To Upgrade or Not to Upgrade?

Many of you have probably recently made the switch or are considering the switch between Office 2003/4 and Office 2007/8, featuring the new version of PowerPoint.  I’ve recently done so myself and after spending a good amount of time with the new version I’ve got a few pointers that I thought you’d find useful:

The Pros:

• Formatting Palette: Instead of having all of your formating options on the bottom of your workspace or in your traditional menu tabs, most of your options are now conveniently placed to the right of your work space. With this new tool, you can easily make changes without having to search through your options. The formatting palette changes options as well, with each different object you select, for instance photos have a different selection of options than do shapes. Another great thing about this is that many more of the lessor used items are now prominently available and easy to use, such as the distribution and sizing functions.
• Quick Styles: If you’ve been waiting for the ability to make “web 2.0-ish” looking graphics for your presentation, you’ll love these. Quick Styles provide a myriad of options, based on your chosen color palette, for treating shapes with just one click. No more wandering through dialog boxes to add just the right amount of reflection, rotation, etc. You also now have the ability to add reflections, glow and 3D-effects. One improvement I can see here however is the ability to have more control over the amount of reflection that is added. Either way, a great and very useful addition.
• Masters: Traditionally, there were only a few different masters slide layouts available by default. Now, your default master comes with eleven different layout options. So you can easily create different layouts for different types of slides, minus the headaches.
• Table Styles: With the old version of PPT, you’d often find yourself spending valuable time changing coloring and styles of your tables to help make them easier to read and distinguish. Now, PPT has done this all for you. Similar to Quick Styles, this function is based on your color palette and provides you with 20+ table layouts to chose from.
• Smart Art: Do you ever find yourself looking for inspiration to make a diagram a bit easier to understand? With Smart Art, there are seven categories (list, process, cycle, hierarchy, relationship, matrix and pyramid) of art choices which are easily laid out and all you have to do is enter the text. This functionality makes it very easy to add a new level of professionalism to your deck.
• Animations: With this version, animations are much easier to control. Especially with audio/video automations. You can now control all you actions in one easy to access place. Even though much of the functionality is the same, it’s much easier to access and apply.

The Cons:

• Speed: Or, lack thereof as it may be. This version of PPT runs much much slower than the 2004 version. And, although there are many more bells and whistles (changing formating palette, graphic treatments, etc) sometimes it’s just not worth it. The program also even has trouble keeping up with the speed of your typing.
• Graphs: Instead of using the old graphing tool, all graphs are now created using Xcel. And while, some may consider this to be a blessing, you’ve then got two separate programs running, even further slowing the actions. The graphs tend to turn out well and have more options in the formating realm. But, this causes a huge problem if you’re working on the deck with someone who has an older version of PPT or vice versa. You can no longer edit the graphs between 2003/4 and 2007/8. Big bummer.
• File Type: Office 2007/8 will automatically save your new files as .pptx or .docx or .xlsx. This means they can only be opened by other 2007/8 versions. Also a huge bummer when working on a document with someone who may not have the new version. Or even worse, if you just want that person to review the doc. There is an option to “save down” however, there are “compatibility reports” that you need to now pay attention to. See, many of the new functions that are so great about the 2007/8 version are non-functional in the older versions.
• Compressing file size on Mac: I just recently ran across this problem and it’s a disappointment. I work on a Mac most of the time and on the 2008 version, the options for reducing files size aren’t as good as they are on the Windows version. In Windows, you can right click any photo, select compress image and a great dialog box pops up. This allows you to select compress this image, or every image in the doc and to delete all cropped sections of images. Which, as you can imaging saves you the hassle of editing photos in another program. In this new version for Mac you’re only allowed to reduce the quality of the images, not delete the cropped areas. And while, it helps a tiny bit, that function really saves when emailing docs back and forth.

Overall, I’m happy with my decision to upgrade. Especially because you aren’t required to delete your old 2003/4 version when you install 2007/8. This means that you will still be able to use the functionality form your old version as well as make edits to your old decks without much hassle. The cons take a little getting used to but the pros make up for most of them. If you’ve had any other experiences, pros/cons, etc. that you’ve run across while making the switch, please leave your comments below.

Another Great Idea From Seth Godin

I was just reading Seth Godin’s blog, which is always packed full of great insights and ideas. He had an idea on a recent post that I wanted to share with you. As you know I’m always on the lookout for great places to find images and photos to use in presentations. Seth recommends searching Flickr, the photo sharing site by Yahoo!. Through their advanced search feature, you can choose to look only at images licensed under the Creative Commons License. With thousands of images being uploaded daily, your options are unlimited. Take a few minutes and browse your favorite category. You’ll be surprised at how many “perfect fit” photos you’ll find