Slidewise 2: Conversation with Mike Power

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      Mike Power owns and runs Neuxpower, the company behind the popular file compressor NXPowerLite and the amazing PowerPoint add-in Slidewise. He has been running Neuxpower for more than 25 years, which makes him feel a tiny bit old. When at work he enjoys designing useful software, and is really loving the challenge of making Slidewise powerful, yet easy to use.

In this conversation, Mike talks about version 2 of Slidewise, a PowerPoint add-in that helps users to find, edit, and control their presentation content more efficiently.

Geetesh: Slidewise 2 seems like a massive upgrade with many new features so that designers can peek inside the PowerPoint file structure and make non-destructive changes. Tell us more about these new features.

Mike: There are so many amazing things that customers have asked if we can help with it’s hard not to try and squeeze them all in. The biggest feature this time is adding a color index. So now users can see where any non-theme colors have been used, which is great for keeping presentations on brand. We also made it easy to copy color details to the clipboard to use in other applications, something that is surprisingly difficult to do otherwise. It doesn’t yet have a replace color feature, but that’s coming soon.

The Image Audit can now scan your presentation and find any cropped images. This makes it simple to pass through and check them to make sure you aren’t inadvertently sharing anything sensitive but also to see if you can safely remove cropped portions of images to reduce file size.

We also added a new tool called Slide Selection that lets you quickly select slides based on their Slide Masters/Layout. You can watch this in action in the included video:

It makes checking layouts, and reassigning slides between layouts so easy. This is great if you are regularly merging or consolidating presentations with multiple masters. We plan to extend this feature further so you can select specific slides based on more properties in future.

Overall, Slidewise helps users find issues and inconsistencies in their presentations, in a fraction of the time it would take otherwise – if it was even possible. It also gives them the tools or guidance to fix any issues they find.

For presentation or event professionals, this tool will save them hours and ensure they make fewer mistakes. For occasional or even frequent corporate PowerPoint users, this tool is the ultimate get out of trouble card. It ensures that whatever presentations come across their desk, they won’t ever get stuck wondering why a file is misbehaving, or why it is so large, or why it keeps throwing that error about a particular font.

It’s powerful already and we’re just hitting our stride – there’s much more we intend to do.

Geetesh: Is a trial version of Slidewise available? Also, are non-profit or volume discounts available?

Mike: Slidewise is available with a fully functional 30-day trial. It’s $79 per year with volume discounts from 10 users. We also offer a non-profit discount on our website.

The views and opinions expressed in this blog post or content are those of the authors or the interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company.