IT Quick Tips

PowerPoint / Sway

PowerPoint vs Sway: perks and differences

General

PowerPoint is still the king of the slide deck and works best for content that will have a presenter. It can also be used to make simple videos, including screen recordings.

Sway can be used to create interactive presentations and content that don’t need a presenter. Sway works well with both image heavy (like portfolios) and text-heavy content (like reports).

Layout

Can only be created in slideshow format. However, some features and effects can be used to make a presentation seem continuous. For example, you can add transitions and timers to run through presentations automatically.

3 different layout options for how the content is presented: vertical (like scrolling through a webpage), horizontal (continuous scroll sideways), and Slideshow (similar to PowerPoint).

Templates

There are thousands of templates available for PowerPoint, many available when you open the program. You can also create your own presentation templates.

There are 25 templates available on Sway. You can also save a Sway as a template. There also are a few design templates called “Styles”, but they control the overall design only. 

Adding content

You can manually add a wide variety of content to your presentation. It includes  text, images, photo albums, charts and graphs (which you can create within Powerpoint), audio and video, equations, screen recordings (which you can record from within Powerpoint), etc. You may also insert 3D objects, but they have to be created seperately.

You can upload content (like a Word Document) directly to Sway and let it build the bones of your presentation for you. Sway supports OneDrive, so you can add content you’ve saved there. You can also pull in web content, like a Youtube video. Sway also suggests content based on what you’ve already added. 

Sharing

AUP gives you an Office 365 subscription, so you can easily share your PowerPoint presentation by email or link. Lock the presentation before sending however, otherwise whoever you share it with will be able to edit it.

You’ll need to send the recipients the link to your Sway since it is on online tool.

You have a few options for who you can share with (specific people, your coworkers, anyone) and what access they will get (view only or edit). Just be careful which link you send: edit or view. You also can control whether or not they have access to share it with others. 

Collaborating

You can collaborate with multiple users at the same time thanks to the AUP Office 365 subscription. It won’t be possible with the add alone.

Since Sway is cloud-based, it includes collaboration. You’ll just need to make sure you select “Edit” in the “Invite people to…” section when creating a link.