A problem arises when presenting the same topic to different audiences. They may be people from different groups having different roles each. Their knowledge about the subject being discussed may also vary. This requires you to adapt your presentations to them. This usually means making multiple presentations containing duplicate slides which need to be updated individually.

Questions -- from the audience - Featured -2- FreePowerPointTemplates

Is There a Better Way?

It seems inevitable that a new presentation file will need to be prepared for each of these audiences, but can this be avoided? Is there a way to make a presentation such that it caters to all these audiences?

The Answer: Yes, there is.

What If I Make A New Presentation Every Time?

Even though we’re suggesting that you don’t need to keep multiple versions of the same presentation. We’re not saying that you should never make a new presentation for each new audience. Especially when it helps you focus on your goal with each individual group. However, there are also disadvantages.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Creating Multiple Presentations for Multiple Audiences

One major disadvantage is the time it takes to make each new presentation. All versions of the presentation need to agree with each other. You don’t want to get caught making different claims to different people. It is often more practical to make one specialized presentation for multiple audiences instead of making many separate presentations for each of them.

PowerPoint’s Custom Show Feature

Custom Show is a feature in PowerPoint that lets you choose which slides you want to include in the actual slide show. You can create multiple custom shows in one PowerPoint file.

Why Use The Custom Show Feature?

This approach covers for the disadvantages of making multiple presentations for multiple audiences. Also, anything updated on one slide is updated everywhere automatically, and does not need to be updated for multiple PowerPoint files. You can use different names for different custom shows making it easier to manage them.

You can add a new slide and include it in one show and not the others. This also applies to making PDFs and printing handouts. You can print custom shows containing slides included in that specific show. Click this link to learn how to make a Custom Slide Show in PowerPoint 2016.

Image: Cade Martin [CC BY 0] via public-domain-image