14 DAY TRIAL // Organize and manage your slides the easy way. Get a unique overview of your presentations. Zoom is an elegant application that will get all your slides in one place and will enable you to assemble new presentations.
Every computer user is familiar with the slideshow term. Slideshows are a great way to put together presentations, regardless of the field you work in or study. Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most popular software that allows you to create and handle slideshows. While it offers users endless possibilities to customize the slides, there’s always room for more.
This is where Zoom comes in. It’s most appealing features reside in its capabilities to offer you a generalized overview of your presentations and what’s more, makes it easy to organize slides by labeling them and assemble new slideshows from existing ones.
The app comes in two editions: Home and Business. The Home edition is free of charge for personal and academic use. If you intend to use it for commercial reasons or for work, it comes at the price of $79.90.
Zoom requires a generous amount of your system resources, about 1 GB of RAM, 2 GB being the recommendation from the developer. The application also requires Microsoft PowerPoint, for launching presentations from inside the program, and Microsoft Outlook, if you intend to use the emailing feature.
Zoom’s interface is awesome. The modern, stylish look works like a charm from the moment you see it. There are no complicated menus, everything is made accessible from the main window of the application. Here, you’ll come across two panels: the left one is the slide organizer, that allows you to search and label your slides and the other one is the place where your slides will be listed.
To add presentations to your workspace, users will need to access the Configuration panel and select the folders to be watched. This is possible by clicking the little configuration icon in the upper right corner of the main window. Zoom is able to list presentations from multiple folders and can handle up to 50 000 slides, so you can go wild on the number of slides.
As soon as you’re done specifying the folders that contain your slides, the application will begin to display them in the main window. Now would be the best time to start exploring the possibilities that the program has to offer.
The left panel of the program is the part responsible for organizing your slides. This is the place where you can search for slideshows containing a certain text string. From this panel, you can also view a complete history of the slideshows you worked with for the past 30 days. One of the most appealing features that you’ll find here is the labeling capability. Labels allow you to organize your slides in a comfy way, enabling you to put your own signature on the presentations.
For instance, you can create a different label for each project you’re working on or you can categorize the slides by topic, theme, product or whatever works for you. You can add a new label by right clicking on its designated section in the left panel. Once you created the desired label, applying it is a breeze. Just right click on a slide and the context menu will do the job for you. Also, labeling can be done for multiple slides at once, by selecting a bunch of them using the CTRL button and the mouse. Therefore, you can label entire presentations without much fuss.
The Unlabeled section, as suggested by its name keeps track of all your slides that remained uncategorized. You can always tell if a slide is labeled by the small etiquette that shows up whenever you label one of them. Hovering the mouse over it will show you the name of the label that particular slide belongs to.
Since we’ve slowly moved to the viewing panel, this is a great time to mention a few quick tips and features that you’ll quickly grow fond of. First of all, you’ll notice that the slides are numbered and on each of them there is a little information icon. If you’ll have the curiosity to roll the mouse over it, you’ll notice that the application displays an information window that lists slide properties, such as: last date when it was edited, author, slide notes and labels.
A more comfortable way to view this type of information is by double clicking on a slide. The pretty window that will pop up allows you to browse through the slides and offers you a relevant preview of your presentation.
The major drawback of the application is that you cannot edit even the smallest detail in your slideshows. Though the software allows you to open presentations from inside the main window, slide editing can only be done from PowerPoint. For future developments, this feature could significantly add to the program’s value.
The application probably gets its name from the built-in zoom feature, accessible from the upper panel of the main window. Drag the little purple button to increase the view of your slides. This way, you can get a general overview of the content and looks of your presentations.
There’s still a lot more to this application than zooming. As mentioned before, the app doesn’t come with complicated menus, but that doesn’t mean its functionality is in any way decreased. Right clicking on a slide will reveal a few other utilities aside from the labeling feature discussed above. From here, you’ll be granted the possibility to edit and run presentations in PowerPoint instantly. Timewise speaking, this is a useful function, as it saves you the effort of locating the slides manually and opening them.
Zoom also catches your attention with what is fair to say, a unique feature. It’s got the means to locate similar slides from different presentations. Whenever a duplicate slide is found, it will automatically be listed only once in the Label section. Additionally, a new icon will be added to the slide, similar to the information and label icons. A small mouse movement on it will show you how often and in which of the slideshows that particular slide appears. If you ever need to edit one of these slides, you’ll be prompted to select only one of them for any adjustments you’d like to make. As soon as you modify its content in PowerPoint, that particular slide will no longer be categorized as duplicate in the Labels section.
You can also use Zoom to print and email slideshows or to export presentations to PDF format. We saved the best for last, so now it’s a good time to mention the assembling function brought by Zoom. The “New Slide Deck” option allows you to select files from different presentations and join them in a completely new slideshow. If you’re more comfortable with drag & drop, Zoom will comply. You can drag one or more slides in the New Deck area and save them as a new presentation.
The process of saving the new project takes a relatively fair amount of time, depending on the number of slides that you included in the first place. During assembling your new slideshow, Zoom displays a status bar, but no time estimation. In any case, the whole thing will be over before you know it and you’ll be able to enjoy the newly created presentation.
The Good
Zoom makes quite the slide organizer. It turns slide managing into an accessible and pleasant job. It allows you to label them, print, email and create new presentations in a few clicks. It’s got just the right look and feel and most of all, its simplicity recommends it.
The Bad
Zoom could turn into a really awesome app if it came with a few editing features. At least slide note editing or a few slide effects of its own would make it a great asset. The application is a little demanding on the system resources, especially during the slide indexing process, when the processor usage peaks at about 10% with a RAM consumption of up to 250 MB (tested on Intel Dual CPU T2410 with 2 GB of RAM). However, while performing ordinary operations, such as labeling or saving presentations, it settles for 25 MB of the system RAM.
The Truth
At this stage, Zoom seems to be in need of a few functions, but until further developments are made, it’s still worth looking at. It can turn into a convenient access point for all your slides, regardless of their size or location. Though it may not seem like much at first, you’ll think differently once you start exploring each and one of its functions. It’s the little things that leave a greater impression.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action: 
