(This post, originally published in 2010, announced the availability of the PowerPoint 2010 Viewer. This post remains incredibly popular because so people find the Viewer to be a useful tool. We're republishing it so readers of our blog can find and use it, too.) I’m excited to announce that our new PowerPoint Viewer is now available here for free download . By installing the PowerPoint Viewer, you can open and watch PowerPoint presentations in all formats, no matter what computer you’re...

Yesterday Microsoft announced that the Office team has reached the technical preview engineering milestone for Microsoft Office 2010.  We now kick-off the Technical Preview program mentioned in our June 25 th posting.   The big effect that this will have on the PowerPoint Team Blog is that the team can start talking publically about what we’ve been working on over the past two-plus years.  As you can imagine, it is a very exciting time! Over the next few months, the blog will...

Do you have questions about Office 2010? Want to learn more about Windows 7?  For the first time ever, MVPs from both Windows and Office have come together as a collaborative group for a special live chat. This event is a great opportunity to tap into the vast knowledge of these industry professionals who are regarded as the best in their field. All levels of experience are welcome from beginners and students to intermediate power users. PowerPoint MVPs Glenna Shaw and Echo Swinford will be...

It’s exciting times for us here on the PowerPoint Engineering Team! Whiteboard brainstorms that began three years ago are now real live features, which are fully functional and ready for a test drive in the PowerPoint 2010 Beta !  As we pass this milestone, I thought it’d be fun to share the inside scoop as to how one of our features, Video Triggers , came to be… Video Triggers is a feature with which one can mark locations in a video (i.e. set bookmarks), and then trigger animation sequences...

In Office 2007, we significantly improved the rendering quality of static content. Users could quickly and easily enhance shapes, pictures, and other content with effects such as bevels, soft edges, and reflections. For Office 2010, we switched our focus to enhancing dynamic content - animations, transitions and video. To accomplish this, we rebuilt the core rendering engine using DirectX 9.0. As a result, you’ll notice that PowerPoint 2010 is improved in four major ways: Improved Slide Show Performance...

PowerPoint seems to be everywhere. It's often the first thing that people think about when they have to create a presentation, which is great from our perspective - but is it for you?

Do you know how to quickly create a solid, engaging presentation with PowerPoint?

Do you know how to unlock PowerPoint's more advanced features?

Do you know how to use PowerPoint to leave your audience inspired and impressed?

If your answer to any of these questions is "no", the PowerPoint blog can help. We'll serve up how-to's and tips for experienced presenters and novice presenters alike.

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PowerPoint has a lot of great pre-set shapes, but sometimes what you really need is a tailor-made shape for your presentation. If you’re looking to go beyond the Freeform Tool and create more complex custom shapes, there's a feature called Combine Shapes in PowerPoint 2010 that helps you do just that!  It uses the principles of Boolean Geometry, to help you create new shapes by combining multiple shapes in one of four ways: Union, Combine, Subtract, or Intersect.

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Over the years, PowerPoint has gone through a number of graphic improvements. Our goal is always to provide the best environment for you to visualize and communicate your ideas. At the beginning of this release, we looked at how advancements in motion graphics have transformed visual storytelling in broadcast TV and movies. We knew we wanted to bring the same capabilities to presentations. For PowerPoint 2010, we are making the biggest visual update to Slide Show in nearly a decade. PowerPoint's...

  Technical Preview Program PowerPoint fans and community, we’re excited to announce that the PowerPoint team will be taking applications to participate in the Office 2010 Technical Preview program. We will be sending out a limited number of invitations to download and install the Office 2010 Technical Preview in early July. For you, this is a first opportunity to experience the new, exciting features that we’ve been working on in PowerPoint. For us, this is an opportunity to get valuable feedback...

One of our pillars for PowerPoint 2010 has been crafting a multimedia experience that allows users to effectively harness the storytelling power of audio and video content. With improvements in bandwidth, computing power, and media devices, we’re seeing media – particularly video – used in all walks of life to enrich communication. We’ve gotten a lot of feedback on PowerPoint’s video capabilities over the years, and we’re very excited about the features we’re rolling out in 2010 to make this experience...