After looking at adding and customizing templates, the chapter will then move on to demonstrate how you can save even more time by importing existing content from PowerPoint slides. This is a great way to breathe new life into your old presentations, and to show colleagues or clients exactly how Prezi can make the same proven content look even more dynamic and engaging.

When Prezi imports your old PowerPoint presentation, it does this on a slide-by-slide basis, so you can choose how much you want to bring in. You can then deconstruct the elements of each slide you've brought in, as these are all kept separate in Prezi. This means you could update an image on a slide without having to delete the whole thing. This is particularly useful if you do have to change images that are outdated or you do not have the correct licensing permissions.

This chapter will take you through utilizing all of the features mentioned previously in a step-by-step format. It will...

We will start off by creating a Prezi from a template and then move on to look at customizing this template.

As we just discussed, Prezi has a selection of predetermined templates, which have all the formatting, design, and layout already created for you. These templates are easily editable, so they can be used as a starting point, and do allow you to still customize your own design, but we'll get to customization later.

As mentioned in the introduction of this book, Prezi allows you to create a range of presentation styles, meaning you don't have to stick with a nonlinear format. The templates are already set up in a range of styles, and when choosing a template, you should consider which flow would work best for your presentation. The templates can also be useful to demonstrate how different styles might work, so don't be afraid to take some time and experiment with the different flows and get a feel for nonlinear presentations.

Let's...

Now that we have created our presentation using a Prezi template, we can start to customize the content within it. First, we will look at how to add more text, and we will then move on to look at how to change the color theme.

There are a couple of useful tips to learn before we can start customizing the template. First, if you left-click and hold on any empty area of the screen, you can drag the mouse to move the Prezi around. If you hover your mouse over any of the content, it should get selected with a blue box, and you can then click on Zoom to Frame to zoom into it. This is particularly useful when entering text into some of the smaller frames. Now, let's put these tips into practice with the help of the following steps:

Now that we have established how to create a Prezi from a template and how to add text and apply different themes, we can look at how to import our existing content from a PowerPoint presentation. For this section of the chapter, you will need an existing PowerPoint presentation to work with.

When you add your PowerPoint slides to Prezi, it turns each slide into a separate frame. A frame is Prezi's way of grouping together different content, just like PowerPoint groups content by using slides. Once the slide is converted into a frame, Prezi identifies each individual element of content that went into making that slide, such as images, title text, and body text. This means you can still edit and remove these elements individually, just as you would be able to in PowerPoint.

In Prezi, it is easy to have frames within other frames (whereas it is inelegant and clunky to have a slide within a slide when using PowerPoint); this allows you to create subframes...

This chapter has taught us how to create a Prezi presentation using a template, and then how to customize that template. We discussed how changing the color involves being mindful of the styling and elements of the theme we have chosen. We also looked at adding in our existing PowerPoint slides.

We briefly looked at the risks of creating a feeling of motion sickness in the audience, which is a potential pitfall for new users. This is comparable to new users of PowerPoint who feel compelled to overanimate slides by zooming text and animations. Similar to this, motion sickness in Prezi can be eradicated by carefully considering movements around the canvas. Never try to move too far off too sharply. Smaller movements are preferable, and try not to move too jarringly in opposite directions from frame to frame. Ensuring you have a smooth and gentle path through the presentation will mean you are able to enjoy the enormous benefits of Prezi's nonlinear design and customizability.

The...