How Powerpoint Makes You Stupid

This is the only book that will help an intermediate PowerPoint user improve their skills to an advanced level. In doing so, they can benefit both professionally and personally. This is not a comprehensive book that will bore you with every detail of PowerPoint, but a guide to specific actions you can take to create the ultimate presentation. The book covers the powerful formatting engine new to PowerPoint 2007, and how it can be used for applying soft shadows, reflection, and glows to make a presentation look attractive. It also covers PowerPoint's new 3D engine. The book goes into deep technical detail about the Office 2007 theme engine and how color schemes, effect schemes, and font schemes work; as well as the new PowerPoint XML file format, showing you how to edit PowerPoint files without using PowerPoint at all. The authors walk through programming a macro and explain how to format shapes, diagrams, charts, text, tables with gradient and picture fills and different kinds of lines (e.g. a beveled compound line with a diamond arrowhead). Also covered are those all important slide show shortcuts that few people know about like -- seeing your private notes while presenting on a projector, starting the slide show from the current slide without fumbling through the user interface, and how to black out the slide show screen with one key press.