PowerPoint 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual

by E.A. Vander Veer

Fast-paced and easy to read, this new book teaches you the basics of PowerPoint 2007 so you can start using the program right away. This concise guide shows readers how to work with PowerPoint's most useful features and its completely redesigned interface. With clear explanations, step-by-step instructions, lots of illustrations, and plenty of timesaving advice, PowerPoint 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual will quickly teach you to:



Create, save, set up, run, and print a basic bullets-and-background slideshow Learn how to add pictures, sound, video, animated effects, and controls (buttons and links) to your slides Discover how to incorporate text, spreadsheets, and animations created in other programs



The new PowerPoint is radically different from previous versions. Over the past decade, PowerPoint has grown in complexity, but its once-simple toolbar has been packed with so many features that not even the pros could find them all. For PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft redesigned the user interface completely, adding a tabbed toolbar that makes every feature easy to locate.

Unfortunately, Microsoft's documentation is as scant as ever, so even if you find the features you need, you still may not know what to do with them. But with this book, you can breeze through the new user interface and its timesaving features in no time. PowerPoint 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual is the perfect primer for anyone who needs to create effective presentations.

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 22, 2006

Reviews

[Gwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of all the books I borrowed from the library to help prep for a computer skills test, "The Missing Manual" series was by far the best. The PowerPoint book is an excellent refresher to make sure that current skills are still sharp, but it also has great new advice and tips for navigating the changes in PowerPoint 2007. While most of the book just cemented my knowledge, I appreciated learning that PowerPoint 2007 allows kerning (!) [Font-->Character Spacing] and that SmartArt [Insert-->Illustrations-->SmartArt] can do some relatively fantastic graphics.

And while this macro-deficient reader would have loved to learn more about building macros in PowerPoint, I understand why the author included only the most basic information about Visual Basic for Applications: it's too huge of a topic to manage and not everyone who uses PowerPoint needs or wants to learn it. (Apparently, the year of Visual Basic programming I suffered through actually was worth something...)

Overall, a really good book that doesn't dumb down the topic. If you're looking for a solid basic PowerPoint education or refresher, I'd recommend this book.

[Ietrio · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good book. It is nothing but how to do things. Not a word about presentation principles. Sadly it is dated and quite useless.