Microsoft PowerPoint 2003

Office PowerPoint 2003 is the presentation graphics application in Microsoft Office, which means it creates slides with bullet-points and nicely decorated backgrounds at the click of a wizard's button. One of the risks with PowerPoint is that all presentations look the same. There's no substitute for custom graphic design, if the skills are available, but Office PowerPoint 2003 does provide a strong collection of professional design templates. You can combine these with one of eight pre-defined colour schemes to vary their appearance. There is also an entertaining set of transition animations to keep the audience awake. Office PowerPoint 2003 makes it easy to add speaker's notes and to print handouts, with complete control over how many slides fit on a page. Multimedia features let you insert sounds, movie clips, or CD tracks during the presentation. It makes giving a polished presentation ridiculously easy, leaving you to focus on what really counts: the content.

Like the other Office applications, Office PowerPoint 2003 is a mature product and there is not a lot new in this version. One important feature is Tablet support. Tablet users can annotate slides as they talk, adding a touch of humanity and immediacy to the blandness of a computer presentation. You can also do this on ordinary PCs using the mouse, but using a pen is more natural. Microsoft has also improved the PowerPoint viewer, with better multimedia support. A new Package for CD bundles your slides with the viewer for easy distribution. Although Office PowerPoint 2003 now requires Windows 2000 or XP, the viewer still runs on Windows 98. Finally, Office PowerPoint 2003 supports Office 2003 Rights Management, which lets you restrict access to specified individuals and document workspaces for team sharing with Windows Server 2003. Overall this is a sophisticated and comprehensive package. --Tim Anderson

Work together better.
Save Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 presentations to shared workspaces where other team members can get the latest version and check the presentations in or out. With shared workspaces you can save task lists, related files, links, and lists of members working on a project. Shared workspaces require Microsoft Windows Server 2003 running Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.
Review with your team.
Create a Document Workspace by using the Shared Attachment option when attaching your presentation in a Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 e-mail message. Your team can then use a task pane in the presentation to collaborate on and review the presentation. Document workspaces require Windows Server 2003 running Windows SharePoint Services.
Control distribution of your presentations.
Protect your company assets by preventing recipients from forwarding, copying, or printing important presentations by using information rights management (IRM) functionality. You can specify an expiration date for a presentation, after which it cannot be viewed or changed. IRM functionality requires Windows Server 2003 running Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services (RMS).*
Stay focused on your work.
Find facts easily without leaving PowerPoint with the new Research task pane. It brings electronic dictionaries, thesauruses, and online research sites into Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 to help you find information and incorporate it into your presentation. Some functionality in the Research task pane requires a connection to the Internet.
Find information related to key words and phrases with smart tags.
Smart tags are now featured in PowerPoint. When a name, address, or other key word or phrase comes up, a smart tag icon appears and provides additional information and a list of actions you can take.
*Note With Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, you can use PowerPoint to create IRM-protected presentations and grant other users permission to access and modify your presentations. You can also apply policy templates to IRM-protected presentations you create. With Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003, you can read IRM-protected presentations; with permission, you can modify them as well.

Improved Features
Broaden your reach.
Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 Package for CD makes it easy to create all the files you need to burn your presentation to a CD and give it to customers. The presentation automatically launches in Slide Show mode when the recipient inserts the CD into their CD drive.
Have more people see your work.
An improved PowerPoint Viewer enables people without PowerPoint installed on their computers to view your presentations. Authors of the PowerPoint presentation can choose to include the viewer for the recipient when saving the presentation to a CD.
Present slides with ease.
The improved Slide Show mode makes it easier to give a presentation, with an improved on-screen user interface (UI) and ink annotation tools—including a highlighter, arrows, and two types of pens.
Add impact with graphics.
In Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, you can access Clip Art and Media on Microsoft Office Online. Select from thousands of multimedia elements—including images, sounds, photos, and animations—to add impact to your presentations. Accessing Office Online requires a connection to the Internet.
Add excitement with custom animations.
High-quality custom animations in PowerPoint can help make your presentations come alive. You can create animation effects such as moving multiple objects simultaneously or moving objects along a path (path animation), and easy sequencing for all of your animation effects, including exits.
Use multimedia to tell the story.
Support for additional file types gives you enhanced capabilities to play video full screen and use playback to stop, start, or rewind your show, or to find content. PowerPoint now supports Advanced Stream Redirector (ASX), Eastman Software's Work Manager for Exchange (WMX), M3U, Windows Media Redirector (WVX), Windows Media Audio Redirector (WAX), and Windows Media Audio (WMA) files. If a media codec is not available, PowerPoint and Microsoft Windows Media Player may attempt to download one.
Mark up slides.
Add notes and illustrations while giving your presentation. If you're using a Tablet PC, you can choose colors and pen types that can help make your comments stand out.
Get started faster.
From the Getting Started and Help task panes, you can access Assistance on Office Online. It provides help and assistance articles that are updated regularly from requests and issues of other users. Some functionality in these task panes requires a connection to the Internet.
Reduce errors and save time.
AutoCorrect can automatically fix common spelling and typing errors, and replace abbreviations with full text.