Oprah's—I mean Crabby's—favorite things: PowerPoint 2010

How could you not love PowerPoint? It's a total package: You get to write, design, add pictures, make movies... It's like a coloring book on 'roids.

PowerPoint 2010 has some very interesting additions and improvements (oops...I said improvements again...). You get a lot more options for how to deliver and distribute your presentations; you gain much more control over how your pictures, charts, graphics, and effects work; and there are some amazing new innovations in the field of collaboration.

Organize your slides into sections

 You can made those large, unwieldy slide decks more manageable and easier to navigate by using sections. You can also collaborate with others to create a presentation by labeling and grouping your slides into sections. For example, each colleague can be responsible for preparing slides for a separate section. And, you can name, print, and apply effects to an entire section.

Take a look at how (and why) you do it

Copy and paste animated effects from one object to another  

You know how much I LOVE the Format Painter, right?  Well, now the Animation Painter allows you to copy animations, similar to how you would use the Format Painter to copy text formatting. With Animation Painter, you can copy animation effects from one object and paste them to another object. No reinventing the wheel each time you need to try to configure your favorite animation all over again.

Read about how to use the Animation Painter.

Turn your presentation into a video  

This is a great way to distribute and deliver your good works. When you want to give a high-fidelity version of your presentation to colleagues or customers (either as an e-mail attachment, published to the web, on a CD or DVD), save it as a video file.

(And you can control the size of the multimedia file and the quality of your video.)

Read about how to turn your presentation into a video

Broadcast your presentation 

Another great way to deliver your message, is to slide show directly to a remote audience by using your Windows Live account or a broadcast service provided by your organization.

 Cool video but if you're more of a READING about it type-o'-learner, follow these instructions.

And finally, don't forget what I already told you (and that got lots of you super hyped up): Turn your mouse into a laser pointer (there's also a video).

Happy Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa, Crabby readers; enjoy family time (and then...you know, find some time for yourself).

Crabby's Find of the Day: On this day, Christmas Eve 1923, President Calvin Coolidge lit the first National Christmas tree (a balsam fir from Vermont that stood 48 feet tall).

— Crabby