Using Special Effects

Use quick transitions for builds. Don't use crawls, or the affect where letters fly in one at a time. You don't want your audience sitting there watching special effects. Besides, when an effect is in progress, people will not be hearing anything you're saying. In the same way, if your bullet points are located on the left side of the slide, don't have the points fly in from the right--it just takes longer; have them enter from the left side so they can slip into place quickly.

Don't use a bunch of different transitions and builds. Find a build that works, and use it throughout the presentation. Likewise with transitions. Professionals will use just one or two, even in a long presentation.

Don't rely on how the presentation looks on your computer screen. Test the presentation in a "real world" setting. What looks good on screen may, under different lighting conditions, appear washed out (too light), and certain colors which looked sharp on the computer monitor may be almost unnoticeable.

Don't use fancy transitions. A simple cut can work well.

Be consistent in your use of transitions. For instance, in a sermon, use the same transition every time you move to a new point. For instance, you could use a drop-down transition whenever you begin a new point, but then use a dissolve (or something else) for slides within that point. That way, when the drop-down effect occurs, it signals your audience that a transition is coming. Then, within that new point, all of the slides should go back to the dissolve.

Don't ever ever ever use the Random Transitions option. There will inevitably be some transitions that occur very slowly on your computer. You don't want to risk having them used.

Avoid sound transitions. "Whoosh" sounds and the like are immediately gimmicky, and quickly become annoying. The camera click sound may seem cool, and you may get a kick out of using it (and maybe someone will chuckle the first time), but it gets old fast.