MS PowerPoint 2000

This is the third and last of my looks at what you get within MS Office, having written opinions on Excel and Access previously - I’m assuming that word processors like Word are old hat to the likes of us that write “e-pinions”. So just what is Microsoft PowerPoint? Well, the official description is “Presentation Software”. Loading a blank “slide”, however may convince you at first glance, that it’s yet another desk-top publishing package, after all, there are all the usual features for inserting text boxes and images, but if this were the case, why do Microsoft also produce Publisher? The difference is in ...

Most people these days have used Microsoft Office products at one time or another. Many are regular users who do so every day. But I always find it quite shocking as to how many just use Word and/or Excel, the bees' knees in word processing and spreadsheets, because they're missing out on Powerpoint 2000, one of the finest of all presentation packages and pretty much standard in all the Office releases these days. In fact, a quick check reveals that Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint and Word are all featured as part of the Standard, Professional and Developer packages. Now, I've read a few reviews by Software Snobs (you know, those geeks who populate the ...

In olden days, there was no more depressing sight than someone clearly discomfited by having to do some public speaking, having their finely wrought plans unravelled, and their nervousness emphasized by an inability to deal with OHP slides. The advantage of PowerPoint should be to unshackle the jumpy speaker from acetate slides that stick together, the rather prim use of a sheet of paper to mask some of the options as you deal with them one after the other, the agony of the dropped sheet, the endless preliminary fumble to make the OHP stop projecting onto the ceiling. Of course, in reality, all PowerPoint has done is give a new set of problems to the same ...