Worried about a presentation? Microsoft PowerPoint can help you practice

Microsoft Presenter Coach, a feature that can help you practice presentations, has been made available on the Microsoft PowerPoint web version for a while now and is finally coming to the desktop and mobile versions too. Microsoft has announced that the Presenter Coach on PowerPoint will now be available on Mac, Windows, iOS and Android.

The PowerPoint Presenter Coach listens to you practicing your presentation out loud and analyses what you are saying. It can warn you if you are going too fast or too slow and also warns you if you use too many filler words like “umm” or “aah”. It will also point out if you are just reading off the slides instead of actually presenting.

At the end of the presentation practice it also gives you a little report telling you about what you need to practice.

Besides the fact that the PowerPoint Presenter Coach is now available on various platforms, there are also some new ways this feature can help your presentation better - like it can look at your body language, how close you are to the camera or if you are making enough eye contact or are putting things in front of your face. 

And it also warns you if you are repeating words or saying them wrong and tells you off if you swear while presenting.

The feature that warns you about swearing didn’t seem to turn up on Mac while being tested by The Verge, but it was there on iOS. Microsoft has not mentioned when this feature is going to turn up on the Mac. There is also no information about whether the vocal and video analysis was done on-device or in the cloud for the desktop and mobile versions.

For proper analysis and the use of the coaching feature, you do need internet access though. The PowerPoint Presenter Coach cannot coach you without it.