Creating a Presentation in PowerPoint : Visual QuickProject Guide (Visual Quickproject Series)

Rating:
Summary: A good "first book" for those who have no experience...
Review: If you're new to creating PowerPoint presentations and need something to help you talk through your first one, try the book Creating a Presentation in PowerPoint by Tom Negrino (Peachpit Press).

Chapter list: Introduction; Explore PowerPoint; Write Your Presentation; Gather Image and Sound Files; Pick A Design; Work With Text; Illustrate Your Presentation; Make It Move; Prepare To Present; Deliver Your Presentation; Present Everywhere; Index

If you've done more than three or four PowerPoint presentations on your own, this book won't add much to your understanding. It's in the style of the Visual QuickStart Guides, which means there's lots of full page graphics with text inserts directing you on specific tasks. It's not meant to be a reference guide, nor is it meant to give you the "whys" or a lot of detail. The target audience is someone who wants to get something done quickly without getting bogged down in all the minutiae...

Now given that as the target audience, I think it does pretty well. My wife, who has never done a PowerPoint presentation, immediately latched on to this book and claimed it as her own. Given her background and learning style, she'll find this a perfect book to take into her workplace and try something she hasn't attempted before. My only real issue with the book is that it doesn't talk much about style considerations. When a new person is shown how to make the text dance and shimmer, they tend to think all their slides should do that. But just because you can, doesn't mean you should. I would have liked to have seen a bit of coverage of basic design concepts to prevent new users from going wild with all the features.

For the right audience, Creating a Presentation in PowerPoint will be a good first book to get them started.

Rating:
Summary: Short, well illustrated walkthrough for beginners
Review: This is a step-by-step walkthrough of the basic features of Powerpoint using more graphics than text. Many screenshots are shown with arrows to the relevant buttons and controls. The content is pretty rudimentary; start a new file, pick a theme, create some slides with some transitions. There are some pointers to places on the web were you can find out how to make more effective presentations, but in general the book focuses on the technical how more than how an effective presentation is put together. A solid starting point for very beginning Powerpoint users.