PowerPoint 2003: The Other Changes
~~Kathryn Jacobs, PowerPointAnswers

• Better research tools
• New order to templates
• Font embedding changes
• Smart Tags
• Inking support

This month, we are going to focus in on the research tools and the template changes. I'll cover the other changes in future articles.

Better research tools

With PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft has added two tools that will make content development a little easier: the research pane and the thesaurus.

The Research pane

All of the Office System 2003 products have "improved" access to research tools. For PowerPoint, this means that with a few quick clicks, you can access a wide variety of resources for content expansion, verification and targeting. The resources available are limited, but growing.

The research tools are accessed via the research pane. If another pane is already showing, click the dropdown arrow in the title of the pane and select "Research". If no pane is showing, you can bring the research pane up by either alt-clicking on a word on your slide or by using the Tools > Research menu item.

As you can see in the picture, the resources available are pretty basic. You have a dictionary, some thesauruses, several research sites, and some business and financial information sites. Expect this list to grow as Office 2003 grows into the market place.

(By the way, if you click "Research options" at the bottom of the pane, you will find other resources. Most of them are international versions of the default resources.)

To do a search, type the words into the search box, select the items you want to search from the drop down, and off goes the search. For general research, you may or may not find what you are looking for.

The reason this tool is worth using….

One of my frustrations with PowerPoint for years is the lack of a thesaurus. Words may not be the only thing in a PowerPoint presentation, but they are a major part of most presentations. I have long been frustrated by the lack of a thesaurus in PowerPoint. Now, we have one. Unfortunately, it isn't totally intuitive, but it is there.

• The intended way to access the thesaurus is by selecting the word you want to change and bringing up the thesaurus. Either a Shift-F7 or the Tools' Thesaurus menu will bring up the Research pane, with the thesaurus pre-selected.
• If you already have the Research pane visible, you can just type in your word and select the appropriate thesaurus from the drop down list.
• Once you get your list of results, you can insert one of those results into your presentation with a right click of the new word. If your original word is still selected, it will be replaced by the new word. If nothing is selected, the new word will be inserted at the cursor position.

Another useful research resource…

Do you do slides with new words? You can use the dictionary resources to add the definintion of the word to your presentation by looking the word up, selecting the definition you are looking for, and copying and pasting the definition onto your slide.

Work with many languages? Translate!

The third piece of the research I find most useful is the ability to translate individual words or full sentences at a mouse click. Select translation from the search list, select the original language and the new language and the translation appears.

The translation is split into two pieces: The bilingual dictionary for individual words and WorldLingo machine translation for sentences.

Template changes

Another of the big changes in PowerPoint 2003 is a change to how PowerPoint shows the templates when you list the available designs and how you access the templates for a new presentation.

Display order

Instead of being listed in alphabetical order, the templates are now listed in a rather unique order that you will either love or hate. Templates are now listed basically in color order. However, the first two templates are not in this order. Confusing? Yeah, but useful once you get used to it….

The first template listed is always the blank template. This is the template on your system which has the name "Default Design.pot". In the past, this was the template that was used for all new presentations. It still is, until you change it. If you want to, you can select a different template to be your default..

If you have a template that you use all the time, bring that template up in a presentation and view the Slide Design pane. Right click on your preferred template. Notice that there is a new menu item: Use for All New Presentations. Selecting this option for a template moves it to the second spot in your template list. It also tells PowerPoint that when you open a new presentation, you want it to use this template.

Next on the list of templates are the most recently used, non-Microsoft templates. These templates are listed in order of use. Following these templates are the rest of the templates loaded with PowerPoint. These templates are grouped by color. The basic order for these templates is blue backgrounds, green backgrounds, orange backgrounds, red backgrounds, black backgrounds, and white backgrounds.

Accessing templates

Besides changing the order of templates, PowerPoint 2003 now differentiates between templates delivered with PowerPoint and those you add to your system.

If you go to the "New Presentation" task pane, you will see three sections:

• New
• Templates
• and Recently used templates

If you use any of the first three elements on the New list, you will be selecting from the templates delivered with PowerPoint. If you want to select from a template you have added to your system, you need to click the On my computer item under Templates.

Further, if you click Blank presentation after having chosen a default template, you will not get a blank presentation. You will instead get a presentation whose background and masters are set up as defined in your chosen default template.

One thing to keep in mind…

Just because a template is shown in one color doesn't mean you can't use it in another color. Each of the Microsoft templates still have various color schemes associated with them. What you are really seeing in the template list is the colors that Microsoft believes will be used most often for that template.

Confusing? Yes. Useful? Yes.

While this change seems to be very confusing to the new PowerPoint 2003 user, it is actually quite intuitive once you play around with the new order and options. If you have a template you use all the time, you can set up your default and never change. If you need to find a template, you look at the others of the same colors and pick the one that you like best.

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Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft MVP, PowerPoint and OneNote
Get PowerPoint answers at http://www.powerpointanswers.com

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Kathy is a trainer, writer, Girl Scout, parent, and whatever else there is time for.

I believe life is meant to be lived. But, if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived.