Hi, I am Echo Swinford, Microsoft PowerPoint MVP and author of Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances. I will be your host for this series, Total Training for Microsoft PowerPoint 2007. If you are ready to create your first presentation or even if you are an old handed PowerPoint and just wanted to get up to speed with PowerPoint 2007, then you are in the right place.

In this series, I will take you to creating a PowerPoint presentation from start to finish. You will learn about themes and schemes which are the foundation for a solid presentation file as well as a ton of new features like picture effects, text effects and quick styles all of which make it easy to create good looking presentations with very little effort. Along the way, we will take our charts, tables, diagrams and even some typical animations.

In this first chapter, we will begin with an overview of the PowerPoint 2007 interface including the ribbon and the Quick Access Toolbar. I promise, we will do hands on stuff in the other chapters but for now, just sit back and let me walk you through the PowerPoint screen so you can get a feel for where your favorite tools are located. So let us get going.