Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office system. Microsoft PowerPoint runs on Microsoft Windows and the Mac OS computer operating systems.

It is widely used by business people, educators, students, and trainers and is among the most prevalent forms of persuasion technology. Beginning with Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft revised branding to emphasize PowerPoint's identity as a component within the office suite. Microsoft began calling it Microsoft Office PowerPoint instead of merely Microsoft PowerPoint. The current version is Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007. As a part of the Microsoft Office suite, PowerPoint has become the world's most widely used presentation program.

Use professional PowerPoint templates

When you choose New from the File menu to begin a new presentation in Office PowerPoint 2007, several resources automatically appear in the New Presentation window (see Figure 1). The Templates pane on the left offers different choices for the type of presentation you might want to create; the center pane displays the list of templates associated with the currently selected left-pane category for starting a new presentation and information from Microsoft Office Online; and the right pane previews the template currently selected in the center pane.

You can start your presentation by clicking one of the template categories on the left and then selecting the template style you want, or you can search for the type of presentation you want to create.

Finding a Presentation Template

• Click in the Search box in the top center of the New Presentation window
• Type a description of the kind of presentation you want to create (for example, sales presentation).
• Click the Start Searching button. If you are connected to the Internet, Office PowerPoint 2007 searches Microsoft Office Online for templates that match the description you entered. The search results are displayed in the center pane.
• Scroll through the templates and choose the one you want. Click Download (if you have selected an online template) or Create (if you want to use a template already on your computer).

  Note In the top of the Search Results window, you ll see a set of buttons that enable you to filter the templates displayed in the results list.
  
  Sort by Most Relevant shows the templates most closely related to the search phrase you entered. Customer Rating enables you to display the templates with the highest number of rating points; Sort By Name lists the templates alphabetically; Show Customer Submitted Templates includes the templates users have sent in as part of the templates displayed; and Hide Customer Submitted Templates suppresses the display of customer-created templates.

Create a widescreen slide show in PowerPoint 2007

1. Click Design Tab > go to Page Setup group > click Page Setup > go to the pop-up Page Setup dialog

NOTES: you should set up your slides to widescreen before you create contents. If you change from standard to widescreen after you have content on your slides, many objects like texts and images will be stretched wider and distort their appearance.