The questions slide: pictures, layouts and wording for the Q&A

The questions slide stays on screen longer than any other slide in your deck. While people think, ask and listen to answers, it is the picture in the room for five, ten, sometimes twenty minutes. Spending that time on a giant question mark wastes the best advertising space of the presentation.

A good Q&A slide does two jobs at once: it invites questions, and it keeps the one thing you want remembered in view. Below are wording ideas, six layouts, sources for pictures, and the steps to build the slide and run the Q&A.

Better words than “Questions?”

An open, specific invitation gets more and better questions than a bare word. Choose by tone and audience:

Six layouts for the Q&A slide

1. Summary and questions. Your three key points on the left, “Your questions” on the right. The message stays visible for the whole Q&A.
2. One big statement. The single sentence you want remembered, large, with a small “Questions welcome” underneath.
3. Contact card. Your name, role, email and a QR code to the slides or a booking link — people photograph it.
4. Picture and question. A half-slide photo that fits the topic, the invitation on the other half. Calmer than an icon.
5. Three discussion questions. Seed the conversation with three concrete questions the audience can pick from.
6. Live poll. A question with answer options people vote on; the result starts the discussion.

Where to get questions pictures and icons

• Icons in PowerPoint. Insert → Icons (Microsoft 365) has question marks, speech bubbles, chat and hand-raise symbols. They are vector graphics: recolour them with Graphics Format → Graphics Fill.
• Stock images in PowerPoint. Insert → Pictures → Stock Images (Microsoft 365) offers photos and illustrations licensed for use in your Office documents. Search “conversation”, “meeting”, “audience”.
• Online pictures. Insert → Pictures → Online Pictures searches Bing. The results are not automatically free to use — check the source page’s licence.
• Shapes. Insert → Shapes → Callouts has speech bubbles; two overlapping bubbles in your brand colours make a clean, original Q&A graphic.
• Free photo sites. Sites with permissive licences work too; keep the source and licence noted with the deck.

Examples by occasion

The right questions slide depends on what should happen after it. A sales meeting wants a next step, a lecture wants understanding, a steering committee wants a decision. These combinations work well:

Plan for silence, too. If nobody asks, do not wait more than a few seconds: answer the question you hear most often, or ask the room one of your seeded questions. And plan for the difficult question: thank the person, answer the part you can, and offer to follow up on the rest — then return to your final message. A good questions slide makes both moments easier, because the summary on screen gives everybody, you included, something to point back to.

Build the slide in PowerPoint

Running the Q&A

• Do not end on the Q&A. Take questions, then return to a final slide with your one key message and close with it. The last words heard should be yours, not the answer to a side question.
• Seed the first question. “A question I often hear is …” breaks the silence that follows the invitation.
• Repeat each question. So everyone hears it — and you gain a few seconds to think.
• Use backup slides. Hidden slides at the end hold the details for likely questions; type the slide number and Enter in the slide show to jump there. See how to flag and hide slides.
• Black the screen for a discussion. Press B in the slide show (W for white) so the room looks at the people talking; press it again to return.

Questions from the audience in Google Slides

Google Slides has a built-in Q&A: start Presenter view, open the Audience tools tab and choose Start new. A short link appears at the top of your slides; the audience opens it on their phones, asks questions and votes others up. You show a chosen question full screen with Present. People ask with their Google account; you can let them ask anonymously, which most audiences prefer for critical questions.

Mistakes on the questions slide

• Only a question mark. It wastes the slide that stays on screen longest. Keep your message visible.
• “Any questions?” said while packing up. It signals that you hope there are none. Ask it facing the room, then wait.
• Contact details too small to photograph. Name and email at 24 pt or more; a QR code at least 3 cm wide on the slide.
• A thank-you slide instead. “Thank you” closes the conversation you want to open. Put thanks in your words, the invitation on the slide.
• Clip art from the early 2000s. Use one modern icon or a calm photo that fits the topic.

Q&A and closing slides in ExpertSlides

The ExpertSlides library has closing slides for exactly these jobs: questions with a contact line, one open question beside a thank-you, a poll before the thank-you, FAQ slides with questions and answers, and quiz slides (the poll and the quiz are interactive slides, part of Pro and Business). Type “Add a closing slide” or “Add a FAQ slide” in the editor’s prompt to get one in the deck’s design; “Add a new slide about our three open questions at the end” writes it from what the deck already says.

For a live vote, the Insert tab has interactive elements (on Pro and Business), among them a Poll (two to six options; a click adds a vote, bars fill by share) and a Rating on a scale. In a presentation they work live, and the audience window follows. Icons come from a library of more than 14,000 in eight styles (all of them on Pro and Business); the one-colour ones take any colour.

More for the end of a deck: agenda, contents and appendix slides, and the AI slides page on what the AI writes. The designs are all in Design Templates.