Project 2010 courseware is now available for download from CustomGuide. For a look at the table of contents, and a preview of some courseware lessons, view our Project 2010 title page.

Waiting for online learning? Work on Project 2010 online learning is currently in progress; look for the complete online learning course this spring.

PowerPoint has a lot of nice tools for creating and designing slides. But if you’ve never had training to be a designer, it can be frustrating to try to figure how to use these tools to create good design. You know it can be better, but how to do it?

Here’s a quick tip that can make an immediate impact: use the Rule of Thirds to layout slides. According to the rule of thirds, an image is most pleasing when it is organized along imaginary lines that divide the image into thirds. This rule is used by photographers to compose photos. Notice how points of interest appear at the intersections, and the horizon follows the top line.

You can set up guides in PowerPoint so you can follow this design tip in your own slides. Here’s how:

Click the View tab on the Ribbon and click the Guides check box in the Show group. By default the guides are arranged to the center of the slide. To rearrange them and divide the slide in thirds, just click and drag the guides. To add a guide, press and hold <Ctrl> as you click and drag.

A grid overlay appears on the slide, so that you can organize the slide into thirds. (The guides appear for all slides in the presentation.) For example, we’ve taken this slide, which doesn’t follow the rule of thirds, and then rearranged the items at focal points along the intersections of the lines, instead of just in the middle.

As you can see, simply rearranging the slide has made it much more interesting. And now you have the design tip you’ve been wanting for making your slides (and photos) better.

It’s Thanksgiving time, and as you go about your usual Thanksgiving rituals, take a moment to think about things you’re thankful for in your own office. It might be a colleague always able to lend a hand or a word of advice, or a boss who is truly interested in seeing you succeed. And though it’s not really tradition to be thankful for your computer, you have to admit it’s nice to have great business tools and applications. Just think: can you imagine doing your work without Microsoft Office? Sure, it’s not always perfect, but where would you be without it? So with that in mind, here are some Office features to be thankful for:

1. The Ribbon
   Yes, it was widely panned. Yes, it seems bulky and cartoonish sometimes. But admit it; it’s not that bad. In fact, you even kind of like it because the layout makes it easier to find commands, and the screen tips are really useful. Time to ‘fess up: thanks for the change, Microsoft.
2. Conversations in Outlook
   Isn’t it great to see all the messages together in one place? And to be able to see messages you’ve sent in context of the others in your Inbox: priceless.
3. Cool graphics tools
   It’s true that working with graphics and images can still be dicey at times. That whole business with the drawing canvas is particularly irritating. But oh, the wonderful things you can do with images in your documents and slides. You can add some really nice borders, artistic filters, and fun effects like shadows that really do take things to the next level. Having the tools to make eye candy is a glorious thing.
4. Office for Mac
   Have your pumpkin pie and eat it too.
5. Excel
   Who doesn’t love Excel? Can you imagine a business world without it? Definitely something to be thankful for.

What would you add to the list? Let us know!

Enjoy your friends and family this weekend!

We’re excited to announce the release of yet a new courseware title: Outlook Web App courseware is now available from CustomGuide! Outlook Web App provides mobile access to e-mail accounts on an Exchange server and is very useful to workers on the go.

For a sample or to view the table of contents, view the title page on our web site.

Stay tuned for more information on when our Outlook Web App online learning course is available.