In part one, we talked about how being able to find the right slide, right when you need it can be pretty important.

If it’s a really great slide, the perfect slide, one worth keeping and recycling into multiple presentations, you and your team most likely invested a significant amount of time, energy, and other resources into creating it. And if you can’t figure out which presentation file, in which folder, on which laptop, the slide is hiding in, it’s worth absolutely nothing.

Given all this (and keeping in mind that a majority of us start new presentations from slides that already exist), you might be surprised to find out that not being able to find the required presentation is more common than you would think.

76% of the responders in a recent study conducted by Research Presentation Strategies (RPS) report having had trouble locating a presentation file they need. 15% say they have trouble locating presentations they need often or very often. This increases to 18% for frequent PPT users (those who edit or create 3 or more presentations a month).

Why is this number so high, why can it often be so hard for us to know exactly where the slides we need to do our work are located? You might assume that some of this is the fault of a particular individual’s organizational skills, and you wouldn’t be wrong. However, it is also very possible that the tools and systems we use to create, share and store our presentation are at least partly to blame.

In part three of this series, we will look at how the work routines of PPT users can play a role in the stress-filled game of slide hide and seek.