Microsoft PowerPoint 2010: Plain & Simple
by Nancy Muir

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010: Plain & Simple is a 'how-to' guide with procedures in a list format. The book is colorful and nicely laid out. There are lots of screen shots as well as small info boxes that offer tips, warnings and cool shortcuts. It was written for the PowerPoint beginner or a regular user of PowerPoint who wants to learn more advanced features or needs a quick reference. PowerPoint grand masters should consider a different title.

The book starts with what's new with PowerPoint 2010. If you've been using PowerPoint 2007, this is a great chapter to quickly review the new features of this release. If you're moving from 2003, this is a quick preview of the new interface that was introduced in 2007. It then moves on to a more detailed tour of the new PowerPoint, including the ribbon, toolbars and design elements.

The next segment begins by showing how to create, edit and manage presentations. We walk through how to build a presentation by adding text and design elements to the slide and how to edit those elements. Next we learn how to manage and edit our presentation using the slide sorter view. There is also more detail on the new 2010 feature Sections, a great organizational tool to help manage large presentations. This segment closes with a discussion of layouts and themes. These tools work together to help us create consistent looking presentations, with little effort. They also allow us to make changes to the entire presentation quickly and easily.

Building on the basic skills covered so far, the next segment offers even more ways to enhance your presentation. We start by learning how to insert graphical elements such as charts, tables, images, audio and video. We follow that with some advanced formatting for text and design elements. The picture and video editing tools, improved in 2010, are covered.

To add pizazz to a presentation, we utilize transitions and animations. These tools bring movement to the slides, which can be used to draw attention to certain points and to add visual interest. The segment concludes with a brief section on how to finalize your presentation. We learn about options for setting up the slide show, how to specify which slides to include, and how to add narration to the presentation.

Delivering a presentation is the point of PowerPoint and the next segment covers three means of delivery. There is important information on how to run PowerPoint, for the person actually giving the presentation. For times when it's necessary to print a presentation, the book shows various ways to print it, with notes, and outlines. Sharing a presentation on the web is covered, including, saving it as a PDF file, broadcasting and saving the presentation as a video.

Finally, advanced PowerPoint topics are introduced, including saving your own templates, creating custom slide shows within a presentation, using document inspector to remove hidden data before sharing, and creating and using a digital signature.

With over a decade of admin experience, I've created my fair share of presentations, even some with VB script. But I've never used themes and animation, nor have I added audio or video. It was great fun learning these tools, especially animation and video.

Pros

1. Easy to follow instructions and clean formatting of content.

2. If you're a PowerPoint beginner and work through this book, you'll be creating visually impressive presentations in no time!

Overall, Laserdog gives this book three wags of the tail - the highest possible rating!

The first edition of this book was published in May 2010 and has 272 pages. The price of the book is $16.49. Click here to buy the book.

Do you have any thoughts, queries, or feedback on Microsoft PowerPoint 2010: Plain & Simple? Share your comments or questions by replying directly to this thread!

***Reviewer's note***

For those who present a lot, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010: Plain & Simple by Nancy Muir and Killer Presentations by Nicholas B. Oulton would be a powerful duo in your business library. "Killer Presentations" focuses more on actual presentation content than the 'how-to' of PowerPoint. You can read the review of "Killer Presentations" here.

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Lezly Harrison
Laserdog Productions - Code that Doesn't Bite