This is the only book that will help an intermediate PowerPoint user improve their skills to an advanced level. In doing so, they can benefit both professionally and personally. This is not a comprehensive book that will bore you with every detail of PowerPoint, but a guide to specific actions you can take to create the ultimate presentation. The book covers the powerful formatting engine new to PowerPoint 2007, and how it can be used for applying soft shadows, reflection, and glows to make a presentation look attractive. It also covers PowerPoint's new 3D engine. The book goes into deep technical detail about the Office 2007 theme engine and how color schemes, effect schemes, and font schemes work; as well as the new PowerPoint XML file format, showing you how to edit PowerPoint files without using PowerPoint at all. The authors walk through programming a macro and explain how to format shapes, diagrams, charts, text, tables with gradient and picture fills and different kinds of lines (e.g. a beveled compound line with a diamond arrowhead). Also covered are those all important slide show shortcuts that few people know about like -- seeing your private notes while presenting on a projector, starting the slide show from the current slide without fumbling through the user interface, and how to black out the slide show screen with one key press.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 9 Ratings

Decent book with many problems - 2008-10-25
Reviewer Rating:
I bought this book based on the positive reviews on Amazon. I am less enthusiastic about the book. Although I have learned a few things from reading this short book, many shortcomings prevent it from receiving five stars:

1. Bad labels - Rather than titling a paragraph based on the technique's benefit, titles often are meaningless catch phrases: "Smart Art: What is so Smart about it?" As a reference book, I want titles labeled as benefits so I can quickly find what I am looking for.

2. Excessive Bad Humor - The occasional joke is okay but this book contains far too many stupid jokes.

3. Wordy - The book does not get to the point. It should simply list the instructions and the end benefit. The authors waste a lot of space in order to create a more lengthy book.

4. Not advanced - There is absolutely no prior PowerPoint knowledge necessary. Every basic concept is presented. Further, the authors spend less than 1 page on macros. An advanced book must cover macros.

5. Black and white - I understand that the publishers want to keep the cost down for the book. But since 1/3 of the book covers formatting, colors, themes, etc; color almost seems essential.

The only thing these authors do well is present a lot of figures so readers can quickly identify more complicated steps in the procedure.

For those of you that are used to reading books by John Walkenback on MS Excel, you will be very disappointed with this book. However, since I have not read Step by Step, the other main PowerPoint book, this could be the best PowerPoint book available.

Finally, even though I have been fairly negative in this review, the book is not that bad. You will learn some new tricks. The point is the book is not as good as other reviewers describe and has significant room for improvement.

Great Reference Guide for PowerPoint 2007 - 2008-02-22
Reviewer Rating:
To be honest, I've always been jealous of PowerPoints that I see during company meetings. How do they make them look so good? Finally, I decided to invest a little time. My friend's friend works at Microsoft and told me that his co-workers wrote a book. I figured I would give it a shot. Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed the book. I thought it would be really complicated, but little things go a long way to make slides look good and this book is great at pointing those out. Now, my presentations look clean, professional, and people are asking me for tips! It's great. If you want to impress your boss/co-workers with your PowerPoint skills, then this is definitely a good place to start.

Good as a tutorial or as a reference - 2008-01-15
Reviewer Rating:
Chock full of good ideas and helpful hints. The examples are really illuminating and the writing is exceptionally clear, especially the section on the XML format (which was what I was most interested in). In both business and academic settings I've found myself having to maintain a large number of presentations. Often there are slight variations between presentations (different customer, different conference) and this book helped me streamline a lot of that process. For instance, now I can easily update tables with fresh data! A HUGE win. Now I finally have time to learn the clarinet!

Tricks for power users - 2009-04-20
Reviewer Rating:
Power users may already have several tricks up their sleeves for great powerpoint presentations, but this guide definitely provides more tools to add to any repoire. Recommended for advanced users who want an additional edge.

Good for young professionals - 2008-09-04
Reviewer Rating:
The company I work for installed the new office and when I first started using it I couldn't find anything. I went through a few Powerpoint books and found this one to have the best explanations. It covers just about everything I need, making a deck look impressive.

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