A Few of My Favorite Features in PowerPoint 2010

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This is the day and now is the time. Microsoft Office 2010 is official launched today, May 12th, 2010. Looking back, it is amazing to realize how far we have come and how much impact the Office family products and solutions have been making in our everyday life, education, and businesses.

There are many features in Office 2010 that I can talk abut for hours. Co-authoring, SharePoint Workspace, Access publishing, etc. are all very exciting new capabilities which I will discuss in upcoming blogs. Meanwhile, the best way is to experiment and see it yourself.

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Here I thought to share some of my favorites in PowerPoint 2010 to highlight the new in Office 2010. These features are what I now use on a daily basis to save time, carry a productive conversation, develop better content, and deliver an effective session to my audiences. Here they are.
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PowerPoint Broadcasting has to be the first one to talk about since I have used it so often. It is simple to do and what a difference it can make. Anytime, either in a phone conversation, instant messaging exchange, or presentation, a few mouse clicks will enable me to broadcast out PowerPoint slides to facilitate a discussion. As needed, a viewer can use cell phone as a viewing device. It makes it easier for every one to follow and be on the same page. This feature is a must-have for those who are mobile while still need to carry out an in-depth or lengthy conversation or presentation while on the road. There are a few limitations to be aware of.
image These days, graphics has become an important and essential part of a presentation. While it can be easily overused and get carried away, graphics is an effective tool to convey sophisticated concepts and complex constructs with large amount of information. Just double-clicking an image in PowerPoint 2010, you will find that the Drawing Tool now has a Background Removal feature allowing an author to remove the unwanted background of an image. This is so much a time saver for me when superimposing images to express a complex idea. I love this feature. No more will I pixel-fix a cropped image. No more.
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Inserting a screenshot right from PowerPoint 2010 is another great feature I can’t stop talking about. Previously I need to jump back and forth between PowerPoint and a screen capture tool and with many repetitions of copy-n-paste to get a screenshot into a slide the way I want it.

Now, just bring up your browser and go to an intended URL, then in PowerPoint simply click Insert Screenshot. It really can’t be any easier. Once the image is inserted, I also hyperlink it to the URL. In this way, during a presentation, I can always show the screenshot and if with internet access and time permitting, I will click the inserted screenshot and show the linked URL in real-time since the inserted image may be out-dated or I want to point my audiences to a particular part of the page.