Macworlds review of PowerPoint 2011 lamented the absence of features found in the Windows version, such as the capability to adjust the starting and ending points of movies, sounds that play in the background across slides, and an advanced timeline for editing a slides animations in a graphical format.

Nearly everything about the massive visual overhaul from the previous version ( PowerPoint 2011 for Mac ) seems clearer, friendlier, and more modern.

Even so, PowerPoint 2016 for Mac still lags behind its Windows counterpartand it also lost a few interesting features that were present in PowerPoint 2011.

New and improved The most obvious change is a nicely redesigned ribbon, which is now nearly identical to the ones in PowerPoint for Windows and PowerPoint Online.

If you knew where everything was in PowerPoint 2011, prepare for a bit of relearning.

Almost every ribbon control is still there, but many have been moved, renamed, and given new icons.

The erstwhile Themes tab is now called Design; Tables, Charts, and SmartArt (among other features) have been subsumed under a new Insert tab, and a number of tabs (such as Picture Format and Table Design) appear only when the appropriate object type is selected.

Although most toolbar icons have been relocated onto one of the ribbon tabs (and also have corresponding menu commands), you can no longer create a customized set of icons for your most common tasks.

A new sidebar (much like Keynotes Inspector) appears on the right side of the window when you invoke certain features, such as the Animation pane (which lists all the animations on your slide), the Format Pane (for editing the attributes of shapes, graphics, and other objectsincluding such previously hard-to-reach settings such as 3D Format and 3D Rotation), and Comments.

Each pane gets its own tab, and you can tear off any tab to make it a floating palette.

I like the way this context-sensitive interface consolidation (along with the streamlined ribbon) reduces screen clutter.

When you open PowerPoint 2016, youre presented with 24 brand-new themes.

Although thats less than half the number of themes in PowerPoint 2011, theres a new twist: each theme has numerous variants.

With one click, you can select a different combination of color palettes, fonts, and background styles for your current theme (but with the same overall design); or you can apply those attributes individually.

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Although the theme chooser displays no templates (basically fill-in-the-blanks presentations, each with its own theme), you can type a keyword in the Search All Templates field at the top to display matching templates, which you can then download with two clicks.

Another noteworthy improvement is better integration with OneDrive and Office 365.

Presentations are now saved to your OneDrive by default, and if you want to use OneDrive for storing and syncing your data, it couldnt be easier.

Unfortunately, unlike PowerPoint for iOS, the Mac version doesnt have native support for Dropbox, iCloud Drive, or other cloud storage services (although you can manually save a file to any folder on your Mac, including Dropbox and iCloud Drive).

Sharing presentations (with or without editing privileges) is much simpler now too, and even someone without a copy of PowerPoint can view and edit your shared presentation in PowerPoint Online.

And people collaborating on a presentation will appreciate the new threaded comments feature.

Other minor new features include a more flexible presenter view, better conflict resolution (for when multiple people make changes to a slide at the same time), and a dozen or so new transitions (matching those in the Windows version).

You can tear off any of these (such as Comments) to make it a floating palette.

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The Help mentions only one of these: you can no longer save a presentation as a movie (you can work around this by using screen-recording software such as ScreenFlow ).

In addition, you can broadcast your slides live using the PowerPoint Broadcast Service, compare two versions of a presentation, or use the Scrapbook to store and reuse text and graphics snippets.

Microsoft Powerpoint 2016 For Mac