PowerPoint 2013 was a ginormous hit for Microsoft, it had bunch of new features that included new transitions, animations, presenter view & more. The new built in features of PowerPoint 2013 helped the presenter to search content and embed it right within the program without having leave the program to sneak around the internet for a perfect content.
And its almost 3 years passed and its time for the new version of PowerPoint to arrive at the market. Microsoft has publicly announced the new version of Office and its called Office 2016 which is about to release this year, but in mean time Microsoft released a preview version for public that can be tried for free for a period of 175 days or till the time the final release hits the market.
We already explored how to download Office 2016 preview in our earlier article, now its time we review the new PowerPoint 2016.
So What’s New in PowerPoint 2016?
After installing the Office 2016, and opening the PowerPoint 2016 program, we found two new major changes that instantly catches your eyes as soon as you open the application.
1) The color of the start screen is now dark when compared to PowerPoint 2013.
Not just the start screen but the inside color profile is also darken, seeing on the brighter side — this change of color contrast can help the presenter to concentrate on content than on the menu options.
2) There is a search button added in the program with a caption that says ” Tell me what you want to do”. This search box allows you to access options within PowerPoint by just typing in it. For example – if you want to add table within the slide, you don’t have to go to Insert > Table but instead just type in the search bar and you get the options that tenders your need.
This search function is going to be a time saver for the presenters as this will reduce the work time of preparing the presentation. We got to admit that the idea of inserting the quick search box that allows the user to access almost all the features/options inside the program is revolutionary, this amazing feature is indeed going to change a lot of working within PowerPoint and as well the other Office applications.
3) Ink Annotations are made available right within the review section, this feature allows you to add annotations directly on the current slide, in earlier version of PowerPoint this feature was limited to slideshow view but this time Microsoft has pulled it down and made it accessible directly under Review section. You can use this feature to mark, highlight the areas of the slide and use it for collaboration etc.
Other than these three we didn’t find any more new interesting features or changes in PowerPoint 2016. The transitions & animations remain same – no additions or subtractions of them, and the work space is same as the PowerPoint 2013.
That’s the sneak peak of the new PowerPoint 2016 preview. We are not completely sure but we hope to see more new features added in the final release.
Wow, kind of a yawner, eh? I was really hoping for some more interesting transitions. For example, there is one transition that is offered in the Mac software known as KeyNote. The transition is called “Anagram” and it’s way cool.