PowerPoint

PowerPoint 2007

 

Resources:

• What's new in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007

• Interactive: PowerPoint 2003 to Word 2007 command reference guide
  
  
• Demo: Up to speed with PowerPoint 2007
   
• Clarion Reference Guides    (Note: These resources are restricted Clarion students and employees.  When you select the documentation link below, you will be prompted to enter your Clarion University username and password.  For detailed instructions on entering this information, please Click here)

 

Key Improvements:

The Ribbon interface

As mentioned previously under "Key features of Microsoft Office 2007", in addition to the familiar Home, Insert, Review, View, and Add-ins tabs, which are common to other Office programs, you'll find tabs labeled Design, Animations, and Slideshow that are dedicated to those presentation elements.  The three images below show you key Ribbon tabs and what they do:

 

Design tab

 

Allows you to choose page setup themes and backgrounds

 

Animation tab

 

Makes it easy to create animations and slide transitions

 

Slide Show tab

 

Used to set up and play the show and control monitor settings

 

The Quick Style gallery

The new Quick Style gallery, with new themes, helps you to put together professional-looking presentations much more quickly because you don't have to select colors and style options individually. Now you can be sure that your graphics elements, tables and charts all match. When you apply a new style or theme, all of these elements change so that they go together and use the same color set.  As a result, any new SmartArt graphics, tables, charts, WordArt, or text that you insert into the presentation, automatically matches your existing theme.  With consistent theme colors (theme colors: A set of colors that is used in a file. Theme colors, theme fonts, and theme effects compose a theme.), all of your materials can look consistent and professional. 

 

SmartArt Graphics

The new Quick Style gallery, with new themes, helps you to put together professional-looking presentations much more quickly because you don't have to select colors and style options individually. Now you can be sure that your graphics elements, tables and charts all match. When you apply a new style or theme, all of these elements change so that they go together and use the same color set. The Quick Styles gallery changes to coordinate with whatever theme you've selected, too. That means that elements such as SmartArt graphics will be automatically color coordinated with the rest of the elements in the presentation. What is a SmartArt graphic:  it is a visual representation of your information that you can quickly and easily create, choosing from among many different layouts, to effectively communicate your message or ideas.

Because Office PowerPoint 2007 presentations often contain slides with bulleted lists, you can quickly convert slide text to a SmartArt graphic. In addition, you can add animation to your SmartArt graphic in Office PowerPoint 2007 presentations.

 

Improved tables and charts

Tables and charts are important elements of many slide presentations, and PowerPoint 2007 makes it easier to create and edit them. It's simpler to cut and paste information from Excel spreadsheets, and adding a table or chart to a slide is a point-and-click operation that's done from the Insert tab.  The Ribbon offers many easy-to-find options for editing your tables and charts. The Quick Styles (Quick Styles: Collections of formatting options that make formatting your documents and objects easier.) galleries present all of the effects and formatting options that you need to create professional-looking tables and charts.  With themes (theme: A combination of theme colors, theme fonts, and theme effects. A theme may be applied to a file as a single selection.), your presentations can now have the same look as your worksheets.

 

Live preview

Tables and charts are important elements of many slide presentations, and PowerPoint 2007 makes it easier to create and edit them. It's simpler to cut and paste information from Excel spreadsheets, and adding a table or chart to a slide is a point-and-click operation that's done from the Insert tab.  The Ribbon offers many easy-to-find options for editing your tables and charts. The Quick Styles (Quick Styles: Collections of formatting options that make formatting your documents and objects easier.) galleries present all of the effects and formatting options that you need to create professional-looking tables and charts.  With themes (theme: A combination of theme colors, theme fonts, and theme effects. A theme may be applied to a file as a single selection.), your presentations can now have the same look as your worksheets.

 

Spell Checker

• The spelling checker has been made more consistent across the 2007 Microsoft Office system programs. Examples of this change include the following: Many spell checker options are now global. If you change one of these options in one Office program, that option is also changed for all the other Office programs. For more information, see the article Choose how spelling and grammar checking work.
  
  
• In-addition to sharing the same custom dictionaries, all programs can manage them by using the same dialog box. For more information, see the article Use custom dictionaries to add words to the spelling checker

 

Presenter View

Another new feature in PowerPoint 2007 is the ability to run the presentation on one monitor while the audience views it on a second monitor. In Presenter view, what you see on your monitor (for example, your laptop) and what the audience sees on the second monitor (for example, the projector screen) are different. The audience sees only the slide itself. But you see the current slide along with your speaker notes and previews of the next several slides in sequence. You can click any of those slides to go to it instantly, and you can darken or lighten the audience screen without affecting your own.

• You can use thumbnails to select slides out of sequence and create a customized presentation for your audience.
  
  
• Preview text shows you what your next click will add to the screen, such as a new slide or the next bullet in a list.
  
  
• Speaker's notes are shown in large, clear type so that you can use them as a script for your presentation.
  
  
• You can black out the screen during your presentation and then resume where you left off. For example, you might not want to display the slide content during a break or a question and answer period.

 

Smaller file size and better file format

Elaborate slide presentations can result in very large file sizes, especially if you use many graphics, embed video, etc. This may make it difficult to e-mail PowerPoint presentations to others because of mailbox limitations.

The new XML-based file format used by default in PowerPoint 2007 (.PPTX) reduces file sizes because the files are compressed. This makes them significantly smaller, sometimes up to 75 percent. XML-based files are also easier to recover if some elements in the file are corrupt or damaged.

If necessary for compatibility with older versions of PowerPoint, you can also save files in the PowerPoint 2003 (.PPT) format

 

Save as:  PDF or XPS

Now you can save PowerPoint presentations as PDF or XPS files. This makes it easier to share them with people who don't have PowerPoint or who are using non-Microsoft operating systems, because these are standardized formats that can be opened across platforms.

Saving in one of these fixed-layout formats also ensures that your presentation will stay exactly as you created it, since they can't easily be edited. It's also easy to print files saved in PDF or XPS, since "what you see is what you get" in terms of the layout.