PowerPoint is a powerful tool that is an essential program to know in any business setting. The ability to make presentations come to life enables businesspeople to sell products, ideas, and brands without being graphics wizards. In SAMS Teach Yourself Microsoft PowerPoint 2000 in 24 Hours, author Alexandria Haddad attempts to teach the essentials as well as the elements that give presentations flair and vivre.
As one who is not privileged to have been brought up on PowerPoint, the step‐by‐step explanations and breakdowns of functions enabled me to follow along easily without getting lost. For those impatient with the step‐by‐step explanations, a reference table set up on the inside of the front cover makes for quick and easy access to answers that can be found right away. Those who fall into the latter category can skip the first few chapters detailing the initial set‐up of the presentation, including using prepackaged templates, and go straight into the flashier components of the program. Chapter 10, entitled “Adding pizzaz to a slide show”, outlines in detail the way to customize a slideshow as well as setting up and executing an online broadcast.
Beyond the drawings, slide building, and presentation set‐up, SAMS also provides excellent instruction on incorporating Microsoft Excel, creating and formatting tables within PowerPoint, and the utilization of Microsoft Graph and the Microsoft Organization Chart application. This instruction, which covers approximately four chapters of the book, effectively covers the basics without bogging the user down with too many details.
In chapter 22, readers are introduced to Web publishing of their PowerPoint presentations. While the steps to actually saving the presentation are straightforward, the book barely skims troubleshooting to the actual upload onto an ISP server. For those who are not experts in uploading to the Internet, a section regarding this would have been helpful.
Despite this setback, the rest of the book is laid out well. Icons dotted throughout the book reference tips, notes, and cautions set by the author to add a little more depth to the learning component. A list of common questions can be found at the end of each chapter, offering solutions to problems before they surface. Additionally, brief introductions at the beginning of each chapter outline why certain functions may be useful in your presentation. A chapter at the end of the book entitled “PowerPoint power hour” (chapter 24) walks the reader through streamlining and customizing PowerPoint 2000 to the user’s preferences, while the appendices offer shortcut key combinations and functions in a quick access table.
This book is a great tool for beginning PowerPoint users, especially for those who have not created presentations on this software before. Intermediate users may find the pace of the book pedantic should they choose to read it from cover to cover but they might find it to be a great reference tool for specific questions. Fortunately the book is set up to accommodate both parties, and the author’s clear‐cut manner is informative. For those who are familiar with the “dummies” series, the format is appealing in its simplicity, although perhaps not so when Haddad offers her dry version of a joke. Overall, readers who plan on using PowerPoint 2000 on a regular basis, may find it to be one of their more well‐used reference books on their shelves.
