How To Create A New Prezi On Prezi Next

Upgrading your Prezi classic to Prezi next

Death of Flash: Time to Upgrade Your Prezi Classic

Adobe is finally planning to kill off Flash once and for all. Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Safari have all been blocking Flash over the past year, but Adobe is now planning for the death of Flash, removing all support for it by the end of 2020. ( I know it's been in the works for a while but what does this mean for Prezi Classic and Prezi Next presentations?)

How does this impact your Prezi Presentation?

So what does this mean for presenters that use Prezi for presentation design? If you have invested some time developing Prezi presentations the first question you might want to ask yourself is what format are the Prezi Presentations?

Prezi Classic versus Prezi Next

From its initial launch in April of 2009 Prezi had harnessed different technologies from the traditional PowerPoint presentation to create innovative web-based presentation software. This initial Prezi format (now called Prezi Classic) was built using Flash technology.

At the time Flash was a classic technology used by nearly every browser to enhance the viewing experience. Unfortunately leaning on different technologies such as Flash left Prezi Classic in dire need of upgrading once the technology that powered Prezi Classic Presentations was being replaced by HTML.

This caused Prezi to design their next platform which was called Prezi Next. The upgrading happened in April of 2018. Most likely, if you have Prezi classic presentations in your Prezi account, they would have been designed before this date.

As of April 2018, Prezi had over 100 Million users who had made over 350 Million presentations (all of which were Prezi Classic presentations). They knew that their users would need some help learning about the differences between Prezi Classic and Prezi Next.

For this reason, there was a bit of a transition period where new users would get only access to Prezi Next while existing users would get access to both Prezi Next as well as Prezi Classic.

If you find that you joined Prezi during this time and are not sure if you joined past the invalid date to get access to Prezi Classic, a good way to check is to log into your Prezi account and go up to the top left-hand side and look for a drop-down arrow which will allow you to check to see if you have access to both the Prezi presentation styles.

If you do have access to both the Prezi Classic and new Prezi Next options, the next step would be to toggle to the Prezi Classic option and see if your Presentation is in that format. If want any help, send us an email at contact@presentationgeeks.com and we would be happy to help you find out which version your presentation is currently in.

What should you do if your presentation is a Prezi Classic format?

Well if you have a Prezi Classic presentation that you currently use, you might want to start thinking about converting the content over to a Prezi Next presentation. In 2018 when Prezi first notified it's users that they were moving to the new Prezi Next format, we notified all of our customers that they may want to consider upgrading their presentation.

Unfortunately, there is no automatic way to do this, but it isn't all bad news. Prezi Next has been created with some new features giving it an enhanced look and functionality. Depending on the account type you have, you will now have access to:

The normal Prezi editor (with a few new ways of doing things)
Shapes and Lines with more colors, and the ability to make them transparent
A new icon set
New Prezi Next Topic Cover Reveals
Voice over options
Prezi Analytics and viewer tracking options
This next version of Prezi now has a better ability to create a non-linear presentation format using what they call "Planets" as a way to layout different sections of your presentation

It's not all bad news...

At Presentation Geeks we've upgraded numerous Prezi's to Prezi Next, and what we've found is that the majority of our customers interested in upgrading are also in need of some content upgrades in their next Prezi as well.

In fact, we've found that even if the presentation you are currently using is 12 months old, it is good practice to revise it once a year. This helps to keep the presentation content fresh, so that the next time you are called upon to deliver your presentation, you can rest assured that it is up to date and that you are ready to go.

It is also important to note that Prezi has stated that all Prezi Classics will continue to display fine indefinitely using the Chrome browser, however once Flash is completely unsupported, users will no longer we able to edit existing Classic presentations in the web version, but you will still be able to make edits in the offline Prezi Next editor.

How can you update your presentation to Prezi Next?

If your presentation is currently a Classic format, we would encourage you to think about upgrading to Next as soon as possible. The most challenging thing about Prezi Next is probably understanding the new features and how to use them. Prezi has come out with a bunch of getting started and help videos which is a great place to start.

There is a bit of a learning curve but for people with the time and patience to learn a new system, we highly recommend giving it a try. In our opinion, there is nothing better than learning a new skill.

However, we also appreciate that not everyone has that time available, or in most cases, their time is better spent developing other areas of their business. If you fall into the latter category, we are here for you.

So, if you need to convert your presentation to the new format, contact the geeks to schedule a call or book in to have your Prezi conversion.