A Tale of Two "Points"

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… No, wait – that's the wrong tale!

It was the best of Points, it was the worst of Points…

Today I'm going to talk about PowerPoint, and how the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Slide Library takes it to the next level.
(Note: I originally wrote and published this article on my original blog site when MOSS was first released. It is just as relevant now, so I've decided to repost it here to be seen with fresh eyes.)

PowerPoint presentations are the lifeblood of many a corporate meeting; however, getting a consistent message across has been difficult due to the fact that a PowerPoint deck is one big file. Sometimes, it is one really big file. If you have certain key business information and you want to ensure everyone presenting "gets it right", your choices have generally been limited to providing a "standards" deck, containing all of your company's boilerplate, and making everyone pull out the slides they need; or going through the tedious process of saving each slide or small block of slides individually, then having your users merge each file them into their working presentation.

That can be very difficult, not only because you might have many such standard slides, but it means that the user needs to try to copy and paste them from the base presentation into their working copy, or merge many separate files. Finding just the right slide can be a task as well. Wouldn't it be great if you could just have each slide in its own file, and easily pick and choose which ones you wanted in your presentation? Well, with PowerPoint 2007 and MOSS, you can!

The slide library feature of MOSS allows you to create a repository of standard company slides, that is true, but because it is based on SharePoint, you can do so much more! Your library can include custom fields so you can make it easy to find just the slides you are looking for (e.g. sales figures, company policies, key executive bios), either by search, or by filter. You can separate slides for internal use only from those suitable for public consumption.

Creating a Slide Library

Creating a slide library in MOSS 2007 is just as easy as creating any other type of list or library - just go to the Create page, and select Slide Library:

You will then be asked the normal questions, like what you want to call it, if you want it on the quick launch, etc...

Accessing your library

Once you've created your slide library, you will want to populate it.

Open a presentation that has some slides you wish to re-use. Then, from the Office menu, select Publish, and click Publish slides.

Use the Browse button to select your site and library (and optionally folder), as normal. Now you can pick and choose which slides you want to save in the library, optionally renaming them and giving them new descriptions at the same time!

Now, what about getting the slides into a new presentation? Easy as can be! Open your slide library, tick the boxes beside the slides you want, and click the "Send to Presentation" link. You will be asked if you want to create a new presentation, or insert the slides into an existing one.

You can have the slides retain their original formatting, or assume the format of the target presentation. You can even have PowerPoint tell you if the source slides have changed since you inserted them into the presentation!

Conclusion

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 are both great products on their own, and even greater together. The MOSS slide library brings this integration to the next level. With a final apology to Charles Dickens:

It is a far, far better thing that they do, than they have ever done; it is a far, far better combination they bring than we have ever known…