Mac Customers Get Creative Boost With Chic PowerPoint Designs

July 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Spotlighting style and creativity, Microsoft Corp.'s Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) today announced at Macworld CreativePro Conference & Expo the availability of 17 new Microsoft PowerPoint templates designed specifically for Mac users.

The 17 new PowerPoint templates come in a variety of business and fun themes, such as Schmooze, Showtime, Pressed Leaves and Mimosa, to name a few. The creative backgrounds are now available to download free at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/ and are compatible with both Office for Mac and Office for Windows.

"Our customers worldwide have told us they are looking for new and more-creative ways to share their ideas using PowerPoint," said Jessica Sommer, product manager for the MacBU at Microsoft. "These templates give Mac users a new way to turn their information into captivating presentations that give them the power to make their point in a more exciting, imaginative manner -- whether they're sharing sales data on charts easily imported from Excel, unveiling a new creative concept, or simply bringing their lesson plans to life."

PowerPoint X for Mac, a presentation graphics program designed specifically for Mac OS X, offers unparalleled compatibility in best-of-breed presentation software. Mac users can work seamlessly and effortlessly with their Windows counterparts because presentations created in PowerPoint X for Mac run on both Mac and Windows platforms. Fully integrated with Office v. X applications, PowerPoint X for Mac enables simple importing of tables and charts created in Excel X or documents developed in Word X. In addition, PowerPoint X offers improvements to features that allow users to design graphics with true transparency control and save presentations as QuickTime movies that can be viewed by anyone with the QuickTime Player on any operating system.

"PowerPoint for Mac offers great tools that make creating presentations easy," said Jim Sorenson, business solutions manager for First Tech Computer in Minneapolis. "The new templates should give any Mac user's PowerPoint presentation an extra flair."

PowerPoint X is available as part of the Microsoft Office v. X productivity suite, which also features the Entourage X e-mail and personal information manager, Excel X and Word X, or as a stand-alone version in some markets.

More information about the MacBU and Microsoft Macintosh products is available at http://www.microsoft.com/mac/.

Source: Microsoft Corp.