PowerPoint 2007: The Missing Manual

PowerPoint 2007 For Starters The Missing Manual E. A. Vander Veer Pogue Press, O'Reilly Publishing Reviewed by Joseph Kluepfel, Director Broward Personal Computer Association, Inc. E.A. Vander Veer has written two "Missing Manual" books for Power Point 2007. One titled Power Point 2007 The Missing Manual for those more experienced in using PowerPoint, and this one, PowerPoint For Starters The Missing Manual for those starting out in designing slideshows and presentations. The Introduction briefly covers the differences between 2007 and earlier versions, mainly the use of the Microsoft Ribbon interface rather than the old Files and Menus. The Missing Manual is divided into three parts. Part 1 Creating a Slideshows covers the building of a slideshow adding text, charts, diagrams and tables. Part 2: Delivering slideshows, provides choices for ways to present the slideshow to an audience. Part 3: Beyond Bullet Points - graphics and transitions shows you how to add the parts of a good and interesting presentation. You can add pictures, sound and video. PART 1 Chapter 1, Creating a Basic Presentation carries you through the basic steps, either from scratch or from templates, within PowerPoint or getting them on line. The trouble with templates is that everyone using them has similar looking presentations. You can be creative and design your own. Chapter 1 goes on to help you add slides with text and how to move the text around on the slide. The author warns you to "distill your message into as few words as possible" and "don't cram too much information onto your slide". Brief instructions on making the presentation are included, namely the use of the scroll bar to select slides, either with the Slides view or Outline view. Chapter 1 does list the basic navigation tools, and refers to Chapter 7, a complete course for setting up and running presentations. Chapter 2, Editing Slides goes into the details of editing text, checking spelling and adding special characters. Here is where the new Microsoft Office Ribbon interface shines. The author works you through the use of this great set of tools step by step, selecting cut, copy or paste, moving text and how to undo an action. A good section on checking the spelling covers automatic spell checking and contextual spelling (included in PowerPoint...with a warning). You occasionally need special characters in your text and we are given a brief reminder of how to obtain them. Chapter 3, Formatting and Aligning Your Text, really gets down to the "creation" of an attractive presentation. The details of using Auto Format are discussed, as is AutoFit. Sure, you can manually format the text, but here we are shown how the programs "Auto..." does it for us. If you want to do it yourself, the Ribbon again is the master tool, but the "Mini Toolbar" which appears when a section of text is selected, is truly a wonder. Hovering over an icon changes the sectio