Microsoft PowerPoint 2002

Other products by Microsoft

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00005B0C4
• Item model number: 079-01391
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 30, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,243 in Software (See Bestsellers in Software)

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  Software > Business & Office > Presentation

• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review
Included as part of the Microsoft Office XP suite of applications, Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 is also available as a standalone product. Users of earlier versions of Microsoft's PowerPoint presentation software will slide right into creating slides, but still will notice the handy new features that have been added to this application.

A welcome addition is the print preview function, a painful omission from earlier PowerPoint iterations. Now you can see on paper how your slides will appear without having to go through a trial-and-error print process.

Even without the rest of the Office XP suite, PowerPoint 2002 allows users to collaborate on projects, and there are a number of new features in this area. When a presentation is sent to another user for review, the appropriate tools are already turned on. When it returns, the owner can automatically merge the reviewer's updated version with the original. Presentations can also be password protected, allowing reviewers to view the slide shows and add comments, but not be able to edit the file. And digital signatures can be attached to presentations for added security in shared environments.

Some of the more noticeable changes appropriately lie within the slide-creation process. PowerPoint 2002 allows users to apply animation effects and transitions to an entire presentation with a single click. You can also use more than one design template within a single presentation, so you don't have to rely on the same theme for an entire slide show. It also lets you merge two slide shows that use different templates.

PowerPoint 2002 is still point-and-click, drag-and-drop easy for slide creation. You can copy and paste multimedia files into slides (now with support for more file types and larger files). This latest version of PowerPoint also lets you view thumbnails of your slides in a pane on the left side in the normal view (paired with the outline pane, which contains just the bare information).

On the right side, the task pane houses recently used templates and tools, making it much easier to choose the layout for slides as well as add animations and transitions. Another nifty touch: Microsoft incorporated anti-aliasing (a graphics technology most often used in games) to smooth out fonts.

When PowerPoint was first released, it didn't come with a standalone viewer, meaning users without the latest version of PowerPoint wouldn't be able to view your presentations. Microsoft has since updated their free PowerPoint Viewer 97 to allow it to view 2002 PowerPoint presentations as well, although some advanced features in 2000 and 2002 slide shows are not supported in the viewer.

Users of PowerPoint 2000 may not find enough incentive to upgrade to PowerPoint 2002, but if you're still making presentations with even earlier versions of PowerPoint, this is the one that you need to click over to. --J. Curtis

Product Description
PowerPoint 2002 empowers users to discover and use more of the existing functionality in the application. When thus empowered, users gain the confidence to try new things and ultimately create more effective presentations. This goal is achieved via new tools such as Task Panes and Smart Tags, which are shared throughout the Office suite. They help users take advantage of the functionality of the application. In addition, PowerPoint 2002 features improved technology for working with diagrams, drawings, pictures, text, and printing.

PowerPoint 2002 lets users spend their time working on their presentations rather than worrying about their software. For example, in the past, if an error were to occur, it was likely that users would have had to spend a significant amount of time recreating their work. With the new reliability features in PowerPoint, users can continue to work even in the unlikely event of an error. Furthermore, a variety of security enhancements have been included in PowerPoint to help users feel more secure when working with their presentation.

Users can also share and collaborate on presentations with others via the Web. As a result, users will be able to work more effectively on presentations with their team members, regardless of where they are located. PowerPoint now includes a whole new way of reviewing presentations with others that takes away the difficulties associated with integrating multiple, disparate presentations. It also includes the ability for users to access the Web to broadcast live or recorded presentations around the world.

PowerPoint provides multinational organizations and multilingual users with a better experience when working the application. This includes a variety of improvements such as improved administration of languages, additional language-proofing tool support, and a variety of user-interface improvements.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good product, ridiculous price, and there's no point., December 1, 2002

By	"mark39407" (Vancouver, WA) - See all my reviews

My last contract was with a subsidiary of Microsoft so they gave me MS Office XP, including PowerPoint. I didn't have to shell out the bucks for it. And it's a nice product. There's a little too much autoformatting but it's reasonably easy to say no, stop that, keep it normal. And Clippy doesn't come up.

But before that contract, and since then because I'm used to them, I've used StarOffice and OpenOffice.org. I've used them both and am really impressed, there's actually an alternative to Microsoft Office that's FREE. Well, OpenOffice is free and StarOffice which has a few other files so they charge you a bit for them. But they both open PowerPoint and Word and Excel files, and save back to those formats too, and 9 times out of 10 they do it perfectly.

I've done lots of presentations, including animation and linking to URLs, etc., in OpenOffice and it's really good. FREE really good software. So I don't see why anyone needs to get this product.

A few key things in OpenOffice.org -- different layouts, so you can look at it as a regular slide, handouts, outline, and in background and layer views too. I've done some great backgrounds since the drawing tools let you put really small gifs or vector graphics in the background once and it doesn't inflate your file size. Plus the file sizes with OpenOffice.org are spectacularly small. I opened up my PowerPoint presentation for a contract, opened it in OpenOffice.org, and the file size was suddenly half as big and it looked just the same as it did in PowerPoint.

So basically, here's the deal. I'm really happy doing all my work now in OpenOffice.org instead of PowerPoint, and while I'm not a power power power user I definitely put it through its paces.

Download OpenOffice.org before you get PowerPoint, or get StarOffice if you feel like you should pay for your software. PowerPoint ain't your only option.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nice, but worth the money? Get OpenOffice.org for free, November 29, 2002

By A Customer

It's a lovely product; aside from a little too much automatic formatting, it does what I want it to. However, A) my employer bought it for me and B) I don't do much with it. And everything want to do with it, OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) does for me. So I don't see the point. Openoffice opens PowerPoint files, does lots of slide type features, and unless you need to do really spectacular effects, you should be fine with the FREE OpenOffice suite.

You can try StarOffice too; it costs a little more than free but way less than PowerPoint.

OpenOffice has some pretty cool three D drawing effects included, plus all the standard slide effects and object effects for sucking in bullet points from the side, etc. You can print handouts, notes, all that stuff.

Try OpenOffice.org before you spend your car payment on PowerPoint!

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good, but StarOffice Impress is as good or better, January 26, 2003

By A Customer

I've been using Ppt for a while but not anymore. Before I upgraded, that is when I was considering upgrading, I downloaded OpenOffice.org, the free version of StarOffice, and I was blown away. It opened all my PowerPoint files, and it has most of the same features. I use Impress all the time now, whether my clients need Impress or PowerPoint file formats. Does'em both.

Try Impress first, from the OpenOffice.org or StarOffice office suite.