Heather A. • Personally, my favorite feature is the picture background removal tool. It's not perfect, or by any means a replacement for Photoshop, but it's very fast and simple to use--good for when I don't have a lot of time for editing pictures.

Jamie G. • For me, it's the new 'hidden' Combine Shapes tool. Couple this with right-click on a shape to Edit Points and this is now a formidable environment for creating custom shapes, very very quickly and easily. If we could just have animation triggers on mouse-over then we would be amazed at what level of interactivity could be created with PowerPoint.

Gary S. • I also love the new background removal, and I do find myself opening Photoshop much less. The combine shapes is also great. I followed the PPT team and addes "Shape Merge" to the home tab which includes the shape subtract, union, intersect, & combine. Another favorite of mine are the new transitions. I would like to see more shapes. Does anyone know a way to add shapes and a place to find more shapes?

Jamie G. • I don't know of any add-in that extends the library of shapes available in PowerPoint but I do know of other add-ins that help create some pretty amazing graphics. Perspector is one of them and there are others here: http://www.powerpointaddins.com/catalog/pageGraphics.asp

Ellen F. • I really like exporting to WMV. I use it a lot. The quality is excellent. One of my clients upgraded just for that feature. I also use background removal a lot and the Combine/Subtract Shapes tools occasionally. Embedded sounds and video and more flexible video (in shapes, laberable, etc.) are also favs.

Echo S. • One of my favorites is the undocumented Lorem Ipsum text. When you need some type to see what formatting looks like, type =lorem() and watch the fake Latin appear! Since I make so many templates, I find this very handy.

Definitely use Combine Shapes a lot. Animation Painter is also essential when I'm doing animated stuff. And Single Document Interface and SmartGuides are both the bomb (but you don't have to do anything special to use either of those).

Here's my big list of new features in 2010: http://www.echosvoice.com/2010_newfeatures.htm It's the most complete one I'm aware of -- it includes a lot of features that I've not seen documented elsewhere.

Tom R. • Echo, great find with the Lorem Ipsum text feature.

Steve H. • Agree with all of the above. It also just seems to work more smoothly together, making it quicker and easier to work with.

Glen M. • The video timeline firing animations with bookmarks. Great for synching presentations, then export to video for high fidelity.

Tayfun U. • My favorite new video features. Specially, perpective shapes and to be able to drag everything above them. It gives too much possibility.

Nolan H. • Thanks Echo for the Lorem feature! I had no idea. Remove background has already saved me countless hours of external Photoshop work. It gets my vote.

Richard I. • I'm a big fan of the animation painter, it makes repetitive animations easy to carry through to other elements.

- -. • There's a new feature called Arrange Objects in PowerPoint 2011. I use it regularly and it's a great time-saver.

Sandra G. • definitely the remove background tool ... works great for a quickie clean up of an image

Terry I. • Just to clarify Echo's tip: you type the following text:

=lorem(3,2)

when you hit return, you will get lorem ipsum text with the number of paragraphs and sentences in each paragraph specified by the numbers that you put in the brackets. There is a rand function in older versions of Word - does the same thing. This is a great tip.

Thanks Echo

Echo S. • No, the aruguments (I think that's what the numbers are called) don't work in the =lorem() function in PowerPoint. They do in rand. So, =rand(3,2) does as you describe. With lorem, though, it is what it is.

In Word, you can use =lorem(3,2) to control the amount, but not in PowerPoint. In PowerPoint it's just =lorem().

So, to further clarify, here's what you can use in PPT:

=rand() this gives you the default 3 bullets with 3 sentences each of "quick red fox" text

=rand(3,2) This gives you 3 bullets with 2 sentences each of "quick red fox" text (you can change the numbers -- first one is number of bullets, second one is number of sentences in each bullet)

=lorem() This gives you 3 bullets with 3 sentences each of fake Latin text

Steve H. • Interesting!... In PPT2010 I'm getting

1 paragraph + 3 sentences from =lorem(1)
2 paragraphs + 3 sentences from =lorem(2)
3 paragraphs + 3 sentences from =lorem(3) or =lorem(4) onwards.

The second argument doesn't seem to do anything.

Echo S. • Oh, how interesting! I didn't know that, Steve! It never even occurred to me to try just one argument. (I was just going by my experience and the fact that the devs told me they didn't enable the arguments in PPT.)

Looks like 3 paragraphs 3 sentences is the default for lorem text but you can actually control the number of paragraphs. Go figure. I love it! Thanks!

Terry I. • I had assumed both arguments (learned new word) worked when I tried (2,3) and (3,3). Never occured to me that second number didn't do anything. Why did they do that? I find that useful in Word. Still, can always use rand.

Heather A. • I didn't realize lorem could take arguments either! Love it! As a PowerPoint trainer, I use lorem all the time! Thanks guys! I love it when I learn something new!!!! [Please note: I've had way too much coffee this morning]