Create Stunning Presentations: 7 Best Microsoft PowerPoint Courses for 2023
From effective business presentations to animated videos, master PowerPoint with the best online courses.
Microsoft PowerPoint is a popular presentation application developed by Microsoft. PowerPoint is used anywhere from educational institutions to offices, and even used to create animated videos for YouTube. Whether you’re a student, a business person, or just someone who wants to pitch your ideas, learning PowerPoint is a valuable skill.
In this Best Courses Guide (BCG), we’ve selected the best Microsoft PowerPoint courses from over 200 Microsoft PowerPoint courses in our catalog, including offerings from popular course providers like Coursera, Skillshare, and Udemy. We’ll discuss the different features and benefits of each course, so you can choose the one that’s right for you.
For those interested in learning other Microsoft software, refer to our BCGs for Excel, Word, Power BI, and Access.
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Top Picks
Course Ranking Statistics
- Combined, these courses have accrued over 399K enrollments.
- Two courses are free or free-to-audit and five courses are paid.
- The Microsoft PowerPoint subject has been bookmarked over 17K times on Class Central.
Best Overall: Work Smarter with PowerPoint (Microsoft)
Exclusively from Microsoft, this free-to-audit course is intended for learners who are seeking to build presentation skills with Microsoft PowerPoint. If you are familiar with PowerPoint’s basic features you can take your skills to the next level.
By taking this course, you’ll be prepared for Exam MO-300: Microsoft PowerPoint (PowerPoint and PowerPoint 2019) which tests your ability to create and manage presentations, insert and format shapes and slides, create slide content, apply transitions and animations, and manage multiple presentations.
Concepts are taught through videos, readings and practice exercises. At the very end, there is an optional “Honors” assignment where you’ll apply all that you’ve learned.
This course is the last one in the Microsoft 365 Fundamentals Specialization.
| Institution | Microsoft |
| Provider | Coursera |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 19 hours |
| Enrollments | 32.8K |
| Rating | 4.7/5.0 (442 reviews) |
| Certificate | Paid |
Skillshare’s Best Course for Beginners (Andrew Pach)
PowerPoint Design for PowerPoint Presentations is taught by Andrew Pach, Graphic Designer and PowerPoint expert. This course is divided into two main sections: the basic functions and the detailed process of designing your own presentation in practice. By working side-by-side with the instructor and completing projects, you’ll be able to produce a presentation like a pro.
The course has two sections:
- Teaching best presentation practices and useful PowerPoint tricks – Basic presentation knowledge.
- Slide-by-slide process of designing your own presentation – Each lesson will be devoted to tackling a slide one at a time.
The course is broken down into 131 bite-sized lessons and it is also available on Udemy: Powerpoint 2016 2019 365 – Master powerpoint presentation.
| Provider | Skillshare |
| Instructor | Andrew Pach |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 8 hours |
| Enrollments | 10.8K |
| Rating | 99% positive (92 reviews) |
| Certificate | Available |
Udemy’s Best Course for Beginners (Kyle Pew)
Microsoft PowerPoint From Beginner to Advanced is taught by Kyle Pew, a bestselling instructor and a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT). This course is very detailed and well-structured with an excellent instructor.
By the end of this course, you will have mastered the basic features of the software, leverage advanced text editing operations and automate formatting, and be prepared to deliver a PowerPoint presentation with graphical elements and animations.
“This course is a great refresher and learning new things. I have a much better understanding of how to use PowerPoint to its fullest. Kyle Pew is an excellent Instructor, after taking the Excel and Word course. I made sure to catch his course on PowerPoint.” – Patrick M., Udemy learner.
| Provider | Udemy |
| Instructor | Kyle Pew |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 7 hours |
| Enrollments | 64K |
| Rating | 4.6/5.0 (13.4K) |
| Certificate | Paid |
Best PowerPoint Animated Videos Course (Udemy)
How to Create Animated Videos with Powerpoint is taught by Paul Nekh, a Udemy instructor with 14 courses and over 123K students. This course will guide you in creating video animation for your business presentations, marketing campaigns, or social media sharing. This course also comes packed with video templates that you can use and customize right away.
“Detailed explanation with excellent training material and templates. The quality of templates shared exceeded my expectations.” – Manson L., Udemy learner.
Parts of this course are also available on Skillshare:
| Provider | Udemy |
| Instructor | Paul Nekh |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 4-5 hours |
| Enrollments | 23K |
| Rating | 4.7/5.0 (5.3K) |
| Certificate | Paid |
Best Presentation Design Course for Business (LinkedIn Learning)
PowerPoint: Silicon Valley Presentation Secrets is totally awesome! It’s not just a PowerPoint learning course, but a lot more. As the name suggests, this course will tell you some of the “secrets” Silicon Valley professionals use to make their company presentations look so dazzling and eye-catching. So if you’re someone who isn’t satisfied with run-of-the-mill presentations, this course is for you.
Taught by Jole Simmons, a Senior Art Director and a Podcast Host, the course provides the best practice of presentation design through a combination of short videos and practical exercises.
| Provider | LinkedIn Learning |
| Instructor | Jole Simmons |
| Level | Intermediate |
| Workload | 1-2 hours |
| Enrollments | 154K |
| Rating | 4.7/5.0 (540 reviews) |
| Certificate | Paid |
Best Microsoft 365 – PowerPoint Crash Course (LinkedIn Learning)
Just like many other Microsoft Office applications, PowerPoint can also be used on the web. You can still use it to create impressive presentations while not having to install the desktop version of PowerPoint. Learning PowerPoint for the web (Office 365/Microsoft 365) is a course for users who know the basics of the PowerPoint desktop app, but are new to the web browser version.
Taught by Heather Severino, a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT). Concepts are taught through a combination of videos and practical exercises.
| Provider | LinkedIn Learning |
| Instructor | Heather Severino |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 1-2 hours |
| Enrollments | 18.9K |
| Rating | 4.7/5.0 (131 reviews) |
| Certificate | Paid |
Also Great: Effective Business Presentations with PowerPoint (PwC)
Unlike the previous courses on this list, Effective Business Presentations with Powerpoint is all about presenting the story of the data using PowerPoint. This free-to-audit course is not your typical PowerPoint tutorial course, but rather, it’s about delivering your presentation through effective storytelling and communication. Remember, this is not a traditional PowerPoint course, and does not teach the technicalities of PowerPoint.
Concepts are taught through a combination of videos and readings.
For paying learners, there are a number of graded quizzes as well as peer-graded assignments throughout the course.
| Institution | PwC |
| Provider | Coursera |
| Instructor | Alex Mannella |
| Level | Beginner |
| Workload | 11 hours |
| Enrollments | 96K |
| Rating | 4.5/5.0 (1K) |
| Certificate | Paid |
Why You Should Trust Us
Class Central, a Tripadvisor for online education, has helped 60 million learners find their next course. We’ve been combing through online education for more than a decade to aggregate a catalog of over 150,000 online courses and 200,000 reviews written by our users. And we’re online learners ourselves: combined, the Class Central team has completed over 400 online courses, including online degrees.
I’ve (Archisha) been using Microsoft PowerPoint since my school days, not just for work but for fun as well!
I (Archisha) have taken over 50 online courses in various subjects. My experience as an online learner and teacher has given me some perspective on what to look for in an online course. I used my experience to evaluate each course in this list.
Fabio also has experience as an online learner and as a tutor who revised the research and the 2023 version of this article.
How We Made Our Picks and Tested Them
Trying to find “the best” can be daunting, even for those of us who live and breathe online courses. Here’s how we approached this task.
First, we combed through Class Central’s Catalog and the internet to find a variety of free and paid open courses, some with certificates.
We extracted information from course syllabi and reviews, and compiled their ratings, leveraging the Class Central database with over 200 Microsoft PowerPoint courses and its thousands of course ratings and reviews written by our users as well as available course provider ratings. We watched some course videos to sample courses we hadn’t already taken.
Then, we defined the scope for these recommendations. A PowerPoint course can cover various topics, so we chose top courses from a range of sub-fields.
Ultimately, we used a combination of data and our own judgment to make these picks. We’re confident these recommendations will be a reliable way to learn PowerPoint’s main features.
Archisha Bhar
