   Microsoft Office 97 Intranet Product Enhancement Guide: New
          Features in Detail in Microsoft PowerPoint 97

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New Features in Detail in PowerPoint 97

The following sections contain detailed descriptions of each
feature, as well as screen shots of menus and some examples of
output.

Slide Finder

The number one request from the PowerPoint Wish Line is the
ability for users to quickly find and reuse slides from existing
presentations without browsing vast corporate servers. In fact,
Microsoft usability research shows that 32 percent of
presentation builders reuse slides from existing presentations.
Users can use the new Slide Finder to instantly preview and open
PowerPoint files by keeping frequently used presentations in the
list of favorites. In addition, it allows users to easily browse
slides in others' presentations, and insert specific or entire
sets of slides from these existing presentations.

Slide finder

Every Type of Output

PowerPoint 97 provides users with every type of traditional
presentation output option users still need to be able to
produce slides, black and white and color overhead slides and
handouts, speaker's notes, and on-screen electronic
presentations in meetings and kiosks. In addition, PowerPoint
now supports users who want to deliver virtual presentations
over the Internet.

Intranet/Internet Viewer

Users can save presentations directly to an http or ftp server
and freely distribute PowerPoint Viewers on their servers to
allow those who don't have PowerPoint to view presentations. The
improved PowerPoint Viewer for Windows 95 supports password
protection for delivering presentations in kiosks, and supports
hyperlinks to URLs on an intranet or the Internet.

Home Page Template

Users can use the Home Page option in the enhanced AutoContent
Wizard to step through everything they need to do to create a
personalized home page, complete with image maps and links with
URLs of their favorite Web sites.

Presentation Conferencing

Anyone who has been in a meeting via a conference call knows
that visual aids could make those meetings much more effective.
PowerPoint 97 lets users deliver their presentations over
Windows NT-based networks, and now over the Internet. The
Presentation Conference Wizard walks the presenter through
setting up the connection to his or her audience, no matter
where the audience is located -- across town, in another city,
or another country.

Conference Wizard

Save as PowerPoint Show

One of the most commonly requested improvements to PowerPoint
was the ability to set presentations to launch directly into
Slide Show when activated, instead of launching into Slide View.
PowerPoint 97 makes this possible with the new .pps file format,
which is now supported and available in the PowerPoint 97 Save
As dialog box. Used with Office Web, presentations can be set to
launch into Slide Show (including the Browse and Kiosk Mode
variants) when selected from within another Active Document,
allowing for a greater degree of electronic delivery control on
a corporate intranet.

Browse Mode

Users of PowerPoint are increasingly interested in
presenter-less presentations, where the recipient is expected to
self-navigate through a presentation in the absence of a
presenter. Tools such as Pack and Go, Sound Narration and Save
as HTML Wizard facilitate this kind of use. Historically, one of
the largest barriers to effective use of PowerPoint for
unattended presentations was the lack of an interface during
Slide Show. Recipients not familiar with PowerPoint often had no
idea how to advance the slides in a presentation, or otherwise
navigate the slides. Setting a slide show to be browsed by an
individual invokes a new variant of on-screen presentation
called Browse Mode, where PowerPoint provides a small
menu-driven interface for navigating slides in an electronic
presentation. The result is a much more comfortable experience
for the recipient of the PowerPoint presenter-less
communication.

Save as Web Animation

PowerPoint provides an easy way to create and publish "live"
animations and presentations for more interesting and
interactive Web pages.

Visitors view the special effects and presentations with the
PowerPoint Animation Player, a free Internet browser extension
that instantly runs PowerPoint animations or presentations in a
window on an HTML page.


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