
Reviewing a presentation purely by checking whether it looks polished at a glance, rather than actually checking for the specific structural problems this whole course has covered. A presentation can look completely fine on the computer it was built on while still containing a linked-data or linked-video dependency that will break the moment it’s opened somewhere else.
Practice Questions
1. A reviewed presentation has a pie chart showing five regions’ independent sales totals that don’t sum to a meaningful combined figure. What’s wrong, from Part 3.2?
Show Answer
A chart type mismatch — pie charts should represent parts of one meaningful whole, not independent values being compared, which a column/bar chart would represent correctly instead.
2. A reviewed presentation has the same logo manually placed slightly differently on several different slides. What does Part 5.1 say about the correct fix?
Show Answer
The logo should be added once to the Slide Master, ensuring consistent, automatic placement across every slide, rather than manually and inconsistently placed on each one individually.
3. A reviewed presentation is about to be emailed to a client, but its main chart uses linked (not embedded) Excel data. What real risk does Part 3.3 identify here?
Show Answer
The client won’t have access to the source Excel file, so the linked chart will likely show broken or outdated data on their computer — the fix is embedding the data instead before sending.
4. True or False: a presentation that looks completely polished on the computer it was built on is reliable evidence that it has no underlying structural problems.
Show Answer
False — this is exactly the core lesson here; problems like linked-data dependencies only reveal themselves under specific future conditions, like opening the presentation on a different computer.
5. List the five review checklist categories from this lesson, in your own words.
Show Answer
Chart type mismatches, overloaded Blank-layout slides, unreliable linked content, inconsistent manual branding, and animation overload requiring excessive manual clicks.
Try It Yourself
Using this lesson’s checklist, review a presentation you have access to (or one you’ve built during this course), and see if you can spot at least one likely issue from the checklist.
This is an open, ungraded reflection exercise — there is no single correct answer to reveal.
Quick Check
1. Why is reviewing a presentation a genuinely different skill from building a new one?
Show Answer
It requires actively checking for specific known problem patterns, not just glancing at whether it looks reasonable.
2. What chart-related check does the audit checklist include?
Show Answer
Whether a chart type genuinely fits the data it’s displaying.
3. What linking-related check does the audit checklist include?
Show Answer
Whether the presentation depends on linked Excel data or online video that might not be accessible elsewhere.
4. Can a presentation look completely polished while still having a genuine underlying problem?
Show Answer
Yes — this is the core point of this lesson; some problems only become visible under specific future conditions.
5. What branding-related check does the audit checklist include?
Show Answer
Whether a logo or consistent element is manually placed inconsistently, rather than added via the Slide Master.