Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program byMicrosoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS Xoperating system. PowerPoint is used by business people, educators, students, and trainers. Beginning with Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft revised the branding to emphasize PowerPoint's place within the office suite, calling it Microsoft Office PowerPoint instead of just Microsoft PowerPoint. The current versions are Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 for Windows and 2008 for Mac. In late 2009, Microsoft released the beta version of Microsoft PowerPoint 2010. The original version of this program was created by Dennis Austin and Thomas Rudkin of Forethought, Inc..[1] Originally designed for the Macintosh computer, the initial release was called "Presenter". In 1987, it was renamed to "PowerPoint" due to problems with trademarks, the idea for the name coming from Robert Gaskins.[2] In August of the same year, Forethought was bought by Microsoft for $14 million USD ($26.8 million in present-day terms[3]), and became Microsoft's Graphics Business Unit, which continued to further develop the software. PowerPoint changed significantly with PowerPoint 97. Prior to PowerPoint 97, presentations were linear, always proceeding from one slide to the next. PowerPoint 97 incorporated the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) language, underlying all macro generation in Office 97, which allowed users to invoke pre-defined transitions and effects in a non-linear movie-like style without having to learn programming (or even having to be aware of the existence of VBA). PowerPoint 2000 (and the rest of the Office 2000 suite) introduced a clipboard that could hold multiple objects at once. Another noticeable change was that the Office Assistant, whose frequent unsolicited appearances in PowerPoint 97 (as an animated paperclip) had annoyed many users, was changed to be less intrusive.[citation needed] PowerPoint presentations consist of a number of individual pages or "slides". The "slide" analogy is a reference to the slide projector, a device that can be seen as obsolete, within the context of widespread use of PowerPoint and other presentation software. Slides may contain text, graphics, movies, and other objects, which may be arranged freely on the slide. PowerPoint, however, facilitates the use of a consistent style in a presentation using a template or "Slide Master". The presentation can be printed, displayed live on a computer, or navigated through at the command of the presenter. For larger audiences the computer display is often projected using a video projector. Slides can also form the basis of webcasts. PowerPoint provides three types of movements: Supporters say that [4][5][6] that the ease of use of presentation software can save a lot of time for people who otherwise would have used other types of visual aid—hand-drawn or mechanically typeset slides, blackboards or whiteboards, or overhead projections. Ease of use also encourages those who otherwise would not have used visual aids, or would not have given a presentation at all, to make presentations. As PowerPoint's style, animation, and multimedia abilities have become little more sophisticated, and as the application has generally made it easier to produce presentations (even to the point of having an "AutoContent Wizard" (discontinued in PowerPoint 2007) suggesting a structure for a presentation), the difference in needs and desires of presenters and audiences has become more noticeable. The benefit of PowerPoint is continually debated.[7] Its use in classroom lectures has influenced investigations of PowerPoint’s effects on student performance in comparison to lectures based on overhead projectors, traditional lectures, and online lectures. Not only is it a useful tool for introductory lectures, but it is also has many functions that allow for review games, especially in the younger grades. There are no compelling results to prove or disprove that PowerPoint is more effective for learner retention than traditional presentation methods.[8] The effect on audiences of poor PowerPoint presentations has been described as PowerPoint hell. Although PowerPoint has the aforementioned benefits, some argue that PowerPoint has negatively impacted society. Many large companies and branches of the government use PowerPoint as a way to brief employees on important issues that they must make decisions about. Opponents of PowerPoint argue that reducing complex issues to bulleted points is detrimental to the decision making process; in other words, because the amount of information in a presentation must be condensed, viewing a PowerPoint presentation does not give one enough detailed information to make a truly informed decision. A frequently cited example is Edward Tufte's analysis of PowerPoint slides prepared for briefing NASAofficials concerning possible damage to the Space Shuttle Columbia during its final launch[9]. Tufte argues that the slides, prepared by the Boeing Corporation, had the effect of oversimplifying the situation, and provided false assurance that the ultimately fatal damage to the shuttle was only minimal. Tufte argued: Tufte concluded that: The language, spirit, and presentation tool of the pitch culture had penetrated throughout the NASA organization, even into the most serious technical analysis, the survival of the shuttle.[9] A review of Tufte's book, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint can be read online. [10] Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010 has been updated in many ways. The ribbon feature, which was first introduced in the 2007 version, is also incorporated in Office 2010. Screen Capturing is also a new feature to PowerPoint which allows users to embed screen captures directly into PowerPoint. Another feature that has been introduced in Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 is background image removal. This is a feature which eliminates the use of using photo editing software for the same purpose of removing background images. Artistic Effects is another image based feature which was exclusive to Photoshop and has now been included within PowerPoint application. Users can now add artistic effects such as ‘Pencil effect’, ‘Cartoon effect’, ‘blur effect’, ‘Black & White effect’ among many other effects to any of your image inserted in PowerPoint. The Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer is a program used to run presentations on computers that do not have Microsoft PowerPoint installed. The Office PowerPoint Viewer is added by default to the same disk or network location that contains one or more presentations you packaged by using the Package for CD feature. The PowerPoint Viewer is installed by default with a Microsoft Office 2003 installation for use with the Package for CD feature. The PowerPoint Viewer file is also available for download from the Microsoft Office Online Web site. Presentations password-protected for opening or modifying can be opened by the PowerPoint Viewer. The Package for CD feature allows you to package any password-protected file or set a new password for all packaged presentations. The PowerPoint Viewer prompts you for a password if the file is open password-protected. The PowerPoint Viewer supports opening presentations created using PowerPoint 97 and later. In addition, it supports all file content except OLE objects and scripting. Versions for Microsoft Windows include: Versions for the Mac OS include: Note: There is no PowerPoint 5.0, 6.0 or 7.0 for Mac. There is no version 5.0 or 6.0 because the Windows 95 version was launched with Word 7. All of the Office 95 products have OLE 2 capacity — moving data automatically from various programs — and PowerPoint 7 shows that it was contemporary with Word 7. There was no version 7.0 made for Mac to coincide with either version 7.0 for Windows or PowerPoint 97[11][12]. The binary format specification has been available from Microsoft on request, but since February 2008 the .pptformat specification can be freely downloaded.[14] In Microsoft Office 2007 the binary file formats were replaced as the default format by the new XML basedOffice Open XML formats, which are published as anopen standard. Nevertheless, they are not complete as there are binary blobs inside of the XML files, and several pieces of behaviour are not specified but refer to the observed behaviour of specific versions of Microsoft product.
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Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 in Windows 7Developer(s) Microsoft Stable release 14.0.4760.1000 (2010) / April 15, 2010 Operating system Microsoft Windows Type Presentation License Proprietary Website Microsoft Office PowerPoint 
Microsoft PowerPoint:Mac 2008 running on Mac OS X 10.5Developer(s) Microsoft Stable release 12.2.3 Build 091001 (2008) / November 15465655656 Operating system Mac OS X Type Presentation License Proprietary Website Microsoft PowerPoint: Mac 2008 Contents
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (April 2010) [edit]PowerPoint Viewer
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Filename extension .ppt, .pptx, .pps, or .ppsxInternet media type application/vnd.ms-powerpointUniform Type Identifier com.microsoft.powerpoint.ppt[13] Developed by Microsoft Type of format Presentation [edit]See also
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