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How to Present a PowerPoint Slideshow (w/ Shortcuts)

• PowerPoint Tutorials
• Shortcuts & Hacks
• May 11, 2019

There are a variety of ways to start a PowerPoint presention, depending on:

• Where you start your presentation (from beginning or from current)
• Which PowerPoint view you prefer to present in (Slide Show view or Presenter view)
• How comfortable you are with keyboard shortcuts

Why would Microsoft include so many ways to present a presentation? My guess is that everyone learns PowerPoint differently, and has personal presentation styles.  The more options you have, the easier your life will be as there will always be a way to start your presentation the way you want to (or jump back into it when you need to).

See all the options below and find the method that works best for you and let the slide show begin !

NOTE: If you are running two presentations side-by-side, each presentation needs to be started as it’s own slide show. To see how to set up two PowerPoint presentations to run side-by-side like this before you start your slide show, read my guide here .

Table of Contents

Start slide show from beginning.

To start a slideshow from the beginning of your presentation using the ribbon, simply.

• Navigate to the  Slide Show tab
• Select  From Beginning

Selecting  From Beginning  starts your presentation from the very first non-hidden slide in your presentation, regardless of which slide you are currently inside of your deck.

You can also start your slide from the beginning of your presentation by hitting the Slideshow From Beginning keyboard shortcut,  F5 .

Regardless of which method you use, this is the classic way to start your presentation in full screen from your first title slide (regardless of where you are in your slide deck).

Let the slide show begin!

NOTE: To expand your knowledge and learn how to use PowerPoint’s FREE and HIDDEN built-in laser pointer to point things out during your presentation, read my guide here .

Take your PPT skills to the next level

Start slide show from current.

To begin your slide show from the slide you are currently on using the ribbon, simply

• Navigate to the Slide Show tab
• Select  From Current Slide

Selecting From Current Slide starts your slide show from whatever slide you are currently on, even if the slide is hidden.

You can also start your slide from the current slide you are on by hitting the  Shift+F5  keyboard shortcut.

Because it’s often easiest to catch errors when building your slides in this full screen mode, I highly recommend learning the  Shift+F5  shortcut and using it frequently as you build your slides to spot them for errors.

If you don’t want to bother learning the From Current Slide shortcut, you can also start your slideshow by clicking the  Slide Show  icon at the bottom of your screen.

This is a fantastic way to spot check your slides as you are building them. On top of that, it’s a fast and uncomplicated way to re-start your presentation from where you left off after demoing something on screen.

Start a mini-slide show in PowerPoint

You can also use the following hidden PowerPoint shortcut to run a mini slide show over the top of your current deck.

To run a mini slide show, simply:

• Hold down the  Alt key  on your keyboard
• With your mouse, click the  Slide Show  icon

Doing so starts a small slide show of your presentation that you can see below, from the current slide you are on.

Presenter View

The Presenter View is an alternate way to run your presentation in PowerPoint. In this view, your slides are projected on screen, and the details of your presentation are displayed on your computer as pictured below.

The presenter view includes your next (non-hidden) slides that is coming up, your current slide projected on screen, how long you’ve been talking and your speaker notes.

To launch the  Presenter View  from the beginning of your presentation using your Ribbon, simply:

• Navigate to the  Slide Show  tab
• Hold down the  Alt key on  your keyboard
• Click  From Beginning

Holding down the  Alt key  and clicking  From Beginning , the Presenter View will launch from the very first (non-hidden) slide in your presentation.

You can also launch the presenter view from the beginning of your presentation at any time by clicking Alt + F5  on your keyboard.

Start Presenter View in PowerPoint From Current Slide

Did you know that you can access different views in PowerPoint by adding keys as you click commands in the PowerPoint ribbon?

To start the Presenter view from your current slide using your Ribbon, simply:

• Hold down the Alt key on your keyboard
• Click  From Current Slide

Holding the Alt key and clicking From Current Slide launches the Presenter View from your current slide. So, this is another way you can quickly practice your presentation, see your speaker notes and see what’s coming up next.

You can also launch the Presenter View from the beginning of your presentation at any time by hitting Alt+F5 on your keyboard.

Showing and Hiding Presenter View

Regardless of which view you start your PowerPoint slide show; you can switch between the two different slide show views without exiting presentation.

To switch between the two slideshow views (while giving your presentation), simply:

• Right-click your slide in whichever presentation view you are currently in
• Select either Show Presenter View or Hide Presenter View

When would you use a feature like this during a presentation? One example is if you want to view your notes without leaving the slide show mode.

NOTE: The letter r  for both  Show Presenter View  and  Hide Presenter View  is underlined. This means that it is a keyboard shortcut. So, if you want to quickly flip between these two presentation views, you can simply right-click your slide and hit the letter r on your keyboard. Doing so automatically switches the view you are in.

Controlling how your presentation runs

Another way to control how your presentation runs (including the default laser pointer and pen color), is the Set Up Slide Show dialog box.

To open the  Set Up Slide Show  dialog box, simply:

• Select the  Set Up Slide Show  command

Doing so, opens all your PowerPoint slide show settings and options as pictured below.

Inside the slide show settings dialog box, you can select:

• How your presentation runs (full screen, window or in kiosk mode).
• Your default pen and laser pointer color options ( see our laser pointer article here ).
• Which slide you want start from, or which slides you want to show. You can also setup a custom show here.
• How your slides progress (manually or using slide timings).
• Which of your computer monitors (or screens) your slide show runs on.

The  Set Up Slide Show dialog box is also the secret to running multiple presentations at the same time in PowerPoint. To expand your knowledge and learn how to set this up, read our guide here .

Setup Slide Show SECRET Shortcut

To use the SECRET shortcut to open the Set Up Slide Show dialog box, simply:

• Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard
• With your mouse, click the Reading View icon at the bottom of your screen

This is useful when you need to quickly cycle through lots of PowerPoint presentations and change how those presentations run. Instead of wasting time clicking through the Ribbon, simply hold the Shift key and click the  Reading View icon. This is also a friendly conversation starter with a fellow PowerPoint enthusiast at Happy Hour.

NOTE: The color of your Reading View icon might be different than in the picture above, as it is dependent on the Office Theme you selected for PowerPoint.

How to exit a PowerPoint presentation early?

Regardless of how you start your full screen presentation, you can end your presentation at any time by hitting the Esc key on your keyboard.

Hitting  Esc  immediately takes you out of the   PowerPoint presentation mode and back to the normal editing view of your slides, on whatever slide you were last presenting.

Here is how you can use a combination of all the different keyboard shortcuts to spot check and practice your presentation in full screen before you finalize your presentation.

• Hit  F5  on your keyboard to   start your presentation in full screen from the very first slide in your presentation. You can then use your arrow keys to advance, spot checking your slides for errors.
• When you find an error, simply hit  Esc  key to return to the normal PowerPoint editing view to fix your slide.
• When you are done, hit  Shift + F5  to return the full screen presentation mode from the slide you just updated. You can then continue spot checking your presentation (without having to start over from the beginning).

In this way you can quickly work your way through your slides and practice your presentation, fixing and adjusting your content as you go.

Understanding how to run your presentations is CRITICAL to the success of your presentation. Not only in presenting them live, but also in knowing how to spot check your slides as you build them.

I personally find it easiest to spot check your slides and quickly fix errors by running your presentation in slide show mode (or full screen). The last place you want to discover an error is during your presentation.

Using the commands and shortcuts above, you can quickly start, exit and step back into your slide show. Once you have these commands and features down, you will also look like a whiz during your presentations.

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How to Run a PowerPoint Slide Show Automatically (Set Up a Self-Running Presentation)

Easily Create a Self-Running PowerPoint Slide Show

by Avantix Learning Team | Updated November 12, 2021

Applies to: Microsoft ®  PowerPoint ®  2013, 2016, 2019 and 365 (Windows)

You can set up self-running PowerPoint slide shows to run automatically at trade shows, conventions, events or as web-based presentations. Prior to setting up a self-running presentation, you'll need to apply your preferred animations to text and objects as well as any slide transitions to be be included in the show (unless specified otherwise in the Set Up Show dialog box). When you create automatic slide shows, you also have the option of including specific slide timings, narrations or voice over and ink annotations.

Recommended article: How to Draw on PowerPoint Slides on the Fly During a Presentation (Using Ink)

Do you want to learn more about PowerPoint? Check out our virtual classroom or in-person PowerPoint courses >

Setting up a self-running presentation

When you set up a self-running presentation, you can choose 3 options in the Set Up Show dialog box depending on your audience:

To set up a PowerPoint presentation to run automatically, but allow those watching the slide show to have control over when they advance slides:

• Click the Slide Show tab in the Ribbon and then click Set Up Slide Show. A dialog box appears.
• Under Show type, select Presented by a speaker (full screen). This is the default setting for slide shows.

To set up a presentation to run automatically, but those watching the slide show do NOT have control over when slides advance:

• Under Show type, select Browsed by an individual (window).

To set up a presentation to run automatically, but those watching the slide show do NOT have control over when slides advance and the presentation repeats until the people watching press Escape (ESC):

• Under Show type, select Browsed at kiosk (full screen).

Setting slide timings manually

You can choose to rehearse slide timings or you can manually set the slide timings for your PowerPoint slides using the Transitions tab in the Ribbon.

To set slide timings manually:

• Click the View tab in the Ribbon and then click Slide Sorter.
• Select the slide for which you want to set timing.
• Click the Transitions tab in the Ribbon.
• In the Timing group, under Advance Slide, select the After check box and then enter the number of seconds indicating how long the slide should appear on the screen. If you want the next slide to appear either when you click the mouse or automatically after the number of seconds that you enter (whichever comes first), select both the On Mouse Click and the After check boxes.
• Repeat the process for each slide for which you want to set timing.

Rehearsing and recording slide timings

If you choose Browsed by an individual (window) or Browsed at a kiosk (full screen) in the Set Up Show dialog box, you can rehearse and record timings for animations, transitions and advancing slides.

To rehearse timings, you'll use the Rehearsal toolbar shown below:

The toolbar includes the following buttons from left to right:

• Next (advance to next slide)
• Total presentation time

Click the buttons in the Rehearsal toolbar to perform the following actions:

• Click Next to advance to the next slide.
• To temporarily stop recording the time, click Pause.
• To restart recording the time after pausing, click Pause.
• To set an exact length of time for a slide to appear, type the length of time in the Slide Time box.
• To restart recording the time for the current slide, click Repeat.

To rehearse timings:

• Click the Slide Show tab in the Ribbon and then click Rehearse Timings. The Rehearsal toolbar appears and the timer begins immediately. The presentation appears in full screen recording mode.
• Click the desired buttons. Click Next to advance to the next slide or press the right arrow on your keyboard. To temporarily stop recording the time, click Pause. To restart recording the time after pausing, click Pause. To set an exact length of time for a slide to appear, type the length of time in the Slide Time box. To restart recording the time for the current slide, click Repeat.
• Continue clicking on the appropriate buttons until you are satisfied with the timings. The total presentation time appears on the top right of the Rehearsal toolbar.
• After you set the time for the last slide, a dialog box displays the total time for the presentation and another dialog box appears.
• To keep the recorded slide timings, click Yes. To discard the recorded slide timings, click No.

The presentation appears. If you view the presentation in Slide Sorter View, the slide timing is displayed below each slide.

Recording a slide show with timings

Instead of using the Rehearse Timings button, you can record timings (and narrations or voice over) as you record a show. The Record Slide Show button appears on the Slide Show tab in the Ribbon. When you record a slide show, you can start from the beginning or the current slide:

After you choose to record a slide show, you will have the option of including slide and animation timings as well as narrations, ink, and laser pointer (2010 users will not have the option of recording ink annotations):

If you select Slide and animation timings, PowerPoint automatically records the time you spend on each slide, including animations and triggers on each slide. If you have already rehearsed timings, they will be replaced.

If you use the pen, highlighter, eraser or laser pointer, those will also be recorded. Pen, highlighter, and eraser recording are available only if you have PowerPoint 2013 (and run updates) or a later version of PowerPoint. In earlier versions of PowerPoint, pen and highlighter strokes are saved as ink annotation shapes. To learn more about including ink, check out the article  How to Draw on PowerPoint Slides on the Fly During a Presentation (Using Ink) .

To record a slide show and include animations and timings:

• Click the Slide Show tab in the Ribbon and then click the arrow beside Record Slide Show. A drop-down menu appears.
• Select Start Recording from Beginning or Start Recording from Current Slide. A dialog box appears.
• Select the option to include slide and animation timings.
• Click Start Recording. The Rehearsal toolbar appears and the timer begins immediately. The presentation appears in full screen recording mode.
• If you want to record timings, click the desired buttons. Click Next to advance to the next slide or press the right arrow on your keyboard. To temporarily stop recording the time, click Pause. To restart recording the time after pausing, click Pause. To set an exact length of time for a slide to appear, type the length of time in the Slide Time box. To restart recording the time for the current slide, click Repeat.
• To end your recording at any time, right-click on a slide and select End Show from the menu.

The presentation appears. In Slide Sorter view, the slide timing is displayed below each slide.

Recording narrations or voice over

In addition to timings, you may want to add narrations or voice over. You can record narrations before you run a presentation or you can record narrations during a presentation and include audience comments. When you add narrations, PowerPoint automatically records your slide timings. Alternatively, you can set the slide timings first. Be sure to test the microphone first. If you do not want narrations throughout your entire presentation, you can record separate sounds or comments on selected slides or objects.

To record narrations, your computer requires a sound card, microphone, speakers and a webcam (optionally). You will also need a microphone connector if the microphone is not part of your computer.

It's not a bad idea to create a script first in Microsoft Word to improve flow and avoid filler words such as "um". You may also want to practice before recording although you can always re-record narration.

To record a slide show with narrations:

• In the Record Slide Show dialog box, select the check box for Narrations and laser pointer and, if required, select or deselect the Slide and animation timings check box.
• Click Start Recording. A Rehearsal toolbar appears.
• Speak into the microphone to record a narration.
• To pause the narration, in the Rehearsal toolbar, click Pause. To resume the narration, click Resume Recording.
• To end your slide show recording at any rime, right-click on the slide and then select End Show.

The recorded slide show timings and narrations are saved. If you view the presentation in Slide Sorter view, timings appear beneath each slide. A sound icon also appears in the lower-right corner of each slide that has narration.

If you re-record your narration (including audio, ink, and laser pointer), PowerPoint erases your previously recorded narration (including audio, ink, and laser pointer) when you start recording again on the same slide.

To use ink, eraser, or the laser pointer during your recording, right-click on the slide, select Pointer options and choose the laser pointer, pen, highlighter or eraser. Ink is not available for 2010 users. If you want to display a laser pointer while you're recording, press Control and your pointer will appear as a small red circle on your screen.

Previewing narration

If you want to listen to the narration on a slide:

• In Normal View, click the sound icon in the lower-right corner of the slide.
• Click Play.

Running a recorded slide show

To run a recorded slide show in Normal View:

• If necessary, on the Slide Show tab in the Ribbon, click Set Up Slide Show. A dialog box appears.
• Under Show type, select the desired option.
• On the Slide Show tab, click From Beginning or From Current Slide. During playback, your animations, inking actions, laser pointer, audio and video play in sync.
• To end the show, press Escape.

Turning timings or narrations off

You can turn off timings and narrations and then turn them on again at any time.

To turn off recorded slide timings, on the Slide Show tab, deselect the Use Timings check box.

To turn off recorded narrations, ink, and the laser pointer, on the Slide Show tab, deselect the Play Narrations check box.

Deleting timings or narration

You can use the Clear command to permanently delete timings or narration from your slide show recording. You have 4 options:

• Delete timings on the current slide
• Delete timings on all slides
• Delete narration on the current slide
• Delete narration on all slides

To clear timings or narrations:

• On the Slide Show tab, click the arrow below Record Slide Show. A menu appears.
• Select Clear and then the appropriate clear option.

Once you have recorded a presentation, you can later save it as a video if you'd like.

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More resources

A Beginner's Guide to Video Formats in PowerPoint

How to Hide and Unhide Slides in PowerPoint (with Shortcuts)

How to Insert Video in PowerPoint (from a File on Your PC or a Shared Drive)

PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcuts to Play and Control Video During a Slide Show

How to Add Animation in PowerPoint (Animate Images, Text and Other Objects)

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How to Play PowerPoint Slides Automatically

The PowerPoint autoplay feature is an amazing tool for creating slideshows that advance automatically . Self-running PowerPoint presentations are great for leaving in kiosks or publicity booths. You can even show them with recordings or voiceovers to make sure your audience gets the most out of it. 

Forget worrying about clicking from slide to slide, today we will teach you how to play PowerPoint slides automatically!

We’ll cover the following topics:

Why should you use the automatic slideshow PowerPoint feature?

• How to Play PowerPoint Slides Automatically without Clicking - Option 1
• How to play slideshow in PowerPoint automatically - Option 2

How to make PowerPoint slides advance automatically with audio 

• How to loop slides in PowerPoint
• Check out some experts’ best practices for Automatic slideshows in PowerPoint

How to automatically play PowerPoint presentations across devices

How to play powerpoint slides automatically without clicking on mac, elevate your presentation with professional designs: try 24slides today.

Using the automatic slideshow feature has many benefits . The main one is its practicality; it is a tool you can set up in advance so that you eliminate the need for ongoing attention and your presentation flow is better. 

And that’s not all, you can even add voiceovers, recordings, and even laser pointer gestures to make sure your audience gets the most out of your presentation.

It becomes particularly beneficial in the following scenarios:

• Business presentations: An automatically progressing presentation can help you focus on your content without worrying about going slide by slide, which can often be distracting and disrupt your rhythm.
• Publicity: Self-running presentations can be great if you use them for publicity. For example, if you have a kiosk or booth, a self-running PowerPoint slideshow can help you reach more people without them having to speak one-on-one with a salesperson. 
• E-Learning: In e-learning modules or training presentations, autoplay can help learners progress through the material while listening to your lecture. However, they can also pause and rewind to go to the specific section they wish to revisit.
• Photo or Video Slideshows: Autoplay is commonly used in photo or video slideshows for events such as weddings or birthdays. It can serve as a background loop, or you can present it at a special moment along with music or narration to enhance the experience.

How to Play PowerPoint Slides Automatically without Clicking: Option 1

There are a couple of different ways to make your slides run automatically, and we'll go over both options. This first option is for when you need a really customized presentation: personalized timing for each slide, voiceovers, or laser pointer gestures . 

If this is your case, go ahead with this section, but if you’d like something a bit simpler, proceed to Option 2.

• The first step is to go to the Slide Show Tab. On the Set Up group, you’ll find the Set Up Slide Show option to start customizing your self-running presentation.

• Once the Set Up Show Window opens, deselect the Presented by a speaker option, as it refers to manually advancing your slides, either by clicking or using keys. Next, consider several options for the automatic slideshow:

• Browsed by an individual is one choice for creating a self-running PowerPoint presentation. This option permits you to deliver your slides within a window, as opposed to the typical full-screen mode. Ensure that the Use timings, if present option is enabled for this feature to function correctly.
• Another option is the Browsed at a kiosk , which allows you to run a full-screen, continuous slideshow automatically. This option locks in both the looping and timing settings, ensuring that your slideshow will continue until you press the ESC key.

If you’re not sure what option is the best for you, remember you can always select manually the loop and timings option . Try different options with these and try out how your presentation will look like with the different settings.

• The next step is to set your timings. This means defining how much time you want your PowerPoint slideshow to spend on each slide before automatically advancing to the next one.

To set your timings, click on Rehearse Timings , which will allow you to go through your presentation slide by slide, and it’ll record how much time you spend on each one. 

After you finish going through all your slides, a message will pop up to save your timings. Click yes so you can save the time spent on each slide.

How to play slideshow in PowerPoint automatically: Option 2

Let’s take a look at a different way of using the PowerPoint autoplay feature. This option is great if you’re looking for something simple and just want your slides to advance automatically at regular intervals. 

• First, open the Transitions Tab and locate the Timing Group.

• Go to the After option and manually add how much time you want to spend on each of your slides.

Select the Apply To All option so all your slides have the same timing.

You can also deselect the On Mouse Click option, depending on whether you want to be able to advance your slides by clicking or not.

Adding audio to your automatic PowerPoint is a fantastic feature to enhance your professional image and communicate your content without needing to be present. Let’s take a look at how to do it:

• Go to the Slide Show Tab and select Record Slide Show . Choose Record From Beginning to start with the first slide.

When the fullscreen opens, you will be able to see your first slide along with several options:

• Start in Settings (1) and select the tools you will be using. You have the option to use a microphone, or you can record yourself talking on camera. Choose your microphone and/or camera for recording.
• Next (2) , decide whether you want to have the microphone or camera you selected turned on. You can also choose to have a video preview.
• When you're ready to start recording, go to the top left corner (3) and click Record to start, Stop to pause, and Replay to review how it went.
• Once you finish with a slide, click on the right arrow (4) to move to the next slide.
• If you have Speaker notes in your slides, you can view them in (5) while you record.
• In the Pens and Markers section (6) , you can draw on the screen and make any annotations you want.
• Finally, the Clear option (7) allows you to clear existing recordings on the current slide or on all slides if you are unsatisfied and want to redo your recording.

• Now, to review what you've recorded, go to Set Up and make sure Play Narrations and Use Timings are checked. Then, click on From Beginning to start the presentation.

How to loop slides in PowerPoint 

If you want to learn how to loop your slides in PowerPoint, follow these steps:

• Go to the Slide Show tab and select Set Up Slide Show .

• When the Set Up Show window appears, go to the Show options group and tick the Loop continuously until ‘Esc’ option. Don’t forget to click OK to apply the new setup!

And all done! Now, your presentation will loop until you select ‘Esc’.

Check out some expert best practices for Automatic slideshows in PowerPoint

Now that you've learned how to make a PowerPoint slideshow run automatically, we'll give you the secrets to make your presentation stand out . Let's take a look at some insights from our expert designers .

Avoid too much text

Remember that your time per slide is limited , so it is important not to put too much text since your audience will not have time to read it. Try to express your message in the shortest possible text, and if necessary, revise and rewrite it as many times as necessary to synthesize it.

Limit interactive elements

Limit or avoid interactive elements such as hyperlinks that rely on user interaction since they may not function in PowerPoint autoplay mode.

However, if you want your audience or potential clients to take a specific action, consider using a QR code. Only make sure to leave the slide displayed for enough time for them to use it.

Practice, practice, practice

Keep in mind that your speech needs to fit perfectly with your timings for each slide. So, practicing your presentation multiple times is crucial to ensure a seamless and synchronized delivery. 

First, go to the Slide Show Tab and select Set Up Slide Show .

• When the Set Up Show Window opens, deselect the Presented by a speaker option and consider the following options to set up your automatic slideshow:

• Browsed by an individual : With this option, you can show your slides within a window instead of the typical full-screen mode. Make sure that the Use timings, if present option is selected.
• Another option is the Browsed at a kiosk : This option locks in both the looping and timing settings, ensuring that your slideshow will continue until you press the ESC key.
• Next, you need to set your timings. This involves determining the duration for each slide so that it advances automatically to the next one when you have finished presenting it.

To set your timings, go to the Slide Show Tab and click on Rehearse Timings.

A window will open, allowing you to go through your presentation slide by slide, and it will record how much time you spend on each one . As you progress through each slide, it will confirm the time spent, and you can either agree or choose to re-record.

After you finish going through all your slides, a message will pop up to save your timings . Click yes so you can save the time spent on each slide.

If you’re looking to create a presentation that truly wows your audience, you might want to consider professional design assistance for your PowerPoint. Lucky for you, we’re here to help. Check out the fantastic designs 24Slides can help you create today!

You might also like

• How to Add a Timer to Your Powerpoint Presentations
• 11 Time-Saving PowerPoint Hacks For Creating Quick Presentations
• How To Loop a PowerPoint Presentation
• Add a PowerPoint Real-Time Clock to Your Presentations

Create professional presentations online

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Tutorial: Save your PowerPoint as a Video

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What It Takes to Give a Great Presentation

• Carmine Gallo

Five tips to set yourself apart.

Never underestimate the power of great communication. It can help you land the job of your dreams, attract investors to back your idea, or elevate your stature within your organization. But while there are plenty of good speakers in the world, you can set yourself apart out by being the person who can deliver something great over and over. Here are a few tips for business professionals who want to move from being good speakers to great ones: be concise (the fewer words, the better); never use bullet points (photos and images paired together are more memorable); don’t underestimate the power of your voice (raise and lower it for emphasis); give your audience something extra (unexpected moments will grab their attention); rehearse (the best speakers are the best because they practice — a lot).

I was sitting across the table from a Silicon Valley CEO who had pioneered a technology that touches many of our lives — the flash memory that stores data on smartphones, digital cameras, and computers. He was a frequent guest on CNBC and had been delivering business presentations for at least 20 years before we met. And yet, the CEO wanted to sharpen his public speaking skills.

• Carmine Gallo is a Harvard University instructor, keynote speaker, and author of 10 books translated into 40 languages. Gallo is the author of The Bezos Blueprint: Communication Secrets of the World’s Greatest Salesman  (St. Martin’s Press).

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How to Create an Auto-Playing PowerPoint Presentation

Self-running presentations work great at conferences and conventions. Here's how to set one up.

Table of Contents

Creating a self-running PowerPoint, as Microsoft calls it, can be a great addition to your company’s booth at conventions or industry-wide conferences. By featuring photos, infographics and key points in a continuous loop, PowerPoint becomes an effective communication tool to inform others about your company, its goals, and your products or services.

Auto-playing presentations are also great for employee training, meetings where the speaker is absent, and reaching remote clients or customers. Microsoft provides easy steps to turn your PowerPoint into an autoplay presentation.

Setting up the presentation

There are several options for creating a PowerPoint presentation automatically. All of these can be accessed under the Slide Show tab.

Slide Show > Set Up Slide Show

There are three options under this menu:

• Presented by a speaker : This first option requires the viewer to click through each slide. This is the default setting that most PowerPoint presentations are already in and is the mode with which you’re likely most familiar.
• Browsed by an individual : This option will create a slideshow where the viewer cannot control when slides advance. This is an autoplay feature, but the viewer will still have to hit Play to get it started.
• Browsed at a kiosk . Once selected, this option will loop the slide show until a viewer presses the escape button.

If you don’t want your viewers to have access to when the slideshow starts and stops, select the third option. The Loop Continuously option underneath will be automatically selected.

Recording slide timing

Before you begin recording your presentation, it’s important to set the slide time using the rehearsal toolbar. This will give you an idea of how long each slide will run before advancing to the next one. It will also allow you to practice your presentation and understand how long the runtime will be. Like setting up the slide show, this window can be accessed via the Slide Show tab.

Slide Show > Rehearse Timings

The recording window allows users to advance to the next slide, pause the presentation, view the current slide’s time, restart the recording for a slide and view the total runtime of the presentation.

After recording the last slide, PowerPoint will ask whether you want to keep the slide timings or not.

Recording your presentation

Once your slide timings are set, you can record your slide show.

Navigate to Slide Show > Record Slide Show to begin your recording. Click End Show and save your file once you are done recording. After saving, your presentation is ready to be sent to clients, customers or played at your convention or conference booth.

Here are some quick tips to check for before recording your presentation:

• Before beginning your recording, make sure you adjust the Play Narrations and the Use Timings checkboxes.
• If you want all narration and slide transitions included, both boxes should be checked.
• To create a silent sequence of slides, make sure the Play Narrations button is deselected.

What is PowerPoint autoplay?

Autoplay allows you to keep a PowerPoint presentation running. In typical PowerPoint presentations, presenters click from slide to slide manually using a clicker or spacebar on a keyboard.

Luckily, PowerPoint autoplay allows users to set up their slides, so they automatically change. That way, they can focus on their presentation without interruptions. There are options to have slides timed to music or voiceovers and make each slide the same length.

Why is PowerPoint autoplay beneficial?

Autoplay is great for several uses, from delivering announcements throughout a company’s office or a school, to giving speeches and presentations at conventions or work. Presenters can rehearse the timings of the slides and then present without worry. Here are some of the reasons why someone may use PowerPoint’s autoplay features:

• Rehearsal . Practicing your presentation involves timing, and autoplay can be a great tool for learning how to fill time or keeping it short. For example, many teachers and professors require presentations to fill a certain amount of time for class projects. While rehearsing timings, users can determine how much time to spend on each slide. This keeps presenters on track during their presentations, even when they want to speed up due to nerves or pressure.
• Convention booths and exhibits. Trade shows , conventions and networking events are great for companies and salespeople who want to showcase a variety of products and services. People who walk by can look at the presentation and not have to ask employees for information. In addition, a good PowerPoint presentation with eye-catching visuals and information can attract potential customers and clients, which could turn into sales.
• Music videos and tribute presentations. Whether it is a presentation of family vacation photos to the soundtrack of the summer or a lyric video to your favorite song, autoplay allows users to create appealing presentations and videos. These could even be downloaded into MP4 files to share with family and friends.
• Replay and loop at events or other occasions. This is great for offices that have a slideshow of information for their clients or patients. They can show a variety of pictures, information about services, and even the company’s latest news and contact information. Because of this, employees can set up the presentation, walk away and know that their announcements are being made public without even saying a word.

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Simple Steps to Make a PowerPoint Presentation

Last Updated: July 23, 2024 Fact Checked

Creating a New PowerPoint

Creating the title slide, adding a new slide, adding content to slides, adding transitions, testing and saving your presentation.

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer, Darlene Antonelli, MA . Darlene Antonelli is a Technology Writer and Editor for wikiHow. Darlene has experience teaching college courses, writing technology-related articles, and working hands-on in the technology field. She earned an MA in Writing from Rowan University in 2012 and wrote her thesis on online communities and the personalities curated in such communities. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 4,337,387 times. Learn more...

Do you want to have your data in a slide show? If you have Microsoft 365, you can use PowerPoint! PowerPoint is a program that's part of the Microsoft Office suite (which you have to pay for) and is available for both Windows and Mac computers. This wikiHow teaches you how to create your own Microsoft PowerPoint presentation on a computer.

How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation

• Open the PowerPoint app, select a template and theme, then like “Create.”
• Click the text box to add your title and subtitle to create your title slide.
• Click the “Insert” tab, then “New Slide” to add another slide.
• Choose the type of slide you want to add, then add text and pictures.
• Rearrange slides by dragging them up or down in the preview box.

Things You Should Know

• Templates make it easy to create vibrant presentations no matter your skill level.
• When adding photos, you can adjust their sizes by clicking and dragging in or out from their corners.
• You can add animated transitions between slides or to individual elements like bullet points and blocks of text.

• If you don't have a Microsoft Office 365 subscription, you can use the website instead of the desktop app. Go to https://powerpoint.office.com/ to use the website version.
• You can also use the mobile app to make presentations, though it's easier to do this on a computer, which has a larger screen, a mouse, and a keyboard.

• If you don't want to use a template, just click the Blank option in the upper-left side of the page and skip to the next part.

• Skip this step if your selected template has no themes available.

• If you're creating a PowerPoint presentation for which an elaborate title slide has been requested, ignore this step.

• You can change the font and size of text used from the Home tab that's in the orange ribbon at the top of the window.

• You can also just leave this box blank if you like.

• You can also click and drag in or out one of a text box's corners to shrink or enlarge the text box.

• On a Mac, you'll click the Home tab instead. [1] X Research source

• Clicking the white slide-shaped box above this option will result in a new text slide being inserted.

• Title Slide
• Title and Content
• Section Header
• Two Content
• Content with Caption
• Picture with Caption

• Naturally, the title slide should be the first slide in your presentation, meaning that it should be the top slide in the left-hand column.

• Skip this step and the next two steps if your selected slide uses a template that doesn't have text boxes in it.

• Text boxes in PowerPoint will automatically format the bulk of your text for you (e.g., adding bullet points) based on the context of the content itself.
• You can add notes that the Presentation will not include (but you'll still be able to see them on your screen) by clicking Notes at the bottom of the slide.

• You can change the font of the selected text by clicking the current font's name and then clicking your preferred font.
• If you want to change the size of the text, click the numbered drop-down box and then click a larger or smaller number based on whether you want to enlarge or shrink the text.
• You can also change the color, bolding, italicization, underlining, and so on from here.

• Photos in particular can be enlarged or shrunk by clicking and dragging out or in one of their corners.

• Remember to keep slides uncluttered and relatively free of distractions. It's best to keep the amount of text per slide to around 33 words or less. [2] X Research source

• Slide content will animate in the order in which you assign transitions. For example, if you animate a photo on the slide and then animate the title, the photo will appear before the title.
• Make your slideshow progress automatically by setting the speed of every transition to align with your speech as well as setting each slide to Advance . [3] X Trustworthy Source Microsoft Support Technical support and product information from Microsoft. Go to source

• If you need to exit the presentation, press Esc .

• Windows - Click File , click Save , double-click This PC , select a save location, enter a name for your presentation, and click Save .
• Mac - Click File , click Save As... , enter the presentation's name in the "Save As" field, select a save location by clicking the "Where" box and clicking a folder, and click Save .

Community Q&A

• If you save your PowerPoint presentation in .pps format instead of the default .ppt format, double-clicking your PowerPoint presentation file will prompt the presentation to open directly into the slideshow view. Thanks Helpful 6 Not Helpful 0
• If you don't have Microsoft Office, you can still use Apple's Keynote program or Google Slides to create a PowerPoint presentation. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Your PowerPoint presentation (or some features in it) may not open in significantly older versions of PowerPoint. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 2
• Great PowerPoint presentations avoid placing too much text on one slide. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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• ↑ https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=DBDCE00C929AA5D8!252&ithint=file%2cpptx&app=PowerPoint&authkey=!AH4O9NxcbehqzIg
• ↑ https://www.virtualsalt.com/powerpoint.htm
• ↑ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/set-the-timing-and-speed-of-a-transition-c3c3c66f-4cca-4821-b8b9-7de0f3f6ead1#:~:text=To%20make%20the%20slide%20advance,effect%20on%20the%20slide%20finishes .

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wikiHow Tech Help:

Tech troubles got you down? We've got the tips you need

Present your slide show

Play a slide show.

On the  Slide Show  tab, in the  Start Slide Show  group, select  From Beginning :

Move through the slide show

Use Presenter view to run your slide show

Using Presenter view is a great way to view your presentation with speaker notes on one computer (your laptop, for example), while only the slides themselves appear on the screen that your audience sees (like a larger screen you're projecting to). For complete details, see Start the presentation and see your notes in Presenter view .

Open the presentation that you want to play as a slide show.

Do one of the following:

Note:  You can also play a slide show by clicking the same options on the Slide Show tab.

To see a list of keyboard shortcuts that you can use to move through slides and manage the slide show, hold down CONTROL while you click the mouse, and then click Help .

To end the slide show when you finish presenting, press ESC .

Set how your slide show is projected on two displays

When you play a slide show with two displays connected, your audience sees the full screen slide show on one screen while you see the presenter view on the other by default. If you prefer to play the slide show in full screen view on both displays, you must change the setting before you start the slide show so that the slide show is mirrored.

You can run your presentation in PowerPoint for the web with an Internet connection and a web browser.

Present your slide show 

Go to Slide Show  on the ribbon. 

Select From Beginning . 

After a short time, the control bar may disappear. If so, you can move your cursor to the lower-left corner and it will reappear. You can also toggle (on/off) with 'T' on the keyboard. 

Several actions are available via the control-bar buttons to do the actions described here. Rollover tool tips also appear for these.   

Loop a slide show

Looping a slide show is not supported in PowerPoint for the web. If you’d like to see this feature added, let us know. Learn how here:  How do I give feedback on Microsoft Office?

You can show your presentation to an audience with PowerPoint Mobile.

Start presenting

On the Slide Show tab, in the Start Slide Show group, select From Beginning or From Current Slide .

Presenter View

If you have a two-screen setup in which you are projecting from your device to a large screen, you can see Presenter View visible on your device while your audience sees the slide show on the large screen. Presenter View allows you to see your notes, get a preview of the upcoming slides, and turn ink tools on and off.

On the Slide Show tab, select Use Presenter View .

Navigate through your slides

To move forward through the slide show, press the spacebar on the keyboard or tap the screen.

To go the previous slide, press P.

To exit Slide Show, press Esc.

To make the screen go black, press B. Press B again to make the current slide visible again.

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Blog Beginner Guides How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

How To Make a Good Presentation [A Complete Guide]

Written by: Krystle Wong Jul 20, 2023

A top-notch presentation possesses the power to drive action. From winning stakeholders over and conveying a powerful message to securing funding — your secret weapon lies within the realm of creating an effective presentation .  

Being an excellent presenter isn’t confined to the boardroom. Whether you’re delivering a presentation at work, pursuing an academic career, involved in a non-profit organization or even a student, nailing the presentation game is a game-changer.

In this article, I’ll cover the top qualities of compelling presentations and walk you through a step-by-step guide on how to give a good presentation. Here’s a little tip to kick things off: for a headstart, check out Venngage’s collection of free presentation templates . They are fully customizable, and the best part is you don’t need professional design skills to make them shine!

These valuable presentation tips cater to individuals from diverse professional backgrounds, encompassing business professionals, sales and marketing teams, educators, trainers, students, researchers, non-profit organizations, public speakers and presenters. 

No matter your field or role, these tips for presenting will equip you with the skills to deliver effective presentations that leave a lasting impression on any audience.

Click to jump ahead:

What are the 10 qualities of a good presentation?

Step-by-step guide on how to prepare an effective presentation, 9 effective techniques to deliver a memorable presentation, faqs on making a good presentation, how to create a presentation with venngage in 5 steps.

When it comes to giving an engaging presentation that leaves a lasting impression, it’s not just about the content — it’s also about how you deliver it. Wondering what makes a good presentation? Well, the best presentations I’ve seen consistently exhibit these 10 qualities:

1. Clear structure

No one likes to get lost in a maze of information. Organize your thoughts into a logical flow, complete with an introduction, main points and a solid conclusion. A structured presentation helps your audience follow along effortlessly, leaving them with a sense of satisfaction at the end.

Regardless of your presentation style , a quality presentation starts with a clear roadmap. Browse through Venngage’s template library and select a presentation template that aligns with your content and presentation goals. Here’s a good presentation example template with a logical layout that includes sections for the introduction, main points, supporting information and a conclusion: 

2. Engaging opening

Hook your audience right from the start with an attention-grabbing statement, a fascinating question or maybe even a captivating anecdote. Set the stage for a killer presentation!

The opening moments of your presentation hold immense power – check out these 15 ways to start a presentation to set the stage and captivate your audience.

3. Relevant content

Make sure your content aligns with their interests and needs. Your audience is there for a reason, and that’s to get valuable insights. Avoid fluff and get straight to the point, your audience will be genuinely excited.

4. Effective visual aids

Picture this: a slide with walls of text and tiny charts, yawn! Visual aids should be just that—aiding your presentation. Opt for clear and visually appealing slides, engaging images and informative charts that add value and help reinforce your message.

With Venngage, visualizing data takes no effort at all. You can import data from CSV or Google Sheets seamlessly and create stunning charts, graphs and icon stories effortlessly to showcase your data in a captivating and impactful way.

5. Clear and concise communication

Keep your language simple, and avoid jargon or complicated terms. Communicate your ideas clearly, so your audience can easily grasp and retain the information being conveyed. This can prevent confusion and enhance the overall effectiveness of the message. 

6. Engaging delivery

Spice up your presentation with a sprinkle of enthusiasm! Maintain eye contact, use expressive gestures and vary your tone of voice to keep your audience glued to the edge of their seats. A touch of charisma goes a long way!

7. Interaction and audience engagement

Turn your presentation into an interactive experience — encourage questions, foster discussions and maybe even throw in a fun activity. Engaged audiences are more likely to remember and embrace your message.

Transform your slides into an interactive presentation with Venngage’s dynamic features like pop-ups, clickable icons and animated elements. Engage your audience with interactive content that lets them explore and interact with your presentation for a truly immersive experience.

8. Effective storytelling

Who doesn’t love a good story? Weaving relevant anecdotes, case studies or even a personal story into your presentation can captivate your audience and create a lasting impact. Stories build connections and make your message memorable.

A great presentation background is also essential as it sets the tone, creates visual interest and reinforces your message. Enhance the overall aesthetics of your presentation with these 15 presentation background examples and captivate your audience’s attention.

9. Well-timed pacing

Pace your presentation thoughtfully with well-designed presentation slides, neither rushing through nor dragging it out. Respect your audience’s time and ensure you cover all the essential points without losing their interest.

10. Strong conclusion

Last impressions linger! Summarize your main points and leave your audience with a clear takeaway. End your presentation with a bang , a call to action or an inspiring thought that resonates long after the conclusion.

In-person presentations aside, acing a virtual presentation is of paramount importance in today’s digital world. Check out this guide to learn how you can adapt your in-person presentations into virtual presentations . 

Preparing an effective presentation starts with laying a strong foundation that goes beyond just creating slides and notes. One of the quickest and best ways to make a presentation would be with the help of a good presentation software . 

Otherwise, let me walk you to how to prepare for a presentation step by step and unlock the secrets of crafting a professional presentation that sets you apart.

1. Understand the audience and their needs

Before you dive into preparing your masterpiece, take a moment to get to know your target audience. Tailor your presentation to meet their needs and expectations , and you’ll have them hooked from the start!

2. Conduct thorough research on the topic

Time to hit the books (or the internet)! Don’t skimp on the research with your presentation materials — dive deep into the subject matter and gather valuable insights . The more you know, the more confident you’ll feel in delivering your presentation.

3. Organize the content with a clear structure

No one wants to stumble through a chaotic mess of information. Outline your presentation with a clear and logical flow. Start with a captivating introduction, follow up with main points that build on each other and wrap it up with a powerful conclusion that leaves a lasting impression.

Delivering an effective business presentation hinges on captivating your audience, and Venngage’s professionally designed business presentation templates are tailor-made for this purpose. With thoughtfully structured layouts, these templates enhance your message’s clarity and coherence, ensuring a memorable and engaging experience for your audience members.

Don’t want to build your presentation layout from scratch? pick from these 5 foolproof presentation layout ideas that won’t go wrong. 

4. Develop visually appealing and supportive visual aids

Spice up your presentation with eye-catching visuals! Create slides that complement your message, not overshadow it. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, but that doesn’t mean you need to overload your slides with text.

Well-chosen designs create a cohesive and professional look, capturing your audience’s attention and enhancing the overall effectiveness of your message. Here’s a list of carefully curated PowerPoint presentation templates and great background graphics that will significantly influence the visual appeal and engagement of your presentation.

5. Practice, practice and practice

Practice makes perfect — rehearse your presentation and arrive early to your presentation to help overcome stage fright. Familiarity with your material will boost your presentation skills and help you handle curveballs with ease.

6. Seek feedback and make necessary adjustments

Don’t be afraid to ask for help and seek feedback from friends and colleagues. Constructive criticism can help you identify blind spots and fine-tune your presentation to perfection.

With Venngage’s real-time collaboration feature , receiving feedback and editing your presentation is a seamless process. Group members can access and work on the presentation simultaneously and edit content side by side in real-time. Changes will be reflected immediately to the entire team, promoting seamless teamwork.

7. Prepare for potential technical or logistical issues

Prepare for the unexpected by checking your equipment, internet connection and any other potential hiccups. If you’re worried that you’ll miss out on any important points, you could always have note cards prepared. Remember to remain focused and rehearse potential answers to anticipated questions.

8. Fine-tune and polish your presentation

As the big day approaches, give your presentation one last shine. Review your talking points, practice how to present a presentation and make any final tweaks. Deep breaths — you’re on the brink of delivering a successful presentation!

In competitive environments, persuasive presentations set individuals and organizations apart. To brush up on your presentation skills, read these guides on how to make a persuasive presentation and tips to presenting effectively . 

Whether you’re an experienced presenter or a novice, the right techniques will let your presentation skills soar to new heights!

From public speaking hacks to interactive elements and storytelling prowess, these 9 effective presentation techniques will empower you to leave a lasting impression on your audience and make your presentations unforgettable.

1. Confidence and positive body language

Positive body language instantly captivates your audience, making them believe in your message as much as you do. Strengthen your stage presence and own that stage like it’s your second home! Stand tall, shoulders back and exude confidence. 

2. Eye contact with the audience

Break down that invisible barrier and connect with your audience through their eyes. Maintaining eye contact when giving a presentation builds trust and shows that you’re present and engaged with them.

3. Effective use of hand gestures and movement

A little movement goes a long way! Emphasize key points with purposeful gestures and don’t be afraid to walk around the stage. Your energy will be contagious!

4. Utilize storytelling techniques

Weave the magic of storytelling into your presentation. Share relatable anecdotes, inspiring success stories or even personal experiences that tug at the heartstrings of your audience. Adjust your pitch, pace and volume to match the emotions and intensity of the story. Varying your speaking voice adds depth and enhances your stage presence.

5. Incorporate multimedia elements

Spice up your presentation with a dash of visual pizzazz! Use slides, images and video clips to add depth and clarity to your message. Just remember, less is more—don’t overwhelm them with information overload. 

Turn your presentations into an interactive party! Involve your audience with questions, polls or group activities. When they actively participate, they become invested in your presentation’s success. Bring your design to life with animated elements. Venngage allows you to apply animations to icons, images and text to create dynamic and engaging visual content.

6. Utilize humor strategically

Laughter is the best medicine—and a fantastic presentation enhancer! A well-placed joke or lighthearted moment can break the ice and create a warm atmosphere , making your audience more receptive to your message.

7. Practice active listening and respond to feedback

Be attentive to your audience’s reactions and feedback. If they have questions or concerns, address them with genuine interest and respect. Your responsiveness builds rapport and shows that you genuinely care about their experience.

8. Apply the 10-20-30 rule

Apply the 10-20-30 presentation rule and keep it short, sweet and impactful! Stick to ten slides, deliver your presentation within 20 minutes and use a 30-point font to ensure clarity and focus. Less is more, and your audience will thank you for it!

9. Implement the 5-5-5 rule

Simplicity is key. Limit each slide to five bullet points, with only five words per bullet point and allow each slide to remain visible for about five seconds. This rule keeps your presentation concise and prevents information overload.

Simple presentations are more engaging because they are easier to follow. Summarize your presentations and keep them simple with Venngage’s gallery of simple presentation templates and ensure that your message is delivered effectively across your audience.

1. How to start a presentation?

To kick off your presentation effectively, begin with an attention-grabbing statement or a powerful quote. Introduce yourself, establish credibility and clearly state the purpose and relevance of your presentation.

2. How to end a presentation?

For a strong conclusion, summarize your talking points and key takeaways. End with a compelling call to action or a thought-provoking question and remember to thank your audience and invite any final questions or interactions.

3. How to make a presentation interactive?

To make your presentation interactive, encourage questions and discussion throughout your talk. Utilize multimedia elements like videos or images and consider including polls, quizzes or group activities to actively involve your audience.

In need of inspiration for your next presentation? I’ve got your back! Pick from these 120+ presentation ideas, topics and examples to get started. 

Creating a stunning presentation with Venngage is a breeze with our user-friendly drag-and-drop editor and professionally designed templates for all your communication needs. 

Here’s how to make a presentation in just 5 simple steps with the help of Venngage:

Step 1: Sign up for Venngage for free using your email, Gmail or Facebook account or simply log in to access your account. 

Step 2: Pick a design from our selection of free presentation templates (they’re all created by our expert in-house designers).

Step 3: Make the template your own by customizing it to fit your content and branding. With Venngage’s intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can easily modify text, change colors and adjust the layout to create a unique and eye-catching design.

Step 4: Elevate your presentation by incorporating captivating visuals. You can upload your images or choose from Venngage’s vast library of high-quality photos, icons and illustrations. 

Step 5: Upgrade to a premium or business account to export your presentation in PDF and print it for in-person presentations or share it digitally for free!

By following these five simple steps, you’ll have a professionally designed and visually engaging presentation ready in no time. With Venngage’s user-friendly platform, your presentation is sure to make a lasting impression. So, let your creativity flow and get ready to shine in your next presentation!

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How-To Geek

How to start a powerpoint slideshow.

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Quick Links

Start a slideshow in powerpoint's desktop app, start a slideshow in powerpoint's web app, start a slideshow in powerpoint's mobile app, key takeaways.

To start a PowerPoint slideshow on your desktop, open your slideshow and click "Start Slide Show" in the "Slide Show" tab. If you're using the web app, select "From Beginning" in the "Slide Show" tab. On mobile, simply tap the Monitor icon at the top of your screen.

There's nothing quite like finishing a presentation after spending hours getting it just right. Now, show off your hard work by starting your Microsoft PowerPoint slideshow on desktop, web, and mobile using the methods below.

Related: How (and Why) to Start Microsoft PowerPoint from the Command Prompt

To play a slideshow in PowerPoint's desktop app, all you have to do is click an option or press a shortcut on your keyboard .

Start the process by opening your presentation with PowerPoint. Then, in the app's ribbon at the top, select the "Slide Show" tab.

In the "Slide Show" tab, from the "Start Slide Show" section, choose "From Beginning" (or press F5). Now your presentation will play from the very first slide.

If you'd like to start the slideshow from your current slide, choose the "From Current Slide" option. Alternatively, press Shift+F5 on your keyboard.

While your presentation is playing, you can perform various tasks, like moving to the next slide or ending the show. You can reveal these options by right-clicking anywhere on the slide.

Alternatively, you can use the following keyboard shortcuts while viewing your slideshow:

• Spacebar or Right Arrow Button: Go to the next slide in the presentation.
• Left Arrow Button: Go to the previous slide in the presentation.
• Esc: End the show.
• W: Hide your current slide and display a white screen. Press the same key again to bring back the slide's content.
• B: Hide your current slide and display a black screen. Revert back to the slide's content by pressing the same button.
• Ctrl+Left Mouse Button: Activate the laser point tool to point at things in your slides.
• Ctrl+P: Launch the pen tool to annotate your slide's content during your show. You can choose if you'd like to keep these annotations when you end the show.
• Ctrl+i: Access the highlighter tool to highlight items in your slides.

If you'd like to jump to a specific slide while presenting, press that slide's number on your keyboard and hit Enter. For example, press 12 and hit Enter to access that slide quickly.

To access the Presenter view, where you can see the upcoming slides and other options, right-click anywhere on your slide and choose "Show Presenter View."

With these options, you can start a slideshow and have it play exactly how you want.

To play a slideshow on the web, launch your preferred web browser and access PowerPoint on the web . Then, open your presentation.

From PowerPoint's ribbon at the top, select the "Slide Show" tab.

In the "Slide Show" tab, start your slideshow from the first slide by clicking the "From Beginning" option. To have your show play from your current slide, choose "From Current Slide."

Your presentation is now playing.

To reveal the options for moving slides, annotating items, and using Presenter Coach , bring your cursor to your screen's bottom-left corner. Then, click the appropriate icon.

Related: How to Practice Your Presentations with PowerPoint's Presenter Coach

To start a slideshow in the PowerPoint mobile app , launch the app on your phone and open your presentation.

On the presentation screen, at the top, tap the Monitor icon to play the slideshow.

Your presentation has now begun.

To move to the next slide, swipe left on your screen. To go to the previous slide, swipe right.

You can reveal PowerPoint's presentation options, like annotation and black screen tools, by tapping at the top of your presentation. Then, choose the option you'd like to use.

And that's it. Happy presenting!

Want to learn a few tips to help you make the best PowerPoint presentations ? If so, check out our guide.

Related: 8 Tips to Make the Best PowerPoint Presentations

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15 Best Presentation Software for 2024 (Full Comparison Guide)

Written by: Orana Velarde

In this comparison guide, we’ll analyze each of these tools and many more to understand what the difference is between them so you can  choose the best presentation maker for your business.

So, if you want to stand out from run-of-the-mill PowerPoint presentations and have a reliable presentation software that will help you collaborate with team members and design stunning slide decks in a fraction of the time, you’ll need this guide. 

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

• Google Slides
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Beautiful.ai
• Microsoft Sway

What are Presentation Tools

Presentation tools are software applications that enable users to visually present ideas or share knowledge. These presentations are delivered in a slide-show format using a combination of text, images and other graphic elements.

Presentation software is frequently used to pitch an idea to investors , present proposals to clients , introduce new products or services to customers, train staff on new policies or ideas , or teach your students new or complex concepts.

Best Presentation Software: A Visual Comparison

When choosing the right presentation programs for your projects, there are some things to consider:

• Does the price point fit your budget?
• Is it easy to use?
• Who is the program geared at: businesses, educators, bloggers or social media managers?
• Does it have lots of templates to choose from? Are they good quality and helpful?
• Is the built-in graphic asset library extensive and varied?
• Can you embed content, add videos or GIFs?
• Can you add audio to your presentations?
• Can elements be animated?
• Is it desktop or cloud-based ?
• Can you use it to create presentations on any of your devices?
• Can finished presentations be viewed offline?
• Can you have team accounts or business accounts for easy collaboration inside your company?
• Does it include a Brand Kit? Is it easy to use?
• Can the finished presentation be shared online straight from the presentation software?
• Can your presentations be uploaded to the cloud privately with password protection?
• Does the presentation software include analytics to see how your projects perform on social media?
• Can you use the finished presentation as a lead generator straight from the software?

We'll take a look at all these aspects in the following list of best presentation software so you can make your own well-informed decision.

Last updated on May 30, 2024.

Visme is a powerful presentation software and all-in-one content authoring tool. It has a user-friendly interface and an extensive set of tools that make it easy for both beginners and experienced professionals to design and deliver impactful presentations.

Presentations made with Visme go beyond the standard slide deck to incorporate interactive elements and easy, full-featured offline sharing.

Making professional presentation slides with Visme is easy and straightforward. Create slides from scratch using content blocks and the extensive slide libraries categorized by style. Browse the presentation template library to find pre-designed slide decks which you can easily customize to fit your needs.

That's not all that Visme can do, though.

You can also use Visme to create other visual content, such as digital documents, animated infographics, interactive reports and whiteboards. There are tons of customizable templates that come built-in with the app.

You can also use Visme to create other visual content, such as infographics, reports and interactive charts. There are tons of customizable templates that come built-in with the software.

Visme can be used for free to test it out for as long as you want. With a free account, you can create up to three projects.

To access all of Visme's capabilities, you can upgrade to one of the paid plans .

• Starter: $12.25/month paid annually
• Pro: $24.75/month paid annually
• Visme for Teams: Custom – learn more here

If you're a nonprofit organization, you may qualify for a discount. Visme also offers separate Education plans for students and teachers.

Ease of Use

Visme is incredibly easy to use. Switching from slide to slide is a breeze, and you can even save a slide to your content block or slide library to reuse later.

The editor comes with a handy sidebar that lets you browse media, graphics and data tools and drag and drop relevant elements onto your slides. You can also use the /shortcut feature to open a search bar and quickly find what you need.

The dynamic fields feature ensures you don’t miss out on any critical information. With single click, you can easily update content throughout your presentation.

Who Is It For

Visme is perfect for small and large businesses, enterprises, marketing teams, project managers, educators, content creators and so much more. The resources and tools available in Visme reach far beyond the ability to create presentations.

• Social media teams can create content for their company’s social channels.
• Sales agents can create branded and personalized proposals in minutes.
• Professionals can build visual CVs to find the next ideal job.
• Project managers can conduct team meetings with a collaborative whiteboard.

Template Options

The template options in Visme are extensive and varied in style. From minimalistic to photographic, there are many presentation styles to pick from.

Presentation Templates

Ecommerce Webinar Presentation

Buyer Presentation

PixelGo Marketing Plan Presentation

Technology Presentation

Product Training Interactive Presentation

Work+Biz Pitch Deck - Presentation

Create your presentation View more templates

You can choose from dozens of fully designed presentations tailor-made for specific industries and topics or mix and match hundreds of slide layouts by choosing a presentation theme.

You can also start with a blank canvas, add new blank slides to existing presentation templates, and save custom slides to use later as your own templates.

Graphic Assets Library

When selecting the best tools for presentations, the visual capabilities and creative design elements should be a top consideration. Visme’s graphic library includes thousands of free icons, illustrations, stock photos, videos , 3D graphics , audio clips, charts and graphs to include in your presentations.

The best part is that every graphic asset that comes built-in with the Visme editor is fully customizable. Resize, rotate or change colors to fit your brand, content and theme.

AI-Powered Tools

Visme comes with a wide variety of useful AI-powered tools, making it one of the best presentation software.

Let's start with the AI presentation maker . This advanced tool is engineered to make your presentation creation process as quick and efficient as possible.

To create a presentation using this tool, you only need to provide a text prompt outlining your requirements. The tool will then generate the slides, complete with text, images, illustrations and any other content you specify.

After that, you can use Visme's presentation tools to personalize the AI-generated slides and add the final touches.

Next up is the AI writer . This user-friendly tool is your key to overcoming writer's block and crafting engaging copy for your presentation. It can help you create layouts, edit and proofread text, summarize the content and much more. Explain to the AI writer what you want to generate, and it will take care of the rest.

Visme offers several AI image editing tools , including erase and replace, background remover, unblur, and upscaler. These tools can be used to edit the image content or enhance its quality. For example, you can use the Image Upscaler to resize your image without sacrificing quality, ensuring your visuals always look high-quality.

And as always, you just need to provide the right text prompts. Feel free to tweak the prompts as many times as you want until you achieve the perfect outcome.

Videos and GIFs

It's easy to insert or embed videos and GIFs inside a Visme presentation. This is another that makes Visme a powerful video presentation software .

To insert a video, upload a video from your computer or cloud storage and place it on a slide of your choosing. Once you’ve uploaded it, it’ll be in your Media library for future use.

If you don’t have videos of your own, Visme has hundreds of stock videos to choose from in lots of categories. Browse them by clicking the / shortcut on your keyboard and opening the videos tab.

Edit your videos with the integrated timeline feature. Trim video clips and customize playback settings. Resize the video on your slide easily by dragging the corner. Or you can resize any video into another shape for more flexibility.

GIFs are available through the Giphy integration, which you’ll find in the Media tab. These are a great choice when you want to make a meme-based presentation.

Take note that all presentations that have videos or GIFs in the slides must be shared as a live link or downloaded as HTML5 or MP4. If you download it as a PDF or PPTX, all the interactive elements won’t play back.

Adding audio to a presentation is easy on Visme. Either along with a video or as the audio on its own. You can also record a voice over.

Another great option is accessing our Presenter Studio to record a video of yourself presenting your content. You can turn on your camera or record audio only before sending a link to your audience. This is a great way to present asynchronously or save your presentation for people to view again and again.

Embed Third-Party Content

There is more content that can be embedded into Visme presentations, like polls, quizzes , forms , online videos and any content that can be turned into code to insert in an iframe.

You can also take advantage of several integrations to embed even more engaging and interactive content into your slides.

Some of our integrations include SurveyMonkey, Hubspot, Giphy, and many more.

Animations and Transitions

With Visme, you can animate your content and create interactive experiences such as:

• Hover effects or clickable pop-ups, link your slides or content blocks to objects
• Pre-animated assets like characters, illustrations and gestures
• Custom animation and motion effects

Features inside Visme presentations can be animated, and we also have a number of seamless slide transitions that make your content pop, like "Enter from Side" or "Staggered Fade."

If you want to make your content even more dynamic, you can access our Custom Animation feature. This is perfect for creating video presentations or making your elements look like they're floating on your slide.

Visme also comes with a 3D Character Creator that helps you elevate your storytelling and connect with your audience. You can create and customize 3D animated characters to embody your brand or message.

Tweak everything, from gender and hairstyles to outfits and skin tone, until you achieve the perfect look. You also have the ability to choose their entry, waiting and exit poses.

Desktop or Cloud

Visme is an online cloud-based app that can be easily used on your computer. We also provide a desktop app that you can download and use outside of your regular browser for seamless content creation.

And if you need to create content on the go, you can easily edit existing projects right from your mobile device or tablet using the Visme iOS app .

Data Widgets

Visme offers a wide selection of data widgets that allow you to creatively visualize statistics and figures in the form of gauges, clocks, pictographs and icon arrays.

Data visualization in Visme goes beyond widgets. Add tables, graphs, and charts to your presentation slides and connect them to a live data source . Create a data stream from Google Sheets or Google Analytics into customized data visualizations.

Offline Viewing

Finished presentations can be viewed offline in four different formats.

The best option is to download it as an HTML5 file. That way it will maintain all the animations when opened on Google Chrome, even without internet. Downloading as an HTML 5 file is a premium feature. Presentations can also be downloaded as a collection of JPG or PNG images, as a PDF or as an editable PowerPoint file.

Create a stunning presentation in less time

• Hundreds of premade slides available
• Add animation and interactivity to your slides
• Choose from various presentation options

Sign up. It’s free.

Collaboration Possibilities

Visme has a premium teams plan that lets all team members customize and complete projects together. Leave comments with edits and feedback, edit projects simultaneously and easily share with other people on your team to move the project along.

Plus, Visme's workflow management features give the project admin complete control over your team's collaboration process. You can assign tasks, manage roles, set deadlines and more, all from a centralized platform. These features are useful for streamlining communication and reducing the time between briefing and final presentation design.

Branding Capabilities

Visme's brand design tool makes it easy to keep all of your content on-brand regardless of who's creating it. It works in three easy steps:

1. Upload all of your branding assets (colors, fonts, logo) to Visme with the Brand Wizard . Input your website URL and watch as our Brand Wizard automatically pulls in all of your branding.

2. Access a bundle of 30+ automatically branded templates that have your logo, fonts and colors already ready to go.

3. Easily access thousands of other templates and input your brand fonts and colors with just a click in Visme's editor.

Then boom! All of your content will always have the same branding, helping increase brand strength and recognition.

Share to Social Media

Once a presentation is finished, it can be shared to social media seamlessly right from the editor. It can also be downloaded.

Privacy and Password Protection

Presentations on Visme can be published privately with password protection so that only the people you want can access it. It is advisable to only use strong passwords for this purpose. There are a few free password managers that could help you do that and keep your account secure .

Visme’s analytics is what makes it stand out as the best tool for presentation. When a presentation is shared via a live link, it can be analyzed for views and sharing.

Access in-depth analytics that show you how much of your presentation is typically viewed, for how long and which slides seem to be the most popular.

Lead Generation

You can add a signup form to your presentations to collect leads that could potentially become clients. Simply head over to our  Advanced Settings tab before sharing your project and turn on  Requires Registration to collect emails from each person who views your content.

The best part of using Visme is that you get access to an interactive online form builder that's proven to generate 2X more conversions than traditional forms. You can choose your preferred form type and customize every aspect, including character appearance, color, background and animations to match your design and branding requirements.

Prezi offers a great alternative to the traditional presentation format that goes slide by slide. The creative idea behind Prezi is you can create an animated, non-sequential flow with topics and subtopics that are hidden until you zoom in.

While Prezi's interface can be slightly complicated to use, it's a good option for people who need to add a creative touch to their presentations.

Prezi is free for basic capabilities and limited templates.

For the paid plans, there are three tiers.

• Standard: $5/month
• Plus: $12/month
• Premium: $16/month
• Teams: Upon Request

There are separate plans available for students and teachers.

Prezi has a slight learning curve, but once you create a couple of presentations, you get the hang of it. However, it doesn't offer too much customizability inside the templates.

Businesses and educators who are in need of a different style of presentation. Prezi offers a “conversational style” of zooming and moving around between information. So, who Prezi is for really depends on who needs this sort of presentation style.

There are plenty of templates to choose from, and you can also start from scratch. The templates are different in color and style, but the idea of zooming into topics and subtopics is the same.

AI Presentation Assistant

Prezi has an AI assistant that automatically generates presentations for users.

The assets library has some icons and shapes available, the usual ones like arrows and buttons. Premium plans get access to over 80,000 icons and 500,000 images.

Videos can be uploaded or embedded from YouTube. Embedded videos are not viewable in offline mode. GIFs aren’t supported.

Voice over can be added in premium plans.

No other content can be embedded into Prezi presentations.

Prezi is all about animations between topics and subtopics. The presentations themselves are viewed as animations.

Prezi is a cloud app but can be accessed to view offline with premium plans.

Available to Create on Multiple Devices

Prezi presentations can only be created on a computer but can be viewed on all devices.

Prezi for teams is available upon demand and has a Slack integration.

Brand Kits are only available with Prezi's team plans, but each presentation can be customized to fit your brand with color customizations and some available fonts.

Prezi presentations can be shared to social media via a special share button at the top-right of the Prezi page. They can be shared to LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Prezi presentations can only be downloaded from the Prezi app. There are two options, as an EXE file for PC and a ZIP file for Mac. Presentations can then be viewed without internet connection or the need to connect to the Prezi app.

Presentations are public unless you have a paid account.

Analytics are available with premium accounts but it only applies to Prezi presentations you share via a link to someone.

There are no lead generation capabilities with Prezi.

3 Google Slides

Google Slides is the presentation software available via your Google account. Just like you can create documents and spreadsheets with Google Docs and Sheets, you can create presentations with Google Slides.

The setup is very similar to PowerPoint and is free to use for anyone with a google account. There is a business version called G Suite, which includes the same things with more storage and management capabilities.

Google Slides is free to use for anyone with a Google account. All features are available to everyone.

There are plans for business accounts so that teams can be created and information can be managed in a more organized way. Plans start at $6/user/month and go up to $18/user/month.

Compared to other examples of presentation software, Google Slides is very easy to use. The controls are very similar to Google Docs and Sheets.

Business professionals, educators and students who need fast and easy access to a presentation software that can get things done.

There is a general collection of templates, but there are not very many. Presentations can also be started from scratch.

The graphic assets are average and simple. The shapes are classic and generic. Photographs can be uploaded from your desktop, your Google Drive, a URL or searched online.

Videos can uploaded with a YouTube link or from Google Drive. GIFs can be added just like images.

Audio and Embed Third-Party Content

Anything from your Google Drive can be added in. Also there are some available “add-ons” that can be integrated for icons, stock photography and audio.

Elements inside each slide can be animated and so can the transition between the slides.

Google Slides is a cloud-based program.

Google Slides can be used fully on any device with their respective apps for Android and iPhone. Presentations can be edited and viewed on all devices.

Collaborating with other people is easy with Google Slides

There is no brand kit feature.

Presentations can be shared via email or link.

Google Slides can be viewed offline with a Chrome Extension and the use of Backup and Sync.

Presentations can be shared privately, but there are no password capabilities, only invitations.

Analytics and Lead Generation

These features are not available.

Read either PowerPoint vs Google ,  or you can check out  Google Slides vs Visme to get a detailed overview of each tool and find the perfect presentation software for your needs.

Keynote is the native Apple presentation software — one of the original PowerPoint Alternatives. Anyone with an Apple ID can use the Keynote editor. It is the most similar to PowerPoint and also Google Slides.

Keynote is free for downloading and also accessing via the cloud with an apple ID.

If you know how to use PowerPoint or Google Slides, Keynote is a breeze. This feature makes it stand out as one of the best tools for presentation.

Keynote is good for businesses, educators and anyone who needs a practical presentation software.

The templates are limited but come in standard or wide sizes. Templates can also be found outside of Keynote and uploaded into the program.

There are plenty of classic symbols and icons available which are also customizable in terms of color and gradient. Images can only be added from your computer.

Videos are not embeddable in Keynote slides but that is sorted with a plug-in like LiveSlides. GIFs can be added as .gif images.

You can upload existing audio files in Keynote to play on specific slides. There's also an option to record your own voiceover to create a narrated presentation.

Including these is not available

Slides and objects can be animated in a number of ways, including path creation, scaling, bounce or jiggle effects, and more.

Keynote is available on both desktop and cloud.

You can create keynote presentations on any apple device and PC.

Keynote presentations can be downloaded as .pdf or as .pptx to view offline.

Keynote presentations can be collaborated on via a link or email with permission settings set to “can make changes”.

Brand Kit, Share to Social Media, Analytics and Lead Generation

None of these are available on Keynote.

Presentations are private until shared and there is no password protection capabilities.

5 Microsoft PowerPoint

This list wouldn't have been complete without the most popular presentation software in the world. Even though there are tons of more advanced presentation tools out there now, PowerPoint is still a favorite of many because of its familiarity, ease of use and availability.

The desktop-based PowerPoint program is part of Microsoft 365, which has different plans for businesses that start from $6/month and go up to $22/month. You can also buy an unbundled digital PowerPoint account for $159.99

PowerPoint Online is free on any device, including mobile.

Most, if not every, computer user knows how to work a PowerPoint. The traditional sidebar interface is easy to use simply because it's familiar. But for people who are using PowerPoint for the first time, there might be a slight learning curve.

Businesses, individuals, students, teachers and anyone who uses a Windows PC or device. PowerPoint is also a good fit for people who want to create simple, conventional presentations, and aren't looking for fancy new features or capabilities.

There are dozens of themes that come built-in with PowerPoint, and there are all customizable so you can play around with the styles.

You can browse stock images, icons, stickers and more by searching for relevant keywords in PowerPoint's graphic library.

Videos and GIFs can be uploaded from your computer. You can also embed videos from YouTube and other online sources. However, this feature is only available to Windows users.

You can upload audio files from your computer. You can also record audio directly inside PowerPoint and edit the settings for playback.

You can embed files created in other Microsoft Office applications, such as charts created in Excel, or any other programs that support Object Linking and Embedding (OLE.)

There are tons of animation and transition options available in PowerPoint, which can actually get confusing at times. However, if you know your way around these options, it gets easier to create a professional-looking slideshow.

There are both desktop and cloud versions of PowerPoint available.

You can download the PowerPoint mobile apps on both Android and iOS devices.

It's possible to share your presentation with specific people.

Brand kits are not available, but you can save custom themes.

Presentations cannot be shared to social media.

You can download your PowerPoint presentations in various formats, including PPTX and PDF. This makes it easy to access them on any device offline.

You can mark your presentations as read-only to prevent users from editing the file.

This feature is not available in PowerPoint.

Ludus is one of the best-looking presentation tools available online. The main attractions with Ludus are the clean black screen to edit on and the number of integrations that give importing capabilities for all sorts of content. From photography to .svg to code builds.

Ludus starts at $14.99/month for teams of 1-15 people. Teams that need more licenses are encouraged to contact for more pricing information. Ludus does offer a 30-day free trial.

Ludus is quite easy to use and includes lots of keyboard shortcuts. It is easy to learn how to use and pretty straightforward. It seems to be easier for designers than for non-designers to use.

This presentation software is geared more towards designers or business owners who have some design knowledge to totally be able to use the broad capabilities.

There are no templates to choose from. You have to start from scratch or use smart blocks that you can create to use over and over easily. Smart blocks are kept in their own library.

Ludus has minimal in-house graphic assets like simple shapes, but the integrations are epic. You can import .svg icons and edit them inside Ludus quite easily. Photos can also be imported via Unsplash, Instagram, Facebook or uploaded.

Videos and GIFs are easily imported via the integrations like YouTube, Vimeo, Giphy and more.

Audio can be embedded as an audio file from SoundCloud, Dropbox and other integrations.

You can pretty much embed anything into Ludus. The integrations are impressive and there are also iframe and HTML options.

Internal elements can’t be animated but there are so many integrations that animations can be done in different ways.

Ludus is a cloud-based app. No need to download anything.

Presentations can only be edited on computers. Finished presentations can be viewed on all handheld devices that have access to the internet via a URL link.

Collaborations are possible with the team plans. This includes live collaboration, workspaces and more.

With collaborations, smart blocks and the Brandfetch integration, a brand kit can be organized quite easily. But it’s not an internal feature.

Finished presentations can be easily shared to social media straight from Ludus.

Ludus presentations can be downloaded as .pdf or .html to be viewed offline.

Pro Plans have password protection.

There are no analytics or lead generation capabilities available in Ludus.

Slides is the only presentation software that promotes itself as being “pixel perfect” as the editor includes a built-in grid to help with composition. Slides has a lower cost at the highest price tag which is good for smaller businesses.

Slides is free to use, but finished presentations will be public and available. 

The paid plans start at $5/month, and the Pro plan sits at $10/month and go up to $20/month for features like unlimited collaborators, privacy, shared media library and Google Analytics.

Slides is very easy to use, the editing board is minimal but all tools are at easy reach. No need to get confused with Slides. There are no templates so presentations are built from scratch.

Small business owners or startups. Individuals that know what they want and don’t need templates to help them along. Also for developers because it has HTML and CSS building capabilities.

Slides has a very limited template library with just a handful of different options to choose from.

The available shapes and icons are common and minimal. Photos have to be uploaded or imported from a URL.

Videos and GIFs are easy to add. Videos can be uploaded or linked and GIFs can be uploaded as .gif or .mp4 as video.

Including audio is not possible with Slides.

Anything with code can be added in an iframe.

All elements and features can be animated to fade in, fade out etc. Length of duration can be customized.

Slides is a cloud-based presentation software that can only be used online.

Slides can be used on the computer and handheld devices. To edit and to view.

Paid plans have very capable collaboration possibilities. Users can leave comments with feedback for the creator to review and make edits.

There is no set section for a brand kit but branded decks can be created and then cloned to use as a template.

Yes, quite easily.

You can also share presentations via URL, email or embeddable code.

A Slides presentations can be downloaded as a ZIP file with an .html file inside that can be viewed offline on any browser.

Privacy and Analytics

Possible with paid plans.

This is not possible on Slides.

8 Slidebean

Slidebean is an easy-to-use presentation software with interesting templates and customizable content blocks.

The highlight of this presentation software is that it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help you put together the best possible slide layouts and configurations. They also have a team of experts that can both write and design your pitch deck for you if you don't want to take the DIY route.

The free plan has limited capabilities but it's enough to see how Slidebean works. To export your presentation, you'll need to upgrade.

There are three price levels from $8/month to $19/month to $149/month. The last one is the Founder's Edition plan, which includes help from the experts on your presentations.

If you choose to get their help on your presentation design, it starts at $29 per slide or $1,999 for the full project.

Slidebean is quite easy to use. You can choose between templates or start from scratch. Adding content is simple and to the point from a popup.

Editing can be done in outline or design mode. The editing is limited to how the content blocks are set up, but there are lots of choices. There's no free size changing or moving around.

Startups, small businesses and entrepreneurs.

There are plenty of template options. They are organized in sections and niche. The template collection has presentations by known brands like Snapchat and Buzzfeed.

There are plenty of icons and images to choose from. However, there are no shapes, but icons can be used as shapes.

GIFs can be added via the Giphy integration in a content block. Video can be added in the paid plans.

There are no audio capabilities.

The code snippet content block has lots of options so a lot of different kinds of third-party content can be added in.

Content blocks and their elements can be animated with a couple features.

Slidebean is an online program on the cloud.

It can be used to edit or view on any device.

Collaboration is possible in the paid plans.

This feature is available in the paid plans.

Sharing to Social Media

Slidebean presentations can be exported to download as both .pdf and .html files to view offline.

This feature is not available.

Analytics are available in the paid plans.

9 Zoho Show

Zoho Show is a presentation software that mimics Microsoft PowerPoint in the way it is set up, with a menu up top for all the actions. However, Zoho's version is much nicer and polished.

Zoho is a complete CRM for businesses and the company offers different types of apps for teams and office use — Zoho Show is only one of their programs.

Zoho show is completely free and without ads.

Zoho Show is pretty easy to use. The content blocks can be chosen as themes but they can also be moved around freely and resized. The presentation can be viewed in three ways, with a handy grid view to see all slides next to each other.

Businesses, entrepreneurs, educators and students. Anyone who needs to make a presentation.

There aren’t exactly templates, but there are themes. These do not come with images or lorem ipsum but are more like visual canvases that can be customized in terms of color, layout and more.

The shapes are pretty good, there are quite a bit to choose from. An added bonus is the possibility to draw shapes or scribble anything yourself with the trackpad.

Videos can be added via the YouTube integration and GIFs can be added as an image.

Audio can be added via Soundcloud with an embed code.

There are a number of sites that are supported via Embed codes but not that many. Zoho Show says that you can ask your needs to be added in the permitted list.

All elements and transitions can be animated.

Zoho Show is a cloud bases program and can be broadcast from anywhere and on any device. The live broadcast includes a chat window and the audience can download the presentation if they want to.

You can only create presentations on a computer.

Teams can easily use Zoho Show, even in the free version.

Custom branding is only available in the highest paid plan.

Sharing to social media is not possible unless downloaded as a PDF file and then uploaded to something like SlideShare.

Presentations can be downloaded as .pptx or .pdf files for offline viewing.

Yes, this is possible on all plans.

Analytics are possible on the paid plans.

10 Beautiful.ai

Beautiful.ai is a presentation software that helps you create great-looking slides with the help of Artificial Intelligence. This means that your presentation will look professional every single time, regardless of who designs it.

Beautiful.ai currently offers a Pro plan at $12/month and a Team plan at $40/month, both billed annually. They offer a 14-day free trial to test out their tool.

This is probably the best thing about Beautiful.ai — it's incredibly simple to use. All you need to do is add smart slides, plug in your content, and choose from different preset layouts.

Of course, that also means that you have limited customization options. But if you're looking for a simple solution and you don't trust your design skills, this may be a good option for you.

Beautiful.ai is a great tool for absolute beginners and non-designers who are looking for a no-nonsense presentation software.

For example, startups and entrepreneurs can use this software to create a nice-looking pitch deck or proposal quickly without any design help.

There are a handful of slide themes available, but they're mostly basic in terms of design. You can play around with the layouts inside each theme to put together a unique presentation.

The graphic assets library comes with a bunch of free stock photos and icons to choose from, but the options are pretty limited.

Videos and GIFs can be uploaded from your computer. You can also import videos from YouTube and Vimeo to embed in your slides.

Audio can be uploaded from your computer.

It's not possible to embed third-party content into Beautiful.ai presentations. However, you can add interactive links to your slides.

Each slide comes with a preset animation style that you're unable to customize. However, you can change the speed, timing and triggers for the animations. 

Beautiful.ai is a cloud-based application.

The software only works on your desktop computer.

You can invite people to collaborate on your presentation by either giving them "view" or "edit" access. Collaborators must have a Beautiful.ai account to view or edit the presentation.

While there's no brand kit feature available, you can customize a theme (colors and fonts) and save it to your library to use in future presentations.

There are several options to share your presentations. Send an email invite, share a public or private link, generate an embed code or share directly to social media.

You can export your presentations to PDF or PowerPoint to view offline.

There is no password protection, but you can use the Secure Viewing option to only share your presentation with other Beautiful.ai users via an email invite.

This feature is only available in the paid plans. You can access a number of viewing and usage statistics for your presentations.

This feature is not available in Beautiful.ai.

11 Genially

The main idea behind the Genially presentation software is interactivity.

This program is good not only for presentations and video presentations but also for other visual graphics. It’s great for adding a modern, interactive feel to your presentations.

There is a free plan in Genially, which gives you unlimited creations but limited resources. The paid plans are as follow, paid yearly:

• Pro: $7.49 / month
• Master: $20.82 / month
• Team: $79.15 / month

Genially is easy to use if you are accustomed to programs with lots of choices. There is a lot that can be done with the features in Genially.

Any change can be applied to all slides with a single click of the button in the menu. When editing, there is a "design view" and a "layers view."

Professionals and educators of any field who can benefit from interactive presentations.

There are plenty of template options. Some are free and some are only available via the premium plans. Presentation templates are also available as "video presentations."

The graphic assets in Genially are quite varied; there is plenty to choose from. Images can be uploaded or found on the Pixabay integration.

Videos can be added via a YouTube link and GIFs can be imported with the Giphy integration.

Audio can be uploaded from your computer, added via SoundCloud and a couple of other integrations, or recorded directly in Genially.

Third-party content can be added to your presentations with Genially integrations. For example, you can add an interactive map via Google Maps.

All elements can be animated, as can the transitions between slides. Animation effects are quite extensive. There is a similar tab called “interactivity,” which are pop-ups and hyperlinks supplied with lots of button choices.

Genially is a cloud-based presentation program.

This program is only available to edit on computers but can be viewed on any device.

It seems that a professional plan allows 5 team members, but the pricing plan shows that all plans have collaborative capabilities. Collaborators can be added in the dashboard where  all creations are stored.

Brand kits are available in the premium plans. It is an internal feature with easy access.

Finished presentations can be shared to social media.

Finished presentations can be downloaded as a set of .jpg images, as a .pdf or as an .html5 file which will keep all animations.

Premium plans have these features.

This is not available in Genially.

Canva is not only a presentation software but also a full editing program for all visual needs. Presentation creation is only one of the possibilities with Canva. It has become a favorite with bloggers and home-based businesses.

The free version of Canva is pretty extensive. The only restrictions are the use of premium resources that can be either bought separately or through the Canva Pro plan. Canva Pro is charged at $12.99/month or $119.99/year.

Canva Teams is $14.99/month + $14.99/month for every team member after the 5th.

Canva is easy to use as all elements are easy to find and are mostly customizable. Presentations are viewed scrolling; there is no master view and you can’t change something on all slides at once.

Bloggers, small home-based businesses and startups

There are lots of customizable template options, and each slide inside the templates can be used individually.

There are plenty of options in the graphic assets library, including shapes, icons, photos, frames and stickers. Some are free, while others are paid.

Videos and GIFs can be uploaded to Canva.

You can add music to your presentations using the available options inside Canva.

Canva offers dozens of integrations and media embed options, including YouTube, Google Maps, Vimeo, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter and more.

There are several animation options that apply to entire slides inside Canva. You can also add animated stickers to your slides.

Canva is a cloud-based app. Presentations can be seen on any device.

Canva is available as an iPhone app and an android app for editing capabilities.

Presentations can be shared for editing with team members.

Canva Pro has a brand kit feature.

Presentations can be shared on Twitter and Facebook.

Presentations can be downloaded as a group of .png or .jpg images or as a .pdf. You can also download it as an MP4 video for offline viewing.

All designs on Canva are private unless they are made public or shared via a link. There is no password-protected sharing though.

These features are not available in Canva.

While Canva offers a wide range of features for various visual design needs, you can explore better alternatives to find solutions that may better fit your requirements. If you want to explore other options, read our article about 12 excellent Canva alternatives .

13  FlowVella

FlowVella is a downloadable presentation software that can be used offline. The main attraction of FlowVella is the Kiosk Mode, in which you can create interactive presentations like the ones used in museums or information counters at malls or hotels.

FlowVella is free to try out. You can use it free forever but the options are limited and the finished presentations has a watermark. P aid plans are as follows:

• Premium : $10/month or $60/year
• Pro : $20/month or $200/year
• Enterprise : Upon request

FlowVella is pretty easy to use, and the controls are straightforward and uncomplicated.

This presentation software is for professionals and educators that need to be able to create presentations offline. Also for those who can take advantage of the Kiosk Mode.

The template options are quite varied and well designed.

The graphic assets library is very limited. Photographs and images need to be uploaded from your computer.

Videos can be uploaded or found via YouTube, iCloud and Dropbox integrations when online. GIFs can be added as images.

Audio can be uploaded from your computer, or added via iCloud or Dropbox.

You can add PDF files.

Only the transitions are animated minimally.

This is a desktop-based application. It must be downloaded.

There are iPad and device apps available for editing on those devices as well.

Paid premium plans can work with teams.

Brand kits are not available.

Presentations can be shared on Facebook and Twitter.

Since this is a desktop application, offline viewing is not a complication.

These features are available in the paid plans. Analytics can be viewed once the presentation has been published online.

This feature is not available on FlowVella.

14  Haiku Deck

Haiku Deck is a presentation software that is straightforward with a simple interface that makes quick and practical presentations. Presentations can be created on the computer and on mobile devices.

Haiku Deck can be tried for free with one available presentation. The Public plan is USD 7.99 a month, Pro plans are USD 9.99 a month billed annually and USD 19.99 billed monthly, and Premium plans are USD 29.99 a month.

Haiku Deck is quite easy to use and menus are easy to follow. There are word size limiters and specific text placement choices for each slide. Charts are simple to create and can be customized. The editor can be connected via cloud to all devices. The new addition, Zuru, is an Artificial Intelligence system that creates creative presentations from simple PowerPoint files or outlines.

The Haiku Deck presentation software is geared mostly toward educators and classrooms. Businesses and bloggers can also use it for practical purposes.

Templates on Haiku Deck are more like an inspiring collection of photographs for a specific niche with some suggestions on where to place the text and what charts to include.

The available graphic assets library in Haiku Deck are millions of photographs, numerous font choices and charts and graphs.

YouTube videos can be embedded easily in a Haiku Deck. GIFs cannot be added to Haiku Decks but a finished presentation can be turned into a video or into a GIF.

Narrations and voice overs are easily recorded on a presentation in Haiku Deck.

Only videos can be embedded.

Features can't be animated in Haiku Deck

Desktop or Cloud / Available to Create on Multiple Devices

Haiku Deck is a cloud-based app that is available for editing and viewing on your laptop and also as an app on phones and tablets.

Haiku decks can be downloaded as .pptx files for offline viewing.

Presentations can be easily shared to social media from the editor.

Haiku Deck offers team possibilities upon request.

There is no brand kit, but you can add your logo to the finished product.

Pro and Premium plans have private and password-protected capabilities.

Premium plans have analytics for who has viewed your presentations.

Emails cannot be captured with Haiku Deck but slides and presentations can be sent with invitations to your existing email contacts.

15  Microsoft Sway

Microsoft has its own alternative to PowerPoint — Sway.

This online presentation software is completely different from PowerPoint and introduces a new concept of building "Sways" instead of "presentations."

Sway is free to use for anyone who has a Microsoft account.

It's super easy to use Sway and kind of fun too. It has a non-traditional storyline editor, which lets you add "blocks" of content that the software configures into layouts.

Sway is mostly for people who don't want to spend too much time designing a complex presentation. For example, students and nonprofit organizations.

There are several templates for different purposes, such as photo slideshows, sales trainings and even personal portfolios.

You can upload your own media or search from various sources inside Sway, including Flickr and Bing Images. There are no shapes and icons included.

You can upload videos from your device or embed from YouTube.

You can add audio to Sway by uploading or dragging and dropping the audio file onto your storyline from your computer.

You can embed images, videos, maps and other content from tons of websites, including Google Maps, Soundcloud, Twitter, Facebook and more.

Sway automatically adds animations to your slides. You cannot change or customize them; you can only increase or decrease the level of animation added to your Sway.

Sway is an online, cloud-based software.

Sway works on any device with an internet browser.

You can invite people to view or edit your Sway presentation.

Sway presentations can be shared directly to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

You can download your Sway as a Word or PDF file to view offline.

There is no password protection available, but you can choose to share your Sway with specific people, anyone with a link or only people in your organization who have a link.

You can view reader statistics for your Sway if you have a Microsoft Office 365 subscription.

This feature is not available in Microsoft Sway.

Presentation Software FAQs

Still have questions? We've compiled answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the best presentation tools available.

Q. Which Is the Best Software for Making Presentations?

There are many presentation tools out there but Visme stands out as a top pick and a creative presentation app with a full suite of advanced features tailored to the needs of individual users and businesses. Visme offers real-time collaboration, interactive and animated elements, hyper-customization options, robust data visualization tools and a brand wizard to maintain brand consistency across your presentations.

Q. What Is Better Than PowerPoint?

Visme is often considered a top presentation software and offers several advantages as a PowerPoint alternative software. Its intuitive interface and extensive template library make creating visually stunning presentations seamless, even for beginners. Visme's collaboration features are superior, allowing teams to work seamlessly. On top of that, Visme is packed with advanced interactive and animated elements to keep your audience hooked.

Q. Is PowerPoint or Prezi Better?

PowerPoint and Prezi each have strengths and are suited for different presentation styles. PowerPoint is easy to use, has a clear structure, and is widely available, making it suitable for traditional slide decks and formal presentations. On the other hand, Prezi excels at non-linear, visually engaging presentations with its zooming and panning features, making it ideal for creative or storytelling presentations. The best choice depends on your content, audience and desired presentation style.

Q. What Is the Best App to Do a Presentation On?

Visme offers a powerful presentation app that allows you to create, edit and present your slides from anywhere. Its mobile app is designed for on-the-go editing and presenting, ensuring you always have your presentation at your fingertips.

Q. Is Canva Better Than PowerPoint?

Canva and PowerPoint are tailored to suit the diverse preferences and requirements of different users.

Generally, Canva is known for its drag-and-drop interface, extensive library of design-focused templates and emphasis on visual appeal. It is an excellent choice for those who value aesthetics and want to create content quickly. On the other hand, PowerPoint offers more traditional features and is super flexible. It is often preferred due to its integration and compatibility with other Microsoft Office tools.

Q. What Is Replacing PowerPoint?

Visme is quickly gaining popularity as a PowerPoint replacement and a free presentation software with a user-friendly interface, tons of customization options, and powerful tools that make creating presentations a breeze. With a plethora of templates, interactive elements, and powerful data visualization tools, Visme empowers you to create presentations that truly captivate your audience and leave a lasting impression

Don't just take our word for it. Hear what Kendra Bradley, Graphic Content Developer at WOW!, has to say about Visme:

“Previously we were using PowerPoint, which is fine, but the interactivity you can get with Visme is so much more robust that we’ve all steered away from PowerPoint.”

“PowerPoint templates are plain and boring, and we want to create more fun and engaging content. Visme has multiple slide templates to choose from, which makes this so much easier.”

“I just made a deck recently and it took me about 15-20 minutes. I found a template I really liked and tweaked it and put it in our brand colors. In PowerPoint, it would take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half.”

Read the full case study to learn how they streamlined their presentation creation process and found a better alternative than PowerPoint.

Looking for a Presentation Software?

Choosing the best presentation program for your business is a great first step towards better and more effective slide deck development. In this guide, you learned about 15 different types of presentation software and we gave you a checklist to help you decide.

If you're looking for an easy-to-use presentation maker that also comes with unique features that you won't find in most other tools, Visme might be a great option.

You can look for the right pricing plan for your needs and even apply for a discount if you're a nonprofit organization. And if you just want to try out Visme to see if it's a good fit, sign up for a free account and use it for as long as you like — no strings attached.

Which of these best presentation software options fits your needs? If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you below.

Create stunning presentations in minutes with Visme

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About the Author

Orana is a multi-faceted creative. She is a content writer, artist, and designer. She travels the world with her family and is currently in Istanbul. Find out more about her work at oranavelarde.com

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As LGBTQ library material comes under fire, California may ban book bans

Alexei Koseff, CalMatters

This story originally ran at Cal Matters.

The presentation was unassuming, just a handful of picture books arrayed on the side of a bookcase — the ABCs of a Pride parade, biographies of the gay World War II codebreaker Alan Turing and 50 LGBTQ+ people who made history, the sex education manual “It’s Perfectly Normal,” a retelling of the Stonewall riot and “My Shadow Is Pink,” in which a young boy explores his gender identity.

But when Fresno County Supervisor Steve Brandau heard a complaint from a constituent that Clovis librarians had put together a graphic Pride Month display for the children’s section, he was concerned enough to check it out. It wasn’t the type of material that he thought should be available alongside books about skunks and pirates.

“I don’t like a kid going in there and seeing ‘I can choose to be a boy or girl,’” Brandau said. “It didn’t seem age-appropriate, especially without the parent being involved.”

After flipping through the books, Brandau said he left the library in June 2023 “horrified” by images he believed were too sexually explicit and topics he felt were too mature for young readers. He began reaching out to local officials elsewhere — in states such as South Carolina, Kentucky and Texas, where library book controversies have become commonplace — to learn what they were doing.

Last November, Brandau led Fresno County in creating one of California’s first citizen review committees for library books , which could soon decide whether to move material with “sexual references” and “gender-identity content” to a restricted area where it could only be checked out with a parent’s permission.

The committee, which has not yet been selected, is already a lightning rod for fears about parents’ rights, censorship, the politicization of libraries and LGBTQ people being pushed out of public life again. Supporters say they are concerned about sexual content, not LGBTQ themes, and they do not want to ban books from the library entirely.

Tracy Bohren, a queer mother of two from Clovis who helped rally local LGBTQ residents against the committee, said adults who object to books about gay and transgender people are applying their own biases to sexualize material meant to help children understand the world. She said it’s important to have library books about marginalized groups available to LGBTQ kids who don’t come from supportive homes and need the message that they are loved.

“Somehow in the ‘we need to protect kids’ platform that they have stated, trans kids, LGBTQ kids, have not been considered part of that population that they need to protect,” Bohren said.

Now the book battle has become another front in the intensifying clashes between more conservative pockets of California and the state’s liberal government over values and local control . A bill on track to pass the Legislature before the session ends on Aug. 31 would effectively outlaw book review committees and other policies that limit access to materials at public libraries — potentially shutting down Fresno County’s efforts before they ever get off the ground.

“It appears to me that they believe that children are best educated and raised as wards of the state,” Brandau said. “We have age limits for movies. We have age limits for alcohol. And it’s not unreasonable to have age limits on sexually graphic material.”

Books bans surging nationwide

Though disagreements over what constitutes suitable reading material for young people are nothing new, public libraries have been thrust into a pitched culture war over the past few years as conservative activist groups across the country organized to demand more books be removed from collections .

The American Library Association has tracked a massive increase in the number of books being challenged at schools and libraries, which soared by 65% in 2023 to a record 4,240 titles. Nearly half featured LGBTQ or racial themes, according to the association.

Many Republican-led states have subsequently embraced policies requiring schools and libraries to remove books with any sexual content — including nudity, masturbation and homosexuality — or keep them in a separate adult section. New statewide restrictions have taken effect in Utah, Idaho, South Carolina and Tennessee in recent weeks.

California is not at the center of this conflict, though it has faced scattered fights over school materials, including a high-profile showdown last year between Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Temecula school board that tried to ban an elementary school social studies textbook because it incorporated a lesson about assassinated gay politician Harvey Milk of San Francisco. In response, Newsom signed a law to penalize local districts that block books for including the history or culture of LGBTQ people and other diverse groups, while voters recalled the school board president in June .

Besides Fresno County, the city council in Huntington Beach, the iconic Orange County surf community, has also voted to create a citizen committee to review children’s library books, part of a broader push by local officials to establish a bulkhead against progressive California policies . In the latest salvo of a bitter brawl over the political future of the city, opponents are collecting signatures to place a repeal of the review board before voters next spring.

These incidents caught the attention of Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi , a Torrance Democrat, who said public libraries are cornerstone institutions that should provide all Americans with a diverse range of perspectives.

“Teens exploring gender identity issues absolutely should have access to books that speak to their experiences and that may provide support or guidance,” he told CalMatters.

His proposal, Assembly Bill 1825 , would require public libraries in California to establish a clear policy for choosing books, including a way for community members to voice their objections, but would prohibit banning material because it deals with race or sexuality. It also clarifies that library material can include sexual content that’s not obscene and leaves to the discretion of librarians where to display those books, though they could not prevent minors from checking them out.

“At the center of this bill is the fundamental respect for professionally trained librarians to be making the decisions as to what book titles and how to present them to the general public,” Muratsuchi said.

The measure has received the support of the California Library Association. Peter Coyl, the director and CEO of the Sacramento Public Library and a member of the association’s intellectual freedom committee, said librarians want to provide people with information, not pornography. While parents have the right to decide what their own children read, he said, libraries need to have materials available to serve their full communities, including families with same-gender couples and children who are questioning their identities.

“Not every book is meant for every reader,” Coyl said. “You can’t then take your belief about what’s right for your child and apply it to everyone else.”

The bill, which won overwhelming approval in the Assembly in May and has advanced smoothly through Senate committees since, must pass the Legislature by the end of August to reach the governor’s desk. A spokesperson for Newsom said the governor would not comment on pending legislation.

If it is signed into law, it could still potentially face legal challenges from defenders of library book review committees, who argue the bill prevents parents from protecting their children from adult material.

“How do we make sure our public libraries really are tools that can be used by everyone?” said Diane Pearce, a city councilmember in Clovis, a fast-growing and Republican-leaning Fresno suburb. “We want to empower our parents in this situation and the state is telling us that they can do it better than we can.”

LGBTQ families feel targeted

The debate over the book review board in Fresno County has been deeply enmeshed with anxieties around LGBTQ rights, particularly transgender youth, underscoring how advocates on either side see the committee in starkly different terms.

As Brandau was researching his proposal last summer, the issue blew up publicly when Pearce posted a warning on Facebook that people “might want to wait until June is over to take your kids to the Clovis Public Library” alongside photos of the Pride display and a page from a book about gender identity.

Pearce said she does not object to LGBTQ content, but rather to graphic sex education books and others dealing with “transgender ideology” being targeted to young children, which she said are not appropriate themes for that age.

“I looked at it as a public service announcement,” Pearce said. “I believe that parents should be involved in their children’s exposure to that. Those issues are controversial.”

Pearce asked her city council colleagues to send a letter to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors seeking a solution, though they did not ultimately agree .

That effort mobilized local members of the LGBTQ community, such as Boren, who said the library skirmish is part of a broader pattern of religious conservatives in Fresno County overlooking or discriminating against LGBTQ families.

The Clovis school district was one of the first in the state last year to require parental notification when a student changes their name, pronouns or gender identity — a policy that the Legislature and Newsom recently made illegal in California , effective in January and pending several lawsuits.

When advocates rallied against the review committee proposal before the board of supervisors last fall, Bohren said officials ignored their expressions of support for the library and seemed only concerned with serving their constituents who aligned with their ideology.

“I feel like it was contrived,” she said. “It’s one specific group of people — Christian nationalists — who are deciding what is appropriate or not appropriate for my children to see.”

Brandau said opponents fundamentally misunderstood his proposal, known as the Parents Matter Act , which he already considered a compromise. No books will be banned, he said; the committee will merely move material to a restricted section of the library that parents can access if they want, allowing Fresno County to set its own community standards for what books should be readily available to children.

He said he took months to develop a policy that was “not targeting one lifestyle,” though he acknowledged that language limiting “gender-identity content” and other “content deemed age-inappropriate” encompasses books about sexuality and transgender people.

“I’m not against this material. I’m against it at the wrong age,” Brandau said. “If this didn’t involve children, it’s not the biggest deal on the planet.”

Librarians under siege

California librarians say morale in their profession has plummeted in recent years. The backlash to certain books has fomented public distrust of their intentions and stoked a host of stressful and sometimes terrifying new threats — protesters, prank calls, bomb threats and “First Amendment auditors,” who record their encounters with library workers on their phones.

“These are things we never worried about before,” said Coyl of the Sacramento Public Library. “It’s not what we signed up for as library workers. And it is probably the worst that it’s ever been.”

Some libraries that have not faced a huge number of book challenges are making precautionary changes to their policies, such as requiring that demands come from someone who proves that they actually reviewed the material and not allowing another challenge if the library keeps the book on the shelf.

“Not every book is meant for every reader. You can’t then take your belief about what’s right for your child and apply it to everyone else.” peter coyl, director and CEO of the Sacramento Public Library

The tumult has stretched even to liberal California communities not used to conflicts over cultural values. Programs where drag queens read stories to children have become a particular flash point. Two years ago, members of the far-right militia group the Proud Boys stormed a drag storytime at a library in the East Bay city of San Lorenzo.

The library in Redwood City, on the San Francisco peninsula, started a drag queen story program remotely during the pandemic. When it hosted the event in-person for the first time in 2022, several groups protested that the library was grooming and indoctrinating children . The protesters included people associated with the Proud Boys and a local homelessness nonprofit with an evangelical Christian affiliation, according to Derek Wolfgram, interim director of Redwood City’s parks and recreation department.

Wolfgram, a past president of the California Library Association, said he tries to use these situations as an opportunity to engage positively with the community. The evangelical nonprofit wanted to host a Bible storytime in response to the drag queen event, so the library created a series of story hours with faith leaders of different denominations, which Wolfgram said has been popular and appeared to draw new library users.

He recalled another exchange with a man who said the library didn’t have enough books with conservative viewpoints. Wolfgram asked for a list of recommendations, some of which were already in Redwood City’s collection and at least one — “Why I Stand,” the memoir of NBA player Jonathan Isaac — that the library added. It has since been checked out several times.

“Don’t tell me what you want to take away from anybody else. Tell me what you want to add so you feel included,” Wolfgram said.

Parents divided over review committee

In Fresno County, another Pride Month has come and gone and the library book review committee still has not launched. The deadline for applications was in April, but more than three months later, the board, which will primarily be selected by county supervisors, remains vacant.

Brandau said he received more than 40 applications, which he is reviewing. He expects to finish interviews and choose his two representatives to the committee by the end of the month.

“We have age limits for movies. We have age limits for alcohol. And it’s not unreasonable to have age limits on sexually graphic material.” Fresno County Supervisor Steve Brandau

A spokesperson said the library is waiting to receive direction from the review committee before it moves any material. In the meantime, the Clovis branch put together an elaborate Pride display in June, with a case of featured books, a historical timeline and, in the children’s section, a banner depicting melting popsicles of every color in the rainbow, with the slogan “Love is Love.”

John Gerardi, executive director of Right to Life of Central California, is among the applicants waiting to find out whether he’ll be on the committee. The Clovis father of three “frequent library-goers” under the age of 10 said he wants to move books about sexuality that he believes are being presented to children who are far too young.

On several library visits, Gerardi said, his wife has found books in the children’s section that included explicit material that did not seem appropriate for the marked grade level, such as “Sex Is a Funny Word” by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth. The sex education comic book for 8- to 10-year-olds has been one of the most challenged books in the country in recent years because of its frank discussion of sexual topics. Gerardi objected to an image that depicts a character masturbating in a bathtub and a passage about the meaning of the word sexy.

“Some of these books just seemed completely inappropriate for healthy childhood development around sex,” Gerardi said.

Gerardi said he has lost confidence in library officials, who he believes have been dismissive of parents’ concerns even though they are not all experts on early childhood development.

“There’s this idea that they have access to some secret hidden knowledge that we don’t have. And I just don’t think that’s true,” he said. “I think that appropriate presentation of sexual themes to children is something that the taxpayers who are paying for this darn library can understand.”

Others are seeking positions on the library book review committee precisely because they do not believe it should exist at all.

“It’s absolutely disgusting trying to control a public library that way,” said Jamie Coffman, a Fresno mother of four children ranging in age from 2 to 11. She said it’s a parent’s job to monitor what their kids are reading, not anybody else’s, and people should trust the librarians’ judgment about what books they put on the shelves.

Coffman said she submitted her application with vague answers that she hoped would conceal her true intention to “take it down from the inside.” She has yet to hear back.

Raised in a conservative, Southern Baptist family, Coffman said reading helped expose her to other viewpoints as she was growing up. She worries that society is moving backward on accepting diversity and said she’s scared that her own children might have fewer books available to them.

“You can’t hide the world just to make your children into who you want them to be,” she said.

Stories Chosen For You

Do you think vice president kamala harris should be the next president, ‘a sarcastic remark i made’: j.d. vance dismisses ‘childless’ women comment at pa rally.

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance dismissed his attack on "childless cat ladies" by calling it a "sarcastic remark."

During a Tuesday rally in Pennsylvania, Vance was told by somebody in the audience that his comments were offensive to "millions of women."

"Now you asked about the remarks that I made that were, you said that they were offensive to millions of women," Vance responded.

" This cat lady loves you !" someone in the audience shouted.

"I love you too," Vance replied. "What I said is very simple. I think American families are good and government policy should be more pro-family."

"Now, if the media wants to get offended about a sarcastic remark I made before I even ran for the United States Senate, then the media is entitled to get offended," he added.

Vance then pivoted to an attack on Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

ALSO READ: Don’t be fooled: Project 2025 is already happening

"I'm offended that Kamala Harris opened up the American southern border and allowed fentanyl to come into our communities," he said. "And I'm offended that she wants to be the people's president, but she won't even answer tough questions."

"And I think that's what most Americans are offended by too."

Watch the video below from Fox News.

'Not going to work': Ex-GOP insider says 'pessimistic' Trump campaign doomed to fail

One-time GOP insider David Frum, who worked as a speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, predicted that Donald Trump's "pessimistic" presidential campaign will ultimately fail.

During a recent interview on The Rest is Politics podcast, Frum argued Trump's message to America was very similar to that of Hungarian President Victor Orban , who presented himself as a Bulwark against a frightening outside world.

"He's behaving as if America has not been a success," said Frum. "That has been the key... His famous line in his first inaugural address: 'The American dream is dead.' And it was pessimism, it was despair, sold in America! You're going to sell pessimism and despair in America?! That's not going to work!"

Host Rory Stewart went on to note that it did work for Trump in the sense that he was elected president in 2016 before losing in 2020 to President Joe Biden.

Frum countered that Trump never won the popular vote in either election and that he has been a persistent anchor around his party in midterm and special elections.

ALSO READ: Kamala Harris was not ‘the most liberal senator’ — take conservatives' word for it

"I don't think it works," Frum insisted. "I think it works for him -- he's been able to steal a lot of taxpayer money and he's enjoyed hobnobbing with his admired dictators all over the world."

Writing on Twitter, Frum elaborated further on why he believes the pessimistic approach only works in countries such as Hungary but not the U.S.

"I understand why Hungarians feel pessimism about the modern world," he argued. "Their leaders positioned them on the wrong side of two world wars, their territory was carved between their neighbors, they were afterward trapped behind the Iron Curtain, their talent driven into exile where nobody spoke Hungarian... but Americans have little in common with Hungary, despite Viktor Orban's efforts to convince/bribe the conservative world otherwise."

Watch the video below or at this link .

Tim Walz's personal finances are extraordinarily boring — and that may help Harris

A one-night stay at a Donald Trump-branded hotel in New York’s Central Park location typically costs nearly $700 per night — at minimum.

But to stay at the personal home of Tim Walz — the new vice presidential running mate of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris — cost somewhere between $2,501 and $5,000 per year in 2017 .

A review of Walz’s personal financial disclosures from his 12 years in Congress reveals a seemingly run-of-the-mill financial situation filled with a teacher’s pension, a mortgage and a life insurance plan.

In this respect, Walz most definitely fits Harris' bill: Since becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee next month upon President Joe Biden's exit from the race, Harris has telegraphed that "building up the middle class will be a defining goal" of her presidency, were she to win the White House.

Walz’s personal finances stand in stark contrast to Republican presidential nominee Trump , whose extreme wealth and exotic financial arrangements are a point of endless pride for the former president. Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who grew up in poverty, now boasts multi-million dollar wealth from real estate to venture capital funds to book royalties and stock investments, according to his 2022 Senate financial disclosure. (Both Trump and Vance requested extensions for filing their disclosures that cover finances in 2023.)

Even Harris’ financial picture shows assets totaling in the millions of dollars between the exchange-traded funds and retirement accounts she and her husband own – plus she’s benefitted from some perks such as comped tickets to a Beyoncé concert and a Howard University football game (her alma mater), valued just under $2,000 each, according to her latest public financial disclosure .

The personal finances of Walz, currently the governor of Minnesota, appear decidedly more relatable to the average American, whose median net worth is $192,900 .

Walz’s final congressional financial disclosure, filed in March 2019 , after he was elected governor, lists the Education Minnesota and Minnesota State Retirement System pensions both he and his wife receive (they met working at the same high school ), along with life insurance policies for each of them valued up to $50,000.

There’s an education savings plan for up to $15,000, a refinanced mortgage valued up to $500,000 and a personal loan for between $10,000 and $15,000.

The rented room in Walz’s Mankato, Minn., personal home brought in between $1,001 and $2,500 at the time of the 2019 filing.

As governor of Minnesota, Walz earns $127,629 per year. The salary went up to $149,550 on July 1, but Walz declined to take the extra money, according to Minnesota state records .

When Walz represented Minnesota as a Democratic member of the House of Representatives, he was one of the champions for the 2012 passage of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which intended to stop insider trading, curb conflicts-of-interest and enhance transparency. It required key government officials, including members of Congress, to publicly report within 45 days most purchases, sales and exchanges of stocks, bonds, commodity futures, securities and cryptocurrencies.

Numerous legislators have pushed for an outright ban on congressional stock trading in the years since as numerous legislators have violated the STOCK Act with little consequence. One of the latest bill, the ETHICS Act, passed out of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs last month, which would also require the president and vice president to divest from covered investments by 2027.

“It is the honor of a lifetime to join @kamalaharris in this campaign. I’m all in,” Walz posted on X on Tuesday. “Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school.”

It is the honor of a lifetime to join @kamalaharris in this campaign. I’m all in. Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school. So, let’s get this done, folks! Join us. https://t.co/tqOVsw2OLM — Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) August 6, 2024

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, responded to Raw Story's questions about candidates' personal financials with links to the Trump campaign's various statements about Walz.

"While Walz pretends to support Americans in the Heartland, when the cameras are off, he believes that rural America is ‘mostly cows and rocks’," said Karoline Leavitt, Trump campaign press secretary, in a statement . "From proposing his own carbon-free agenda, to suggesting stricter emission standards for gas-powered cars, and embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote, Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide."

Walz’s gubernatorial office and the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to Raw Story’s request for comment.

Kamala Harris was not ‘the most liberal senator’ — take conservatives' word for it

Delusional 'fat elvis' trump thinks he can keep spinning the old hits.

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Flywire Corporation (FLYW) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Flywire Corporation ( NASDAQ: FLYW ) Q2 2024 Results Conference Call August 6, 2024 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Allison MacLeod - Chief Marketing Officer Michael Massaro - CEO & Director Robert Orgel - President & COO Cosmin Pitigoi - CFO and Principal Financial & Accounting Officer

Conference Call Participants

John Davis - Raymond James Tyler DuPont - BofA Tien-Tsin Huang - JPMorgan Andrew Schmidt - Citi Dan Perlin - RBC Capital Markets Ken Suchoski - Autonomous Research Chris Kennedy - William Blair Darrin Peller - Wolfe Research James Faucette - Morgan Stanley

Greetings, and welcome to Flywire Corporation's Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Ms. Allison MacLeod, Chief Marketing Officer. Thank you, Ms. MacLeod, you may begin.

Allison MacLeod

Thank you, and good afternoon. With us on today's call are Mike Massaro, Chief Executive Officer; Rob Orgel, President and Chief Operating Officer; and Cosmin Pitigoi, Chief Financial Officer. Our second quarter 2024 earnings press release, supplemental presentation and when filed, Form 10-Q can be found at ir.flywire.com.

During the call, we will be discussing certain forward-looking information. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements.

We will also be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to our press release and SEC filings for more information on the risks regarding these forward-looking statements that could cause actual results to differ materially and the required disclosures and reconciliations related to non-GAAP financial measures.

This call is being webcast live and will be available for replay on our website. I would now like to turn the call over to Mike Massaro.

Michael Massaro

Thank you, Allison, and thank you to everyone that is joining us today. We are pleased to share our Q2 2024 results with all of you here today, demonstrating continued strong performance across the business.

Concurrent with sharing our Q2 results today, we will also be discussing the announced acquisition of Invoiced, an award-winning accounts receivable, Software-as-a-Service platform for the B2B industry, a share buyback program to return capital to shareholders as part of our commitment to driving long-term shareholder value and how we are dealing with the revenue headwinds related to the ongoing Canadian government actions involving student study permits, both operationally and in terms of our forecast.

Rob Orgel, our President and COO; and Cosmin Pitigoi, our CFO, will go into greater detail later in this call. But first, I will start with a few financial highlights from the quarter.

Revenue less ancillary services was $99.9 million, an increase of 26% year-over-year. Adjusted gross profit for the quarter was $63.4 million, an increase of 26% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA was $5.8 million for the quarter, increasing by $5.9 million year-over-year, and adjusted EBITDA margin expanded nearly 600 basis points year-over-year with strong free cash flow conversion.

As we are past the halfway point of the year, I want to underscore the strong business fundamentals that position Flywire for sustained growth and success. First, we have significant growth potential within our existing accounts, given the depth of our solutions can pull multiple levers to add more value to our clients.

We frequently use our land and expand strategy to grow our business. For example, winning a large cross-border payments client and then solving other payment challenges for them, like domestic payments is one way we expand with clients while being deeply embedded into their ecosystem.

Second, we continue to drive great diversity of revenue across verticals, subsectors, countries, currencies and clients. We are not a one vertical company. Consistent with our plan to broaden beyond education, travel has grown into our second largest vertical by revenue less ancillary services, reinforcing our ability to strategically diversify our business.

And consistent with our plans, we are not a U.S.-only revenue company. We are capturing the market opportunity around the world, driving significant revenue from other geographic regions.

And third, we are now and will continue to consistently convert adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow while achieving strong revenue growth and expanded adjusted EBITDA margins. We believe our strength and ability to excel in all these areas sets Flywire apart from other businesses.

All this being said, we continue to believe that our current valuation does not properly reflect the sizable market opportunity in front of us, our offering that uniquely combines software and payments and our thoughtful approach to efficiency and scale.

So today, we are announcing a share repurchase program of $150 million as we believe that our existing liquidity and projected free cash flow generation allows us to continue making organic investments to grow our core as well as strategic acquisitions, while also giving us the opportunity to return capital to shareholders. Cosmin will share more details on the share repurchase program later in this call.

Returning to operating performance. We have continued to make progress in our 3 strategic investment areas: optimizing our go-to-market capabilities, expanding our Flywire Advantage and strengthening our FlyMate community.

First, on our go-to-market capabilities. We continue to optimize and invest in our growth algorithm. Our increased investment in sales and relationship management is paying off in our B2B vertical, where in Q2, we increased our year-over-year client wins by 38% and generated an over 100% increase in pipeline value creation compared to Q2 last year.

B2B is vast, but we are focused on subsegments of the market. For example, in Q2, we had great traction within insurance, thanks to a combination of in-person events, digital acquisition and direct sales outreach. In addition, here at Flywire, we believe our successful M&A track record complements our strong organic growth.

Today, we announced the acquisition of Invoiced, an award-winning accounts receivable, Software-as-a-Service platform, and we are thrilled to be welcoming a talented group of new FlyMates to our global team. The deal augments Flywire's B2B payment solution with workflow automation software, purpose-built for mid-market companies to streamline the entire AR process.

In addition to the experienced team with Invoiced, we gained AR automation software involved in invoicing, communicating with payers and reconciling payments to ERP systems. We are also gaining the opportunity to monetize several billion dollars of domestic and international payment volume that is managed annually by the Invoiced platform.

The combination of Invoiced AR automation software with Flywire's proprietary global payment network, which supports diverse payment methods in more than 140 currencies across 240 countries and territories around the world is expected to provide the B2B industry with a full suite software and payment solution that streamlines workflows for finance departments.

Invoiced client base present meaningful growth opportunities for Flywire. We believe their software will significantly accelerate our product road map and add greater value to our B2B clients. We also believe Invoiced Software-as-a-Service platform has the long-term potential to resonate across our verticals as well. And we look forward to scaling it with the support of Flywire's clients, partners and our global team.

We are very excited to share this news today and have added more details on the acquisition in our earnings supplement posted on our Investor Relations website. Cosmin will also go into more detail about the financials of this deal shortly.

As we have said before, we are confident in our track record of strategic and value-add acquisitions, and we'll continue to pursue acquisitions that fit our strategy. In addition to both organic and inorganic go-to-market investments, we have also made great progress expanding our Flywire Advantage.

We remain focused on delivering product and payment innovation to power the vertical ecosystems in which we operate. One example is the recent expansion of our capabilities in India to streamline and digitize student loan payments for Indian students studying abroad. Through our partnership with HDFC Credila, India's largest private loan provider, Flywire enables Indian payers to seamlessly and digitally disperse their education payments in Indian rupees for the loans that are funded and managed by HDFC Credila.

This innovative approach helps us capitalize on the large market opportunity around Indian student loans, which we estimate to be approximately USD 3 billion in annual payment volume. It also builds on our ongoing momentum in India, a key outbound market for us. As a reminder, we have recently established direct integrations to 3 of India's largest banks, including State Bank of India, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank.

We've invested in more local payer support now offered in 8 Indian languages around the clock across a number of familiar channels. And we've expanded our network of education agents and counselors who are becoming increasingly important in placing Indian students in overseas colleges and universities.

And finally, we continue to focus on strengthening and growing our FlyMate community. We pride ourselves on having a culture of collaboration to solve hard problems for our clients. We showcased these strengths when we hosted our annual Flywire Advisory Board meeting with some of our top clients throughout Australia and New Zealand. This year's event was distinctive as it was the first time Flywire and StudyLink clients came together in a summit format.

The event reinforced not only to respect our clients have for their Flywire partnership but also the significant growth potential within our existing accounts and the multiple levers we have to grow those clients and add more value to them. The partnership amongst our teams to integrate and cross-sell our offerings are yielding substantial results in our Australian education market, which Rob will go into great detail about.

Our culture is also underpinned by our commitment to giving back to the communities we serve. This past April, we came together as a company to host our first-ever environmental awareness month, which was a combination of educational programming, volunteering and philanthropy focused on Flywire's commitment to climate action.

Throughout the month, we organized 8 fly better days across our global offices with more than 100 FlyMate volunteering their time and energy to give back to their local communities. This all coincided with our new sponsorship for the Adventure Travel Conservation fund, which enables Flywire to support community-led conservation efforts in tourist destinations around the world. The energy, enthusiasm and dedication of our FlyMates is truly special, and we are proud of our collective efforts and the positive impact our teams have made.

Before I close, I wanted to briefly acknowledge the speculative rumors that circulated last week regarding Flywire. I believe it is evident based on our results and actions announced today that we are focused on executing and growing this business, and that we have confidence in our ability to drive shareholder value.

We will end, as always, with a Q&A session, but I'm not going to further comment or take questions on last week's rumors. Overall, we are very pleased with how the business performed during the second quarter, underscoring the resilience of our business and winning strategy across our industries.

I would now like to turn the call over to Rob Orgel to review some operational highlights from the quarter. Rob?

Robert Orgel

Thanks, Mike. Good afternoon, everyone. It was another quarter of strong performance for the company with solid results on both revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Our sales, client service and delivery teams delivered great results during the quarter.

Here are just a few of the highlights. We signed more than 200 new clients across all verticals. Total projected ARR grew nearly 40% year-over-year across new signings and upsell signed. Average deal size increased across the business and our global go-to-market teams generated greater than 50% growth in new pipeline year-over-year.

This quarter's growth was driven by the continued execution of our 5 strategic growth pillars. As a reminder, these pillars include growing with existing clients, adding new clients, expanding our ecosystem through channel partnerships, expanding to new industries, geographies and products, and finally, pursuing strategic value-enhancing acquisitions. I'd like to briefly discuss how these pillars drove growth during the second quarter.

For our education vertical with an estimated TAM of $660 billion, we saw an increase in new clients signed and an increase in pipeline value creation compared to Q2 of last year. I will get to Canada in a moment as a separate topic, but starting a bit higher level, we saw strong revenue growth within our Higher Education segment despite some of the well-discussed student visa policy topics relating to some of our education markets.

Our combined transaction revenue from our top 4 higher education markets outside of Canada, grew well above our overall corporate growth rate. We were able to achieve this kind of growth in higher ed in the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Mainland Europe market based on the breadth of growth levers at our disposal.

These include ramping with clients signed in the prior year, cross-selling and upselling new products and signing new clients. I'll provide you with some examples across our globally diversified education markets.

Starting with the U.K., which outperformed our expectations, transaction revenue growth was driven largely by volumes ramping from clients signed last fiscal year and product upsells and cross-sells. For example, we signed the University of Bristol where Flywire is integrated with the tribal SIP ERP system as the exclusive payment provider. Bristol has about 30,000 total students with approximately 9,000 being international students.

This is also an example of a prior software-only client that chose Flywire to handle the entire life cycle of student-related payment processing flows including application, deposit, tuition and accommodations-related fees. We plan to be live with Bristol ahead of the U.K. peak education season this year and continue to ramp volumes into next year.

We are also pleased to see positive visa-related headlines in the U.K. with the new U.K. government making statements welcoming international students and reaffirming support of the graduate route, which is the policy that enables international students to stay in the U.K. on visas for a period after their studies.

Shifting over to our Australian education market we grew transaction revenue by a little over 50% year-over-year, another very good results. This was driven primarily by the ramping of existing and recently added clients as we grow our client base and continue to expand our product footprint with clients.

It was also supported by continued growth of agent-driven volumes that reflect the good work of our agent teams around the world, deepening our agent relationships. As Mike previously mentioned, there's a lot of momentum as we integrate and cross-sell our Flywire and StudyLink offerings.

For instance, in Q2, we secured an extension of the StudyLink agreement with Taste South Australia, which serves international students from over 65 countries. We will be using this model with Tape and other existing study in clients to expand the relationship to include Flywire payments.

Moving over to the Canadian education market. In Q2, we saw a modest ramp in international students enrolling in colleges and universities. Student numbers and associated revenues were notably better than Q1 but below our prior expectations. The combination of regulatory announcements and uncertainty resulted in lower application demand and enrollment across a broad span of schools.

While these policies impacted our Canadian results for the quarter, we had some offsetting growth levers that help ease the macro and political cycle-driven headwinds. For example, we are excited to expand our partnership with Global University Systems Canada, which is a network of 40 higher education institutions globally. As part of the expansion, Flywire will process tuition payments for the University of Niagara Falls, which offers both undergraduate and graduate degree programs.

Additionally, we saw a very strong ramp-up in transaction volume processed from some of our larger projected ARR clients that went live during the second quarter of last year, most notably the University of Toronto, a top-ranked global public research university.

And lastly, our K-12 education segment in Canada experienced strong year-over-year growth from a combination of onboarding new clients and increasing utilization across existing clients. So despite a more challenging short-term growth environment in Canada, we are confident that the region is still well positioned to contribute to our longer-term growth objectives.

Finally, for our U.S. education market, we're seeing strong traction with our domestic education student financial software offering, both in terms of cross-selling into our existing cross-border client base and also winning net new clients. For example, Elon University and a public university in the State of Washington were existing cross-border clients who added on our domestic solution during the quarter. Both universities were using the same incumbent providers legacy solutions for domestic payments processing prior to signing on for Flywire's SFS domestic offering.

We also added Alabama State University as a new client during the quarter as they signed up for a full domestic SFS suite. Alabama State will replace legacy solutions and consolidate vendors to use Flywire to manage both domestic tuition formats and payment plans.

We see a long runway ahead of continuing to take market share from the incumbent providers in the U.S. domestic education market with our best-in-class integrated accounts receivable software and payments capabilities.

Now moving on to our second largest vertical in terms of revenue less ancillary services. Travel with an estimated TAM of $530 billion grew over 55% year-over-year for the first half of the year with APAC travel outperforming, growing over 75% year-over-year for the first half of the year. Notably, average projected ARR for new client signings in the travel vertical have increased by over 15% year-over-year during the quarter.

A few larger clients who went live during the quarter includes [indiscernible] a luxury bill-up provider in Thailand within our luxury accommodation subvertical; and SAFARI FRANK, a multiday Safari tour provider in South Africa within our destination management subvertical.

In addition to this global traction, we also saw continued momentum with our newest ocean experiences subvertical. In Q2, we went live with encoding a provider of luxury yachting experiences across the Greek islands. We're excited about the continued traction we're seeing in this new subvertical as it continues to support the rapid growth of our overall travel vertical.

In health care, with an estimated TAM of $500 billion, I'll highlight the success we saw stemming from our multipronged channel partner strategy. This quarter, we signed over 10 new clients supported by our partnerships with a top U.S. bank, in by, Oracle Health, Tintri and Fiserv.

The partnerships that help Flywire broaden our reach to serve nonacute providers and to expand patient payment services to our large health system space. We signed multiple payment service deals through our Fiserv partnership, including Winona Health, an independent health system with over 1,100 employees in the State of Minnesota.

And with our partnership with Sini, we signed on with Salt, the leading international ambulance operator with over 3,000 ambulance in patient transportation vehicles and over 25,000 employees around the world. This is a unique health care business that leverages the capabilities and flexibility of our platform.

And our team was able to get them live in a few short months with softer marketing that it was their most effective and efficient recent system implementation. We are pleased to see this level of activity with our channel partners.

Finally, our B2B vertical, which covers a broad TAM estimated to be about $10 trillion, saw great traction with our Bank of America partnership. During the first half of the year, we had over 60 client referrals from our partnership with the bulk of these referrals and new pipeline opportunities coming during Q2.

Not only did BofA deliver a record number of new referrals to our sales team, but they also worked with our teams to elevate Flywire's cross-border receivables solution to have greater visibility among their B2B clients with complex cross-border payments needs.

Outside of our channel partner efforts, our direct sales team signed CorCentriq, and we're happy to see them go live during the quarter. CorCentriq, a leading global provider of payments, procurement, accounts payable and accounts receivable solutions to enterprise and middle market companies, is both a client and a partner for Flywire with over 2,000 customers using CorCentriq to streamline payments processes and optimize working capital requirements.

Forcentriq utilizes Flywire to accept payments for their managed accounts receivable solution in which core-centric handles the invoicing and payment acceptance on behalf of enterprise clients globally. We worked closely to integrate directly into CorCentriq's softlad platform called Core Connect, where global payers can access and pay their invoices.

While we're still in the early phases of implementation, we are excited about the opportunity to ramp volumes with CorCentriq as the relationship progresses.

And finally, as Mike detailed, our acquisition of Invoiced complements the strong organic growth and will help us accelerate our go-to-market strategy in B2B. Consistent with our thesis that software drives value and payments, combining invoice, workflow automation software and Flywire's payment network will create a differentiated solution for businesses that can scale by leveraging the power of the Flywire platform, network and teams.

Stepping out of our verticals and moving to our efforts towards efficiency and scale, we remain committed to controlling costs and investing prudently while also remain focused on driving top line growth across our verticals and geographies.

While we are being prudent with personnel and hiring pace overall, we are increasing the proportion of our personnel-related investments towards key sales and go-to-market teams this year compared to last year as our business continues to scale.

We are also working to improve our processes with a focus on adding automation within processes that touch our back-office ERP, accounting, financial reporting, reconciliation and client onboarding systems and processes. These focused initiatives contribute scale and efficiency benefits that are leading to our steady improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin as we grow our global business.

With that, I will now turn the call over to Cosmin to go over our results for the quarter as well as discuss guidance for Q3 and 2024. Cosmin?

Cosmin Pitigoi

Thank you, Rob, and good afternoon, everyone. First, I would like to thank our clients, partners and employees for helping us deliver another strong quarter in the face of external pressures. Today, I'll provide an overview of our results for the second quarter and then discuss our outlook for Q3 and the fiscal year.

As Mike and Rob mentioned, we had a strong quarter across many of our customer and operating metrics, which underpin our long-term financial health. I continue to be energized by being part of this team as we rally together to deliver strong top and bottom line growth. All despite an unexpected high single-digit percentage impact to growth in the second quarter from Canada, and what we now expect to be a $30 million-plus headwind to our full year revenue less ancillary services.

Our team's resilience paid off as we beat the high end of our adjusted EBITDA guidance and are raising our full year adjusted EBITDA margin expectations to reach approximately 490 bps increase year-over-year. At our midpoint of full year revenue less ancillary services and adjusted EBITDA guidance, we are a Rule of 40 company despite this external Canada headwind.

At the same time, we executed on a strategic acquisition this quarter and are evolving our capital allocation strategy by announcing our first buyback allowing us to opportunistically return capital to shareholders.

Turning to our performance this quarter, starting with revenue. Revenue less ancillary services was $99.9 million in Q2, representing a 26% year-over-year growth rate despite a high single-digit percentage headwind to growth related to our Canadian higher education business.

FX rates created a slight headwind of approximately $140,000 during the quarter, but for which we would have been right at our guidance midpoint. While our revenue performance this quarter was relatively in line with our expectation, as we exited Q2 into July, we saw a slower-than-expected rolling recovery in Canada creating a mid- to high single digits negative million dollar impact instead of the expected mid-single-digit impact in Q2.

This was offset by better-than-expected volumes from U.K. and Australia higher education clients and stronger international corridors performance. We continue to see strong volume growth with total payment volumes during the quarter reaching $4.9 billion, growing 19% year-over-year. From a monetization standpoint, our spreads have remained relatively consistent and stable over the last several reporting quarters.

Looking at the 2 components of our revenue. Transaction revenue is based on fees as a percent of transaction value, while platform and other revenues consists of software like fees.

Starting with transaction revenue, we saw a 28% year-over-year increase, driven by a 26% increase in transaction-related payment volume, primarily in our international and U.S. education vertical as well as travel. Platform and other revenues increased 17% year-over-year, primarily driven by the platform fees that do not carry payment volumes, specifically, revenues associated with the contribution from StudyLink of $1.6 million.

This is offset by softer performance in our health care business this quarter. As previously indicated, we expect the health care business to return to growth for the second half of the year.

Adjusted gross profit increased to $63.4 million during the quarter, up 26% year-over-year, accelerating by about 500 basis points from Q1 2024. Adjusted gross margin was 63.5% for Q2 2024, which is flat compared to Q2 2023. As we look at the puts and takes driving gross margin year-over-year changes, business mix continues to put downward pressure with travel and B2B growing faster with a more prevalent use of credit cards.

This pressure was offset by stronger trends across our main education corridors, continued payment cost optimization and a positive impact from FX shifts that occurred during settlement of transactions. These shifts are largely offset by FX hedges, which are booked in OpEx, resulting in a mitigated impact on adjusted EBITDA.

Adjusted EBITDA was $1.8 million above the high end of our range, and grew to $5.8 million for the quarter compared to the negative $0.1 million in Q2 2023. Adjusted EBITDA margin was up nearly 600 basis points year-over-year. The strength in adjusted EBITDA was driven by stronger gross profit and continued operating leverage, along with targeted and disciplined cost management through the year.

Even with these actions, OpEx is still growing in the high single to low double-digit year-over-year range. As you heard Rob mention earlier, we're focused on investing in our growth initiatives while showing improving scalability and efficiency in the business.

To close out the income statement, I would like to provide some perspective on our net income dynamics this year. In Q2, net income reflected a loss of $14 million, improving year-over-year by approximately $3 million. Q2 includes a higher income tax provision of approximately $4 million based on full year tax estimates, which amplified our loss in Q2, driven by seasonality of our business.

The year-to-date tax provision of $6.3 million, therefore, represents more than half the year's total tax provision and should normalize through the rest of the year, as we pivot to profitability heading into next year.

Our balance sheet remains strong. We ended the quarter with approximately $571 million of available liquidity consisting of $539 million of unrestricted cash and equivalents and $32 million of highly liquid short-term marketable securities against no long-term debt. During the quarter, we invested $58 million of cash into short- and long-term corporate and government debt securities.

Turning to capital allocation. We continue evolving our strategy with 3 key priorities: investing in organic growth, as we previously discussed today, executing strategic M&A and returning capital to shareholders. We've demonstrated our execution across those pillars this quarter.

First, as Mike and Rob touched on earlier, the acquisition of Invoiced is a continuation of our long-term plan to supplement strong organic growth and expand across business lines. We expect Invoiced to add approximately $2 million of revenue with softer like gross margins in full year 2024. And while the business has strong adjusted EBITDA margins, we expect to reinvest the majority of the margin dollars this year to grow the combined business.

Second, I'm pleased to announce that our Board of Directors have approved a share repurchase program under which we may opportunistically repurchase up to $150 million of our outstanding common stock. This is a direct reflection of our confidence in the long-term potential of the business, the strength of our balance sheet and modest operating cash needs and is a responsible way to deploy its capital that is consistent with our disciplined approach. This program allows us to opportunistically take advantage of short-term dislocations in our equity value as we focus on executing and building long-term value.

Finally, it is important to note that this program still allows us ample capacity to continue to pursue strategic value-enhancing acquisitions.

Moving on to guidance. For full year 2024, we expect revenue less ancillary services to be in the range of $469 million to $485 million based on spot foreign exchange rates as of June 30, 2024. This represents a year-over-year growth rate of 25% at the midpoint.

The revenue impact from Canada is now expected to be double the mid-teens expected in prior guidance. So we now expect the impact to be over $30 million for the full year or approximately 8 points of growth. The $11 million reduction at the midpoint from prior guidance is driven by Canada performance, including the removal of the recapture assumption.

Note that our full year revenue outlook includes a benefit of approximately $2 million from the Invoiced acquisition for the rest of the year based on the August 2 close.

To provide some context on our assumptions in this guidance, we're seeing 2 key dynamics in Canada. First, within Canada, earlier government actions have made it challenging for schools to be able to fill spots as fast as they had hoped. This is creating a high single-digit impact in the second half versus prior expectations, roughly evenly spread across Q3 and Q4.

Second, given the frequent conversations our team has been having with our network of global education agents, we now see increased uncertainty around the timing of students pivoting from attending score in Canada to other countries around the world where we have higher education clients or what we are calling recapture.

As a result of these recent conversations and observations, we believe it is prudent to remove the mid-single-digit dollar benefit we expected to see in the second half from recapture. As we head into our largest quarter, we are assuming a relatively normal education peak in August and September, primarily in the U.S. and the U.K. We will continue watching underlying trends throughout the quarter.

We are raising our full year adjusted EBITDA outlook with the new midpoint of our range above the prior high end, stemming from solid gross profit growth and OpEx discipline. We expect to deliver a full year 2024 adjusted EBITDA in the range of $72 million to $80 million.

At the midpoint of our full year 2024 guidance range, we expect to generate approximately 490 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin improvement on a year-over-year basis, which represents a 170 bps increase from our prior guidance. This improvement reflects OpEx efficiencies and agile cost discipline across the teams, allowing us to look ahead towards profitability as we exit into next year.

Shifting to Q3 2024. Revenue less ancillary services is expected to be in the range of $141 million to $151 million. This guidance relatively to our thoughts earlier this year is primarily impacted by performance in Canada, along with the removal of the recapture, part of which was assumed in Q3.

Rounding out the guidance discussion, we expect Q3 adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $37 million to $43 million, implying a nearly 400 bps margin increase at the midpoint on a year-over-year basis.

In closing, as we continue our strong track record of execution, these temporary external challenges are making us even more focused and looking to the second half of this year, to exit stronger as a team and as a business.

I'll now turn it over back to the operator for questions. Operator?

Question-and-Answer Session

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of John Davis with Raymond James.

Mike and Cosmin, just wanted to try and square, pieces in Canada are down about 30%. And I think the guide -- updated guide for Canada implies revenue is down 55% to 60%. So just want to understand and kind of square those differences.

Yes. John, thanks for that question. Yes. So to clarify, if you look at the total numbers versus last year, it is not down that much. I would say it's down closer to 30% if you look at it year-over-year. What you have to remember is the $30 million that we're not referencing is against what we expected this year, and that would have included growth in Canada in a normal year.

So what you need to then sort of think about as far as growth would be against that number being down. So year-over-year, I would say you're still in that sort of high or so negative year-over-year, which you can see a little bit even from the supplement that we provided. If you look actually at the slides in the supplement, we try to provide 2 slides, one on what the assumptions are by a quarter of that $30 million, which is in that mid- to high single digits across every quarter. And then we actually gave you the profile by quarter for Canada. So you can see it -- including last year, so you can see that drop.

Okay. That's super helpful. I wanted to clarify. And then Cosmin, as we look at incremental margins, I think last year, they were about 24% first half of this year, 29%, it looks like you're implying based off of the updated EBITDA guide, about 40% incremental margins in the back half of this year. So is that the right way to think about go-forward incremental margins? Or how are you guys thinking about it as you look to drive profitability in the face of slowing growth?

Yes. Look, as I said, I think the main drivers for margin for us is, first, is the gross profit. Second, you've seen us be quite disciplined in terms of cost. And a portion of then the third thing is us being just more disciplined around how we spend given the headwinds we've faced.

Now some of that, as you can see, benefited Q2 that helps into second half. However, as you look at that into next year, obviously, we'll have to look -- some of that is us offsetting some of the headwind. And so we'll have to look at next year. But I would say looking at the total year, probably a better gauge, but we'll have to sort of come back to you into next year as to how we think about -- how to look ahead of that.

But again, I think my comments on profitability, I would say that's a big focus for us going forward and continued growth in EBITDA margin in line with above our expectations.

Next question comes from the line of Jason Kupferberg with Bank of America.

Tyler DuPont

This is Tyler DuPont on for Jason. I wanted to ask about Canada as well, but from a slightly different lens I know the F '20 guidance has been updated, right, to reflect that incremental softness. But can you just speak at all to how we should be thinking about Canada as we look beyond the second half into whether that's in 2025, but just more from a longer-term perspective.

I know you guys don't provide guidance or anything on long-term stuff like that. But can you just offset how we should think about Canada revenue more on a longer term on a go-forward basis?

Yes, this is Rob. I'll jump in here. So we remain very optimistic about Canada on a longer-term basis. So this is sort of a unique year where we had the announcements related to the study permits early in the year. There's continuing sort of uncertainty created on the part of students because of ambiguity around graduate work permit policy. All of that is expected to be clarified this year.

I've been in Canada. I spent time with our clients. Their expectation is that those rules will all be clarified. The programs that the schools offer will be tailored based on how that policy evolves, and the additional sort of certainty and confidence that brings will bring Canada sort of back into sort of popularity as a destination.

And so the long-term view of Canada is that it will continue to be a contributor of growth for us despite the fact that this year is a tough year, as Cosmin just outlined.

Okay. That's helpful. And then I guess, secondarily, in the prepared remarks, I think you mentioned travel becoming the second largest vertical. Can you maybe just discuss the growth trends you're seeing there, sort of what in particular is driving that? And maybe juxtapose that with the trends in health care, which has historically been the second largest. I think you mentioned health care in the second half would return to growth. Just any comments there worth mentioning?

Yes. So thanks for the question. First of all, hopefully, you saw from my comments overall optimism and conviction around the strength of the business overall. So as I went through the verticals. You heard a lot of great things going on based on the great execution of our team.

Travel was a perfect example of that. The travel team was winning great deals all around the world. As you've heard in our prior comments, there are really 4 subsegments for us within the travel vertical. All of which performed very well. Our newest being Ocean Adventure is performing well but our preexisting around accommodations, operators and DMCs also reporting well. So we continue to view that as a business with a great opportunity ahead of it.

Health care is a little different story. Again, we do expect that team's growth in the second half of the year. Overall, health care has had the frustrations for us of kind of multiple steps forward, but offset by multiple steps back. That's similar to the comments I've made on prior calls.

We are winning new deals. We are expanding deals. We are seeing success with our integrated financing offering. But those have been offset by challenges in part caused by the Change Healthcare situation, which, although resolving and improving did impact Q2 as well as just continued challenges, one client shrink based on divesting some hospitals and other client turned modestly -- sorry, with modest impact. And so that's the 2 steps forward, 2 steps back.

Just to conclude, though, a lot of conviction in the platform, and we will expect to see growth in the second half.

Next question comes from the line of Tien-Tsin Huang with JPMorgan.

Tien-Tsin Huang

I want to ask on the Invoiced acquisition. Really interesting there is the home run opportunity to monetize the payments in their client base. I'm just not sure what their client base looks like or what kind of overlap you might have? What can you tell us there?

Yes. Tien-Tsin, it's Mike. Yes, we're super excited. So it fits right into the pillars. We talked about prior looking for opportunities to accelerate existing verticals we're in, add new capabilities to drive NRR. And this fits right in those first 2 pillars that we've talked about before. And so our priorities and our focus, we think, first is the monetization opportunity.

I mentioned several billion dollars of Invoiced volume on that platform. It's our ability to monetize that both domestic and international volume there is really kind of priority #1. And so you can imagine the team is going to quickly get at work at that integrated solution and bring that to clients.

The second is really just leveraging our global distribution opportunity. We have an amazing marketing and go-to-market team and obviously, a great way of generating new pipeline, and we think we can help supercharge access to that platform by getting it more rapidly sold and distributed on a global basis. And so those are two of the primary revenue synergies, integration goals that we have.

And how quickly can you replace or go after the incumbent and put it on your platform on the payment side. And my other quick one, I'll jump off. Just the 170 bps of additional margin upside with the revenue revision. I heard the cost efficiency, but any other detail around the contributing factors to that?

Yes. So on your first question, just around the speed. Obviously, exciting news just got it out there just getting done. So team is going to get to work on that integrated solution like we've done in the past, however, when we had access to unmonetized volume through an acquisition. It's a relatively short period of time to get up an integrated offering, you're going to bring it to market.

So I would expect it to be similar to what we've talked about in the past on other deals where you have a little bit hitting potentially in a year like '24, but mostly hitting '25, '26, '27 kind of waterfall for that volume. I'll let Cosmin speak to your second question.

Yes. So Tien-Tsin, on your 170 bps, that's total margin. I mean a lot of that is driven by sort of like the 3 factors I mentioned earlier. As far as it relates to invoice, again, we did not put almost any EBITDA upside even though the business itself has healthy EBITDA margins. We didn't include any of that in our guidance because we wanted to invest against that to make sure that we get the benefit. We exit strong. That's kind of our view, as I said earlier, is a really strong exit for the year, and this deal is part of that.

Next question comes from the line of Andrew Schmidt with Citi.

Andrew Schmidt

Rob, Cosmin, congrats on the Invoiced transaction. I know there's a lot of scarcity in terms of AR solutions, so good to see that pick up. Just to drill down in Canada, I guess, the obvious question is just visibility in terms of the assumption that you've set now? And then is it possible to disaggregate what is the impact on visa limits versus timing in terms of logistics and getting the students back-to-school? You think that will help inform us in terms of out-year impact in terms of growth there?

Yes, this is Rob. I can start on that. Certainly, one of the data points that we look at is the aggregate of the visa data that's reported. But keep in mind that the results for us are the product of multiple things, right? There's that number. But we have multiple things. And if you remember in my comments, I covered some of the offsetting factors for us, right?

So we've got new client acquisition that's part of this. We've got returning student payers that are part of this. We have additional product upsells in the market. And so -- and we've got the increasingly effective role of our agent network that's also helping drive volume across all the destination markets.

So if you look at all that, it would be a factor that would go into it, but our success and our ability to perform better than what are the sort of aggregate visa numbers are the function of those factors that we have that give us a better result.

Got it. And then visibility question in terms of where you set the impact?

We've given you everything we can give you in terms of our expectations. If you look through the supplement materials, you'll see the growth rates for prior quarters, current quarter as well as how we've modeled it going forward, built into the guidance. And there are 2 charts that Cosmin referred to and the supplement that will show you the underlying assumptions, and that's based on our visibility into the trends and our conversations with clients and agents.

Yes. The only thing I'd add is, I guess, on the full year, obviously, we wanted to be clear and show the impact on that full year and get it out of the guide so that people could make those adjustments. If you look at the first half of the year, the business continued to outperform quite well in other areas and really was offsetting that headwind, and we want to make it really clear what that headwind was and make sure people saw it, and that makes up for the change in the full year guide.

Got it. It makes a lot of sense. And if I could squeeze in one more, just to Recapture. I just want to be clear because I think with the tenants of the Flywire models is global, and I think you guys should be picking up some additional volume here. Is it a function of just difficulty to measure the Recapture? Is it just a prudent assumption? Just curious, if look at to put a finer point on the removal of the Recapture assumption.

This is Rob speaking. Again, hopefully, you took from my comments, the strength of the overall education franchise around the world, right? We talked about the strength in U.K. We talked about strength in Australia. We talked about strength in the U.S.

You look in the data to see sort of evidence of recapture. And even though there's strength in all these markets, it's not very obvious how you determine that, that is recapture. And so again, we're seeing good strength across the business but don't feel that we can call comfortably that, that's a recapture from Canada.

Next question comes from the line of Dan Perlin with RBC Capital Markets.

I was hoping maybe you could just spend a minute or two just kind of framing. You've done a lot of deals in India recently, and I know you talked about it being a big outbound market. So just trying to think about that as kind of an offset or shock absorber or some of the stuff that's been happening in Canada?

And how quickly you think you can recognize incremental growth from that market? And then what do you frame, I guess, the long-term expectations. It just seems like such a big opportunity, but -- and again, you've been signing a ton of deals there. So anything around that would be helpful.

Yes. I mean, obviously, there's a whole bunch of innovation we've done there. I mean those deals, whether it's one with HDFC by Cardillo or whether it's the 3 bank integrations. Those are not very common partnerships and integrations in our space. So we feel really proud about what the team has been able to do get those innovations up get them live, and really deliver new solutions to the market.

I would also just say the agent investment we've made that combination of software and our team in India, again, I think it positions us really, really well. So we feel really good about the work we've done to strengthen up that market. We're obviously doing similar things in other important markets like China and elsewhere.

And again, that's part of the Flywire playbook is investing in the product to payment innovation, making sure we have the local expertise in the markets to deliver good results, and we feel really good about what the team's accomplished in the last year related to India. And again, we saw in Q2 really big trends around China. So strength in China and feel good about both those entering Q3.

Okay. Just one other quick follow-up. I mean, you continue to have a pretty rapid pace of new client signings. I think it was over 200 again this quarter. But as I've asked, I guess, in the past, like when you think about spooling them up in terms of the implementation team and the time to kind of bring the clients up to revenue recognition, like do you feel like you've got enough investments behind that in order to continue to maybe accelerate the opportunity there?

Or do you feel like you've got to beef it up because I heard you in the comments about investing in the go-to-market, but I often wonder about the pace of which you can do these implementations.

Yes, this is Rob. I can jump in on that. Look, the integration team is doing great. We are very effective at deploying the clients, the time lines from sort of signature or beginning a project to initial transactions and revenue are very satisfying for us. And if anything, we're getting even better at this.

So if you remember in one of our recent calls, we talked about how fast we got a full suite education client here in the U.S. live that reflects improved sort of process and practice as well as adequately staffed teams. If you take my comments on us investing in go to market, think of us as having an understanding of sort of everything it takes to make that revenue live. Sales through RM, through servicing, through implementation and us understanding how to sort of grow those teams proportionately appropriately.

Next question comes from the line of Ken Suchoski with Autonomous Research.

Ken Suchoski

Maybe I'll ask on travel. Travel continues to grow quickly. I think travel has lower gross margin. So can you talk about what drove the gross margin outperformance this quarter? And I guess how are you guys thinking about the year-over-year change in gross margin in 3Q and 4Q?

Yes. Thanks, Dan. So yes, as you saw, gross margin relatively flat. But what I would say, if you look -- last quarter, it was a little bit lower. So one of the things that we see is obviously is from quarter-to-quarter, you have different mix of corridors, countries and other factors that can move the gross profit up and down and gross margin.

This quarter, it was a couple of things. So as you saw in my remarks, first mix. And as you pointed out, mix usually for us means travel or B2B growing a bit faster where there's credit cards are more prevalent. Those 3 things. One was we're seeing strength in some of the quarters. As you heard here us comment, we're seeing strength there.

Second, our team here is always looking to optimize our cost across our payments, different payment methods. And third is FX, which is that FX on settlement. That one is sort of a -- it kind of moved last quarter, it was a big negative this quarter. It was a positive. I'd say that piece, in particular, is more of a -- it kind of differs by quarter.

So stepping back from that, to look ahead, I would say, we feel good about it for this quarter. But in general, for the year, and as we look in general trends, I would stick with the same assumption that you've heard us say before, which is gross margin percent goes sort of declined a little bit between 100 to 200 bps a year. So I would still assume that same sort of trend over time. And again, from quarter-to-quarter, things can change in terms of mix.

Yes. Okay. That's super helpful. And then maybe just my follow-up just on Canada. I think you mentioned you're seeing lower application demand, lower enrollments across a broad set of schools in Canada. Can you just expand a little bit more on what's driving the lower demand? And I guess, what you're hearing from schools? I think you mentioned some government actions were making it difficult to fill seats, but any additional color there would be great.

I'm not sure there's a whole lot more color to supply there other than to say whenever there's uncertainty that affects the students view of the market. Overall, Canada has great reputation and a desirable destination, but it does have this uncertainty right now about the work permit status for post studies.

And the expectation, as I said, is that Canada is going to clarify all that. They will make clear what the qualification criteria are, and that will help give comfort to the students and provide help to the demand side.

Next question comes from the line of Chris Kennedy with William Blair.

Christopher Kennedy

You guys have added a lot of new clients over the last several quarters. Is there any way to talk about the profile of those cohorts relative to history?

Yes, this is Rob. I can jump in there, and we tried to give some color and flavor here. Obviously, the accounts were very strong. They were strong across the verticals. And the key point that we tried to give there was that the average ARR projected also increased per client. So when you look at the overall ARR for the business, it was very much in line with our plan. It was good and strong, and the deal size increased over prior quarters.

Okay. Great. And then just a quick follow-up. Any way to frame the growth of Invoiced?

I would say -- this is Mike, obviously. I would say it's a business that has -- the founders have taken it and bootstrapped now with a ton of capital. So I would say there's a great opportunity for us to invest in it. So it's growing, but we think we can even accelerate that growth rate.

Cosmin spoke a bit about its positive EBITDA generation. We're going to invest behind it and use our go-to-market marketing and sales prowess to help further distribute that product -- that platform as quick as we can.

Next question comes from the line of Tim Chiodo with UBS.

Unidentified Analyst

This is Pat Ennis on for Tim Chiodo. I know you talked about some client wins on the domestic side, but with some of the headwinds and pressures around cross-border revenues. Can you speak to maybe the success you're seeing from a volume growth perspective on the domestic education side? And then maybe just share the economics to Flywire and what that looks like for those specific payments as compared to cross-border transactions.

Yes. I mean, I think we're very pleased with the results of the U.S. franchise across both cross-border and domestic. So if we didn't express that, let me express that here. We talked about sort of the increased pace of wins on the domestic side. So we called out 3 in my earlier comments. And these are great deals for us, right? The economics comes to us in the form of increased transactional volume as well as platform volume.

One of the main drivers there is setting up things like payment plans that carry with them a very high margin for us. They're a very sort of profitable business for us, and a great platform and benefit to the schools and the clients. So overall, I feel like our pace in the U.S. is accelerating and the economics of those deals are great.

Next question comes from the line of Darrin Peller with Wolfe Research.

Darrin Peller

Most of my questions have been asked. I want to understand a little bit more visibility, again, just a follow-up on -- you mentioned a lot about Canada. Help us understand exactly if you believe the conservatism in Canada as such that it's off of preexisting enrollments and that there's very little uncertainty now in Canada, first of all.

And then second of all, I know, Rob, you talked about the other markets, U.K., Australia doing well, but just make sure we're comfortable that there's not other added potential for regulatory that you see. Is there anything else going on in the market that could wake up and surprise us that you're at least it tracking, let's call it, at this point of the day. And then I just have a follow-up on new customer adds, please.

So I'll start with sort of the U.K. and Australia and then Cosmin, if you want to jump in on any further comments on the Canada piece. So with the U.K. just put forward some fairly positive statements from them in terms of actually clarifying students being welcomed, the graduate route being affirmed. There had been some uncertainty about that prior, but that was hopefully sort of addressed properly and thoroughly by the comments from the new labor government.

If you look at Australia, obviously, they've already done a bunch of things in terms of how they're handling student visas and the like, and we performed very, very well in that market. We have great assets and a great opportunity in terms of customer growth in Australia and feel like the team is executing very well against the land and expand strategy in Australia, the new integrated offering, StudyLink go live.

There's a lot of good stuff going on in Australia for us. That's the foundation for that strength going forward, and we expect that to continue. Cosmin, do you want to address the Canada piece?

Yes. So Darrin, just at a high-level guidance, we feel it's relatively balanced, including Canada. You can see from the supplement materials that we've adjusted based on the trends we're seeing. Obviously, we'll look through the rest of the quarter, and we'll see how it progresses, but we feel like we've put in a pretty balanced outlook.

And Darrin, I know it's not lost on you. I mean, obviously, we think we're putting up great growth numbers with the business performing given a $30 million headwind on the year. So again, I think we unlike anyone can't tell the future, but we feel like we got a really good diversified business that has different industries, different products, different industry-based growth levers that just help us no matter what's kind of ahead of us.

No, there's no doubt that you're seeing the growth outside of the Canada show up well. It's just a matter of making sure there's enough visibility in the guide coming off of realized or revision down. And it sounds like you guys are trying to do as much as you can on that front.

Just on the new customer adds, again, 200 is a good number. I just want to make sure we're clear. Last time around, I think, either 2 quarters ago or last quarter, you said it was a pretty good even split between education and health care -- or I'm sorry, in travel. Maybe you could just give us more color on where the source of the new customer adds are coming in to size. I guess I just want to make sure that still are notable enough client add that it could sustain strong trends in the year ahead and the years ahead.

Yes. So first, let me make a high-level comment in this is exactly on our plan or even ahead of our plan in terms of the aggregate value of those deals signed. If you look at the composition of the deals, they started, I think I said 2 quarters ago, travel pet-out education, last quarter, education BDA travel this time. Travel a bit ahead of education. Think of these as good 5, 6 figure deals with some 7-figure deals in there as well. So a strong mix across our overall client adds.

Our final question comes from the line of James Faucette with Morgan Stanley.

James Faucette

Great. Just a couple of follow-ups from me. I wanted to understand really quickly a little more detail on NRR. Historically, we know that that's been the low to midpoint 20s range, which is obviously very robust, and especially when looking at historical cohorts that are still growing in the high teens range. With that said, it would be great to get your thoughts on individual payer retention especially in the vertical space, if you -- for example, if you have a pool of 100 incoming first years to university, how many are still using Flywire as -- by the time they exit.

And I guess, more importantly, I'm just trying to understand how we should anticipate that phenomenon to impact NRR over the medium term, especially as you look to continue to upsell that existing base of education customers.

Well, first, let me address the NRR piece straight on. So obviously, NRR overall will be impacted somewhat by the Canada metrics, but we did do the work to go look at NRR, excluding Canada, and want to give comfort that, that NRR is right in the range. We've always reported strong performance through the other verticals and in the other markets with NRR results following right in line with what you're used to hearing from us.

So underneath all that NRR, I guess your second question is about sort of underlying payer adoption. We continue to work on that as a priority for the company and continue to make progress on that. We've talked about some of our initiatives in terms of the PayX, in terms of building longer-term client relationships, all those factors that drive that utilization. And we see that those numbers going in the right direction for us, meaning increasing transactions per payer over their lifetime and that is a metric that we seek to drive forward.

Got it. Got it. And then just last question for me is, once again, this ties to footprint expansion within your customers, how should we think about the customization and back-end integration work required at least for certain customers and how that could or how should we anticipate that impacting your margins for better or worse?

I think we've built the business as you've come to know it today being very effective at implementations. All of that is baked into our current sort of business model and cost profile, and we don't see that changing certainly for anything that would be negatively impactful to any of those metrics. So if anything, we believe we're getting better at the implementations. We continue to build into the platform automation to allow things to go faster.

And so we feel very good about sort of what implementations represent both in terms of time and cost to us. And for us, that lifetime value of a client is really excellent, and the implementations are only a very small part of that now.

Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time.Thank you for your participation.

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Open-source secrets manager for developers

Customer Success Engineer

About the role

About infisical.

Infisical is the #1 open source secret management platform for developers. In other words, we help organizations manage API-keys, DB access tokens, certificates, and other credentials across all parts of their infra! In fact, we process over 100M of such secrets per day.

Our customers range from some of the largest public enterprises to fastest-growing startups (e.g., companies like Hugging Face, Delivery Hero). Developers love us and our community is growing every day! Join us on a mission to make security easier for all developers – starting from secret management.

About this role

Infisical is looking for a customer success engineer to help grow Infisical’s customer base and ensure great product/onboarding experience. You will be working closely with our CEO and the rest of the engineering team on:

• ensuring new customers are activated, happy, and have all of their questions answered;
• expanding Infisical to new use cases within accounts (e.g., more integrations, feature announcements, cross-sell);
• running proof-of-concept with leads, guiding customer through onboarding, or being able to recommend best practices for specific architectures and use cases;
• becoming a trusted technical advisor to customer and business leaders;
• talking to customers daily to find points of friction and potential improvement in any workflows, understanding customer's needs and provide feedback towards product roadmap;
• improving documentation and public facing materials based on customer feedback;
• managing/facilitating case studies and customer quotes/references;
• hosting webinars and knowledge sharing sessions for customer's stakeholders;
• understanding user journey and being able to guide UX/DX roadmap;

Overall, you’re going to be one of the defining pieces of our team as we scale to thousands of customers over the next 18 months.

This job will require you to have the following pivotal skills:

• technical experience in development or systems engineering (open source experience is a plus);
• experience in a customer-facing role (technical/developer product is a plus);
• understanding of the Infrastructure/DevSecOps space is a plus;
• exceptional verbal, presentation, and written communication skills;
• high energy and strong work ethic;

How you will grow?

With this role, you play the defining role in:

• growing Infisical and our customer base;
• shaping short- and long-term product roadmap;
• building out the future customer success & sales team;

Team, Values & Benefits

Our team has worked across transformative tech companies, from Figma to AWS to Red Hat.

We have an office in San Francisco, but we are mostly a remote team. We try to get together as often as possible – whether it's for an off-site, conferences, or just get-togethers. This is a full-time role open to anyone in North American time zones.

At Infisical, we will treat you well with a competitive salary and equity offer. Depending on your risk tolerance, we would love to talk more with you about the range of options available between the two. For some other benefits (including lunch stipend, work setup budget, etc), please check out our careers page: https://infisical.com/careers .

Infisical is the #1 open source secret management platform – used by tens of thousands of developers.

We raised $3M from Y Combinator, Gradient Ventures (Google's VC fund), and awesome angel investors like Elad Gil, Arash Ferdowsi (founder/ex-CTO of Dropbox), Paul Copplestone (founder/CEO of Supabase), James Hawkins (founder/CEO of PostHog), Andrew Miklas (founder/ex-CTO of PagerDuty), Diana Hu (GP at Y Combinator), and more.

We are default alive, and have signed many customers ranging from fastest growing startups to post-IPO enterprises.

Olympics opening ceremony recap: Highlights from Paris torch relay, flame lighting

Editor's note: Follow the latest Olympics live results, medal count and updates for Saturday, July 27.

With an ambitious and unique opening ceremony , the 2024 Paris Olympics got under way when thousands of Olympians, including Team USA athletes , cruised along the Seine River on Friday night.

The city’s iconic landmarks provided a stunning backdrop for the parade of nations. Athletes from around the world, including Team USA flag bearers LeBron James and Coco Gauff , floated on boats for the six-kilometer route that traveled east to west across Paris from the Pont d’Austerlitz to the Trocadero.

USA TODAY Sports brought you live updates from Paris, highlights and more throughout the opening ceremony. (Follow NBC's replay of the opening ceremony in prime time.)

Who lit the Olympic Cauldron?

The Olympic Cauldron was lit by Teddy Riner, a three-time Olympic champion in judo, and Marie-Jose Perec, a three-time Olympic champion in track and field.

Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams carried Olympic torch

In an Olympics opening ceremony surprise, Rafael Nadal carried the Olympic torch once it reached the Eiffel Tower. Nadal might as well have honorary French residency after winning a record 14 French Opens. He won four in a row from 2005-2008, five in a row from 2010-2014, another four in a row from 2017-2020 and his final one in 2022. He is 112-4 all-time at Roland Garros. A statue of him was erected outside the stadium in 2021. Nadal has 22 Grand Slams total. 

Nadal then passed the torch to fellow tennis legend Serena Williams. Three of her 23 Grand Slam titles came at the French Open. Carl Lewis, a four-time Olympic champion at the 1984 Games, and Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, who scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic history at the 1976 Games, also were part of the torch’s final journey. — Nancy Armour

Boat of GOATs. 🐐🛳️ #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/8Plbfd0seX — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 26, 2024

Amelie Mauresmo passed Olympic torch to Tony Parker

The tennis theme in the Olympic torch relay continued when Amelie Mauresmo, the only French player to be No. 1 in the Open era, took the torch after it arrived off the boat. Tony Parker, who paved the way for French players in the NBA and won four titles with the San Antonio Spurs, took the handoff from Mauresmo. Parker and Carter continued running with the torch after they passed it over to a trio of French athletes. — Nancy Armour

Celine Dion at opening ceremony dazzled

The legendary singer Celine Dion performed at the opening ceremony after the Olympic Cauldron was lit. She also sang at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics opening ceremony.

CELINE! 🥹 #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/87AqGnLJUi — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 26, 2024

Eiffel Tower puts on light show at opening ceremony

Watch the iconic Paris landmark sparkle.

The #ParisOlympics are here‼️ 📺: @NBCOlympics & @peacock #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/5IPiPHTFqZ — Team USA (@TeamUSA) July 26, 2024

Who sang 'Imagine' at the Olympics?

Pianist Sofianne Pamart and singer Juliette Armanet performed “Imagine,” the John Lennon and Yoko Ono song.

Team USA's LeBron James, Coco Gauff not slowed by rain

The rain wasn’t spoiling the party for LeBron James, Coco Gauff and the rest of the U.S. Olympic team.

“Representing the red, white and blue, there’s no better time,” James said during an interview with NBC’s Maria Taylor during the parade of nations. “We’re here for the USA and ready to go out and compete at a high level.”

The NBA superstar and the Grand Slam champion were selected as flagbearers by the rest of the U.S. team. Flagbearers held their country’s flags aloft as the team boats floated down the Seine while other athletes waved smaller flags. But Gauff and James also took time to pose for photos with others on the boat – including the captain – and take in the sights of Paris.

“Seeing a lot of water, first off,” Gauff said. “But also some amazing people, a lot of amazing athletes and we’re all excited to represent Team USA.”

Asked if the steady rain put a damper on their special moment, James said no.

“The rain can’t stop us,” he said. — Nancy Armour

Team USA cruising into the #ParisOlympics 🤩🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/gQDaRBrqXT — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 26, 2024

LeBron and Coco leading the way as Team USA cruises down the Seine. 🫡 📺 #ParisOlympics Opening Ceremony on NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/JUBuL2It10 — NBC Sports (@NBCSports) July 26, 2024

Axelle Saint-Cirel performs French national anthem on Grand Palais roof

On the roof of the Grand-Palais and wearing colors of the French flag, Axelle Saint-Cirel, the Choeur and the Maîtrise de Radio France performed the French national anthem, called The Marseillaise. It was composed in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, who was an officer for the French Engineers. It was declared the national anthem in 1795. As the national anthem was performed, the Republic Guard raised the flag at the Trocadéro. Composer Victor le Masne musically rearranged the national anthem for the opening ceremony. 

🇫🇷 La Marseillaise ! Vous l’attendiez, c’est Axelle Saint-Cirel qui l’interprète depuis le toit du Grand Palais. pic.twitter.com/Nvsx31VC0S — Info France 2 (@infofrance2) July 26, 2024

Steph Curry, A'ja Wilson at Olympics opening ceremony

Women's basketball forward  A'Ja Wilson  looks to have added an extra piece of fashion to her Team USA Ralph Lauren outfit — thanks to the help of Steph Curry. The Golden State Warriors guard — who is making his Olympic debut with USA Basketball in Paris — gifted Wilson Olympics-themed sunglasses for Friday's opening ceremony.

thx @StephenCurry30 for the shades 🙂 pic.twitter.com/f3MaJA9iPq — A'ja Wilson (@_ajawilson22) July 26, 2024

Which country will host the 2028 Olympics?

The 2028 Summer Olympics will be in Los Angeles. The city has hosted twice before: 1932 and 1984.

Noah Lyles, Sha'Carri Richardson show off nails at opening ceremony

Here's a look the nails of Noah Lyles, who is the fastest man in the world so far this year.

He’s an ICON. He’s a legend. He is the moment. 📺 #ParisOlympics Opening Ceremony on NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/8BzUdyEX03 — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 26, 2024

And here are Sha'Carri Richardson's nails from the opening ceremony.

She is HER. 💅 #ParisOlympics @itsshacarri pic.twitter.com/sXXxIMPf4R — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 26, 2024

What country has the most athletes in the Olympics?

There are 10,714 athletes from 206 different countries scheduled to take part in this year's Olympic Games. The United States  will have the largest national delegation at the Summer Games in Paris with 593 athletes. Host nation France is second with 573, followed by Australia (460), Germany (427), Japan (404), Italy (403), China (388), Spain (382), Great Britain (327) and Canada (318) rounding out the top 10.

Why was Australia after Zambia and Zimbabwe at opening ceremony? 

The sight of the Australian team coming after Zambia and Zimbabwe might have taken those who know their alphabet by surprise. But there was a reason for the Aussies being so far out of alphabetical order. Countries that are hosting upcoming Olympics come at the end of the Parade of Nations. Brisbane is hosting the 2032 Summer Games, so Australia was the third-to-last team. The United States was second-to-last, with the Olympics returning to Los Angeles in four years. And France, the host of these Paris Olympics, was the last country in the 85-boat flotilla. — Nancy Armour

Olympics opening ceremony order of countries

The order of the parade of nations is determined by the French spelling of their country names. Germany is Allemagne in French, for example, so it goes with the As, not the Gs. The only exceptions are the United States, which is Etats-Unis in French but goes second-to-last because it is hosting the next Summer Games, and France, because it’s the host country. 

Metal band at Paris Olympics: Who is Gojira?

The metal band Gojira , who performed at the Olympics opening ceremony, is made up of Joe Duplantier, Mario Duplantier, Christian Andreu and Jean-Michel La- badie. They performed at the Conciergerie, which was the residence of French kings in medieval times. It became a prison during the French revolution and Marie-Antoinette was one of its most famous prisoners. Gojira performed alongside singer Marina Viotti.

Aya Nakamura Olympics opening ceremony performance 

Aya Nakamura is one of France’s most famous pop stars, performing performed "Pookie, Djadja" and "For me formidable, La Bohéme" at the opening ceremony alongside 60 musicians from the Republican Guard and 36 choristers of the French Army. Nakamura mixes elements of R&B, Afropop and Parisian street slang, and her most famous song is “Djadja.” She’s been compared to Rihanna and Cardi B.

En même temps. pic.twitter.com/xDkT0Kdq6N — Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) July 26, 2024

Why Russia, Belarus are banned from 2024 Olympics

Once again, Russia is technically banned from appearing at the Olympic Games . Yet once again, Russian athletes will compete under a different name − a handful of them, at least.

At the 2024 Paris Olympics , which begin this week, 15 athletes from Russia − and 18 from neighboring Belarus − are slated to compete as "Individual Neutral Athletes," or AINs for short, according to the most recent statistics released by the International Olympic Committee on Saturday . The AIN classification means that Russian and Belarusian flags, national anthems and uniforms will be absent from the Paris Games. This punishment was levied by the International Olympic Committee following its invasion of Ukraine. — Tom Schad

How many athletes are on Team USA?

There are 593 American Olympians at the Paris Games. Meet Team USA .

Leading the stars and stripes 🇺🇸 📺: @NBCOlympics & @peacock #ParisOlympics | #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/Yxcgph2rsj — Team USA (@TeamUSA) July 26, 2024

How many countries participate in the 2024 Olympics?

More than 200 countries are competing in the 2024 Olympics , from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

Minions at Olympics opening ceremony

Minions — of the "Despicable Me" franchise and its spinoff movie, "Minions" — made a digital appearance at the opening ceremony. In a video with the "unknown" athlete running with the Olympic torch, the Minions are seen acting out a scene in a submarine submerged in the Seine.

The Minions are trained and READY for the Olympic Games. 💪 @Minions 📺 #ParisOlympics Opening Ceremony on NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/7vhtm5yxcw — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 26, 2024

Lady Gaga at Olympics opening ceremony gave stunning performance

Lady Gaga  returned to music at the 2024  Paris Olympics  during a performance at the opening ceremony and lit up the City of Lights. Alongside  a fleet of dancers , the Grammy favorite performed a French-inspired set alongside the Seine river with a tribute to Zizi Jeanmaire's presentation of  "Mon Truc En Plumes,"  translated to “My Thing with Feathers.” — Jay Stahl

Olympic opening ceremony performers

Lady Gaga, metal band Gojira and French pop star Aya Nakamura were among those who have performed at the opening ceremony.

APPLAUSE to Lady Gaga for SLAYing this look 🩷 pic.twitter.com/arTVjG79lO — On Her Turf (@OnHerTurf) July 26, 2024

Who made medals for the Paris Olympics? 

The Monnaie de Paris, which has been minting France’s coins since 864. The company also made the medals for the Athens Olympics in 1896, the first modern Olympic Games, and the two previous Summer Games in Paris, in 1900 and 1924. 

How many medals were made for the Paris Olympics? 

Why does greece go first in the olympics.

Greece goes first at the opening ceremony every Olympics because it is the birthplace of the Olympic Games. 

Bienvenue mesdames et messieurs 🤩 Welcome the delegations to this enchanted, playful and sparkling Paris. Lights up, the curtain is open and the show has begun. #Paris2024 #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/rSZJdIg30f — The Olympic Games (@Olympics) July 26, 2024

Why is Peyton Manning wearing an arm band?

NBC opening ceremony co-host Peyton Manning sported an arm band on his right forearm during the opening ceremony broadcast, much like he did during his playing days as an NFL quarterback. He joked he was wearing it because he had notes on all 200-plus countries in the opening ceremomny.

Giannis Antetokounmpo on being Greece's flag bearer

“That is an honor,”  he said . “If I am the flag bearer, great. If I am not, OK. I am just happy that I have a good coaching staff and a good team, I am in the Olympics."

Η μεγαλύτερη τιμή 🇬🇷🇬🇷🧿 pic.twitter.com/xHAWs5SI8i — Giannis Antetokounmpo (@Giannis_An34) July 26, 2024

Who designed the Olympics flag?

Pierre de Coubertin, who is considered the founder of the modern Olympics, designed the rings in July 1913. The Olympics logo was first used on a flag in 1914. That original flag is now at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. The IOC officially adopted the rings logo and flag in 1914.

Americans in Paris

Rachael Raskovich, Amanda Mason-Sekula and Kelly Holmes arrived at the opening ceremony wearing American flag themed hats, red white and blue glasses and sequin USA jackets with "Proud American" stitched on the back.

"Amazon," Raskovich said with a smile when asked about the gear.

The trio of friends met in law school and said they will spend the next week or so hopping around to events around the city. They have tickets to beach volleyball and equestrian, Raskovich said, among other sports. Their group was just one of the many clad in red, white and blue that lined the southern banks of the Seine River on Friday night. Doris Ng of Chicago was among the U.S. spectators who were still searching for a good spot from which to view the ceremony in the hour before it began.

"We thought we were going to be on time," she said. "I think everybody else beat us to the punch already."

Fortunately, she also has tickets to the closing ceremony, she said. — Tom Schad

Not every local was in a festive mood

One man saw my media credential and wanted to make sure — despite barely speaking English — that he was upset over a rumor Celine Dion had been paid 2 million Euros to perform one song at the opening ceremony. Another woman, an American who has lived in Paris for 15 years, said property taxes went up and yet Parisians were not given much access to events or even public spaces to watch the festivities despite the financial and social burden being put on them.

But even when the rain began falling, people did not scatter to look for shelter. Instead they powered through, trying to get a better look at the bleu, blanc and rouge streaks being left in the sky by an airplane flyover.

Restaurants, which don’t have televisions here, were generally not busy. If you were going out to eat Friday night, it’s because you didn’t care to watch the show live. But inside one of them in a residential area near the Eiffel Tower, you could hear the singing of La Marseillaise, the French National Anthem. For a few minutes, the din of conversation went completely silent. — Dan Wolken

Team USA opening ceremony outfit

Team USA’s opening ceremony outfit is a modern take on a tailored look. On top, a tailored single-breasted wool blazer with red and white tipping is worn over a striped oxford shirt. The bottom is a more casual tapered jean and classic suede buck shoe fit. 

Ralph Lauren works closely with Team USA and the goal, as always, is to “do something graphic and uniquely American,” chief brand and innovation officer David Lauren said. 

To account for the heat, the company constantly looks at different fabrics and layering systems to keep the athlete’s body temperature in check, Lauren said. All items in both the opening and closing ceremony outfits are manufactured in the United States. 

The USA Basketball delegation departs for #Paris2024 #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/Hzdz7VtuYx — USA Basketball (@usabasketball) July 26, 2024

Coco Gauff opens up on being U.S. flag bearer, making Olympic debut

Coco Gauff is making her Olympic debut in Paris and she is one of two U.S. flag bearers . “(Competing) in the  Olympics  has always been up there with winning a Grand Slam, like top goals,” Gauff told USA TODAY Sports this summer.  Read our full feature on Gauff .

On the opening ceremony red carpet, Serena Williams was asked about Gauff being the flag bearer. "Isn't that great. I'm so excited to see her tonight. I'm just so happy for her," the tennis legend said.

"I don't know if it's fun or if I'm a little jealous!" 😅 Serena Williams on enjoying the #ParisOlympics despite no longer being a competitor. 📺 #ParisOlympics Opening Ceremony on NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/DLWoHJ1ppY — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 26, 2024

USA flag bearers 2024

Basketball superstar LeBron James and tennis star Coco Gauff are the flag bearers for the Americans. Gauff is the first tennis player to serve in the role.

Our flag bearers are ready 🇺🇸 📺: @NBCOlympics & @peacock #ParisOlympics | #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/xyJIz2w7Aa — Team USA (@TeamUSA) July 26, 2024

Why is Snoop Dogg at Olympics?

With his mind on the Olympics and the Olympics on his mind, Snoop Dogg is, indeed, back for the 2024 Paris Olympics . The rapper, who will carry the torch ahead of the opening ceremony , is primed for a bigger role three years after his reactions to the dressage competition with Kevin Hart went viral at the Tokyo Games.

Snoop will appear regularly on “Primetime in Paris,” serving as a “ special correspondent ” for NBC. During parts of the primetime show, Snoop Dogg will interact with Team USA athletes, their families, or explore Paris and share his experiences and insights with the night's audience. He's also carrying the Olympic torch .

Snoop Dogg is bringing the energy to the Opening Ceremony. 📺: #ParisOlympics Opening Ceremony on NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/W3bQHHcWoQ — NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) July 26, 2024

Paris Olympics closing ceremony date

The 2024 Summer Games will hold the closing ceremony on Aug. 11

How many times has Paris hosted the Olympics?

Paris has hosted the Summer Olympics three times: 1900, 1924 and 2024.

Are any U.S. athletes skipping the opening ceremony?

About 350 of Team USA’s 592 athletes will march – or rather, float – in today's opening ceremony, according to Nicole Deal, who oversees the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s security operations.

That means about 40% of the U.S. delegation will be absent, though that is not exactly unusual.

Many athletes and teams – especially those competing early in the Games – choose to pass on the opening ceremony because it often runs late into the night and requires them to spend several hours on their feet. U.S. gymnasts and swimmers, for example, regularly skip the ceremony to rest up for their competitions – which, in some cases, begin the next morning.

U.S. swimming star Katie Ledecky said earlier this week that she never planned on going to the Paris opening ceremony for this very reason. She swims the 400-meter freestyle Saturday morning. — Tom Schad

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