PowerPoint and Presenting Stuff

PowerFinish Templates Volume 6

Millions of presentations may be created each day, but you may only see a few each week. And even then, they all look the same to you. Your newspaper changes their layouts, websites rehaul their identities, companies go through image makeovers, and even television looks different and more contemporary each day. So why do people make presentations that look the same? That’s typically because they use the designs that are built into PowerPoint.

PowerFinish Volume 6 is a set of 50 PowerPoint design templates that comprise an assortment of abstracts, geometry, and strokes with a painted canvas look. It is very contemporary, and the entire collection is available in both 4:3 standard and 16:9 HD sizes.

Read the Indezine review of PowerFinish Templates Volume 6.

Filed Under: Reviews
Tagged as: PowerPoint, Review, Templates

Ric’s Podcast: Presentation Party Invitation to PowerPoint Live

Ric Bretschneider‘s newest podcast is now live on the Presentationsroundtable site.

In this podcast, Ric does a candid conversation with three PowerPoint MVPs, Steve Rindsberg, Echo Swinford, and Glen Millar. They have been regulars at five successful yearly PowerPoint Live gatherings. Indeed, some of the PowerPoint MVPs were responsible for the idea behind the PowerPoint Live conference. This podcast recalls those origins and reflects on why the event gets rave reviews from attendees.

The participants in this podcast are (as shown in the picture above, clockwise from the larger photo) Ric Bretschneider, Steve Rindsberg, Echo Swinford, and Glen Millar.

Filed Under: Thoughts
Tagged as: Echo Swinford, Glen Millar, PowerPoint, PowerPoint Live, Ric Bretschneider, Steve Rindsberg

Tom Bunzel’s Review on PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit

Here’s a small excerpt from Tom Bunzel‘s review on PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit on InformIT:

There are, in my opinion, two different ways to get proficient in a computer, and more important, a professional discipline of some kind. One way is methodical, and the other way is to wing it.

I must confess that when I get a new program these days, I mainly try to intuit how it works and have little patience for methodical training.

But when I encounter methodical training, as I do in Echo Swinford and Geetesh Bajaj’s Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit, I am always reminded of how superior it is.

Particularly in a professional discipline like presentation coaching, consulting or authoring, and a program like the new PowerPoint 2007, taking a project oriented approach and then digging deep into the precise whys and wherefores helps to ground any end user thoroughly in techniques that are empowering and enduring.

Read more on InformIT.

Filed Under: Books
Tagged as: Books, PowerPoint 2007

PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit: Conversation with Echo Swinford

    Echo Swinford is a Microsoft PowerPoint MVP (Most Valuable Professional). When she’s not working on new media, she is answering almost all the questions on the PowerPoint newsgroup. Echo is also the co-author of Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit, published by Que. The other author of this book is the owner of this blog — so I thought it will be fun for one author to interview the other!

Visit Echo’s site Echo’s Voice to find several PowerPoint usability tricks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Filed Under: Interviews
Tagged as: Books, Echo Swinford, Interviews, PowerPoint 2007

Using Excel in PowerPoint

  Although you can copy and paste an Excel sheet inside a PowerPoint slide, there’s so much more you can do to make the entire Excel-in-PowerPoint thing more useful. Microsoft Excel possesses an amazingly intuitive and powerful calculation engine, and tons of formulae. We would like to leverage these capabilities of Excel while running a PowerPoint slide show.

Naresh Nichani and Brain Reilly show you more.

Leverage Excel’s capabilities while running in PowerPoint 2007, 2003, and 2002 for Windows.

Filed Under: PowerPoint All Versions
Tagged as: Excel, PowerPoint, PowerPoint All Versions, Programming, Tutorials