Some features sound really cool at first, but then finding a use for them in your day-to-day work is difficult or in some cases inappropriate. In those cases upgrading to the latest version just because there is a later version is not always a worthwhile venture.

It’s been close to a year since the public beta release of PowerPoint 2010, and throughout this past year I’ve been amazed by all the new features PowerPoint 2010 has to offer. With 60+ new and/or enhanced features I was quite curious which ones I’d actually use on a day-to-day basis and which ones would fade into the background.

And after looking back over the past year’s presentations, I’m happy to report that there are quite a few features that I actually use on a daily or weekly basis. So, I’ve tallied up those features and compiled my own “Top 10″ list to demonstrate why PowerPoint 2010 is well worth an upgrade.

No. 10: Customize the Ribbon

There are still mixed feelings about the new ribbon interface. Personally, I love the ribbon and feel that it is much easier to locate certain commands. But if you disagree, PowerPoint 2010 gives you the ability to create your own custom tabs filled with whatever tools and commands you use on a regular basis.

For example, I draw a lot of shapes and wanted all commands related to shapes in one tab. So I created a Shapes group with my frequently used shapes (rectangle, oval, triangle, and straight connectors), and an Edit Shapes groups filled with all kinds of editing options including hidden features such as the combine shapes tools. I also created a Format Shapes group, a Move Shapes group, and a Customize section with the Customize the Ribbon button added to it so when using my custom ribbon I realize I forgot to add a command, I can quickly jump to the PowerPoint options window to make my customizations.

But perhaps the best part of PowerPoint 2010 is the ability to Import and Export any Quick Access Toolbar or Ribbon customizations so that you can transfer your custom tabs and commands to other computers.

Click to read more information about how to customize the ribbon in Office 2010.

No. 9: Group Slides into Sections

Another great addition to PowerPoint 2010 is the ability to group slides into sections. And I’ve got to be honest; at first, I wasn’t that excited about sections and didn’t think it would be something I’d use very often. But after forcing myself to try it out on several of my presentations, I’m hooked.

Overall, this is a feature that I find very useful for longer presentations (think 50+ slides), of which I have many. With sections I can navigation the slide deck easily by collapsing or expanding sections from both the slide sorter view (pictured below) and the normal view through the navigation pane.

I can even rearrange, print, or apply themes or transitions by section.

No. 8: Improved Picture Crop

I had been using PowerPoint 2010 for a while before I realized just how cool the picture crop tool is now. You can now easily crop pictures by aspect ratio, a feature which is great if you work back and forth between widescreen (16:9 or 16:10) presentations and the standard 4:3 PowerPoint slide ratio.

Also if you have ever tried to use pictures as a shape background fill or in SmartArt, you may have been bothered by how earlier versions of PowerPoint stretch the images beyond recognition. Well, with PowerPoint 2010 you can now set and customize how an image will fill or fit into a shape.

Selecting Crop → Fill will make the picture cover the edges of the shape, and selecting Crop → Fit will make the picture’s edges fit inside of the shape. Even basic cropping is better. Now, with the crop tool activated, PowerPoint will still display the removed portions, just grayed out slightly — a great feature for seeing both the before and after all at once from one view.

No. 7: Broadcast Slideshow via the SkyDrive

Let’s face it, not everyone has SharePoint, so sharing documents and slideshows with people in other locations is still a bit tricky. Luckily, PowerPoint 2010 gives you the ability to broadcast your slideshow, allowing you to upload your presentation using the free PowerPoint Broadcast Service.

All you need is a Windows Live ID to sign in to send a private URL to remote users via email. And all that your remote viewers have to do is click the link to watch your presentation from most any Web browser.

Click here to view the step-by-step directions on how to save documents to the web with Office 2010 and Windows Live SkyDrive.

No. 6: Insert Video from Online Sites

In previous versions of PowerPoint, inserting video from online sites was a bit tricky and didn’t always work quite as you would expect it to. Now, with PowerPoint 2010 presenters can insert and play video from online sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Revver during a slide show. All you need to do is copy and paste the embed code into the insert video dialog box and PowerPoint does the rest.

NOTE: This does not technically embed the video into your presentation. You will require a high speed internet connection during your presentation to stream the videos.

No. 5: Save Presentation as a Video

For the past few years I’ve been using a variety of third-party applications all designed to convert a PowerPoint slide deck into a video; however, often with these third-party solutions I’d see a drop in quality or a disconnect between my slide animations and audio. With the release of PowerPoint 2010 I was very excited to see the innate ability to create a video and see that in doing so both audio and very complex animations keep their timings and synchronization.

You even have the ability to save in one of three possible sizes:

• Computer & HD (960 x 720),
• Internet & DVD (640 x 480),
• Portable Devices (320 x 240).

NOTE: Resolutions will vary depending on the size of your PowerPoint slides (Design → Page Setup → On Screen Show 4:3 or On Screen Show 16:9, etc.).

No. 4: Combine Shapes Tools

Often in PowerPoint I create my own graphics by drawing and grouping shapes together. Sometimes, however, rather than grouping shapes I always wished there was a way to join shapes or at minimum “cut” one shape out of another shape like you can do in other graphic programs. Well, now with PowerPoint 2010 you can join two or more shapes with either the Shape Union or Shape Combine tools, and even cut shapes using the Shape Intersect or Shape Subtract tools.

But you won’t find this handy tool on the ribbon. You’ll have to manually add this command to either your Quick Access Toolbar or to a custom tab on your ribbon. You can find Combine Shapes in the section “Commands not in the ribbon” from your PowerPoint Options screen (File → Options → Quick Access Toolbar → Choose commands from: | Commands Not in the Ribbon).

No. 3: Animation Painter

As a huge fan of the format painter, I was happy to see that the PowerPoint team decided to add an animation painter tool as well to PowerPoint 2010. Now, just like with formatting, you can copy and paste an object’s animations with just a quick click of a button. This isn’t by far the most exciting new feature, but I place it third in my list mainly because of how much I actually use this feature.

And granted, I do use more animations than the average PowerPoint user does, so my perspective on this feature might be a bit less than universal. But I’ve got to say that the animation painter has saved me a ton of time on the job in preparing presentations.

No. 2: Bookmark and Trigger Audio and Video

Another great new feature in PowerPoint 2010 is the ability to create bookmarks inside media, allowing the presenter to skip or jump to a particular point within the media. But this feature really finds its power in the ability to trigger an animation to media bookmarks, which if you ever tried to sync animations to music you’ll understand why bookmark triggers are so cool.

Unfortunately, this feature is not one that translates well in blog format. So, watch this clip from my PowerPoint 2010 Training course to see what you can do with either video or audio bookmarks and triggers in PowerPoint 2010: Triggering Animations to Audio Bookmarks in PowerPoint 2010.

No. 1: Remove Background from a Picture

By far the most used feature (and therefore my most favorite feature) in PowerPoint 2010 is the background removal tool for pictures. As someone who has been using Photoshop to do exactly this for years, I welcome PowerPoint’s quick and easy-to-use tool.

All you have to do to remove the background is click the background removal tool (located on the Picture Tools | Format tab), which will open up a special tab on the ribbon:

Next, click on the Mark Areas to Remove button and then click on the areas of the photo you want to remove. Alternatively, you can click on the Mark Areas to Keep button and click on the areas of the photo you wish to keep. When finished, simply click the Keep Changes button on the background removal tool’s tab. And if you don’t believe that it is that easy, be sure to watch this tutorial on using the PowerPoint background removal tool.

I hope you enjoyed my very own top 10 list of the new PowerPoint 2010 features.

Where Do You Go From Here?

• For more free Office 2010 tutorials, please visit Train Signal’s Office YouTube Channel.
• For more extensive PowerPoint 2010 training, check out my full PowerPoint 2010 Training course.
• To share your thoughts on these or other new PowerPoint 2010 features, join the discussion Which is your favorite new feature of PowerPoint 2010 on LinkedIn.

But, who wants nice and useful? You want a GREAT PowerPoint presentation and you’re going to get it when you use these Five Top Tips for a Killer PowerPoint Presentation.

Top 5 Tips for a Great PowerPoint Presentations

1. Learn the Product

With most software products, people assume they don’t really know how to use them at first. That leads them to seek out training, or at least read a book or article about the product. For some reason, everyone assumes that they can already use PowerPoint without a single minute of learning about it.

Some of the best features of PowerPoint 2007 are only great when used properly. And, some are only great when used in combination with other features. So, take a look at some PowerPoint 2007 training, or at least grab a manual or book to give you the proper grounding in PowerPoint 2007.

2. Add Powerful Impact with Multimedia

Distracting little animations or videos are obviously not the way to a killer PowerPoint presentation. However, multimedia can be a very powerful way to help get your message across.

One way to ensure that your multimedia is not distracting from your presentation is for it to actually be the presentation. If you stop talking, your audience will automatically turn to look up at the screen and give their full attention to the media on display. Since you’ve paused your speaking, that video can’t be distracting because there is nothing to distract from!

You can easily add video, graphics, and sound to your PowerPoint presentation right from the Insert Tab.

3. Time Your Presentation and Use 2-Screen Presenter Mode

PowerPoint 2007 can actually make you a better presenter, trainer, and speaker. Most people only hit the Slide Show tab just so they can press the From Beginning button to start their presentation. Don’t make that mistake.

The Slide Show tab is packed full of tools to help make the most important element of your PowerPoint presentation better … you!

The Rehearse Timings feature displays your slideshow exactly the way it will display for your audience. You give the presentation like you would if it were really live and PowerPoint records how long you spend on each slide.

This provides two huge benefits. First, it tells you exactly how long your presentation is. We’ve all sat in the audience as the speaker who was doing a great job of making a powerful and moving presentation suddenly sees the clock on the back wall, or checks his watch, and says, “Oh wow, is that the time.” Then, he rushes through the rest of the slideshow, skipping slides to make up time and throwing out the gist of it as he goes.

What was persuasive is now lackluster and rushed. The worst part of it is that most presentations build up to something, so the most important parts are the parts now being skipped. With Rehearse Timings, you’ll never be that guy because you know that your full presentation takes 43:22 to deliver.

The other great feature of Rehearse Timings is that you can “Use Rehearsed Timings” to deliver your presentation. PowerPoint remembers how long you spent on each slide when you were rehearsing and duplicates the timing for your presentation. This is amazingly useful for two common scenarios.

The first is when something goes wrong with the remote (doesn’t it always seem to at the most important presentations) and you can’t easily click to advance the slides. You end up trapped by the laptop which throws off your flow and worse impairs your ability to connect with the audience.

In this case you can use the rehearsed timings instead. It won’t be perfect, but it will be better than the alternative.

The other great way to use rehearsed timings is for keeping you on schedule. If you are the keynote speaker, no one will say anything when you go over by four minutes. But, when you are one of fifteen speakers giving a ten-minute presentation before an important board, you’ll be given the hook before you can deliver the powerful finish.

By using your rehearsed timings that work out to exactly ten minutes, you’ll stay on track by noticing the slide changes and increasing your pace to keep up.

Also, use the two-screen presentation mode to have one screen for the audience with your carefully crafted and clearly designed slides, and another for you with speaker’s notes, and even that clever little joke you want to use to warm up the audience.

No more being that speaker who is clicking two laptops during his presentation, one for him, and one for them.

4. Use Themes and Templates To Keep Your Slides Consistently Powerful

Be a speaker at enough events and sooner or later you’ll be working with a one-hundred slide presentation when you notice that it would all look so much better with a darker background, or a slightly different font. Of course, making that change on all those slides without messing up the elements that were already deliberately different is a lot of work, so much so that you might not make the changes and just go with the “good enough” slides.

Not anymore. While PowerPoint has had templates for a while, the concept was that instead of starting from a blank slate for each slide, if you had the same starting place for each slide that would create consistency. That worked as long as the concept and design stayed the same from start to finish.

With PowerPoint 2007’s implementation of themes, there is a whole new ballgame. When themes are applied to items in your presentation they conform to the theme as you might expect. But, the power comes when it is time to make a change. When you change a theme, PowerPoint applies the theme to all the slides in the presentation.

Fonts, colors, even bullet types are all switched over with the click of the mouse. Now, when you notice a powerful new color to use, you can just use it.

5. Tell Them Your Points, Show Them Your Proof

Reasonable people will listen to others when it comes to hearing new ideas and thoughts. But, as the old-timers say, “I’ll believe it when I see it with my own eyes.”

The weak link in most PowerPoint presentations is a fundamental misunderstanding of how to use the tool for persuasion. Don’t use your slides to “sum up” what you are saying. Rather, use your slides to show your proof.

If you are going to say that sales are at an all time low, don’t put a bullet on a slide that says “Sales at all time low.” Instead, show sales at an all time low. They’ll remember that better than any bullet point with text and as an added bonus, they’ve seen the proof with their own eyes.

If your graph shows sales going back to 1919 and this year is lower than any other there isn’t any doubt. No one will walk back to their office thinking, well 1979 was pretty bad, it can’t be worse than that, because they will have seen this year underneath even 1979’s dismal year.

Use the powerful features in PowerPoint to deliver your proof, and your presentations can’t help but be anything other than killer presentations.

But, that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of ways to turn a regular PowerPoint presentation into a nightmare PowerPoint presentation.

In hopes of saving you, and more importantly, your audience, the terrors of some of the worst PowerPoint presentations, I present the ways to make your PowerPoint presentation the Worst PowerPoint Presentation Ever!

Top 5 Worst PowerPoint Mistakes

1. Reading Your Slides To The Audience

• Is your audience a formerly undiscovered Amazon rain forest tribe? If so, you may want to ask if PowerPoint is really the right tool. If not, then chances are they know how to read.
  
  It is actually possible to listen and read at the same time, while it is not possible to talk about something else, while reading out loud at the same time. That means that your audience will have already read whatever is on your slide before you do. Don’t make your audience re-hear what they have already read.
  
  Use your slides to emphasize or prove your point, not to deliver them.
• Take advantage of PowerPoint 2007 innovative new two-screen display to put presenter view on your monitor and the slide show view on the main monitor. Put your notes and what to read aloud on the presenter view.
  
  You’ll sound more knowledgeable when you can cite something that isn’t up on the slide and.

2. Infinite Clutter

• PowerPoint 2007 streamlined new interface puts features that used to be buried in the menus front and center. That makes it easier than ever to add graphics, videos, animations, fonts, WordArt, sounds, graphs, boxes, bullets, colors, backgrounds, transitions … Whew!
  
  With all of the great new features (and some old ones you might have just never used before) it is very easy to clutter up a slide with so much wiz and bang that your audience will never be able to absorb it all, let alone appreciate your point.
• Use the PowerPoint Slide Rule of 3+1+1. You can have up to 3 different elements on any one slide plus one “background” item plus one flash item.

3 — Unless you are showing a picture, text is going to be one of those three. Now, you have two left. Bullets, numbers, graphics, another font, another color of text? The choice is yours, but only up to three total elements.

1 — Only one background item is allowed, so make it count. Want a colored background? OK, you’re done, move on. Want a pattern instead, great, but that’s it. No animated GIFs on top of patterns on top of colors on top of …

1 — One and only one piece of flash. What’s flash? Anything that makes your slide “neat.” If it makes your point, then it goes with the 3. If it isn’t an integral part of the presentation and it isn’t a background, then it’s flash. Animations, sounds, videos, and so on are almost always flash. How to find out? If you stop talking to see or hear the element on the slide, then it is not flash. If it is just there while you talk, then its flash.

3. Transitioning to Transitions With Transitions Until The Transitions Are Transitioned

• Perhaps no single element has doomed more PowerPoint presentations to the annals of eye-rolling lameness than slide transitions.
  
  Invented as a way to keep your audience from getting bored with the same old thing over and over again, many a PowerPoint presentation instead became a guessing game where the audience paid more attention to how the slides left and arrived than they did to what was on them.
  
  PowerPoint 2007 makes this temptation even greater with more transitions, and easier customizations.
• Stick to a single transition for each section of your Presentation. For any professional presentation that is not deliberately funny stick with Not Transition, Left to Right, Right to Left (Wipe and Push), and Fade Smoothly.
  
  All other transitions are officially banned from professional presentations. Any use of dissolve or any of the spinning/rotating transitions is grounds for guffawing out loud. Never, ever, use the customization to slow down a transition unless the next slide is supposed to be a surprise (accompanying drum roll is preferable).

4. Worthless Graphics, Images, Graphs, WordArt, SmartArt, etc …

• PowerPoint 2007 comes loaded with tons of amazing ways to jazz up your presentation with high impact visuals. Just make sure they are high impact and not highly annoying.
  
  If every presenter who ever put a cute little kitten, or a funny(?) cartoon, or a “neat” picture on the slide with the company’s fourth quarter numbers was simultaneously hit in the head at the same time, the earth might actually come off its axis. Do not, under penalty of mockery, use unrelated visuals on your slides just to “give them some flair.”
• Make your images count. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, take advantage. Always use graphical elements as “proof.”
  

• Have a slide about deforestation? Show a picture of a clear-cut forest. Have a slide about how important it is to read to children? Show a picture of a happy child being read to. Have a slide about how the Marketing budget is up 23% this year? If you put a picture of a kitten hanging off of a string with the words, “Hang In There” on it, we all hope your project bulb burns out and you get a lot of paper cuts.

5. Auuurrrrrggggghhhh, I Wish I Was Color Blind!

• A woman once remarked that she would never date a man if he wore a brown belt (or shoes) with black pants because it meant that no one had ever loved him enough to save him. The same can be said of many PowerPoint creators.
  
  I once asked a colleague why he chose to deliver a 45 minute presentation with red, cursive style, text on a neon orange background. He said, “Because before this presentation, no one had ever seen that before, so they’ll definitely remember it.”
  
  I’ve never had a fire ant trapped under the eyelid before either, and while I am sure I would always remember it, I don’t think that would be a good thing.
• Fortunately, PowerPoint 2007 comes stocked with Themes and color schemes to allow even the most color-challenged make compelling PowerPoint presentations. If you don’t know why purple text on a lime green background is a bad idea, then for the love of all that is good, please, please, please stick to the supplied themes and color schemes, there are plenty of them to keep it “new.”

While much of the functionality remains essentially the same, there are some intriguing new features available for both slideshow presenters and those who create them.

Here are some of the best new features:

1. The PowerPoint Ribbon

Like all Office 2007 products, the most noticeable new feature in PowerPoint 2007 is the ribbon interface.

Microsoft’s updated replacement for the familiar menu with toolbar combo, puts more features than ever just one or two clicks away instead of checkboxes accessed from deep within the menu structure. So, users who need a special effect or other tool can access it much more easily and more quickly.

One difficulty with the previous menu bar was the necessity of trying to shoehorn commands into certain menus in order to maintain consistency, while at the same time avoiding so many menus that it became confusion. Gone are the days of trying to remember if what you were trying to do fit under Edit, Insert, Format, or Tools.

Thanks to the new ribbon interface, familiar cross-product commands like New, Open, Save, and basic formatting are all under the Home tab, while the rest of the tabs can be more specific to PowerPoint. You’ll never have trouble finding the menu to add animation again!

Plus, managing the color scheme of your presentation has never been easier.

2. Slide Masters

Have you ever put together a beautiful hour-long presentation complete with appropriate company logo and disclaimer on every slide only to get feedback from your boss that it’s great, but it should use the new logo with the company slogan on it?

Thanks to slide masters, one single change can replace that logo on ever single slide, and make sure it gets added or updated to every slide that comes in along the way from the local offices.

Slide Masters allow for certain elements to be made part of the “template” while making other areas editable for each slide. So, common elements can propagate throughout the presentation without restricting the dynamic nature of individual slides.

3. Powerful New Formatting

WordArt is great, but too much can be overwhelming. But if you stick with the basic 5 fonts and a little bold and italics and you have a snooze-fest waiting to happen. Fortunately, PowerPoint 2007 comes with more formatting features. Small Caps, Strikethrough, and even Underline with Color are all available without any hoops to jump through.

Also making a welcome appearance in PowerPoint 2007 is paragraph formatting. Nothing makes a slide look just a little “off” like the inability to format paragraphs. In older versions, you had two choices, make a phony break by adding another bullet, or let the disclaimer have the same line spacing as your clever multi-line quote.

In PowerPoint 2007, there is not only real line spacing but also columns, vertical text alignment, and even text direction so you can have that information about things moving up, actually reading up.

4. Improved WordArt

WordArt has been around for several versions of MS Office, but it has always been most robust inside of Word. Previous versions of PowerPoint allowed for some WordArt, but without its full power. Unfortunately, with the number of PowerPoint presentations the average person sees, even the most creative uses of WordArt start to look repetitive.

Not anymore! PowerPoint 2007 comes with a pretty much fully loaded implementation of WordArt. Now, not only are there more WordArt choices, but you can customize them to your liking with gradient fills, shadows, and more.

5. Better Graphic Tweaks

Microsoft calls it SmartArt. You’ll call it not having to do all of your arrows and direction affects in PowerPoint. SmartArt exists primarily to help visualize flow and ordered lists. In PowerPoint of old, your only hope was clunky arrows, varying font sizes, or a background that suggested the proper movement.

In PowerPoint 2007 there are all manner of flowing graphics from circular arrows for "cycles", to pyramids, to actual hierarchies. No more importing that scanned image of the company org chart onto your slides.

Another nifty new feature involves picture-based effects like shadows, reflections, and even rotation.

6. Presenter View

Those who actually have to give presentations in front of a live audience will love the new presenter view.

The presenter view allows for one screen to have just the slides that the audience is supposed to see, while the other screen has all of the talking points, notes, and even a preview of what the next slide is for the person giving the presentation.

No more standing in front of 200 of your colleagues while you say, “And, I think on the next slide we’ll see some …”

7. SharePoint Integration

For companies using Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration software, PowerPoint provides tighter integration with that platform. Slide Libraries allow for PowerPoint presentations to be shared among multiple users. While people have been sharing PowerPoint files for years, Slide Libraries add a new level of functionality.

When a user downloads a presentation from a slide library, it maintains a link to the original. If that presentation is updated, then the user is notified of the new version automatically when they open PowerPoint. There is no need to check and see if you have the latest version, because PowerPoint (via SharePoint) checks this for you.

Even better, if you use just one slide in another presentation, that one slide also maintains the link to the SharePoint Library ensuring that the slide remains continuously up to date. This type of functionality is perfect for sales professionals, trainers, and anyone else who needs to ensure that updated facts and figures are always included in their presentations.

For example, a salesperson giving a series of presentations over the course of a month could automatically update the pricing slide to reflect mid-month price cuts without having to manually check and edit the figures. Pretty neat huh?

Summary

Microsoft PowerPoint was already pretty much the only way people create and present electronic presentations any more. But, Microsoft has included some great new features to an already robust set that make creating and delivering interesting and useful presentations even easier.

This is one of the questions I asked Heather Ackmann, the instructor for our brand new PowerPoint 2007 Training, in my interview this week.

Heather explained what her new training is all about and what most people don’t know about the popular presentation tool (I bet you don’t know it either).

What I learned from talking to Heather is that PowerPoint is more than a presentation tool, and Heather’s PowerPoint training is more than PowerPoint training.

So whether you use PowerPoint or not, and whether you do presentations or not — check out my interview with Heather Ackmann.

More Than PowerPoint Training …

Kasia: A lot of people would say you don’t need training to learn PowerPoint because it’s so easy to use, what do you say to that?

Heather: I would have to say that that very attitude is why PowerPoint has gained such a bad reputation as a program, earning the pithy phrase “death by PowerPoint.”

The PowerPoint team at Microsoft has built an absolutely amazing tool with limitless potential and possibility; however, the average user to PowerPoint isn’t aware of PowerPoint’s hidden potential because they’ve never really seen it used beyond what’s available through the stock templates.

Don’t get me wrong — templates are a great timesaver. But if your goal is to create something that is unique, something that will wow your audience, then you will have to get more creative, step out of the predesigned PowerPoint box, so to speak, and spend a bit more time playing around with some more advanced features.

Kasia: What’s one important (or cool) thing that the average user doesn’t know about PowerPoint?

Heather: PowerPoint isn’t just for speaker-led presentations anymore. There are so many things you can create with it: certificates, timelines, count-downs, information kiosks, self-running movie-like shows … the possibilities are endless. In fact, I’ve designed my course around that, demonstrating how to create four different kinds of presentations.

Kasia: How has PowerPoint and presenting with PowerPoint changed in the last few years?

Heather: PowerPoint presentations change right alongside fashion, meaning slides that “looked good” a few years ago simply look old-fashioned, maybe even somewhat cheesy now. So staying on top of slide design is a never-ending battle.

On a program level, PowerPoint has evolved into a more visually friendly application. For example in years past if users wanted to edit a photo a certain way, they’d have to export that photo to another program like Photoshop to achieve the desired look. Now, however, with PowerPoint 2007’s new picture tools and styles many users do not need another photo editing tool. With a little ingenuity and know-how, you can really make those PowerPoint tools do anything!

Kasia: What is the coolest trick you teach in your new PowerPoint training?

Heather: That’s hard to choose. The coolest thing I think we make throughout the course is actually in one of the bonus videos where I show students how to create a “Flash-style” presentation synced to music. That file in and of itself contains a lot of really cool “tricks.”

Kasia: Who do you think would benefit the most from watching your PowerPoint videos?

Heather: Anyone who wants to learn more about not only how to use PowerPoint 2007, but how to use it effectively and efficiently.

The first section of the video “Creating a Rhetorically Designed Presentation” takes students through a bit of theory (rhetoric, visual design, and learning styles) that can be applied to any style presentation. The exercises that follow in later videos put all that theory to work.

So, I think the course is beneficial for both beginning or advanced users to PowerPoint, as I don’t just talk about PowerPoint.

Kasia: There’s lots of training and books on PowerPoint out there, what makes your training different from the competition?

Heather: First, my course goes beyond the basic “how-to” line of training. I try to give students the skills necessary to make good choices about designing a presentation to meet the needs of their audience.

And I don’t pretend that there’s “one method” that will work for every situation either. Instead, I give students a starting point by exploring some theoretical basics and show them how to incorporate those principles through the use of several scenarios, just to show them how it’s done.

Kasia: I know you have years of teaching experience, but how did you become a PowerPoint expert?

Heather: Well first let me say that I wasn’t always an expert. In fact, in preparation for this course, I looked through some of the presentations I created as a beginning teacher — they were just terrible! So let me take the time to apologize to all my students from Waukegan High School; I am so sorry I subjected you to such torture!

I’ve been using PowerPoint for well over a decade, but I didn’t become what I’d call “an expert” until about three or four years ago. Honestly, it took a lot of time and practice mainly because I didn’t have a course like the one I made to teach me. “Trial and error” was how I learned.

I remember I was giving a presentation in graduate school and I couldn’t get the videos to display through the projector even though they played just fine on my laptop. And like a lot of other people, I first blamed the technology. But when the sting of embarrassment wore off, I decided it was probably just human error and decided that I should really learn how to actually use PowerPoint.

And even now, though I know what every button does in PowerPoint, I still don’t know how everything could be used. I’m always learning new creative tricks and techniques all the time, which is one reason why I love the program so much. There’s a lot of creative control to the application, if you are willing and have the time to be creative.

Kasia: Tell us something about yourself, something most people don’t know about you.

Heather: Well, I was born without a sense of smell (congenital anosmia) and blog about my non-smelling experiences over at neversmell.com. It’s a strangely rewarding little hobby. I get emails all the time from people who had no idea that there were other people out there who couldn’t smell.

One teenager emailed me saying that she cried when she found my website. Apparently, her parents didn’t believe that she couldn’t smell (that’s very common by the way) and were giving her a pretty hard time about “lying.”

Kasia: Heather, thanks for taking the time to talk to us about PowerPoint and congrats on the release of your new training.

About Heather Ackmann

Heather Ackmann is an accomplished instructor who has taught over 4,000 students at the high school, college, and adult levels.

Specializing in computer applications, writing, and literature, she holds a degree in English and Secondary Education, an Illinois Type 09 Initial Teaching Certificate, and is a Microsoft Certified Master for Office 2003.

While her energetic and easy-to-follow style is ideal for beginners to computer applications, her knowledge, thoroughness, and foresight in potential problems will satisfy the more proficient user.

On the left you can see Heather in her Halloween costume as “Death by PowerPoint” — and below you can check out her training so that death by PowerPoint never happens during your presentation.

Give Your Presentations an Edge with PowerPoint 2007 Training

No more “Death by PowerPoint”!

Learn how to design effective presentations that engage, entertain & communicate to ANY audience

Create attractive and professional slides and several different styles of presentations to fit your unique needs

Master special effects — flash-like animations, hyperlinks, hover actions and much more — that will wow your audience!

Learn more about PowerPoint 2007 Training and watch a demo now!