Add-ins
Slide Executive
Reviewed by Geetesh Bajaj,
February 3rd 2005 - discuss
this review...
Introduction
Novatrox and Slide Executive
Using Slide Executive
Organizing Presentations
Creating Presentations
Pricing and Support
In Conclusion
Introduction
Many PowerPoint users have hundreds if not thousands of presentations
on their computers. And if you are like any of those users, you
probably have all the content for tomorrow's presentation scattered
in slides across those hundred presentations.
All you need now is a solution that will assemble the slides you
need into a new presentation that you can thereafter fine-tune.
If you really need a magic potion like that, do look at Slide Executive.
Back
Novatrox and Slide Executive
Slide Executive is from Novatrox AB, a company
based in Stockholm, Sweden. Novatrox was founded in 2000 - you'll
find more information on the company at their
web site...
Jonas Fernholm, President of Novatrox AB was my contact for this
review. Thank you, Jonas.
I asked Jonas about what prompted Novatrox to create Slide Executive:
"A few years ago, Novatrox had a consulting mission regarding
a web based system for managing PowerPoint presentations. We
realized the potential of such a system and also saw that there
weren't many of these systems on the market at the time. As a
start we wanted to develop a small program suited for the single
user or a small workgroup, let say a sales force which are likely
to be reusing information."
The Slide
Executive site provides a trial download of the product that
is similar to the full product but has some limitations - for
example, it does not index more than 10 presentations.
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Using Slide Executive
Using Slide Executive is easy - the first
time you launch the product, you'll be presented with a wizard
that asks you to select a folder that contains the presentations
you want to index.
Slide Executive scans the folder to search
and import presentations. If you have too many presentations,
this process can take a while.
Once the import of presentations into Slide
Executive is complete, you can exit this wizard.
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Organizing Presentations
If you've used Windows Explorer, you'll
find Slide Executive easy to use.
On the left pane is a list of your presentations as they are saved
in the indexed folder - right down to the subfolders that contain
more presentations.
Each presentation is shown as a collection of slides and you can
create a new presentation by dragging the slides you need into
a new virtual presentation window. However, there seems to be no
way to create a new virtual presentation!
You could right-click on the Virtual Presentations listing on
the left pane and choose Open New Virtual Presentation or access
the same option from the File menu but the first time I used Slide
Executive, I thought that option allowed me to open an existing
virtual presentation!!!
Turns out that option "creates" rather than "opens" a
new virtual presentation. Mystery solved! I wish the menu options
were named more intuitively.
Once you create (open) the new presentation, Slide Executive creates
a new blank window. Just drag the slides you need into this window.
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Creating Presentations
To create a real PowerPoint presentation from the virtual presentation,
just select the virtual presentation within the left pane and right-click.
Select the Export Virtual Presentation option and an export wizard
guides you through the export.
You can also choose the Quick Export option. Finally, you can
open a virtual presentation inside PowerPoint itself.
There's so much more to Slide Executive - the search feature in
the system is nice and it is possible to drag whole presentations
from the tree (in the left pane) to a virtual presentation as well.
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Pricing and Support
Slide Executive is priced at US$49 and is available for online
purchase.
I asked Jonas more about their support infrastructure:
"We give support to all customers through e-mail or phone.
Our policy is to answer an e-mail within 3 business days. The
phone support are open during business hours 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Central European Time(CET), Monday - Friday. Most of the support
issues are handled by our developers, since they are the most
knowledgeable people regarding the product. There is also a online
FAQ where we answer the most common questions about the product."
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In Conclusion
Slide Executive does one task but it does it well. The interface
needs some improvement but everything else works very well indeed.
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