Microsoft PowerPoint

Microsoft PowerPoint is a computer program that allows interactive presentations on Windows and Mac OS create.

Dissemination

PowerPoint is the most widely used presentation program. 2001 Ian Parker wrote that PowerPoint is installed on 250 million computers. The number of held daily PowerPoint presentations were given in the same year by Microsoft with 30 million. Edward Tufte is estimated that up to 100 billion films are prepared annually. In LaPorte et al. there is an indication that 95 percent of all presentations are created in PowerPoint.

History

The program has been developed since 1984 at the company Forethought in Sunnyvale and was at this stage the name of the presenter. The first version was released in April 1987 for Macintosh computers ( with 512 KB RAM). Through the acquisition of Forethought for 14 million U.S. dollars on 31 July 1987 Microsoft bought the rights to the program. The then published in May 1988 Version 2.0 first supported colors and was localized in several languages. The German language version was available from 8 December 1988.

With the introduction of Windows 3.0, the version 2.0 of PowerPoint for Windows on 22 May 1990, delivered.

Concepts

PowerPoint is a page-oriented program. For each page, also known as " films ", made ​​extensive design possibilities. These range from simple text slide on slides with graphics, tables and charts to slides with multimedia content such as film and sound. Graphics can be either in PowerPoint itself with various drawing tools created and in the form of clip art or photos ( in GIF, JPG, PNG, TIF, BMP formats) are inserted. It is also possible, audio (for example, in the formats MP3 and WAV ) and video files to integrate ( in AVI, MOV, QT, MPG, MPEG and WMV formats).

After the giving presentations using video projectors ( beamers ), the use of classic films on overhead projectors displaced more and more, play the animation options in PowerPoint a big role (they were in the 2002 version for Windows or vX for Mac OS significantly extended). Text and images can be integrated with many different animations in the slides. The transition between slides can be done with slide transition effects.

A special presentation view enables it to project only the contents of the film on the big screen, during the current and next slides and notes are displayed on the monitor as an overview. This was introduced with the 2004 version in the Mac version after Office vX was still pursuing a different approach for the presentation view. There, in the ordinary PowerPoint user interface currently displayed on the monitor foil was transferred to the projector full screen, which had the advantage that adjustments to the film could be transmitted to the projector immediately. With the 2004 version, this was no longer possible.

Current version and software packages

PowerPoint is sold both individually and as part of various Microsoft Office packages. With each new release of Office Suites, a new version of PowerPoint will be issued which bears the same name.

Programming and Automation

PowerPoint can be set via VBA ( Mac OS only) automate and extend (Windows / Mac OS except PowerPoint 2008 ) and AppleScript. The concept of VBA is, however, with the XP successors to revision. With PowerPoint 2008 VBA support for the Mac was dropped, introduced with PowerPoint 2011 but again.

Display of presentations

To view the presentations, PowerPoint must be present. Under Windows, not Macintosh, also available for free PowerPoint Viewer can be used. This is capable of running up to the 2003 release of the CD, the PowerPoint Viewer 2007 must be installed according to the new file format.

Often, however, it is also possible to view PowerPoint presentations with LibreOffice, OpenOffice.org or Keynote and edit. However, so all the new functions of the respective versions of PowerPoint are not always supported.

File Formats

After Microsoft previously proprietary, not open documented format. Ppt used, the presentations will be stored for PowerPoint 2007 and 2008 by default in Office Open XML format (. Pptx ). The presentations can be created or spend as individual slides in the most popular graphic formats also as Web pages ( html *. ).

In addition to the standard presentation format (. Ppt or. Pptx and. Pptm for files with macros, the latter only Windows) is often the slide show format (. Pps or. Ppsx ) is used, which serves the immediate display of the presentation in full screen mode. Between the two formats is not a difference in content; the same information will be stored. To view the presentations either the full version of the program or the free PowerPoint Viewer for Windows on the computer must be present.

Alternatively, can be combined with the Windows version of PowerPoint from the 2003 version, with the option for CD packaging to create a presentation CD. In this case, all linked with the presentation files are summarized. An option allows you to burn a startup file and the PowerPoint Viewer on the CD. This can be run from the CD and does not need to be installed on the target computer.

For old versions there is the " Pack and Go " feature that comes with the copies a zip file and unzipped on the target computer. The compressed file has the file extension. Ppz and is compressed in ZIP format.

If PowerPoint automated using VBA, these macros are stored either within the individual presentation file or add- in may ( file extension. Ppa or. Ppax ) complete as to all the features of PowerPoint presentations.

In order to standardize the appearance of presentations, for example to comply with a corporate design, templates are the masters contained therein. You have the file extension pot. Respectively. Potx or. Potm.

Criticism

Critics speak in PowerPoint often typographically very poor results. This is mainly because that the typographic most inexperienced user will be asked too many setting possibilities in terms of the typeface, such as color, font, size and text style for selection. To apply the text bold, italics and underline are often used in combination, which is highly questionable from a typographic point of view.

An investigation of the company SirValUse still comes to the conclusion that novice users the concepts and terms used cause problems.

In addition, PowerPoint verleite to use complicated effects that could affect the presentation unprofessional, such as letters that appear one after another to fly from the page to the screen.

Another point of criticism is the poor set of formulas of the Office suite: it was not only cumbersome to create complex formulas by means of the purely graphical formula editor, the result was not partially satisfactory.

Also, there may be problems with graphics, if presentations created on Mac and want to play on Windows. This is due to non-compatible TIFF format, which is what is used as the default format for Mac is not supported in the Windows version. Currently, there seems to be no solution to this problem, to insert images except the absolute avoidance of drag and drop.