What you saw in my segments of The Office Show was a mixture of old PowerPoint and new PowerPoint 2010 features.

The Design Tab

Changing design to a new look and color is as easy as it looks in the video. In PowerPoint 2007 and above, you can preview changes as you mouse over the icons. You can change them quickly if you were caught in Tina and Laura’s scenario, but often the formatting will be off on some styles. However, you can change the theme color very quickly with no ill effect so no two presentations ever have to look the same. There are at least 20 color changes for each theme design.

See this introduction to themes for PowerPoint 2007.

Working with Images

When working with images (and we have over a hundred thousand free images at Office.com) ...

Our friends at Channel 9 have produced a great series of demo videos about the new features of Office 2010. In this Access 2010 demo, you'll find out how to make the most of your information, even if you aren’t a database expert. Ryan McMinn, lead program manager for Microsoft Access, explains new features like community templates, and shows how you can track, report, and share more easily. For more of Channel 9's Office 2010 videos check out The Office Blog on Channel 9. For more about what's new in Access, check out the Getting Started with Access page on Office.com.

In Part 1 of this Office Show, Tina and Laura used Office 365 to get their dog grooming business up and running with email, calendars and shared documents. In Part 2, they step up their game and create their own website, edit a Word doc simultaneously and set up a customer database in Access. Cool things for sure, but will it be enough to fight their ruthless corporate dog-washing competitors? Watch to find out...

Huge congrats to author Jennifer Egan, whose novel A Visit from the Goon Squad just earned the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Jennifer was a guest of the Office Show late last year, and spoke to us at length about how important PowerPoint was in formulating her book.

A Visit from the Goon Squad features an entire chapter written in PowerPoint, and to hear Jennifer talk about it, it was a key chapter in forming the structure of the book. She also wrote a special blog post for us, detailing her top tips for storytelling with PowerPoint. Since then, her book has racked up dozens of awards and landed on just about every major "top 10" list, but the Pulitzer is obviously the big one. Congratulations, Jennifer!

-- Doug Kim

The New York Times recently came out with its 10 best books of the year list, and on it is Jennifer Egan's "A Visit From the Goon Squad." Jennifer is an amazingly innovative author, and created a chapter of her book entirely in PowerPoint.  Jennifer was featured on an episode on the Office Show recently, and talked about why PowerPoint formed the foundation for her brilliant novel. More on the full post.

In the Office Show Holiday episode, we had to create a "pretty and festive" holiday party invitation really quickly. But you don't have to be a design guru to do the same for your party. Microsoft Office helps you get great-looking results, whether your work hangs in galleries or you can't draw a straight line. Just keep these simple principles in mind:

Some folks look at Outlook as another source of info overload, but here's the thing: Outlook 2010 and the Outlook Social Connector are the most powerful tools you have for mastering all your information streams. Check out the video to see how, and learn more on the full post...