The PowerPoint 2007 Ribbon
One of the most obvious changes confronting any new user of Office 2007 is the lack of the old Menu Bar, where you used to find menus for “File”, “Edit”, “View”, and so forth. These have been replaced in Office 2007 with the Ribbon. Below, the main Ribbon views are displayed and explained, along with a couple of the specialty Ribbon views.
The Home Tab –

This is the tab that you first view when you launch PowerPoint. It’s also where the most commonly used commands are located. As you look at this ribbon (or, indeed, any of them) you’ll notice that the ribbon is divided into various groups. The groups for the Home Tab are:
Clipboard: This contains the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands
Slides: This section allows you to insert new slides (clicking on the “New Slide” button allows you to select the slide type you wish), as well as adjust the layout of your individual slides, reset slides to default, and delete slides
Font: Select your font here. Adjust the font type and size. Make it bold, italic, or underlined. Change the color or highlighting
Paragraph: Bullets or numbered lists. Change the alignment
Drawing: Insert shapes. Arrange objects on a given slide.
Editing: Find, edit, select, and replace text.
The Insert Tab –

When you need to insert anything into your slideshow, this is where you come to do it. The groups available to you are:
Tables: Insert tables into your slide. These can be pre-made, or you can make them as you go. You can also create tables based on data from Microsoft Excel
Illustrations: Pictures, clip art, entire photo albums, shapes, charts, and “Smart Art” can all be inserted with the click of a button
Links: Add a hyperlink, to take you out of your slideshow to a web resource. Add an action to cause something to happen in your slide show if you point to an object with your mouse
Text: It’s not just about typing text into a slide: Insert text boxes, which allow you to play with the location and orientation of words. Insert headers and footers. Turn your text into “Word Art”. Insert date, times, slide numbers, symbols, and other embedded objects.
Media Clips: Insert video and sound into your slide, to create a truly vibrant presenation
The Design Tab –

Adjust the look and feel of individual slides with the contents of the design tab. Change just one slide, or apply your changes to the whole presentation:
Page Setup: Adjust margins, page size, and orientation (portrait or landscape)
Themes: PowerPoint 2007 comes with 20 built-in themes (combinations of color, layout, and font). You can browse the web for more themes, or create your own custom ones.
Background: adjust the background look of your slides by changing the color, or adding special images like watermarks
The Animations Tab –

How do your slides transition from one to the next? This is where you make those decisions. Be as simple or as complex as you like, depending on your topic, and your audience:
Preview: Preview your slide show often, to see how the changes you’ve made affect the flow of the presentation
Animations: How do the objects (text, images) in your slide appear? Do they show up with the slide? Or fade in?
Transition to this slide: Does the slide as a whole fade in when you move from one to another? Is there sound when it appears? Does it appear quickly, or slowly? Does this transition apply only to the current slide, or would you like it to apply to your entire presentation? Do you want the slides to advance automatically on a specified time interval, or would you like to have them move only when you click?
The Slide Show Tab –

See how your slide show works. Run it, and preview it both as a presenter and an audience member, to see what changes you need to make to get it to run smoothly: Start Slide Show: Run it from the beginning or from a selected slide. Or, create a second slide show using only those slides in your presentation you want to use. Set Up: Record narration for your slide show. Practice your timing as you speak while the show’s slides transition automatically Monitors: What screen resolution will you be using? Do you want to have separate views of the slide show for the audience and the presenter?
The Review Tab –
All of the commands in one place that allow you to review the content of your slide. Check spelling, change wording, add comments, and whatever else you might need to do to make your presentation flawless:
Proofing: Check the spelling, scan online research references for more information, find synonyms so you don’t use the same word repeatedly, check the grammar, or change the text into another language entirely Comments: Add or edit comments about a given slide, or about a specific bit of content on a slide. Helpful when planning your narration Protect: Restrict how people can access your presentation. Helpful if the slide show is stored on a shared network drive where multiple people have access to it, or if you’re emailing it around for collaborative or editorial purposes
The View Tab –
Sometimes, it’s helpful to be able to look at your slide show in a format other than the standard “one screen, one slide” view. This is the place to do that: Presentation View: Choose from normal, slide sorter, notes view, handout view, and other options, either for on screen viewing, or printouts Show/Hide: Display gridlines, rulers and other tools to help you place objects into your slides exactly where you want them Zoom: Force your slide to fill a presentation window (computer screen or projection screen) exactly. Or zoom in or out to change the size of your slide window Color/Grayscale: View the presentation in color, grayscale, or even black and white Window: Arrange the windows in which you’re working to help you be more productive Macros: Create and use custom macros to do complex tasks with just a click or two
The Format Tab – Drawing Tools
The Drawing Tools is one of several context-sensitive tabs that only appear in the ribbon when they can be used. They also change depending on what you have selected in your screen. This one is specifically for text box modification: Insert Shapes: Lines, rectangles, equation symbols, arrows and many more shapes are available into which text can be inserted Shape Styles: Specify colors, fill, outline, even special effects for your text box WordArt Styles: Something fun to play with – turn text into art! Change the color, add borders, shading, even reflections. Make your words glow and bevel the edges. Anything you need to do to create perfect, eye-catching text Arrange: Move things around on your screen. Bring certain text boxes to the front, where they can overlap other text boxes Size: Adjust the size of your text boxes. Make them smaller or larger depending on your specific needs
The Format Tab – Picture Tools
Another context-sensitive tab on the ribbon, this one allows you to work with inserted images (photos or clip-art) to achieve the effect you want: Adjust: Play with the brightness, contrast, and other settings to get the image to look just like you want it to in terms of clarity and depth Picture Styles: Like Shape Styles, in the above section, you can play with the shape of the image, add a border, even add special effects. Take a square picture, and change it into a diamond shape to add a bit of surprise Arrange: Bring background images into the foreground, and vice-versa Size: Crop images, and adjust their size, to make them fit your specific requirements
The Design Tab – Table Tools
A third context sensitive tab allows you to work with tables you’ve inserted into your slide. And in this case, because there’s so much you can do with tables, there are actually two context sensitive tabs. The first one allows you to adjust the actual design of the table itself: Table Style Options: add header and footer rows, color the rows or columns to make it easier to read, even shade the first or last columns to make them more obvious Table Styles: add borders, color, and special effects to your tables to make them stand out WordArt Styles: Turn text into art! Change the color, add borders, shading, even reflections. Make your words glow and bevel the edges. Anything you need to do to create perfect, eye-catching text Draw Borders: Adjust the thickness and placement of borders around your table, around rows or columns, or around each individual cell in your table
The Layout Tab – Table Tools
The second of the Table Tools tabs allows you to work within the table itself, as opposed to working with the look of the table: Table: Select specific cells within the table (or the whole thing), or view gridlines on your screen to see where and how things line up within your table Rows & Columns: Insert or remove new rows or columns, and specify exactly where you want them to go Merge: Combine cells into one larger cell, or separate a large cell back into its constituent parts Cell Size: How big do you need your cells to be? Adjust their height and their width Alignment: Center, left or right justify, and align text to the top or bottom of your cell. Which way does the text go in your cell? Adjust the margins of specific cells to make text fit better
Table Size: How big is your table? Adjust the overall size of the entire thing without disturbing the contents Arrange: Bring background images to the front, and move others to the rear