Book Review: “Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 Plain & Simple”

“Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 Plain & Simple“, by Nancy Muir, is a step-by-step walk-through training guide to the latest version of Microsoft’s presentation creation software.

Nancy does an excellent job setting your expectations for the book.  She starts off on the right foot with an introduction as her first chapter, where she sets the roadmap for the book and defines what she is intending to accomplish over the following lessons.  She also clearly defines the prerequisite knowledge she assumes her audience possesses—which is basically that you need to be proficient using a computer.  Nancy extends her clear roadmap by highlighting the goals of each chapter on their respective cover pages.

Each chapter focuses on an aspect of presentation through PowerPoint, and walks you through performing the steps that you’ll need to use its features effectively.  All the steps are clearly illustrated and easy to follow—a big win for the book.  While performing the various tasks under Nancy’s direction, I only found one minor task out of many that did not work as she described.  In general I found her steps to be very accurate.

In addition to teaching you the technical aspects of PowerPoint, Nancy does a great job infusing real world advice into the teachings, so you aren’t just learning how to use PowerPoint; you’re learning how to make effective presentations.

Although the book requires little experience with PowerPoint, I learned quite a bit despite having worked with PowerPoint for many years, including most recently with PowerPoint 2010.

The design of the book as a follow-along training guide and should not be purchased as a technical reference.  After following Nancy through her tutorials I was familiar with the features, in fact so much so that they now feel like second nature.  I also know how to use these features effectively to add value to my presentations—not just add a bunch of star wipes and Comic Sans-esque fonts.