Microsoft’s new online presentation product offers new features but poses no real threat to PowerPoint, here’s why!

Microsoft has released a new presentation tool, called Sway, that has many people wondering if they’re trying to replace PowerPoint. While this new presentation tool offers a whole host of new and innovative features, it is in no way meant to replace PowerPoint.

New features of the Sway presentation platform

Sway is mobile friendly / device responsive

Unlike PowerPoint, Sway is completely online. This allows presentations to be easily created in any browser, regardless of device. Microsoft also offers a Sway mobile app for free.

Sway has a more consolidated navigation structure

With Sway, gone are the days of multiple dropdown menus nestled within dropdown menus like in PowerPoint. Sway has a much cleaner interface and doesn’t use slides at all. Instead Sway presentations are heavy on scrolling, similar to many of today’s popular websites.

Sway can be your design assistant

While PowerPoint offers an almost endless amount of customization options, this can become intimidating at times. With Sway you get a digital design assistant that does the heavy lifting for you. Instead of having to scroll through mountains of font menus, you can simply click on an icon called “Remix,” which instantly switches out the font and matches it to a new background.

Easily embed online content

Sway makes it extremely easy to embed content inside your presentations. Built-in content sources include OneDrive, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and your devices.

Sway has no ‘Save’ button

Have you ever spent hours on a PowerPoint presentation only to have your work lost due to a power outage or computer issue? With Sway, all of your content is automatically saved in the cloud. Don’t worry though, you still have an ‘Undo’ button in case you want to revert any of your changes.

Reasons why PowerPoint isn’t going anywhere

People still want full control

While Sway is great for quickly creating presentations to be shared online, you give up some functionality for this ease of use. For those users who want to control every aspect of their presentation, PowerPoint is still the tool of choice.

Better integration with Word and Excel

While Sway offers limited copy and paste features and formatting options, PowerPoint makes it extremely easy to copy content from Word and Excel. This means that if your presentation is heavy with charts and other content that you’re pulling from other Office programs you may be better off using PowerPoint.

Customization

PowerPoint offers full customization, whereas Sway utilizes a design engine, which has limitations.

Branding opportunities

PowerPoint makes it extremely easy to maintain your company’s brand image, unlike Sway, which is simply not geared to utilize company branded templates.

Interact with live audiences

When interacting with a live audience, PowerPoint offers a much better viewing experience. Sway presentations are typically through a browser or mobile device.

There’s still a need for both PowerPoint and Sway

While Sway offers a large number of exciting new features for users looking to create presentations to be consumed online, it’s likely not going to replace PowerPoint. Sway seems to be geared more toward casual environments where individuals are looking for a way to easily create presentations to be shared online without having to spend large amounts of time on the initial design process.

Depending on your needs, PowerPoint and Sway both offer unique ways to easily get content in front of your target audience through interactive presentations.

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