PowerPoint 2007

Visio Experts

bVisual Microsoft Visio & MapPoint Solution Providers

This page will list some of the new features in PowerPoint 2007. Correction and omissions would be appreciated.

So what is new in PowerPoint 2007?

You may be able to obtain a copy of the Office Beta 2 from here.

General

Microsoft has several resources for PowerPoint 2007.There is a User Guide and a Demo.

The new UI

PowerPoint, like Access 2007, Excel 2007, Outlook 2007 and Word 2007 has a new UI (User Interface). Features and capabilities are presented in a streamlined, uncluttered workspace that minimizes distraction and enables people to achieve the results they want more quickly and easily. PowerPoint 2007 features a redesigned user interface. This new results-oriented interface makes it easier for you to produce your best work more quickly. Drop-down galleries easily present formatting options, graphic choices, layouts, and more. Live previews show you exactly what your changes will look like before you click or commit to anything.

The user interface is totally redesigned. Newcomers to PowerPoint 2007 and the other Office apps will probably find it easier to accomplish basic tasks than with the earlier versions. The context sensitive interface changes to reveal tools that are appropriate for the task at hand. More experienced Windows, Office 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 users may find it hard to adjust. Power users may not be pleased with the increased number of mouseclicks it now takes to perform common operations. But most if not all of the keyboard shortcuts from previous versions have been retained.

Slide Libraries

PowerPoint Slide Libraries help you publish and share slides and layouts while easily accessing content from other presentations. This new feature gives you one centralized storage area for all your personal or team presentations. You can store presentations as individual slides on a site supported by Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Using slide libraries, you can share your presentation content, making it easy for anyone to repurpose your content. Not only does this cut down the time you spend creating presentations, but any slides you insert can remain synchronized with the server version, ensuring that your content is always up to date.

[This may be one of the biggest features in the release, but to be fair make the point that unless your organization is well-heeled and an early technology adopter, you don't have this, so you can't use the feature. Sorry.]

Graphics Effects

With improved graphics effects, you can add impact to existing graphics or easily modify new graphics in your presentations. Effects that were previously most accessible to graphic designers are now put in your hands through the style galleries presented in the contextual menus. Whatever option you choose, you can rest assured that the effects you add to all your graphical elements look professional and are easy to work with. Specific graphic features include: New effects for graphics like 3-D, shadow, glow, warp, bevel, and more. Improvements in drawing alignment, selection, and direct manipulation of objects.

[Dismissed as eye candy by some, but again, there's a lot of really sweet stuff here that users will love. Move it higher on the list. (But isn't PowerPoint all about eye candy?)]

SmartArt Diagrams

Easily create professional and dynamic relationship, workflow, or hierarchy diagrams from within PowerPoint 2007. You can even convert a bulleted list into a diagram, or modify and update existing diagrams. It's easy for users to take advantage of formatting options.

Themes

Uniformly format your presentations with PowerPoint 2007 themes. PowerPoint 2007 themes enable you to change the look and feel of your entire presentation with just one click. Changing the theme of your presentation not only changes the background color, but the color of a diagram, table, chart, font, and even the style of any bullet points within a presentation. By applying a theme, you can be confident that your entire presentation has a professional and consistent look and feel. PowerPoint 2007 comes with new, out-of-the-box themes, layouts, and styles that give you a wide range of options when formatting presentations. In the past, formatting a presentation could take time as you chose color or style options for your tables, charts, and graphics to match one another. PowerPoint 2007 themes simplify the process of creating presentations. Simply select the theme you want, and PowerPoint 2007 does the rest. With one click, the background, text, graphics, charts, and tables all change to reflect the theme you have selected, helping ensure that all elements in your presentation complement one another. This same process also works even if you have already selected a theme. Once a theme has been applied to your presentation, the style and formatting galleries change to adapt to that particular theme. As a result, any new diagrams or graphics you insert into the presentation automatically match your existing theme.

Quick Styles

Using Quick Styles, you can change how your presentations look with a single click of the mouse. You can modify fonts, colors, effects, and other elements by choosing a different format. Simply select the text you want to change and then choose the style you want from the style gallery.

Character Styles

PowerPoint 2007 also has new character styles to provide you with more choices. You can choose from all the standard styles of previous releases of PowerPoint as well as: (All caps or small caps, Strikethrough or double strikethrough, Double or color underline, (Fills, lines, shadows, glow, and 3-D effects on text) and Highlighting.)

Office Styles

Office Styles help ensure a consistent appearance when you create Word 2007 documents, Excel 2007 spreadsheets, and PowerPoint 2007 presentations.

Create a Review or Approval Workflow

After creating presentations, you may send them in an e-mail message to colleagues to gather feedback. When you need to get feedback quickly, you want to route the document to the right people without having to deal with complicated interfaces or cumbersome tools. Now you can take advantage of the review or approval workflows available from PowerPoint 2007 and SharePoint Server 2007.

To initiate a review or approval process, simply select the appropriate SharePoint Server workflow from within PowerPoint. The workflow creates a task for participants and sends an e-mail message notifying them that they have a new document to review. After they open the document and complete the review, participants can indicate its status on a workflow completion form.

[you can send for review in PPT 2003 and route presentations via email. No special serverware needed beyond ordinary email. This expands upon that but again, not for little guys. Needs special software and expertise.]

Windows SharePoint Services

Organize and Access Your Presentations. For companies who have a great number of mobile or remote workers, storing presentations in Windows SharePoint Services document libraries and then connecting them to the Outlook 2007 messaging and collaboration client is an excellent option. By connecting data to Outlook 2007, you can easily manage your information and work with it offline. Then, when you are back at the office, it is easy for you to tell which documents have changed so that you can synchronize your files with the versions on the Windows SharePoint Services site.

Custom Slide Layouts

With Custom Slide Layouts, you can create the type of layout you need when you need it so you are never confined to prepackaged layouts. This gives you the flexibility to create layouts that contain multiple elements—and you can even have multiple slide master sets with custom layouts for different slide topics. In addition, you always have the option of saving your layout for future use.

[Biggie. Move to the top of the list. This is one PPT have been begging for since PPT came out.]

Custom Slide Shows

Create custom slide shows based on existing presentations. This feature helps you present exactly what you need—without having to skip slides or fast forward through the presentation. You can also save your custom slide show for later use.
[nothing new there unless there's the ability now to create a custom show then save just the slides in the show as a new PPT file.]

More Setup Options

With more setup options, you can create compelling presentations quickly and easily. (I still need to find out what these are).

Multiple Monitor View

With the new user interface, it is easy to locate and start using Presenter View, which uses multiple monitors to provide one view for the presenter and another for the audience. The presenter has insight into upcoming slides, timing, and speaker notes, while the audience only sees the full view of the slide.

[Multiple monitor support/Presenter view aren't new, but are way improved]

Document Inspector

The new Document Inspector feature gives you the opportunity to choose whether or not you want to remove personally identifiable information, comments, and tracked changes. It can also search for and remove hidden text. Some customers might want to inspect their PowerPoint 2007 presentations for specific types of information. The Document Inspector is designed so that organizations with specialized needs can develop these custom modules.

Digital Signatures

You can now add a digital signature to PowerPoint 2007 presentations to ensure the integrity of the file, or mark a presentation as "final" to prevent inadvertent changes. These features ensure that your content can only be modified or shared the way you intended.

PowerPoint 2007 introduces the ability to insert a signature line into documents. This signature line looks like a typical signature placeholder in a document, but it works differently. When the signature line is inserted, the author is asked for information about the intended signer and given an opportunity to provide instructions for that person. The recipient sees the signature line and a notification that his or her signature is requested.

The signed document includes an image of the signature, so it looks similar to a page that has been printed and signed. However, the difference is that a digital certificate is used to provide a record of exactly what was signed. With this technology, the signature can be verified in the future. This feature can then also be used with the Signature Collection workflow in Office SharePoint Server 2007 to notify recipients and track the progress of each signer.

Information Rights Management

You may need to control who can access company information, especially if you are creating presentations with highly confidential information. By using the Microsoft Office system with Windows Rights Management Services of Windows Server™ 2003, you can assign permissions that prevent others from copying, printing, or editing your presentation.

Office SharePoint Server 2007

Manage and Keep Your Content Safer with Office SharePoint Server 2007 It can be extremely challenging to implement consistent information management policies across an organization that has a wide range of sites. To solve this issue, SharePoint Server 2007 empowers policy decision makers to define site policies that users can apply without worrying about the specific details.

Information Management Policies

Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports a set of information management policies that can be defined for an entire site or a specific list, library, or content type. You can also create a policy statement that informs users how the content is governed. For PowerPoint 2007 presentations, this policy statement is embedded in the presentation. For instance, the policy statement might indicate that a document will expire after a certain period of time or that it is sensitive information that should not be communicated outside the company. It can even provide a contact name if the recipient needs more information.

Compatibility

Deprecated Features

File Formats

With PowerPoint 2007, you can share documents in Portable Document Format file (PDF (aka Adobe Acrobat)) and XML Paper Specification (XPS) format without using third-party tools.

A special PDF writer will no longer be required. Due to legal issues, this may be available as an add-on rather than part of the released product.

The new Microsoft Office Open XML Format (XPS) is a set of XML files compressed into a single file that offer a dramatic reduction in file size and helps ensure damaged or corrupt files can be easily recovered.

Beth Melton has an article on the new file format, "Microsoft Office Open XML Formats for the Non-developer".