What's New

What's New in PowerPoint

The tools you want, when you want them

The new Microsoft Office for Mac ribbon helps you find the features and commands you want to complete tasks quickly.

You’ll find the commands you already know how to use in an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, right at the top of the application window. Your home base is the Home tab, which holds the most frequently used tools, such as font and paragraph formatting. The tools for other presentation design elements, such themes, transitions, and animations, can be found on their own tabs.

In addition, specialized tools appear on the ribbon when you need them. For example, when you click a picture in your presentation, the Format Picture tab appears. Clicking the tab reveals robust photo editing tools. When you click a text area of your presentation, the Format Picture tab closes, and the tools on the Home tab appear again.

Want to adapt the ribbon to your particular style of working? You can customize it by rearranging tabs and showing or hiding group titles in the tabs.

Read more: Familiarize yourself with the ribbon
Interactive Ribbon Guide: Find where a command is located
Watch video

Make every presentation look professional

The new PowerPoint Presentation Gallery provides professional quality templates that you can make uniquely your own by adding your own words, iPhoto pictures, and favorite themes. Templates make it easy to produce great looking presentations.

The PowerPoint Presentation Gallery displays templates in a large format that lets you see layouts, graphics, and fonts at a glance. And you’re not limited to the colors and fonts of the built-in designs. The color and font menus in the Presentation Gallery provide an array of choices so that you can customize and create a document that reflects your style.

Don’t see what you want? Use the search tool to quickly locate the type of document that you want to create and then preview it with the colors and fonts you prefer without even opening the document.

Sophisticated slide layout made easy

Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac 2011 makes complex slide layout a breeze. You can place a text box, shape, or picture anywhere on the page intuitively and easily. Want that text in front of the picture instead of behind it? The new Reorder Objects tool allows you to move and reshuffle the order of objects on your slide simply by dragging the layers.

Create a multimedia experience

The Media Browser provides handy, instant access to your photos, music, and movies, as well as images such as shapes, clip art, and symbols. The Media Browser integrates with your Mac. It displays photos from your iPhoto or Photo Booth libraries, music from your iTunes playlists, and movies from iMovie, Photo Booth, and iTunes. Add your own pictures and sounds to your presentation with just a click.

Make an impact with transitions and animations

PowerPoint for Mac 2011 offers new, dramatic, silky smooth transitions that will keep your audience riveted on you and your presentation from slide to slide. As you create your presentation, you can view and choose transitions right in the ribbon. Add transitions to one, two, or all slides.

Use animations to jazz up entrances and exits of text and images on your slides. Or apply emphasis effects to draw the eye to important slide content. Animations in PowerPoint 2011 are easier than ever to use. In addition, you can now create motion paths for objects on your slides to follow. You can use the pre-defined lines and arcs, or create your own custom paths.

Retouch your photos

You can edit photos directly in PowerPoint 2011. Click any picture in your presentation to open the Format Picture tab on the ribbon, where you’ll find robust photo editing tools. Enhance and customize graphics by adjusting exposure or by adding color. Apply special artistic filters, crop to remove unwanted artifacts, or remove a background by using the powerful new background removal tool. Use the enhanced offerings of Picture SmartArt to create presentations that convey your unique message. Compress photos to make presentation files easier to send, post, and share.

Organize slides quickly and easily by using sections

You can group slides that share related content into sections. After you’ve inserted sections, you can move whole groups of slides by dragging the section. Sections also create an easy way to assign different parts of a presentation to different team members.

Perfect your presentation

Presenter view helps make presenting easier by providing great tools all together in one place. The notes pane displays your slide notes clearly and helps you to deliver a smooth narration while presenting slides. The clock helps you to begin and end on time, while the timer shows you the duration of the presentation. And the progress bar keeps you oriented so that you always know right where you are in your presentation. Presenter view tools help you stay focused on what’s important.

Presenter view can help improve your skills even before you stand before an audience. Rehearse your presentation, check the timing of slides and transitions, or take notes during a meeting. You can also record a voice-over narration for a presentation that loops continuously, for example, while it plays in a kiosk.

Collaborate in real time

The new coauthoring tools in Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac 2011 make it easy for teammates to work together. Whether you’re separated by an ocean or a dorm room wall, you can compose your own thoughts, see what sections and slides other people are working on, and comment on other authors’ work, all in the same presentation at the same time. You can use collaboration tools to merge changes and review updates from others, so that no one’s work is lost.

You can even communicate instantly as you work, directly from PowerPoint for Mac. When you and your team members have instant messaging accounts (such as Microsoft Lync for Mac 2011 or Microsoft Lync 2010 or the free Windows Live Messenger) you can all see who else is working on the presentation, and whether they are available for an instant messaging conversation.

Access your files anywhere

You know that with your purchase of PowerPoint 2011, you have a professional, creative, and powerful application for the desktop. But did you know that PowerPoint now also gives you access to your documents anywhere, anytime? The Microsoft PowerPoint Web App, an online extension of PowerPoint on your computer, extends your workspace to the Internet. Now, whether you’re in the office, at home, or on the road, you can use Microsoft PowerPoint Web App to easily post, access, edit, and share your documents—all in one place. You can share documents with anyone, anywhere, even if he or she doesn’t own PowerPoint. All you need is a computer with an Internet connection and a supported browser.

From the browser, you can check spelling as you type, apply font and paragraph formatting, and use other familiar tools, such as AutoCorrect. Make and save your changes, and you’re done!

Broadcast to the world

Use PowerPoint for Mac 2011 to broadcast your slide show to anyone, anywhere, over the Internet. (Your audience doesn’t have to have PowerPoint to view your presentation.) You send a link to your audience, and they follow along in their browser while you present. As you move through your presentation, the audience sees the slides change right in their browser.