PowerPoint 2010 Technical Preview

Technical Preview Program

PowerPoint fans and community, we’re excited to announce that the PowerPoint team will be taking applications to participate in the Office 2010 Technical Preview program. We will be sending out a limited number of invitations to download and install the Office 2010 Technical Preview in early July.

For you, this is a first opportunity to experience the new, exciting features that we’ve been working on in PowerPoint. For us, this is an opportunity to get valuable feedback and early testing on PowerPoint 2010 that will directly impact our public beta later this year. We want testers of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds; so long as you use PowerPoint, we’d love to have you give us a test drive.

If you’re interested, go here to sign up for Microsoft Connect and apply to be part of the Technical Preview. When asked, select PowerPoint as the application you’re most interested in testing (Question 13 on the survey). Thank you for signing up and helping us test out our latest creations!

Whom Do You Trust?

Have you seen this unexpected security dialog pop up when you run slide show?

What is this thing anyway, and how can I prevent it from showing up?

Let’s face it, we live in a security conscious environment these days.  One general trend in the hacker community is to rely upon “social engineering” to foist viruses, mal-ware, etc. onto your computer.  Social engineering basically means that the evil doers out there somehow convince you to open a Microsoft® Office document which could contain a macro that erases the contents of your hard drive or could “call home” to a hacker’s web server with your personal internet address. Would you ever want a hacker to know where you digitally reside so that he or she can watch everything you do on the internet?

You might be tempted to avoid these dialogs by turning off the security settings or lowering your shields (to borrow a Star Trek® term).  But, you don’t want to set your security settings too low or turn them off, because then you’re no longer protected…

There are a number of solutions to prevent the dialog from coming up, while still protecting yourself from dangerous content or exposing yourself to risky security behavior.  We’ll examine those in this post.  First, some background…

The Office Trust Center

In Microsoft Office 2007, security settings for Word, Excel and PowerPoint were consolidated together in a common location within each application.  That location is known as the Trust Center.  No more hunting around in the user interface for a setting for macros, linked pictures, ActiveX controls, etc.  As part of that consolidation effort, different security settings have been grouped together and standardized across the applications.  Each application has some unique scenarios or usage, however, and in this blog we will touch on some specifics for PowerPoint.

Presentation content that can “trip” the security alarm

There are a variety of objects and other presentation content that are prone to security checks when PowerPoint opens a presentation.  These include macros, add-ins, linked pictures, and ActiveX controls. 

The world of trusted content vs. non-trusted content

A lot of content is assembled today from pre-existing sources.  This is especially true for presentations.  When developing a new presentation, authors often start with an existing presentation and use Save As to create a copy. The author can freely modify this copy without worrying about destruction of the original version.  Another technique involves borrowing content from a variety of presentations and copying that content into the new presentation.  At the heart of this activity is the search for content on the Internet or within your own organization’s file locations.

In one admittedly simplistic view, the world can be broken down into two types of content: content that is trusted and content that is not trusted.  Trusted content is content that you believe is accurate and the content does not pose a security or privacy risk to you or your organization, typically because you know the source of the content (your employer, your IT department, a peer, etc.). Non-trusted content is everything else. The difference between trusted and non-trusted content cannot be detected by a computer. You, the user, are the one who decides if content is trustworthy based on your knowledge of its source. The most trustworthy content is the content you create from scratch.

When considering other presentations as possible sources of content for your presentation, you need to factor in the familiarity you have with that presentation.  Is it from someone you know?  Is it located on the Internet or within your organization’s own firewall?  Even if the presentation is within your organization’s firewall, did it originate from someone within your organization or was it authored by an external source?  These are all factors that can go into a risk profile and can help you assess how much you should or should not trust that content.

Avoiding security alerts: copy your presentation to a Trusted Location

If you trust the content of a presentation, move the file to a Trusted Location on your computer. 

What is a Trusted Location and where do I find it?

A Trusted Location is a directory that is exempted from security checks.  You should not lightly make a decision to place files in this location.   Any presentations that you’ve created yourself are good candidates to go there.  Presentations from other authors that you trust might be good candidates as well.  Presentations you’ve obtained from the Internet or via e-mail from un-trusted contacts should bear close scrutiny before you consider moving them to a Trusted Location.

By default, the Trusted Locations are defined as (assuming Office was installed on the C: drive):

C:\Documents and Settings\<user_name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates\

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\

C:\Documents and Settings\<user_name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Addins\

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Document Themes 12\

This list of locations can be modified, added to, or removed from as needed.

The Trust Center settings can be accessed by going to the Office Jewel, selecting PowerPoint Options, clicking on the Trust Center navigation link on the left, clicking the Trust Center Settings button, and finally the Trusted Locations navigational link on the left.

Once you establish that a location is trusted, you can place presentations there and launch them in both normal view or slide show without being prompted for security settings.

Part of the “dry run” process

Checking out security prompts before giving a formal presentation is a good idea.  This can be integrated into what should be a “best practice” for giving presentations, namely that you conduct a dry run of the presentation prior to presenting it to a larger audience.  This is especially true if you are moving the presentation to a different computer for the purpose of giving the presentation, as that computer’s configuration (network connectivity, video settings, and security settings) may be vastly different than the computer you used to author the presentation.

In the end, you are in control of your security, and you can control what warnings you would like to keep around. We’ve wired your software for a high level of safety, but you are free to disable the system and unlock the backdoors. We just recommend that you remain cautious and stay aware of any vulnerabilities you may expose.

Additional information about the Microsoft Office 2007 security system is available here.

Stay safe.

-Dave K

June 23, 2009

Design Share

One of the most powerful features of PowerPoint is the ability to click a button and morph your presentation in to a completely different animal.  Designers have the ability to define nearly every aspect of how your content is arranged, colored, and rendered.

For Office 2007, we released a set of themes which exposes the fundamental capabilities of the themes engine. Just click on the design tab, and explore the gallery.  Each theme automatically inherits a multidimensional matrix of variations which are easily accessible through the nearby buttons and drop-downs.  As a user, you simply browse and click until you find exactly what you like:

You can edit and save themes to your heart's desire, so that your favorite visual settings are just a click away.

If you are really interested in design, you can use the Theme Builder tool to define advanced characteristics of themes such as shape styles, background variations, and font mappings for other languages. This tool includes a comprehensive designer’s guide under the help menu.

Templates are closely related to themes; they are generic, reusable presentations, each containing at least one theme which you can easily change (as with any other presentation).  They will save you significant amounts of time when you want to replicate your layout across multiple decks.

You Deserve Recognition

If you’re skilled at designing themes and templates, here’s an opportunity to spread your genius around the world.

The folks who run the PowerPoint Live user conference have launched their annual Design-a-Template Contest (one of the judges is our very own Ric Bretschneider). If you have a template of which you are proud, you should enter it in the contest, and maybe your skills will win you a free trip to their October 2009 conference in Atlanta.

The Create a Spark PowerPoint Contest is another great way to gain exposure.  Three of our MVPs, Geetesh, Echo, and Julie, all of whom are heavily involved in the design culture, will be judging the event.  You are always welcome to submit your themes and templates to Office Online to share with the rest of the world.  The winners of this contest, however, will receive special recognition and promotion.

Regardless of what kind of presentation you have to give, the visual design is elemental.  With your help, the world will be a better place.

I hope to see you out there!

-Christopher M

June 11, 2009

Key Information

My name is Christopher Maloney, and I joined the PowerPoint team in August.  I will be taking over day-to-day management of the PowerPoint Team blog following the long and distinguished stewardship of Ric Bretschneider. Ric isn’t going anywhere, of course, and he will still post.  I’ll just be handling the daily operations of the weblog. Over the next few months you’ll see posts from myself and from many of the other members of the PowerPoint team.

I’ve been using PowerPoint for years, and for me it is software with which I can fabricate any presentation imaginable.  In fact, I sometimes use the program to create things that aren’t presentations at all.  My favorite example would be the time I used PowerPoint to produce the scene breaks in a home-made kung fu documentary.

Now that I’m helping to engineer PowerPoint, I use it every single day. Most of the time I’m working with an internal, unfinished version that includes the new features that we’re developing for the next release. However, it’s often necessary to run PowerPoint 2007 (the current release) so that I can fully understand the behavior to which users have become accustomed, and to check backwards compatibility of the new functionality. Regardless of the version, there are a variety of features that I never knew about until I started building new ones and improving old ones. Even advanced users are sometimes unaware of great features, simply because PowerPoint is so flexible and offers so many. Sometimes there are even multiple ways of achieving the same result, and exploring the other options isn’t always the top priority.

For example, when creating a diagram or drawing, I’ve often tried to align objects on a slide only to find that when I nudge the object around, it jumps too far and never lands where I want it to land. Using the mouse to drag the object results in the same coarse movement behavior, regardless of how much I zoom. The reason for this behavior is that, by default, objects on the slide are constrained to a grid. In the past, I would have disabled the grid altogether, which would allow me all the precision I need to bring my vision of a perfect diagram into fruition.

I’ve often wondered, why would anyone want the grid in the first place? Now that I’ve had a chance to discuss this with the PowerPoint team, I understand the logic behind the decision to enable the grid by default. Most people create very simple drawings, and the alignment and spatial distribution of objects are most important in the majority of these situations. So, for the majority of drawings, the grid-based design is a good solution. It’s only once in a while that you run into this issue where you need to place something off the grid.

Lucky for us, this once in a while case was not disregarded in the design. You don’t have to turn off the grid every time you encounter a situation where the grid is too imprecise. Here are a couple of extremely valuable keys that are guaranteed to come in handy when you are dragging shapes around on a slide:

	Toggle the grid As in, disable grid while the Alt button is down
	Copy an object to a new location Instead of moving the original
	Constrain object movement to the X or Y axis Can combine with Alt, Ctrl, or both

You don’t have to memorize this list. Just remember that you can use Shift, Ctrl, and Alt when you drag. If you forget which is which, just try one. It’s easy to undo, and pretty soon you’ll use them without thinking.

You can also use these modifier keys when you are moving objects around with the arrow keys. The keys have different mappings, which you can discover through experimentation.  In short, Alt rotates the object, Ctrl turns off the grid, and Shift changes the scale of the object. 

If you are using a Mac, you can play too.  In Mac PowerPoint, the keys are mapped out so that they spatially match those in the Windows version.  When dragging with the mouse, the Apple key toggles the grid, the Option key duplicates the object, and the Shift key constrains the axis of object movement.  The Ctrl key is necessarily reserved for right click (context click), since many Macs ship with a single mouse button.

The bottom line: try the modifier keys, they are very powerful.

Good luck, and have fun.

-Christopher  M

May 20, 2009

What Service Pack 2 Means to You!

If you’re an Office 2007 user you should just go download SP2, install it and enjoy.  However, if you want to understand the goodness that comes with SP2, read on…

OK, so what’s a “Service Pack?”

Once a product makes it out into “the wild,” which is one way of referring to the real world of users, we start hearing about work we could have done better. We actively look for reports, official and unofficial, of problems with the product.  We’re looking for bugs and design issues, that are affecting users and need to be fixed.  And we start working on fixing these problems in the current release even as we’re working on the next release.

This is work has to be done very carefully.  Every change that we make has the potential of creating a new problem. Well discuss that process in an upcoming post, but for now we’ll just say that the changes we do make in a service pack are focused on problems that affect the success of our users, things that will make a big difference.

To be clear, this is not a time when we add new features.  This is a time for making your lives better with the products we’ve worked so hard to deliver for you.

The Release of SP2

Last week we released Office 2007 SP2.  A set of changes to all Office 2007 products started rolling out through Microsoft Update.  There are a lot of high-level announcements out now, and including a few magazine reviews, in particular:

Yes, that’s all great news, but it still probably leaves you, the PowerPoint user, wondering…

What About PowerPoint… Specifically?

As mentioned earlier, we’ll follow this post with a couple of additional drill-downs into some of the meatier changes, and a bit about the process we used to determine what changes would make it into SP2.  For now, let’s review some of the more important PowerPoint improvements.

Faster File Save

Smarter picture compression in PowerPoint’s XML file format (.PPTX) now saves up to 90% faster than before when the presentation contains a lot of pictures.

Steadier Zoom While Editing

Some commands, such as deleting the selected object when zoomed in would cause the slide view to snap to the center of the slide.  Now the zoomed-in slide view does not move on its own.

Text Overlaps

Some third-party printer drivers could provide bad information, causing PowerPoint to misalign text.  We now detect this situation and reference an alternate set of settings for text layout in these cases, preserving proper text spacing. 

Vista Preview

PowerPoint is now compatible with the Vista file preview commands.

Image Exports

Images exported from PowerPoint when the optional registration key ExportBitmapResolution was used, could be saved corrupt or cropped.  This is now fixed, and the setting produces a good bitmap.

Slide Thumbnail Highlighting

Colors and effects used to indicate when the mouse was over a slide thumbnail, and when the thumbnail was actually selected could occasionally become confused and might indicate a slide was selected when it was not.  These are now clear now and update properly.

Saving to .PPT with Styled Title Text

Some of the new text formatting in PowerPoint 2007 has to be represented as a picture when saved to the older .PPT format.  However, a few cases would cause both a picture and styled text to be saved into the file when it appeared in a title placeholder, giving the text a jumbled or blurred look.  We now detect the situation properly and use the one correct method for these cases.

Additional changes

Many additional fixes:

• International spell check errors
• Printing with multiple masters
• Fixes for Ricoh Aficio 1022/1027/1032 PCL6 and PCL5e printer drivers

A Lot to Recommend SP2 for You

You can review all the changes for PowerPoint and the rest of Office 2007 in the Microsoft Help and Support Knowledge Base article 953195.  We hope you’ll agree that this is well worth your time and effort to install.  Set up automatic updates if you haven’t already, to keep up to date now and in the future.

Enjoy Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2.  We made it for you.

Ric Bretschneider
May 5, 2009

When Most Valuable Professionals Gather

In the first two parts of this series we explored what MVPs do, how they are chosen, and how this fantastic team of PowerPoint MVPs can help you with your PowerPoint problems.

This time we’ll look at the yearly summit conference where MVPs all over the world gather on the Microsoft Redmond Campus.

Up to the Summit!

Every year, thousands of Microsoft MVPs travel from around the globe to gather in Seattle Washington for the annual MVP Summit.  Microsoft hosts the summit as an opportunity to provide information on current and future activities, product releases, and MVP coordinating information.  Over the last few years the amount of time the MVPs spend with their product groups has grown from a single question-and-answer style meeting, to deep dives with the teams lasting a couple of days.  Presentations begin preparation months in advance, special guests from related teams or technology representatives are tasked to present. The team contact has become a rigorously scheduled two full days of presentations, feedback sessions, demos and social gatherings.

Of the PowerPoint MVPs, about half were able to come this year.  For some the state of the world economy made attendance a hardship.  However, we still had representatives from as far away as Germany, Korea, Great Britain, India, and of course the Americas. We do have a regular monthly phone call where all are invited to attend and discuss the state of the application, but it's always great to have face-to-face contact.

The MVPs start arriving on Sunday, as things get going early on Monday and they need the extra time to get registered, badged, and settle in.  A Meet and Greet reception is held for all the teams at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center.  It’s a huge crowd.  They do get to sit in on a few presentations, just to warm up, in the main hall. Microsoft execs talking about the MVP program, what’s ahead for the rest of the conference, and other orientation stuff.  Then it’s off to a huge hall where thousands of MVPs gather to drink, dine, and catch up with old friends.  Members of the Microsoft MVP coordination group get the product-specific MVPs gathered in signed areas, and a few of the product team make it in to catch up as well. 

Here’s a quick look at the gathering, with some close-ups of the PowerPoint folks at the end:

PowerPoint Breakouts

While we’ll focus on the PowerPoint MVPs activities here, it’s worth noting that their contact was not exclusively with the PowerPoint development team.  As mentioned above, our team has a lot of regular contact with the MVPs, from a regular world-wide phone conference to e-mails and individual phone calls about issues that spring up on the MVPs radar (see MVPs and Escalation from the earlier post in this series.) 

In preparation for the summit, we poll the MVPs to determine what they want to see in the team sessions.  High on those lists are face-to-face sessions with the teams that add to PowerPoint’s function through Office shared code.  The Excel team, who provides Charting function, sat down to discuss problems and requests.  A programmability session was the focus for MVPs who spend time creating add-ins and tools for other PowerPoint users.  The Office Graphics team provided insights into work that was going into the Office SP2 release, as well as the upcoming Office 2010 product. And we had a couple of surprises, new groups whose names would give away a little too much about yet-unreleased Office plans.

Two ninety-minute sessions on Monday and Tuesday highlighted work being done for PowerPoint in Office 2010.  It would be great to be able to tell you all about those sessions, and we dearly want to!  However, they’re still not public and so we’ll have to leave you with the news that the MVPs were ecstatic about the work we’re currently doing and can’t wait to get their hands on it.

Just so we’re not totally teasing here, we promise that once we can start talking about the next PowerPoint release, the whole team will be writing about their features, right here in the PowerPoint Team Blog.

The PowerPoint MVPs get to see behind the scenes at the Microsoft MVP Summit.

Fun and Relaxation

Monday night all of the Office MVPs joined with the product teams for a dinner catered in our Redmond campus office cafeteria.  You’ll recall that most of the PowerPoint team is located in Mountain View California, on the Silicon Valley Campus.  However, many were able to attend the Redmond dinner, and were joined by our close peers in the Office Graphics team and others. 

Tuesday night was the big event, as the whole of the MVP program bussed across the bridge into the shadow of the Space Needle to attend an event at the EMP: Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum.  This is the perfect place for technology focused professionals to let their hair down and do live Karaoke or browse the history of popular music or the fantastic visions of the future. 

MVPs and Softies Gather for a group photo at the 2009 MVP Conference

Rounding Out the Week

Wednesday morning finds the MVPs back in large sessions with the Microsoft executives, giving more organizational insights and collecting feedback from the MVPs.  There were no official product group activities on Wednesday, but the PowerPoint MVPs are notorious self-starters and have for the last few years organized their own farewell dinner gathering.  It’s one last time to chat, praise, and promise the best is yet to come.  

Thank you PowerPoint MPVs!

- Ric Bretschneider  May 4th, 2009

Where Do Most Valuable Professionals Hang Out?

In the first part of this series we explored what MVPs do, how they are chosen, and a little introduction to the fantastic team that makes up the PowerPoint MVPs.  This time we’ll cover where to find them, and what they can do for you once you do.

Of course you can find your MVPs by coming to conferences where they speak, or visiting their workplaces (with permission of course), or even sometimes at Microsoft events like TechNet or Tech-Ed. But more importantly, you can get help from almost all of the PowerPoint MVPs without even leaving your chair.

Where are the MVPs?

I’ll tell you up front, the PowerPoint MVPs are a terrific group of people just to hang out with and share a laugh over random PowerPoint trivia or experiences.  But you’ll most likely to want to talk to them when you’ve run into a problem you can’t solve, need advice on approaching the use of a specific feature, or just need someone to walk you through some basic PowerPoint features. Once you start these conversations you may find it hard to stop, because there’s really nothing as satisfying as free advice from a professional.

A world of MVPs gather at the Annual Microsoft MVP Summit in Washington

Newsgroups

One of the most expedient ways of getting help for all of your questions is to make your way to the Microsoft PowerPoint newsgroups. What’s a newsgroup?  Well, newsgroups are not a Microsoft invention, they’ve been around about as long as computer telecommunications has existed.  They are collections of conversations between individuals on any subject, from Star Trek to Shakespeare, from auto racing to oceanography; if it’s a topic for discussion there’s a newsgroup for it. 

Microsoft sponsors sets of news groups that support our products.  We learn a lot watching user conversations, both about how our products are used in the field from news conversations.  Because their content is automatically archived and searchable, they provide an always expanding base of information and answers.

Getting The News

If you’re already familiar with newsgroups, all you need to know is that the PowerPoint group is located at microsoft.public.powerpoint.  If that doesn’t make any sense to you, you’ll need to do a little investigation into the use of news readers.  Here are two places you can go for help there:

The Microsoft Newsgroups is the official web page listing of all the product news groups with additional articles on how to navigate and read the online threaded discussions. 

PPTFAQ: How do I join the PowerPoint newsgroup? is an MVP-written set of links and notes on how to join and use the newsgroups. 

While you’re in this second page, check out the larger PPTFAQ web site.  Guess what?  It’s written and maintained by Steve Rindsberg, a PowerPoint MVP, with the help and contributions of many other MVPs.  PPTFAQ is a great place to go and just search for answers to your PowerPoint questions. 

However you get to the newsgroups, you’ll find them a wealth of information and assistance Over the years many questions asked and answered in the newsgroups have been archived here.

Lurking and Participating

Once you get to the PowerPoint newsgroups, don’t feel you need to start asking questions right away.  Go ahead if you want, but it’s a time honored tradition to “lurk” in the sites for a while, getting a feel for how the conversations go and who knows what about what, before you actually post a question or comment yourself.  Remember, everything will be fine as long as everyone communicates respectfully and productively.  Believe me, this is one of the best newsgroups you would ever want to spend time in; it’s like an extended family.

Web Sites

Almost all of the PowerPoint MVPs have web sites.  Not surprisingly, most of the content on these sites is about PowerPoint.  You can browse these at your leisure, and if you’re still lurking in the newsgroups you can read up on the various players while you’re getting your footing. 

The MVP organization keeps this list of MVP sites: MVP Web Sites: PowerPoint. It is a little dated but still quite useful: As you might guess by now, just browsing these sites may answer your immediate questions, and will likely provide you with answers you don’t even know you need yet.

MVPs and Escalation

The PowerPoint development team keeps in regular touch with our MVPs.  They have a history of providing us with good information on both the products in the field as well as providing feedback on areas we want to deal with in future versions of PowerPoint.  It’s easy to run a quick questionnaire past the MVPs, and they use their contact with customers to provide valuable insights.

The MVPs occasionally escalate issues from that same customer experience directly to the PowerPoint team when they can’t find the answers elsewhere, or they believe there may be a problem we aren’t already aware of.  Both regular phone conferences and mail passed back and forth strengthen this relationship creating value on both ends.  If you’re talking to an MVP, you’re talking to someone who has the ear of the PowerPoint development team. 

While we can’t talk about future products and what improvements and advancements are currently in development, you can be sure that feedback given to MVPs does make it back to us.

Next Up: March is the annual MVP Summit at Microsoft in Redmond Washington.  Next episode we’ll discuss what happens at the summit, what the MVPs get to see and hear there, and how the whole thing feeds back into a constantly improving program.

Ric Bretschneider 2/1/2009

PowerPoint’s Most Valued Professionals…

Over the next few posts we’re going to explore the workings of the PowerPoint team’s MVPs.

To begin, you first need to be acquainted with the general Microsoft MVP program.

As you may have guessed, MVP stands for Most Valuable Professional. Although that might sound like a contrived acronym, it’s actually quite accurate. They are highly professional, and very valuable to both Microsoft and our customers. It’s an incredible and unique organization – if you’re not already making the most of your MVPs, perhaps the next few posts can convince you that you should.

Microsoft watches the community of users, those participating in the product support newsgroups, some with their own product-based web sites, or those who simply stand out in their advocacy and support of specific products.  In other words, the MVP program is looking for individuals who are already acting like MVPs, already supporting the larger community. These are people who answer other user’s questions, who help with their own how-to articles or add-in tools for the products.  Candidates are identified, are discussed internally, and then some, the ones who really stand-out, are contacted and invited to join the program.  And when they do join, they are assigned to a Microsoft product - typically the one they’re already noteworthy within, as you might expect. 

What’s in it for them?  Well, as an MVP, they do get a couple of perks and advantages.  They get to purchase a few Microsoft products at a reduced cost. They are allowed to identify themselves as being an MVP in mail, their business correspondence, web sites, etc.  And they get a higher level of access to the product group they support. Over all, it’s a pretty sweet reward for something you’re already doing.

So how about PowerPoint’s MVPs?

PowerPoint’s MVPs are a great group, excellent folks who represent a diverse set of specialties and talents with the PowerPoint product.  We have world-class designers, design consultants, writers, programmers, and some amazing feature hackers.  A terrific, talented, and generous group of folks you really should get to know better.

Some of the PowerPoint MVPs at the Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2008 – Redmond WA  

I could spend the rest of the article listing these folks individually but you can read a bit about each of them here.

Next up: Where MVPs hang out, and how they can help you.

Ric Bretschneider – 1/25/2009

A Picture + 1000 Words…

We learn best by examples.  And the better the example, the better the results.

That’s why its a pleasure to point you to a new group of PowerPoint examples that are stunning, inventive, evocative… simply beautiful.  Nice enough if it stops there, but each and every one of these examples includes very detailed instructions on how you can reconstruct the design, and learn how to apply the technique to your own work. Animation for graphics and text, static text effects,  photographic effects, new background techniques, Smart Art and transition effects… this is a holiday present come early for PowerPoint users.

And they’re free!  Get them here.

Here’s a small sample, which of course does not include the amazing animated designs.

And in case you’re wondering, this is the work of PowerPoint MVP Julie Terberg of Terberg Design. Julie has done some amazing work for all you PowerPoint customers to benefit from and enjoy. Do let us know what you think!

Note: Effects and styles used in these examples do require Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 for editing.

- Ric Bretschneider

How to insert that funny clip you found online

Hey everyone, my name is Allen Huang, and I’m one of the Program Managers that works on multimedia in PowerPoint. Although we’re busy working on the next version of PowerPoint, I wanted to take some time to share with you a neat trick I’ve learned in PowerPoint 2007. It also works in older versions of PowerPoint, but I’m going to focus on showing how it works in 2007.

PowerPoint users are often asking how to get their YouTube or MSN SoapBox videos into PowerPoint. It takes a little bit of work to get it in, but now you can have “History of Dance” playing in your presentation too.

There a few setup steps before we get into actually inserting that video:

Make sure you have the Adobe Flash Player installed on your computer

If you’re watching videos on YouTube, you probably already have Adobe Flash Player installed. Otherwise, go to http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ to download it.

Enable the Developer tab

Look for the Developer tab on your ribbon. If it’s not already there, go to the Office menu, where you’ll find a “PowerPoint options” button on the bottom. Select this button to get a dialog box like the one below.

Check the “Show Developer tab in Ribbon” checkbox. After you close this dialog, the Developer tab should appear on your ribbon.

Find the web address for the video you want to put in PowerPoint

The web provides tons of websites that supply user-created, user-uploaded video. YouTube is probably the most popular, but MSN Soapbox, MetaCafe, and DailyMotion are other examples of sites like YouTube. Once you find the video, look for the “Embed code” that allows you to embed a video on a blog or another webpage.

The screenshots below show a couple places where you might find this.

Once you’ve copied this code, paste it in Notepad or any other text editor. I’ve highlighted the two snippets you’ll need below:

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/dMH0bHeiRNg&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/dMH0bHeiRNg&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

The two places where you’ll find the URL that you need are bolded in the above example. Most of the time you’ll find this URL after “value=” or “embed src=”. Hold onto that URL (http://www.youtube.com/v/dMH0bHeiRNg&hl=en&fs=1), because that’s what we’ll need to make this work in PowerPoint. put in PowerPoint to insert the video.

For MSN Soapbox, the parts you’ll need are a little different. Again, the parts you’ll need are highlighted :

<embed src="http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf" width="432" height="364" id="p6vu3jr0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" pluginspage="http://macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="c=v&v=be9075bb-df0a-41c9-8d86-7ded46627e26&ifs=true&fr=msnvideo&mkt=en-US"></embed><noembed><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=be9075bb-df0a-41c9-8d86-7ded46627e26" target="_new" title="Bill Gates&#39; Last Day - CES Clip">Video: Bill Gates&#39; Last Day - CES Clip</a></noembed>

In this case, you’ll need to get the URL after src=”, but you’ll also need the flashvars. All you need to do is add a “?” after the src URL and add the flashvars, like below:

http://images.video.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf?c=v&v=be9075bb-df0a-41c9-8d86-7ded46627e26&ifs=true&fr=msnvideo&mkt=en-US

What to do once you’re in PowerPoint

Now that all of that’s out of the way, go to the Developer tab and pick the “More controls” dialog (the icon looks like a little hammer/wrench icon).

In this dialog, select “Shockwave Flash Object” and hit OK. Your cursor should be a crosshair now, and you can draw the size for the video. When you let go, there’ll be a box with an X through it. Then select “Properties” from the Developer tab, you’ll get a second dialog that provides lots of options for this Flash object.

Paste the embed code in the blank “Movie” property, and then press Enter. Now when you enter slideshow, the video should appear, and you should be able to interact with it like you would on the website you got it from.

What you’re doing in PowerPoint is inserting an ActiveX control in PowerPoint, which allows you to host other applications in PowerPoint. In the list of “More controls”, you’ll find a Windows Media Player ActiveX control, an Adobe Reader control, and many others that you can manipulate using the “Properties” dialog.

A few additional notes

• If you’re presenting with the video, be sure you have an Internet connection, and be prepared for any loading times there might be.
• Although you’ll see an EmbedMovie property in the Properties list for the Shockwave Flash Player, it will not actually embed the movie in your presentation. You should ignore that setting.
• Due to differences in the file formats, if you’re going to be creating this file in PowerPoint 2007 and then distributing it to someone using an earlier version of PowerPoint, be sure to save as .PPT.

Enjoy Rickrolling your friends in PowerPoint! Reply back and let us know how it works for you!

Remembering Brian

Pardon me for a somewhat personal departure from our usual topics, but I think it’s important to note that Brian is no longer here to help us continue developing new versions of PowerPoint for you.

Brian Reilly passed from this world last week.  Brian was a PowerPoint MVP; a Most Valued Professional.  And you really should have known Brian.

In 2002 I took on the responsibility for managing the PowerPoint team communications with our MVPs.  This was not a reward, we had a pretty rocky relationship with the MVPs at that time, mostly because no one on the team had really spent any time figuring out what the program was about or how we might profit from the relationship.  That’s changed a lot over the years, but at the time it was a somewhat frightening assignment.

Most vocal among the PowerPoint MVPs was a guy named Brian Reilly.  He had the reputation of being rude and annoyingly persistent, and of not taking no for an answer.  His mails, the only contact I’d had with him, were very blunt in telling us where we’d gone wrong in developing the product.  I set up our first MVP group phone conference with more than a little concern about what Brian would say.

The meeting started and after a few minutes of listening I realized one thing about Brian. It wasn’t that he was willfully rude or abusive.  He was just a “typical New Yorker,” and there was nothing really personal in his assessment of our situation.  I realized I could deal with this, and we went on to develop a really productive and enjoyable relationship.

Brian was loved among the MVP program, in the way you can only love a paradox.  Impish and mischievous one moment, dead serious and analytical another, and always looking to make sure everyone was taken care of, that no one was left behind, left out, or unrecognized in their achievements.

In the last couple of years New York city has become a personal favorite vacation spot for my family.  Brian showed up on our first day there teach us the city, walking us up and down the streets and avenues, explaining how they worked, how to ride the subway, how to get lost in Greenwich Village.  To this day my son still quotes Brian about how “in New York, it’s dinner time when you want to eat dinner.”

I miss him already, and the thought that I will no longer get his insights and advice, or be the subject of his jokes or pranks… will have its effect for quite a while.

You should know Brian was a fierce advocate for you, the PowerPoint user.  Your work in PowerPoint is made easier because he was just such a unique person. I’m sorry that most of you never had a chance to meet him, or thank him. 

Brian is survived by his brothers Joe and Bill, and his sister Mary Horton.  Those of us who knew Brian will be observing a minute of silence on Sunday the 28th, 8am Pacific in Seattle and California, 11am Eastern Daylight in New York and Cincinnati, 4pm British Summer Time in London and Surrey, and 8:30pm Coordinated Universal time +5:30 hrs in Chennai, India. 

If you have the opportunity to join us for that moment, wherever you are, please do.

Ric Bretschneider
September 26, 2008

One More Special Intern and the PowerPoint Prototype

It does seem like we've been featuring a lot of material on Microsoft interns lately, but this one is a little different.  Hope you'll agree and enjoy one last post in the series.

Kris Jordan recently interned with the Microsoft Visual Studio team. Like many technical and enthusiastic students, he runs a personal blog where he reports on his own experiences and  things that get his attention.  Recently he wrote a entry on prototyping software user interface and user experiences with PowerPoint.  This was accompanied by a video example of his techniques and advice.  The video is embedded here as well, just to the right. 

It's really exciting to see people notice this outside of the PowerPoint and Office team.  We've been using PowerPoint like this for years now, but you'd expect it of us! Having others expand their use of PowerPoint this way is really exciting.  It particularly fun to watch him smoothly and quickly do the prototype in the video.  Way to go Kris!

The first formal use of PowerPoint for user interface planning happened back in the mid-90's when program managers Howard Cooperstein and Peter Wu were working on the interface to a shared graphics editing experience across Word, Excel and PowerPoint for the new shared graphics engine now known as Office Art.  Even then, drawing in PowerPoint was a fast and efficient method for quickly prototyping and communicating software user interface designs. 

Since then, PowerPoint prototypes have become a standard within Microsoft. The interactivity that Kris writes about and shows in the video is a great way of going beyond "paper prototypes" as it lets you put a novice in front of the computer to "try out" software that hasn't actually been written yet; a practice that helps avoid design mistakes and saves development time and money!

From what we hear the Visual Studios team was very happy to have had Kris join them this summer, and the PowerPoint team congratulates him on his enthusiasm and technique!

Make sure to check out Kris Jordan's blog.

Ric Bretschneider
9-14-2008

September is Alive with Presentations

Some quick notes about three special events of interest to PowerPoint users.

Slideshare's 2nd Annual Best Presentation Contest Winner

The results of Slideshare's 2nd annual presentation contest are in, and the winner is Jeff Brenman's Thirst, a compelling and very visual story about water.  The contest was judged by Guy Kawasaki, Bert Decker, Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte.  Read all about it and review the winners and other contest entries at http://www.slideshare.net/contest/results-2008

You Can Still Get Into PowerPoint Heaven

We may be biased, but we think that PowerPoint has the best MVPs around.  PowerPoint user comments tend to re-enforce that opinion; the PowerPoint MVPs go above and beyond the call of duty. An example of this is MVP Shawn Toh's web site PowerPoint Heaven.  Normally the site is chock full of presentation galleries, tutorials, and other examples of cool and useful things you can do with PowerPoint. This month the site taking things up a notch, and is hosting an online e-Con. Things got started on September 1st, and continue participation through 26th, culminating with an online convention capping the event on the 27th.  We'll be watching things develop here, and suggest you may want to too. For more details check out http://pptheaven.mvps.org/econ2008/

The PowerPoint Live User Conference 2008 

Rounding out September and in it's sixth successful year, Rick Altman's PowerPoint Live User Conference continues to draw an impressive array of presenters and attendees.  This year's conference in San Diego, is no exception.  Held September 21st through 24th, this year's keynote speakers include Jim Endicott, Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds.  Garr will present to the San Diego audience live from Osaka Japan.  Quite a lineup. But the meat of the convention is found in the three tracks of daily sessions focusing on skill building both in presentation construction and delivery. Following the theme of arming attendees with new presentation skills, the convention builds and staffs a help center. Here a crew that includes many PowerPoint MVPs provides one to one assistance for convention attendees with solutions and advice on specific questions.  A few members of Microsoft's PowerPoint and Office Art teams usually attend the convention.  We're interested in the sessions of course, and occasionally speak or aid presenters. But we're also there to listen to customers, to learn how people use PowerPoint, and gather feedback that will help us create better products. Check out podcast recordings from last year's conference, where PowerPoint MVPs, conference keynote speakers and conference organizers sat down to discuss the unique nature of the community this conference creates every year. The conference is still open for registrations, but you'll want to hurry!

Ric Bretschneider

Listening to the PowerPoint Interns: A Farewell Interview

As promised last week, one more surprise.

We wrap up our coverage of the PowerPoint 2008 Summer Interns with a real change of pace.  An audio roundtable discussion about their experiences on the team, what it was like being part of the development of the next version of PowerPoint, and what they've learned while they were here.

It's a fun conversation, hope you enjoy it.  Click below to get to the podcast posting.

My PowerPoint Summer: Five Intern Tales

Pictured at left: Mike Rodgers, Trevor Florence, Nirav Sanghani, Luiz Pereira, and Jesse Harvey

Summer Interns: Luiz Pereira

We wind up up in our series of posts by PowerPoint's summer interns with Software Development Engineer Luiz Pereira.  But check back in a bit for one final intern surprise.

My name is Luiz Pereira and I’m nearing the end of my internship as a Software Development Engineer (SDE) in PowerPoint’s Multimedia team.

I’m currently finishing up my Master’s in Computer Science at Stanford (just a quarter left!), with a concentration in Human-Computer Interaction. I got my Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering also at Stanford in 2007. I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and moved to the Bay Area in 2003 for college. Most of my family’s still back in Brazil, except for my sister who currently lives in New York.

Working on PowerPoint is extremely exciting, since you have a chance to develop features for a product that is used by hundreds of millions of people. Even the smallest changes have a huge user impact and as an intern you have the opportunity to make enormous contributions to the product, which have tremendous user impact.

Being a PowerPoint intern, you really feel like you’re a full-time employee. I spend my days implementing features, working with testers to get them tested, working with program managers to refine feature specifications, performing code reviews and keeping track of bugs assigned to me. As an intern, you really get a taste of what it’s like to be a full-time engineer, so it’s a great opportunity to determine whether Microsoft is a good match for you.

Microsoft is very accommodating and they want their interns to have the best time here. For example, they let me do a shorter, 10-week internship instead of the standard 12 weeks, which gives me plenty of time to travel at the end of summer. They also flew the Silicon Valley Campus interns up to the main headquarters in Redmond, where they treated us to an event-filled weekend. They are interested in letting us explore the company and different teams, in order to find the best match for our talent and learn about the diversity of projects in the company.

Last summer I was working at Google’s New York office and the year before I was working at Yahoo’s Los Angeles office. It’s very exciting be in Silicon Valley for the summer, since it is the place to be for technology. There is also a lot to do in the Bay Area. Regardless of whether you like big cities, culture and nightlife (like me!); sports, perfect weather and being outdoors; or cutting-edge technology and entrepreneurship, you’ll find something to do around here.

Interning at Microsoft has been an amazing opportunity and I encourage everyone to apply!