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The PowerPoint Ezine - 26
by Geetesh Bajaj
Contents
Office 2003 releases in September, October
Sonia Coleman announces PowerLink, PowerLinkPlus
Quick News
Text Types in PowerPoint
SuperSaver Combo
Fonts in PowerPoint
Events and Seminars
Office 2003 releases in September, October
 Microsoft
announced the release of the upcoming Office 2003 program suite
to manufacturing on August 19th. More than 600,000 beta testers
participated in what was probably among the largest software development
efforts in history.
Office 2003 System will be available on the volume licensing price
list on September 1st and some original equipment manufacturers
(OEMs) are expected to begin shipping machines with Office 2003
editions preinstalled by the end of September. The retail versions
will be available after a worldwide launch event in New York on
October 21st.
Pricing remains largely unchanged from Office XP.
Suite Versions
Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003, $399
Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, $499
Microsoft Office Student and Teacher Edition 2003, $149
Standalone Versions
Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, $229
Microsoft Office Word 2003, $229
Microsoft Office Excel 2003, $229
Microsoft Office Access 2003$229
Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, $109
InfoPath 2003, $199
OneNote 2003, $199
More info at:
Office
Products Released To Manufacturers
Microsoft
Office System 2003 Pricing
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Sonia Coleman releases PowerLink and PowerLinkPlus
Sonia Coleman and Steve Hetrick announced the release of two new
products:
PowerLink is a wizard based product that needs your input
on two counts - you need to provide a 'project name' and point
to your main presentation. PowerLink then makes a copy of the file,
analyzes the presentation for all links, locates the linked files,
converts links to 'pathless' if necessary and stores copies of
everything in the designated project folder. If there are nested
links to other presentations, they are also included in the process.
PowerLink produces a report telling you what it found, including
any errors, and what it did.
PowerLinkPlus goes one step further and packages everything
ready for burning to an autorun CD. The current version requires
that the PowerPoint 97 Viewer be installed.
For more info and a free trial, visit the product pages at:
PowerLink
and PowerLinkPlus
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Quick News
Ovid announced that it will offer a new medical information
research solution accessible through the Research and Reference
Pane within the 2003 versions of Microsoft Office applications
including PowerPoint. This will provide healthcare professionals
with direct access to more than 900 leading medical and health
sciences journals. More info...
powerpointtemplates.net is a new PowerPoint related site
with articles, tips and links. More
info...
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Text Types in PowerPoint
Text content in PowerPoint can be divided under four types:
- Titles or Headings
- Body Text
- Decorative Text
- Captions or Legends
Each of these text types have specific characteristics of their
own - but combined together, they have a role to play in the PowerPoint
scheme of things.
Headings or Titles are something which describe a slide,
almost like it's identity. As with all text in any presentation,
titles need to be as short as possible. Moreover, titles need to
describe the slide - just putting up a few words with high impact
is not sufficient - those words have to convey some meaning relating
to whatever is the content of the slide. A title is more like an
essence - it needs to reflect related content to maximum effect
with the use of as few words as possible.
Body text in a presentation is unlike writing for an article
- sentences are 'out', bulleted lists are 'in'. Text needs to be
short enough to educate, although not as diminutive so as to mystify
the audience. You could follow a time-tested procedure of inputting
sentences initially, then try to ruthlessly edit into small bites
of information with every consecutive review. Arrange all such
edited information within a bulleted list - and review or edit
as necessary - repeatedly!
Decorative text is text with a purpose. It beautifies,
it attracts and too much of it drowns your presentation to below
sea level. It often looks great in small doses - and many-a-great
presentation has been created with no decorative text at all. As
with any other form of text, but of particular concern in the use
of decorative text - be aware of the concept of font embedding
- covered in detail in Indezine's PowerPoint
And Fonts page.
Captions and Legends includes captions, legends and more...
For instance, copyright notices and other legal gobbledygook. Sometimes
you just want it be there, other times you want it to be visible
- and many times you need it to be viewable and readable too! This
calls for a lot of visual balance. If you don't have a lot of screen
estate to make the text larger - try using a font which offers
better readability at a lower point size - something like Verdana.
Another trick is to draw a black rectangle and superimpose it with
white text.
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CrystalGraphics announces SuperSaver Combo 4
CrystalGraphics announced the new SuperSaver Combo 4 collection
that comprises:
- PowerPlugs: 3D Titles, Volumes I and II
- PowerPlugs: Transitions, Volumes I, II, III & IV
- PowerPlugs: Templates, Volumes I and II
- PowerPlugs: Music, Volumes I and II
- PowerPictures: Photos, 2 CDs
Until August 31 get it all for just $299. That is over 50% off
the price of buying the same products separately. More
info...
Fonts in PowerPoint
Font Smoothing
Font Smoothing is a feature which Microsoft released initially
in the Windows 95 Plus Pack. The feature was incorporated in the
main operating system in later versions of Windows.
The Font Smoother is available as a free download from the Microsoft
site.
The article - Smooth
Fonts at the Microsoft Typography site explains the entire
concept.
Dingbat Bullets
Dingbat fonts are a lot of fun - you can never have enough of
them! Many of them are simple in character, and make excellent
bullets for a bulleted list in a PowerPoint presentation.
For instance - you're creating a presentation for an ice cream
industry - and you substitute the boring round bullet with another
one symbolizing a scoop of ice cream. Interesting, but dangerous
if you go overboard!
Many Fonts Can Crash...
You've got too many fonts installed - and certain components of
PowerPoint like the Organization Chart are giving you nightmares.
This particular program crashes every time you use it!
The solution is simple - reduce the number of fonts installed
to a more manageable level.
Read more about fonts in PowerPoint...
Events & Seminars
Winning Presentations Seminar
September 24 and 25, 2003
Boston, USA
Claudyne Wilder, Wilder Presentations
http://www.wilderpresentations.com/
PowerPoint Live
October 12 to 15, 2003
Tucson, Arizona, USA
Rick Altman, R Altman Digital Consulting
http://www.pptlive.com/
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Credits
During the preparation of this issue of the PowerPoint Ezine,
I received assistance, content or feedback from Nicole Ha, Tommy
Powell and Sonia Coleman (all in alphabetical order). I would like
to use this platform to thank them for their help.
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