PowerPoint 2007
The Missing Manual
Review by Richard Black, NOCCC
Summary: In PowerPoint 2007 The Missing Manual, author E.A. Vander Veer presents a comprehensive view of PowerPoint 2007. She gives practical tips and some common sense advice for both creating and giving presentations, many of which work in earlier versions of PowerPoint. Her writing style makes for fairly easy reading. One of the techniques she uses is to introduce concepts followed by step-by-step instructions, a very useful teaching technique.
A 16-page introduction discusses new features for PowerPoint 2007, such as the ribbon, a multi-tabbed toolbar that replaces the previous menus for commands. Rather than going into deep detail in the Introduction Vander Veer gives enough information about the ribbon to allow the user to get started. Details are given throughout the book. The ribbon is something that will make learning Office products easier for new users, but requires users who are familiar with earlier versions to relearn where commands are stored.
New graphics, templates, and the reduced ability to collaborate are also introduced. There also is a comparison of the new file formats vs. the older formats, and the beginning of her hints for using PowerPoint as a tool. One of the many reasons I like the book is because I agree with many of her ideas, such as “PowerPoint is supposed to support your presentation, not be your presentation” and “just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should.”
The 30 pages of Chapter One introduce creating slides from scratch, using templates and themes, and it introduces speaker notes and handouts. Throughout the book the author uses a technique common in commercial (versus academic) training classes: she discusses a concept and then gives step-by-step instructions to accomplish the task. It is a technique that can make learning easier.
The Introduction and Chapter One give users enough information to create basic slides. The next fourteen chapters go into the details of creating more effective slides by modifying text; adding charts, diagrams, and tables; printing slides, handouts, overheads, and speaker notes; adding images, sound, and video; creating transitions and animating slide objects; creating slide masters and layout masters (which are new); and more.
Some areas receive more attention than I expected. It is unusual, if not unique, for a PowerPoint book -- or even an Excel book -- to suggest which type of chart to use based on the type of data and what the presenter wants to convey. The discussion in The Missing Manual is no match for a dedicated book such as How to Lie with Charts, but it does have more to offer than the majority of Office books. As usual, remember that such discussions often are based on opinions. Vander Veer also points out that the available chart styles and the creation techniques depend on whether the user has Excel loaded. If so, Excel can be used to create charts; if not, PowerPoint falls back on default Microsoft Graph, the “old way” of PowerPoint charting.
The author also gives more attention to the drawing toolbar than I expected, possibly because they are often used more in PowerPoint than in other programs. I know a number of people who use PowerPoint for its graphic abilities; they don’t give presentations, they print the slides.
On the inside of the back cover of The Missing Manual is the statement “There’s no CD-ROM with this book; you just saved $5.00.” However, there is a Web link to http://www.missingmanuals.com for shareware and additional information, including indirect links to Microsoft tutorials.
Although there are books written specifically for new users that may be better introductions, I can recommend this book to both new users* and to more experienced users who want to get up to speed in PowerPoint 2007 quickly and easily. There is plenty of information in this book for reference, and it is written in such a way that it makes for a good training tool. That, plus the links make this a worthwhile book, especially if one takes advantage of the publisher’s discount.
E.A. Vander Veer
Paperback of 455 pages
Published by O’Reilly
ISBN-10: 0-596-52738-1 ISBN-13: 978-0-596-52738-1
List price $29.99 (before O’Reilly’s user group 35% discount)
For more O’Reilly information on this book, go to: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527389/index.html.
*O’Reilly also publishes a “For Starters” book by E.A. Vander Veer (list price is $20, but discounted). See: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596528317/index.html.
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