[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhY9MrAStQo]PowerPoint is regaining a much-needed edge in the world of business presentations. Microsoft recently announced some new exciting and easy to use features that will improve presentation design for those who subscribe to Office 365 and who have PowerPoint 2016 or beyond. Some experts are calling the new features like the Live Captions and Subtitles innovative and even, sleek.

1. Live Captions and Subtitles: This is a new and very innovative feature to PowerPoint that transforms and even translates what you are saying into helpful real-time captions and subtitles. These live captions and subtitles also support those who are deaf and hard of hearing in Microsoft’s mission to use artificial intelligence (AI) for social good. This feature also engages those who speak an entirely different language making your PowerPoint presentations more inclusive. This feature will support 12 languages and display captions or subtitles in over 60 languages using AI.

2. Zoom: Say goodbye to clicking from one slide to another and keeping track of how all of those slides work together. PowerPoint’s new Zoom feature is like a presentation’s visual table of contents. You select the slides you want to feature and the Zoom tool will automatically become the menu of all the presentation’s slides. Plus, while on the menu slide, you can “zoom in” or focus in on different parts of the presentation. Zoom is a creative an eye-catching feature that allows presenters to share the overall context of the presentation without having to click through a variety of slides. And it is straightforward to use with three options; the summary zoom, section zoom or the slide zoom. The summary and section features create menu slides that allow presenters to select what to click on. The slide feature cleverly allows you to include a clickable thumbnail into a slide as opposed to the menu slide.

3. Morph: The Morph slide transition feature gives you the opportunity to easily create interesting and seamless transitions between slides, smoother animations, and object movements among slides. Morph allows a presentation of individual slides become like a continual thread creating a type of video. Experts suggest the best way to create a successful Morph is to select two slides that include at least two common objects. A tip is to copy and paste the common object onto two slides and then move the object to a different location on the second slide.

4. Slide Hyperlinking: This is a game changer in PowerPoint’s features. Slide Hyperlinking feature allows you to click on any slide within your presentation creating a more interactive and better flowing presentation. There is a feature, “place in this document” that allows this to happen. If an audience member has a question concerning information on a previous slide, the hyperlink feature takes you back instantaneously.

5. Designer: PowerPoint has taken the mystery out of beautiful presentations with Designer. Designer helps and inspires you to create professional looking slides with ease. This feature will generate a design concept as soon as a photo or other content is inserted. A template including color schemes, font types and selections, and other stylings are recommended. In the end, Design saves you time, effort and stress when creating a presentation.