A PowerPoint Glossary

PPTools
Shape Styles brings the power of styles to PowerPoint. Apply complex formatting with a single click
Merge Excel, CSV or tab-delimited data into PowerPoint presentations to create certificates, awards presentations, personalized presentations and more
FixLinks prevents broken links when you distribute PowerPoint presentations
Optimizer saves disk space and bandwidth, shrinks your PowerPoint presentations to the right size for email, screenshow or printing
PPT2HTML gives you full control of PowerPoint HTML output, helps meet Section 508 accessibility requirements
Prep4PDF preserves interactivity in PowerPoint presentations when you convert to PDF
Image Export converts PowerPoint slides to JPG, PNG, GIF, WMF and more

Here's a list of some of the terms you might see used in PowerPoint or by people who work with PowerPoint:

If you don't find what you're after, ask on the PowerPoint Newsgroup. Someone will answer your question there and we'll try to add it here.

The terms are not in alphabetical order because sometimes several related terms share a common definition. Use Ctrl+F to search for the term you need to find

Automation, Code, VBA, Visual Basic, Macro, Object Model, VBE, IDE, Macro Recorder

PowerPoint includes a programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (or VBA). With a bit of knowledge and experience, you can use program code (also called macros) written in this language to make PowerPoint do things automatically for you.

You can use the Macro Recorder to record a set of steps as you perform them manually, or use Alt+F11 to open the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), also known as the Visual Basic Editor (VBE) to edit the macro code you've recorded or create new code from scratch.

PowerPoint "exposes" (makes available to programmers) its objects and capabilities via the Object Model.

Other programs can "drive" PowerPoint and manipulate its object model too, and code in PowerPoint can drive other Office programs; this is called Automation.

Learn more about it here:
How do I use VBA code in PowerPoint?

MCI, Media Player, CODEC

PowerPoint uses media files like sound and movies in sometimes mysterious ways. It may use one of two Windows-supplied programs to play them back. One is the familar Windows Media Player. The other is called the MCI Media Player.

Media files tend to be big. When they're not big, they're huge or humongous. Sometimes bigger than that even. In order to keep thei size down, they're compressed when saving and then de-compressed for playback. The media players use software called CODECs for this. COmpressor DECompresser. Clever, huh?

Contents © 1995-2008 Stephen Rindsberg, Rindsberg Photography, Inc. and members of the MS PowerPoint MVP team. You may link to this page but any form of unauthorized reproduction of this page's contents is expressly forbidden.

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