Emily A. Vander Veer - Powerpoint 2007: The Missing Manual

In PowerPoint 2007, help's never far away. In fact, the program gives you a helpful description of just about every item onscreen before you even click itin the form of a screen tip. You can also get help from wherever you are inside PowerPoint by displaying the Microsoft Office PowerPoint Help window.

To get help on a specific button, menu, or dialog box option, first mouse over the option. A good-sized screen tip pops up with a description of the item, and advice on where to get further help ().

Figure A-1. Not every screen tip you see contains a link you can click to get more help, but many do. New in Office 2007, this contextual help system was designed to whisk you directly to help articles describing the thing you're trying to do (instead of the old approach, which forced you to hunt for the right article yourself).

To open the Help window, click the Help icon located in the upper right of the screen (). This icon's always visible in the top-right corner the PowerPoint interface, no matter which tab you're on. Just as in older versions of the product, PowerPoint gives you an alternate way to display the help window: by pressing F1.

Figure A-2. The question-mark icon shown here (the international symbol for help) replaces the Help menu that was included in earlier versions of PowerPoint.

Either way, the Microsoft Office PowerPoint Help window shown in appears. PowerPoint help launches in its own window, which means it doesn't automatically disappear when you go back to working in PowerPoint. (Minimizing the help window and clicking the pushpin icon keeps it handily in sight when you go back to work.)

Figure A-3. PowerPoint lets you access the latest and greatest online help, or just the help files you installed on your computer when you installed PowerPoint. Head to the bottom of the window to change this setting.

In the Search box, type the word or phrase you need help with and click Search. You can also click any of the links in the Table of Contents pane to search for a word or phrase. PowerPoint displays a list of topics and topic-related links in the right-hand side of the Help window. You may have to repeat this step several times to zero in on the information you want.

Out of the box, PowerPoint assumes you want to see online help files, which are more numerous than the ones installed on your computer. You can tell PowerPoint whether you want it to search online help files or not. (Unless your Internet connection is down or is very, very slow, you want to search online.) To do so:

• To tell PowerPoint to access online help files . At the bottom of the Help window, click the down-arrow next to Offline and, from the menu that appears, choose "Show content from the Internet." When you do, Offline changes to Connected, and PowerPoint attempts to access your Internet connection. If it can't get online, you'll get an error message.

• To restrict PowerPoint access to the help files stored on your computer . Click the down-arrow next to Connected and choose "Only show content from this computer." When you do, Connected changes to Offline.

Figure A-4. Figuring out what you can expect when you set an option in PowerPoint can be challenging. Fortunately, many of the options include Help icons you can mouse over to see a meaty description.

Although getting help directly from Microsoft is neither cheap nor easy, you can do it, as you'll see in the following sections.

Because PowerPoint 2007 looks so much different from earlier versions of the program, Microsoft maintains the Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Highlights Web site, which offers a tutorial as well as a well-designed, 12-minute animated demo showing PowerPoint 2007 in action (www.microsoft.com/office/preview/programs/powerpoint/highlights.mspx).

The folks at Microsoft have created several dozen interactive tutorials in PowerPoint, some of which address PowerPoint topics (such as adding animated effects to your slideshow). To see a list of these tutorials, head to Microsoft's Office training center, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training, and search for "PowerPoint 2007."

The Microsoft Technical Communities Web site (www.microsoft.com/communities/default.mspx) is the place to find user groups, technical chats, Web casts, a 24/7-accessible knowledge base, and to find out about PowerPoint-related events and training.

You can also try Microsoft's Help and Support site for PowerPoint, http://support.microsoft.com/ph/2522, which organizes questions (and answers) by topic and lists important security updates you can download to help keep your copy of PowerPoint (and your computer) healthy and virus-free.

If it's creating PowerPoint macros you're interested in, start with the PowerPoint Developer Portal (http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/program/powerpoint/default.aspx), which offers links to a VBA language reference as well as articles written especially for VBA programmers.