What’s new with PowerPoint 2007

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This partial article is from the http://www.officeletter.com/ January 8th e-newsletter. It talks about some of the great new features that will be available in the new PowerPoint 2007, including the enhanced integration PowerPoint has with SharePoint.

——————————————————————-3) IN DEPTH: POWERPOINT 2007——————————————————————-

Many of the changes in Office 2007 focus on visual communication. That’s nowhere more important — or well done — than in PowerPoint 2007. While the presentation program has long had the ability to create charts and diagrams, the improvements in Office 2007′s SmartArt are of great benefit to PowerPoint users, where such graphics (hierarchy charts, workflows, and more) are used frequently. There are some improvements to Office 2007 features not found in the other Office modules. For example, SmartArt lets you build attractive bullet lists, but it’s only in PowerPoint that you can select an ordinary bullet list and turn it into a SmartArt diagram with a click of an option on the Ribbon bar. (It’s a feature that would be welcome throughout the suite — especially Word.) Charts are another visual element popular in PowerPoint presentations, but in the past you’ve been limited to using MSGraph by default. PPT 2007 uses Excel 2007′s charting engine; in fact, when you add a graph, PowerPoint opens up two screens: an Excel workbook (with sample row and column data filled in) and a corresponding chart window for previewing your work. It’s easy to use and the results are far more satisfying than in previous versions of PowerPoint. (See Figure 1 in our online edition this week: http://www.officeletter.com/current.html.)Microsoft hasn’t forgotten about text. Long bone of contention with Office Letter readers has been that PowerPoint’s text handling doesn’t match those of Word or Excel. In PPT 2007, the playing field is more level: you can finally use strikethrough and ALL CAPS fonts (see Figure 2), and you can also pick the fill and outline colors of outlined text without having to use WordArt. There’s kerning control, too, which becomes more important as font sizes increase. Table formatting is much improved; it’s easier to control background colors and fonts in PPT 2007, and combined with the visual effects you can employ (much like AutoFormatting tables in earlier versions of Office), you can create tables with greater eye appeal, as Figure 3 demonstrates.
MASTERING MASTERSThere are many ways to change the “look” of your presentation. In previous PowerPoint versions, I fought with Master Slides. It look some time to get the hang of them, but their power — changing the master changed all slides in the presentation — was undeniable. In PPT 2007, Master Slides are greatly improved. A new hierarchy now exists — Masters now consist of several layouts, such as a chart slide layout (for charts and graphs)and a picture slide (for displaying an image). You can add, remove, and position elements (such as text boxes) on each of these layout masters, and your changes will be applied to all the slides that use the layout. If you hover over a layout, PowerPoint tells you how many slides use it (as shown in Figure 4). Overall, making changes to slide templates is far easier (and logical) than ever before. As in other Office applications, you can apply themes — sets of properties such as font, font size, and colors — to your presentation. PowerPoint ships with many predefined themes, which you can easily change (or change and then save as a new theme). To use a theme, just visit the Themes gallery for a thumbnail preview of its properties. We applied the Median theme to the slide shown in Figure 5. There are many new changes you can make to visual elements (such as charts and illustrations). You can apply shadows, blur the edges, create gradient fill effects, and employ 3D effects. If you paste a graphic file into your presentation, you can give it a special edge effect (a rough-torn edge, for example). With all this power, sometimes your slides can get a bit messy. To help you edit slides with lots of objects, the latest PowerPoint offers a new “Selection and Visibility” panel so you can focus on a particular slide element. You then click on an item to temporarily hide it while you work on other elements, then click it again to make it reappear. The S&V panel is shown in Figure 6. To display the panel, choose an object (we selected a box shape); PowerPoint adds the Drawing Tools Ribbon, on which you’ll see the Format tab. In the Arrange group on this Format tab, choose the Selection Pane option. It’s now easier to add action buttons (click to advance to the next slide, for example), add slide numbers, fill a graphic with an image, apply a gradient to a line (new in 2007), replace one shape with another, and in general handle a myriad of graphics chores. Editing is also enhanced because, as with other applications in the Office suite, PowerPoint 2007 allows you to see your changes in real time, so you’ll know if the font size you’ve selected is too large or the font style looks good. Preview is also available for animations (though the animations themselves are the same as those in PPT 2003). There are some minor changes to the user interface. Zoom is now handled with a slider bar located in the bottom right corner, where you’ll also now find the View icons (for Normal, Slide Sorter, Slide Show Preview modes). Of course, there’s the Ribbon interface we’ve described before you’ll have to get used to. The command to insert a slide isn’t on the Insert tab but on the Home tab, which is smart, but if you’re used to the Insert/Slide command, you’ll need to retrain yourself a bit. (The Insert tab is where you’ll work with headers/footers, clip art, and links.)
POINTPOINT AND SHAREPOINT

———– THE OFFICE LETTER —– www.officeletter.com ———-Tips and Tricks for Microsoft Office – Published WeeklyNow In Our Sixth Year – ISSN: 1543-5768Editor in Chief: James E. Powell

Contributing Editors: Jim Boyce (www.boyce.us)Dick Archer (www.diseno.com)