Computerworld -
Microsoft's Office 2013 preview may be getting all the press these days, but many of us are still getting used to the Office 2010 applications, including PowerPoint 2010. Depending on which version of Office you're upgrading from, your PowerPoint 2010 experience will be very different.
If you've been using PowerPoint 2007, you'll find a few small interface tweaks and a number of useful new features in PowerPoint 2010, especially for dealing with multimedia content. If you're upgrading from PowerPoint 2003 or earlier, you'll find an overhauled interface that radically changes how you interact with common features and functions.
Either way, we've got you covered. This cheat sheet shows newcomers how to get around; it also explores features that are brand new in PowerPoint 2010. We've noted which sections of the story former PowerPoint 2007 users can skip over.
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New picture-editing tools
PowerPoint 2010 also offers new tools for performing basic image editing on a graphic or photo you're using in a presentation. These tools certainly don't rival Adobe Photoshop or even midrange image-editing software, but for basic, quick-and-dirty editing, they do the trick.
Select an image in a presentation and you'll see the Picture Tools supertab and the Format tab on the Ribbon. The tools are straightforward and self-explanatory. For changing the brightness or contrast, for example, click the Corrections button near the left end of the Format tab and you'll see thumbnails that you can hover over to see the results of changing the brightness and contrast in various pre-set ways. Simply click the one you want to apply, and it's done.
Hover over a thumbnail in any of the image editing pop-up windows to see its effect on the main image on the slide.
Click to view larger image.
The Remove Background button does just what it says -- it removes the background of a photo so that you can create a silhouette. The Color button gives you options such as Recolor, which lets you tweak a photo's color in interesting ways including, for example, converting a color photo to grayscale and giving a blue-themed photo a greenish cast.
You can also add a variety of effects by clicking the Artistic Effects button. You can choose from several pre-selected options, including 3D effects and making a photograph look like an Impressionist painting. Click Artistic Effects Options at the bottom of the pop-up window and you'll get more editing choices, including cropping, adding a glow, doing color editing and more.
If you want to reduce the amount of space your presentation takes up on your hard disk or you want to shrink a picture because you're posting the file with the picture onto the Web, click the Compress Pictures button and make your selection.
New ways to share presentations
PowerPoint 2010 has two new ways to share your presentations with others remotely: You can broadcast them in real time over the Web or share them on a CD or DVD. Click the File tab and select Save & Send in the left pane to get to these options.
To share a live presentation over the Web, click Broadcast Slide Show and then click the Broadcast Slide Show button that appears. (Yes, it's redundant, but that's the way it works.) When you do this, you're connected to Microsoft's free PowerPoint Broadcast Service. (You'll need a Windows Live ID to make it work.)
Click the Start Broadcast button and a link is created to the presentation; you can send that link to other people who can then click it and watch your live presentation streamed over the Internet in any Web browser. If you already use a different broadcast service, such as your company's internal SharePoint site, you can switch to that one instead by clicking the Change Broadcast Service button.
You can also turn your presentation into a video that you can distribute on CD, DVD or via the Web. To do that, go to the Backstage Save & Send screen and click Create a Video in the File Types area. You'll see options for having the video formatted optimally for different devices -- for example, computer monitors and high-definition displays, DVDs and the Internet, or on portable devices such as the Zune and smartphones.
When you've made your selections, click the Create Video button, choose a location to save the video to and click the Save button. The video will be saved in the Windows Media Video (.wmv) format and will be playable on any device that can play .wmv files. You can copy the .wmv file to a CD or DVD, send it via email, save it on the Web and so on.
If you prefer instead to distribute the presentation as a self-running CD, click Package Presentation for CD in the File Types area. Then click the Package for CD button that appears on the right, give the CD a name, click Copy to CD and follow the instructions for burning it to a CD.
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