Images: PowerPoint 2007 beta 2

The View tab offers a variety of ways to display a document. The ribbon within Office 2007 presents such options with icons that are larger than in Office 2003 and labels icons with text to help you figure out what they mean.

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The Insert SmartArt feature can turn a bulleted list into a variety of diagrams, such as hierarchical flow charts, matrixes and cycles.

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You'd think that SmartArt would convert a highlighted, bulleted text into a diagram. But no. Instead, you must first type your text within the SmartArt input window.

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If you change your mind about how you want SmartArt and other graphics to look, the Quick Styles galleries let you preview the changes.

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Selecting a slide headline and choosing a new font look from the WordArt Styles menu produced a surprise: PowerPoint didn't apply the changes to our chosen text. Instead, it created a newly formatted version of the headline.

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Picture Tools options within the ribbon's Format tab provide a slew of choices for framing and shaping graphics.

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Picture Styles galleries let you quickly change the border and position of an image.

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To animate your PowerPoint presentation, a gallery of fades, dissolves, and wipes lets you see how effects behave before you apply them.

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Microsoft emphasizes the integration provided between the programs in the Office 2007 system. But it was tough to figure out how to add an Excel chart to a slide in PowerPoint 2007 beta 2. When we chose Chart from the Insert tab, PowerPoint gave us options for creating a new chart.

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Publishing a PDF version of the PowerPoint slide show took about half a minute.

Read CNET Reviews' First Take and slide shows of the beta 2 versions of Microsoft Word 2007, Excel 2007 and Outlook 2007.

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