Microsoft Sway: A Powerful Tool to go beyond Presentations
With the introduction of Sway, Microsoft added a brand new app in their Office portfolio. Sway is an entirely different, and fantastic way to express yourself, and bring your ideas to life. With Sway, you can create and share interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, and more. You can try Sway on Web, Windows 10 PC, iPhone, and iPad. In this post, I will share how you can create a presentation with SWAY.
Microsoft Sway: A Powerful Tool to go beyond Presentations
The Hamburger:
The app has a vibrant UI with loads of options. It features a Hamburger menu, a part of Windows 10 design language. Clicking on the Hamburger menu, you would get options like creating & opening a Sway, duplicating, feedback, and about.
Insert:
The Insert section of the app lets you insert anything and everything in your Sway without having to leave the app. You can add “Contents Suggested by Sway,” your contents from One Drive, One Note, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Bing, etc. And if all these aren’t enough, you can upload photos or videos from your computer, or even Search for something within the insert section.
Cards:
That is where you will take the first step of creating your Sway. Cards are something where you add contents to your Sway. Cards are subdivided into three main categories:
- Text: This is where you put your thoughts and creativity into words. It has got a few options like Emphasize your text, Accent, adding bullets, adding numbers, and adding links.
- Heading: Heading is where you give heading to your project, and it will be displayed bold. You can add a picture for your heading, emphasize or accent your heading or add links to your heading.
- Media: Add Pictures, Videos, Tweets, Charts to your photos, with just a click. It features drag and drop, letting you do things quickly.
- Group: Let’s you Group your cards together. Allows you to select among a handful of themes like Stack, Slide Show, Comparison, and Grid. However, if you’re too bored to choose one, click on Automatic and it selects the best one for you.
Design:
That’s is where you design your Sway. It has got a lot of themes, colors, and fonts, which will make your Sway stand out from the crowd. At last, you have Animation emphasis, which is like a slider which you can adjust depending on the type of intensity you want in your animations, or keep it on Subtle, Moderate, or Intense.
Navigation:
It is used to set how you want others to see your Sway. You can keep your Sway like a page, make it go vertical or horizontal, depending on your mood.
Remix:
Can’t decide on which theme to use, which color to use or which font to use? No worries! Sway will do it for you! Just Click on Remix, and it will automatically select a design, color, and font for you. Didn’t like the one it created? Click again, and it will come up with some other theme.
Authors:
Don’t like working alone? Or it’s a group presentation? Worry not! Just click on the Authors tab, it will give you a link. Only share the link with the person you want to add and ask me to log into it using Microsoft account. Now you can work together.
Why Sway?
If you read along what Sway can do, it is clear that if you want to create a quick presentation, or create a photo album or when using PowerPoint is out of scope; Sway is an excellent choice. This tool lets you craft stories, with beautiful image placement, and intuitive navigation. Combined with multiple author feature, and duplicating existing Sway adds the power of collaboration.
