Microsoft PowerPoint 2002

• Slide design task pane
  
• Animation schemes task pane
  
• Multiple masters
  
• Presenter tools
  
• Thumbnails in normal view

A welcome addition is the print preview function, a painful omission from earlier PowerPoint iterations. Now you can see on paper how your slides will appear without having to go through a trial-and-error print process.

Even without the rest of the Office XP suite, PowerPoint 2002 allows users to collaborate on projects, and there are a number of new features in this area. When a presentation is sent to another user for review, the appropriate tools are already turned on. When it returns, the owner can automatically merge the reviewer's updated version with the original. Presentations can also be password protected, allowing reviewers to view the slide shows and add comments, but not be able to edit the file. And digital signatures can be attached to presentations for added security in shared environments.

Some of the more noticeable changes appropriately lie within the slide-creation process. PowerPoint 2002 allows users to apply animation effects and transitions to an entire presentation with a single click. You can also use more than one design template within a single presentation, so you don't have to rely on the same theme for an entire slide show. It also lets you merge two slide shows that use different templates.

PowerPoint 2002 is still point-and-click, drag-and-drop easy for slide creation. You can copy and paste multimedia files into slides (now with support for more file types and larger files). This latest version of PowerPoint also lets you view thumbnails of your slides in a pane on the left side in the normal view (paired with the outline pane, which contains just the bare information).

On the right side, the task pane houses recently used templates and tools, making it much easier to choose the layout for slides as well as add animations and transitions. Another nifty touch: Microsoft incorporated anti-aliasing (a graphics technology most often used in games) to smooth out fonts.

When PowerPoint was first released, it didn't come with a standalone viewer, meaning users without the latest version of PowerPoint wouldn't be able to view your presentations. Microsoft has since updated their free PowerPoint Viewer 97 to allow it to view 2002 PowerPoint presentations as well, although some advanced features in 2000 and 2002 slide shows are not supported in the viewer.

Users of PowerPoint 2000 may not find enough incentive to upgrade to PowerPoint 2002, but if you're still making presentations with even earlier versions of PowerPoint, this is the one that you need to click over to. --J. Curtis

Amazon.com Review
If you use a PC, you almost certainly use Microsoft Office at least occasionally. PowerPoint 2002 is the presentation graphics application in Microsoft's new version, Office XP.

New features across the range of products within Office XP suite, such as task panes, smart tags, and integrated e-mail, aim to make the various applications more tightly integrated than ever, and thus squeeze more functionality out of each program. Task panes are dynamic windows that pop up in response to specific actions you're performing within a document, suggesting formatting or mail merge options, for example. Smart tags, similarly, are icons that appear when you perform a particular task--hover over them and a drop-down menu appears.

PowerPoint 2002 really is a leap forward from earlier versions. Dual-screen presenter tools allow trainers to have a different view of their presentation from the audience, giving much more subtlety and control over lectures. And anti-aliased screen fonts overcome the amateurish jagged onscreen text that can result from using certain typefaces. Print preview, meanwhile, allows you to view work in progress as you construct your presentation.

Task panes take on a lot of the hard work in this new version. Layout, colors, animation, and more are tackled in the handy pop-up windows. And animation itself is beefed up, with support for multiple objects and path animation opening the door to more sophisticated and slick presentations. --John Rennie, Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com Product Description
PowerPoint 2002 gives users additional functionality to create professionally designed presentations. This latest version also makes it easier for PowerPoint users to discover and use the functionality that was previously in the application. New and improved tools in PowerPoint also make it easier to share and collaborate on presentations over the Web, enabling users to present to and work with others who are geographically dispersed. There is no need for anyone to leave his or her office.

PowerPoint 2002 empowers users to discover and use more of the existing functionality in the application. Users gain the confidence to try new things and ultimately create more effective presentations. New tools such as Task Panes and Smart Tags are shared throughout the Office suite, and help users take advantage of the functionality of the application. In addition, PowerPoint 2002 features improved technology for working with diagrams, drawings, pictures, text, and printing. With the new reliability features in PowerPoint, users can continue to work even in the unlikely event of an error. Furthermore, a variety of security enhancements have been included in PowerPoint to help users feel more secure when working with their presentation.

Share and collaborate on presentations with others via the Web. Work more effectively on presentations with team members, regardless of where they are located. PowerPoint now includes a whole new way of reviewing presentations with others that takes away the difficulties associated with integrating multiple, disparate presentations. It also includes the ability for users to use the Web to broadcast live or recorded presentations around the world. PowerPoint 2002 provides multinational organizations and multilingual users with a better experience when working the application. This includes a variety of improvements such as improved administration of languages, additional language-proofing tool support, and a variety of user-interface improvements.

The biggest drawbacks are: the instructions are relatively weak (I strongly recommend "Step by Step MS PowerPoint" if you are a new user to get you up and running); and the extraordinarily steep price tag. I bought it as a standalone product, and I think it is outrageously priced, considering you can get it plus Word, Excel and Outlook in the new 'MS Office XP Standard for Students and Teachers' (which, unfortunately, had not come out when I bought this) for less money than PowerPoint alone.

Overall, I still believe that my title sums it up: Good performance, high price.


Not worth the money   April 23, 2003
Andrew J. Breen
13 out of 15 found this review helpful

While I've found this product to be quite useful, it is unnecessarily expensive. I used to only use the powerpoint program on the school computers, but I found an alternative. OpenOffice.org has an entirely free version of office. Impress is the name of the equivalent program to powerpoint, and it works for everything I have needed to do with it. Don't pay the monopoly for powerpoint, it's not worth that much money.


Good, but StarOffice Impress is as good or better   January 26, 2003
20 out of 22 found this review helpful

I've been using Ppt for a while but not anymore. Before I upgraded, that is when I was considering upgrading, I downloaded OpenOffice.org, the free version of StarOffice, and I was blown away. It opened all my PowerPoint files, and it has most of the same features. I use Impress all the time now, whether my clients need Impress or PowerPoint file formats. Does'em both.

Try Impress first, from the OpenOffice.org or StarOffice office suite.


Good product, ridiculous price, and there's no point.   December 1, 2002
52 out of 52 found this review helpful

My last contract was with a subsidiary of Microsoft so they gave me MS Office XP, including PowerPoint. I didn't have to shell out the bucks for it. And it's a nice product. There's a little too much autoformatting but it's reasonably easy to say no, stop that, keep it normal. And Clippy doesn't come up.

But before that contract, and since then because I'm used to them, I've used StarOffice and OpenOffice.org. I've used them both and am really impressed, there's actually an alternative to Microsoft Office that's FREE. Well, OpenOffice is free and StarOffice which has a few other files so they charge you a bit for them. But they both open PowerPoint and Word and Excel files, and save back to those formats too, and 9 times out of 10 they do it perfectly.

I've done lots of presentations, including animation and linking to URLs, etc., in OpenOffice and it's really good. FREE really good software. So I don't see why anyone needs to get this product.

A few key things in OpenOffice.org -- different layouts, so you can look at it as a regular slide, handouts, outline, and in background and layer views too. I've done some great backgrounds since the drawing tools let you put really small gifs or vector graphics in the background once and it doesn't inflate your file size. Plus the file sizes with OpenOffice.org are spectacularly small. I opened up my PowerPoint presentation for a contract, opened it in OpenOffice.org, and the file size was suddenly half as big and it looked just the same as it did in PowerPoint.

So basically, here's the deal. I'm really happy doing all my work now in OpenOffice.org instead of PowerPoint, and while I'm not a power power power user I definitely put it through its paces.

Download OpenOffice.org before you get PowerPoint, or get StarOffice if you feel like you should pay for your software. PowerPoint ain't your only option.