May 1, 08 - Compressing Pictures in PowerPoint

The decline in the prices of digital cameras is directly related to the bloating file sizes of PowerPoint files. If you don’t believe me, just insert a few ten megapixel photos inside a PowerPoint presentation and see what happens to the file size. The poor presentation is probably already on its way to the bloat heavens.

Read more here...

Apr 30, 08 - Xara Xtreme 4 Pro

Most graphic software these days is slow and filled with features that you would use once in a blue moon. That's why it is good to work with a program that is so much more snappier and responsive -- with this new Xtreme 4 Pro version, Xara continues to make strides in usability and speed.

Read more here...

Apr 29, 08 - Task Pane in PowerPoint 2007

The Task Pane is a docked window within the PowerPoint 2007 interface that provides more options than normal dialog boxes -- also unlike most dialog boxes, you can view both the active slide(s) and the Task Pane at the same time -- thus the task panes provide a more streamlined workflow.

Read more here...

Apr 26, 08 - Slide Area in PowerPoint 2007

The Slide area comprises the slide, the slide workspace, the scrollbars, and the rulers. We discuss each of these individual interface elements in this article.

Read more here...

Apr 24, 08 - Notes Pane in PowerPoint 2007

The Notes pane is the highlighted area that you can see right below the actual slide. This area provides space to write speaker's notes that can be so helpful to the presenter while presenting -- the Notes pane can be also used to write any sort of information about the presentation or individual slide.

Read more here...

Apr 23, 08 - Status Bar in PowerPoint 2007

The Status Bar is a thin strip located at the bottom of the PowerPoint interface. This area provides information about the active slide and applied Theme -- and also provides View options.

Read more here...

Apr 22, 08 - The Christian Lund-Sørensen Interview

Christian Lund-Sørensen is co-owner and serves as Managing Director at SkabelonDesign. He is responsible for all international activities in the company and also focus on strategic development of the company. In this interview, Christian discusses the PresentationEngine product, and how it can make life easier for PowerPoint designers.

Read the interview here...

Apr 11, 08 - Book Excerpt: Advanced PowerPoint 2007

This exclusive book extract from Advanced PowerPoint 2007 is presented here with permission from Pearson Education. The book, authored by Wayne Kao and Jeff Huang will help an intermediate PowerPoint user improve their skills to an advanced level. The book goes into deep technical detail about the Office 2007 theme engine and how color schemes, effect schemes, and font schemes work; as well as the new PowerPoint XML file format, showing you how to edit PowerPoint files without using PowerPoint at all.

Read the excerpts here...

Apr 10, 08 - The Christina Deatherage Interview

Christina Deatherage serves as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for ShowLogicTM for Catevo. Prior to joining The Catevo Group, she worked for IBM/Lenovo where she held various marketing, sales and strategy positions. In this interview, she discusses Catevo's new ShowLogic presentation platform.

Read the interview here...

Apr 8, 08 - Slides/Outline Pane

Although the new Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 interface has changed so much with Ribbon and Tabs, it's good to know that the Slides/Outline pane continues to be relatively similar in its look and feel from previous PowerPoint versions.

Learn more here...

Apr 8, 08 - Developer Tab of the Ribbon

By default, the Developer tab is not visible in the Ribbon because most PowerPoint users really don't require any of the options in this tab -- these options are related to working with macros, ActiveX controls, and VBA stuff. To enable the Developer tab on the Ribbon, you need to follow these steps.

Learn more here...

Apr 4, 08 - Ribbons and Tabs, Groups and Galleries

The Ribbon along with its tabs forms the most visible change you'll see in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 interface when you compare it to the older versions. The Ribbon replaces all the menus and toolbars.

Read more here...

Apr 3, 08 - Mini Toolbar in PowerPoint 2007

The Mini Toolbar is a semitransparent floating toolbar that spawns right next to the cursor -- and it is also available instantly with a right-click.

Learn more here...

Apr 3, 08 - Quick Access Toolbar

Although the entire concept behind the new Ribbon interface in PowerPoint 2007 was to do away with menus and toolbars, one toolbar still exists -- and this entirely customizable toolbar is called the Quick Access Toolbar -- or QAT for short. By default, this toolbar contains the Save, Undo, and Redo icons -- but you can use it to store many more of your often used commands.

Learn more here...

Apr 2, 08 - The Office Button

In PowerPoint 2007, the old File menu is replaced by the new Office Button -- it's a round button placed on the top left of the interface that works in almost the same way as the File menu in earlier versions of PowerPoint.

Read more here...

Apr 2, 08 - PowerPoint 2007 Views

In PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft has made sweeping changes to the program interface -- but many of the views remain unchanged -- or are very slightly changed. In this article, we will explore all these view options. PowerPoint 2007 continues to provide seven different views to help users to create and play presentations.

Read more here...

Apr 1, 08 - Speech-Over 2.5: Conversation with Joel Harband

Joel Harband heads Tuval Software Industries, based in Israel. Their best known product is Speech-Over Studio, a PowerPoint add-in that enables PowerPoint slides to incorporate narrations using automated voices. In this conversation, Joel discusses the new version of Speech-Over and the use of Text to speech (TTS) voices.

Read here...

Mar 28, 08 - Slide Executive 2.4

For organizations and individuals who have been creating PowerPoint presentations for years, these presentations represent a very significant pool of content that needs to be synergised for reuse and reference -- aiding in the creation of new slide content. Cataloging your presentations to the slide level is therefore a very important aspect of slide management, and our review product does just that and more.

Read the review here...

Mar 24, 08 - Speech-Over 2.5

Adding narrations in PowerPoint has never been a very intuitive and failsafe operation -- and it's so much easier to do the whole PowerPoint narration thing with a logical and complete third-party solution called Speech-Over.

Read the review here...

Mar 14, 08 - Excel in PowerPoint for Macintosh

Although you can copy and paste an Excel sheet inside a PowerPoint slide, there's an alternative method. Microsoft Excel possesses an amazingly intuitive and powerful calculation engine -- and tons of formulae. This tutorial shows how you can insert an instance of Excel within a PowerPoint slide on the Mac.

James Gordon shows you more...