Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 is a full-featured presentation program that helps you quickly and efficiently develop dynamic, professional-looking presentations and then deliver them to an audience. You can use PowerPoint to:
Introduce an idea, proposal, organization, product, or process with professionally designed high-impact slides.
Use galleries of styles and formatting options to achieve the right combination of colors, fonts, and effects.
Bolster your arguments by easily adding pictures, shapes, and fancy display text.
Convey numeric data in easy-to-grasp ways with styled tables or visually compelling charts.
Use SmartArt graphics to create sophisticated diagrams that reflect processes, hierarchies, and other relationships.
Create custom layouts so that your presentation has a unique look and feel.
Collaborate with colleagues, giving and receiving feedback to ensure the best possible presentation.
PowerPoint 2007 has been extensively overhauled and improved with this version. You’ll notice some obvious changes as soon as you start the program, because the top of the program window has a completely new look, described in Chapter 1. But the improvements go way beyond these changes in appearance. Throughout this book, we include discussions of each new feature that is likely to be useful to you and how and when to use it.
Tip
Included in the back of this book is a four-color poster provided for your reference. This convenient guide points out some of the best new features of the redesigned Office user interface and includes tips to get you started. You will learn about these features and many more while working through this book.
Because there are so many new features in this version of PowerPoint, we don’t identify them with a special margin icon as we did in previous versions of this book. We do, however, list them here. If you’re upgrading to PowerPoint 2007 from a previous version, you’re probably most interested in the differences between the old and new versions and how they will affect you, as well as how to find out about them in the quickest possible way. The sections below list new features you will want to be aware of, depending on the version of PowerPoint you are upgrading from. To quickly locate information about these features, see the Index at the back of this book.
If you have been using PowerPoint 2003, you will soon realize that PowerPoint 2007 is not just an incremental upgrade to what seemed like a pretty comprehensive set of features and tools. In addition to introducing a more efficient approach to working with presentations, PowerPoint 2007 includes a long list of new and improved features, including the following:
The Ribbon. No more hunting through menus, submenus, and dialog boxes. This new interface organizes all the commands most people use most often, making them quickly accessible from tabs at the top of the program window.
Live preview. See the effect of a style, theme, or other option before you apply it.
Custom layouts. Easily create your own layouts with placeholders for specific objects, and then save them for use in other presentations.
SmartArt graphics. Use this awesome new diagramming tool to create sophisticated diagrams with 3-D shapes, transparency, drop shadows, and other effects.
Slide libraries. Share slide content with team members in a special Microsoft SharePoint library for presentations and slides.
Presentation cleanup. Have PowerPoint check for and remove comments, hidden text, and personal information stored as properties before you declare a presentation final.
In addition to the features listed in the previous section, if you’re upgrading from PowerPoint 2002 (part of the Office XP system), you’ll want to take note of the following new features that were introduced in PowerPoint 2003:
Thesaurus and research service. Choose words that suit your presentation and your audience, and research information on the Web.
Smart tags. Track types of data that can be used in multiple ways, such as dates, names, and addresses.
Improved media playback. Get superior performance when playing video or sound.
Tablet PC support. Edit a presentation in your own handwriting.
Document workspaces. Collaborate with team members on presentations stored on SharePoint sites.
Information Rights Management, improved password protection, and digital signatures. Restrict who can work on a presentation.
Package for CD. Make sure you include all the files you need when you transfer a presentation to a CD.
New slide show navigation tools. Move smoothly from slide to slide when delivering an electronic slide show.
Improved ink annotations. Mark up slides during a presentation.
If you are upgrading from PowerPoint 2000, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do, but this upgrade will definitely be worth the effort. In addition to the features listed in the previous sections, the following features and tools, which were added in PowerPoint 2002, will be new to you:
Overview pane. Quickly view a presentation outline or slide thumbnails on tabs in this handy pane on the left side of the program window.
Task pane. Quickly access groups of related commands or options in this pane on the right side of the program window. This pane is used for searching, accessing design templates, clip art, viewing and working with Clipboard content, and other PowerPoint tasks.
Print Preview. Preview presentation slides before you print them.
AutoCorrect and AutoFit options. Control the features that correct spelling as you type and resize text to fit its placeholder.
Multiple masters. Add more than one master to a presentation.
Visible grid. Display a grid to align objects.
Photo album. Create a presentation that can be used as a photo album.
Compress pictures. Reduce the size of pictures in a presentation.
Animation schemes. Quickly apply a set of animations to an object or slide.
The following features that you might have used in PowerPoint 2003 or earlier versions are not supported by PowerPoint 2007. Comparable or replacement features are listed where applicable.
Discontinued Feature | PowerPoint 2007 Feature |
|---|---|
AutoContent wizard | Create presentations based on templates with themes and layouts. |
Adding pictures from a scanner or camera | Download the pictures, and then insert by clicking the Picture button in the Illustrations group on the Insert tab. |
Commands on the Web toolbar | Use the Location box instead of the Address box; add the Back and Forward buttons to the Quick Access Toolbar. |
Macro recorder | Create or edit macros by using Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). |
Live broadcast add-in | Collaborate and share presentations by using Microsoft Live Meeting or Windows Meeting. |
Send For Review command | Attach your presentation to an e-mail message. |
Summary and contents slides | Copy slide titles onto a summary or contents slide. |
Apple QuickTime movie support | Create a link to the QuickTime movie, or convert it to a Microsoft Windows video. |
Title master | Define the content and formatting for the title slide in Slide Master view. |
Allow Fast Saves option | PowerPoint always saves the entire presentation. |