I bought this book based on the feedback on this page. And although I would not call the book unusable, it has a lot of scope for improvement. The book layout is terrible and there is almost zero cross refrencing in the book itself. Imagine the author does not ask the reader to look in another part of the book for more information. So my verdict is that although the book has good content, it's laid out in a haphazard way.

I love this book. The reason I gave this book 4 stars is because it hopelessly fails trying to get into PowerPoint programming territory. The author should have stayed away from this area and concentrated more on beginner issues. After all, this certainly is a beginner's book. In fact, it's as good as the missing PowerPoint manual. If you want to go beyond the manual, check out the well explained Cutting Edge PowerPoint by Geetesh Bajaj. It makes a great complement to this book. And if you want to do more programming, check out Powerful PowerPoint for Educators by David Marcovitz. And for troubleshooting PowerPoint, look at Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances by Echo Swinford.

I like this book because I found out how to use all the features of the software and it covered many of the topics that were important to me including the fine points of graphic design and tips for delivering the presentation in front of an audience.

I really liked this book since it gives a very good overall features and how to's in adddition to advice on how to deliver a presentation in PowerPoint. With this book, you can create a very professional looking powerpoint presentation in an instant. Easy to navigate through the pages and sufficient amount of images to go along with the step by step instruction.

PowerPoint is a must these days for both college students and professional work and this book is a great buy and the price is right. Makes a good reference book.

I find "How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2000" a great dollar value. The lack of color between the covers is not a loss, especialy at the checkout counter. As a professional I use computer manuals as a quick resource to solve a particiluar problem. This book is well layed out for topical information and the index in not pretend. The index contains adequate sub-references to make it faster to track down solutions to specific questions. Chapter 1: Get Started With Presentations provides the novice to PowerPoint with the hand holding necessary to get up and going.

This book makes it easy to look up the answers to my questions. It is a perfect book for a novice because the directions are so clear and it's great for me as I know lots but need some help in certain areas. I found that help easily. I love the cautions Ellen gives. For example, she gives a caution about being sure the hyperlink color shows up on the slide. All these pointers make it easy for me to help my clients. She's got call out boxes called tips, short-cuts, cautions, did you know's and how to's. There's an excellent chapter on creating charts. I use this as a reference for when my clients ask me questions as well as an update for what's new in PowerPoint 2003. You can only create more effective presentations using Ellen's clear descriptions and easy to follow pointers.