What’s new in Office 2010: PowerPoint

Although there are more components of Office like InfoPath, Sharepoint Workspace and Sharepoint Designer, Access, Project and Visio this will be our last installment. I’m happy to share information with you about these applications for those who want them. Contact me and I’ll send them to you.

PowerPoint has transformed everything from business presentations to school science projects. PowerPoint 2010 builds on the HUGE number of new features seen in 2007.

Presentations to live and virtual audiences - PowerPoint has a remote slide show capability that lets you present a slide show over the Web or a network connection to virtual attendees or live attendees, or both. No expensive video conferencing account required!Some common broadcast scenarios are as follows:

· Ad hoc one-on-one broadcast.

· Invite multiple viewers to view a presentation remotely at any time.

· Present a slide show to both live and remote attendees at the same time in the context of a training session, meeting, or conference call.

Working with text and objects - PowerPoint provides improved editing tools with a new set of Photo Effects that enable you to transform your images.

· Video and audio editing

· Graphics, transitions, and animations

· Help and translation

Presentation security - In PowerPoint 2007, new security features were introduced to help ensure that a presentation was safely managed after it left the user’s hands. In PowerPoint 2010, the permissions can still be set, but now through the Backstage view. Security features include the following:

· Prevent unintended changes to a final version of a document by using the Mark as Final command.

· Provide assurance as to the authenticity, integrity, and origin of the presentation by adding a digital signature.

· Assign permissions that prevent other users from copying, printing, or editing the presentation by selecting the access level specific to their requirements.

· Manage document properties through the Backstage view.

PowerPoint Viewer - The Viewer lets you view presentations created in Microsoft PowerPoint 2000, PowerPoint 2002, PowerPoint 2003, PowerPoint 2007, and PowerPoint 2010. The Viewer also supports opening password-protected PowerPoint presentations.

And now for a little training:

Make the switch to PowerPoint 2010 (about 45 minutes)

What’s new in Office 2010: OneNote

You’ve never heard of OneNote? Unfortunately that is the case for too many of our clients and yet everyone who uses it can’t imagine what they did without it. It is the best kept secret of the Office suite. If you haven’t used it before then you might want to skip to the bottom of this post and click on the links there to learn more about how you use it.

This is one of many posts on Office 2010. If you missed the others please visit our blog to read them.

What’s new in OneNote?

Improved access to information - OneNote provides virtually uninterrupted access to notes by allowing you to view and use your notebook files anywhere — at work, home, or in transit.

· Sync to Windows Live   You can access notebooks from any computer. You can also synchronize notebooks by using shared folders, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, and USB drives.

· Microsoft OneNote Web App   You can access and edit notebooks from a Web browser, even on computers on which the full version of OneNote is not installed.

· Microsoft OneNote Mobile 2010   By using a compact version of OneNote on a Windows Mobile-based smartphone, you can access and edit your notebooks stored on Windows Live and SharePoint.

Improved search, which can find information on either the current page, within selected sections or notebooks, or within notebooks. Search improvements allow for rapid search and navigation within the search results. For example, by typing the first few letters of a title, users can quickly jump to recently visited pages, or repeat a previous search.

Outlook integration improvements:

· Create Outlook tasks from OneNote.

· Improved organization and search features:

· Section and page tab improvements.

The ability to easily add links to content within other content — for example, pages, sections, or section groups — and to quickly navigate through these links. This enables you to create Wiki-like notebooks.

Quick Filing feature, which lets you choose where in your notebook you want to send information (such as mails from Outlook, pages from Internet Explorer, and so on).

Quick Styles for creating and applying headings.

Support for mathematical equations.

Formatting improvements for bulleted lists.

Mini Translator, which lets you use your mouse to point to a foreign word or phrase and see a translation into your native language in a small window (you can also use the Play button to hear the pronunciation of the word or phrase, and use a Copy button to paste the translation elsewhere in your notebook).

Linked note-taking to Web page URLs, Microsoft Word 2010, and Microsoft PowerPoint 2010.

Automatic text wrapping.

Sharing and collaboration features -OneNote supports simultaneous editing of notebooks by multiple users. For example, a group of users can work on a notebook at the same time, or a single user can work on the same notebook from different computers simultaneously, all without locking the file.

The changes are as follows:

· New content is automatically highlighted.

· Author information for any added or shared content is identified by a color-coded bar and the author’s initials.

· Version support lets users see when and by whom changes were made to a notebook. Changes relative to earlier versions of the notebook are automatically highlighted.

· Faster synchronization of pages so that changes are displayed to all authors in near real time.

· Display recently added content (by last day, week, month, and so on). You can also get an overview of what specific users changed on specific days.

· Merge feature allows merging two sections of a shared notebook.

Support for touch-enabled computers -OneNote provides support for computers that run touch-enabled operating systems such as Windows 7. The features include the following:

· Panning and auto-switching   On compatible computers that run Windows 7, the user can scroll and pan around any page in OneNote 2010 by using a finger and, depending on the input device, OneNote automatically switches between pen, pan, and selection.

· Zooming   On multitouch devices, such as a computer that runs a touch-compatible or multitouch-compatible operating system such as Windows 7, using a pinch gesture with the fingers allows a user to zoom in or out of a notebook page in OneNote to customize the page view.

· Improved navigation   Several navigational enhancements have been added to OneNote 2010 for users who have computers that run touch-enabled operating systems.

 

But if you’ve never used OneNote before than that’s probably all gibberish, so here’s how you can learn more about OneNote:

Make the switch to OneNote 2010 (about 30 minutes)

Doing basic tasks in OneNote (document)

What’s new in Office 2010: Publisher

If you are still using an older version of Publisher then you are really missing out. By now most of you have installed a copy of Office 2010 and if you were previously using Office XP or Office 2003 as many were then you are in for a real treat. Publisher 2007 introduced a lot of new things and 2010 builds on those. It is a really useful program to master for your flyers, spec sheets, invitations, and other business marketing materials.  I’m going to do is just post what’s brand new and then point to some quick and easy training courses at the end.

If you missed our other post on Office 2010 you can read them on our blog.

Here’s what brand new for Publisher:

Integrated print and preview experience - Print and Print Preview are integrated so that it is easier to get a more accurate view of what publications will look like when they are printed. This includes the ability to make print adjustments while viewing the effect of the changes in a large preview of their publication. You can view multiple pages at the same time, view page boundaries, page numbers, and sheet rulers while in print preview, and even view a simulation of a two-sided document as if it were held up to a light — to see the front and back at the same time, as the publication will look when printed. This is really handy stuff.

Save file as .pdf or .xps - Users can save files in the .pdf or .xps file format. No PDF writer required.

Improved picture technology - You can more easily work with pictures in their publications with the following picture technology improvements:

· Cropping   Rotate and resize pictures, crop them into non-rectangular shapes, and preview the images while keeping the picture in the desired size, shape, and location.

· Replacing pictures   Replace pictures by drag-and-drop, swap two pictures in a single operation, and paste pictures copied outside from Publisher into a placeholder in Publisher.

· Using picture placeholders   Maintain placeholder dimensions when a picture is inserted. For example, pictures either too small or too large for a placeholder are automatically resized.

· Add captions   Add captions to their pictures, choosing from a gallery of caption designs and layouts, and make changes easily.

Publisher is one of those applications that is better seen that described. So here are a few short training courses that will help you get going. These are for Publisher 2007, but since that was when the major changes happened in the application they will be useful for 2010 as well.

Get started designed professional publications (about 45 minutes)

All about handling objects, moving forward and back (5-10 minutes)

Everything you ever wanted to know about pictures (5-10 minutes)

Those last two items are help documents, not courses but you will find them very helpful and clear.