Saving Your Work Part 4 in PowerPoint 2010

Tip If you consistently want to save in a different format from PowerPoint 2007, choose File  Options and click Save. Then, choose a  different format from the Save Files in This Format drop-down list. This makes your choice the default in the Save As Type drop-down  list in the Save As dialog box.

Not all of the formats are available here; your choices are PowerPoint Presentation (the default), PowerPoint Macro-Enabled Presentation, PowerPoint Presentation 97–2003, and OpenDocument Presentation. Table 3-1 lists a lot of choices, but don’t let that  overwhelm you.

You have three main decisions  to make:

 PowerPoint 2007/2010 format or backward-compatible with PowerPoint 97–2003. Unless compatibility is essential, go with the  newer format because you get access to all of the new features. (See Table 3-2 to learn what you’ll lose with backward-compatibility.) If  you use a backward-compatible format, some of the features described in this book work differently or aren’t available at all.

 Macro-enabled or not. If you plan to record and store macros, use a macro-enabled format;

if not, use a file format that does not include macro support, for a slightly safer file (because a file cannot carry viruses if it can’t carry  macro code). 

Regular presentation or PowerPoint Show. The ‘‘show’’ variant starts the presentation in Slide Show view when it is loaded in  PowerPoint; that’s the only difference between it

and a regular presentation. You can build your presentation in a regular format, and then save in show format right before  distribution. PowerPoint shows can be opened and edited in PowerPoint the same as any other file.

Most of the other choices from Table 3-1 are special-purpose and not suitable for everyday use.

The following sections explain some of those special file types.

Saving Slides as Graphics If you save your presentation in one of the graphic formats shown in the Graphics/Other section of Table 3-1,  the file ceases to be a presentation and becomes a series of unrelated graphic files, one per slide. If you choose one of these  formats, you’re asked whether you want to export the current slide only or all slides. If you choose all slides, PowerPoint creates a new  folder in the selected folder with the same name as the original presentation file and places the graphics files in it.

Tip The Picture Presentation format, new in PowerPoint 2010, does something unique: it converts each slide to an image, and then  places the images in a new presentation file. This is one way to make sure your slides are not edited by anyone who uses the  presentation.