Editing Microsoft PowerPoint (section)

===U.S. military excess===
Use of PowerPoint by the U.S. military services began slowly, because they were invested in mainframe computers, MS-DOS PCs and specialized military-specification graphic output devices, all of which PowerPoint did not support.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Gaskins |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Gaskins |title=Sweating Bullets: Notes about Inventing PowerPoint |year=2012 |publisher=Vinland Books |isbn=978-0-9851424-0-7 <!-- hardcover ed -->|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RC_5OCQQJ7YC |access-date=September 5, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170624031005/http://www.robertgaskins.com/powerpoint-history/sweating-bullets/gaskins-sweating-bullets-webpdf-isbn-9780985142414.pdf <!-- webpdf ed --> |url-status=live |archive-date=June 24, 2017 |pages=428–433 |quote=PowerPoint got off to a very slow start in infiltrating the military forces of the world ... .}}</ref> But because of the strong military tradition of presenting [[:wikt:briefing|briefings]], as soon as they acquired the computers needed to run it, PowerPoint became part of the U.S. military.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Gole |first=Henry G. |date=1999 |title=Leadership in Literature |url=http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/articles/99autumn/autessay.htm |journal=[[Parameters]] |volume=29 |issue=3 |pages=134–150 |issn=0031-1723 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170918224109/http://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/articles/99autumn/autessay.htm |url-status=live |archive-date=September 18, 2017 |access-date=September 18, 2017 |quote=In the 1990s, the outward signs of form over substance are field grade officers grinding out slick PowerPoint briefing charts ... .}}</ref>

By 2000, ten years after PowerPoint for Windows appeared, it was already identified as an important feature of U.S. armed forces culture, in a front-page story in the ''Wall Street Journal'':<ref name="WSJ-Jaffe-2000">{{Cite news |last=Jaffe |first=Greg |date=April 26, 2000 |title=What's Your Point, Lieutenant? Please, Just Cut to the Pie Charts |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB956703757412556977 |url-access=subscription <!-- but archive is ungated --> |department=A-Hed |newspaper=Wall Street Journal |issn=0099-9660 |edition=US |page=A1 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6ta1rPrxK?url=https://filetea.me/n3wWd80E7jUQBunx1dNjWUTBg |url-status=live |archive-date=September 18, 2017 |access-date=September 18, 2017 |df=mdy-all }}</ref>

{{Blockquote|Old-fashioned slide briefings, designed to update generals on troop movements, have been a staple of the military since World War II. But in only a few short years PowerPoint has altered the landscape. Just as word processing made it easier to produce long, meandering memos, the spread of PowerPoint has unleashed a blizzard of jazzy but often incoherent visuals. Instead of drawing up a dozen slides on a legal pad and running them over to the graphics department, captains and colonels now can create hundreds of slides in a few hours without ever leaving their desks. If the spirit moves them they can build in gunfire sound effects and images that explode like land mines. ... PowerPoint has become such an ingrained part of the defense culture that it has seeped into the military lexicon. "PowerPoint Ranger" is a derogatory term for a desk-bound bureaucrat more adept at making slides than tossing grenades.}}

U.S. military use of PowerPoint may have influenced its use by armed forces of other countries: "Foreign armed services also are beginning to get in on the act. 'You can't speak with the U.S. military without knowing PowerPoint,' says Margaret Hayes, an instructor at National Defense University in Washington D.C., who teaches Latin American military officers how to use the software."<ref name="WSJ-Jaffe-2000" />

After another 10 years, in 2010 (and again on its front page) the ''New York Times'' reported that PowerPoint use in the military was then "a military tool that has spun out of control":<ref name="NYT-Bumiller-2010">{{Cite news |last=Bumiller |first=Elisabeth |date=April 27, 2010 |title=We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html |newspaper=New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |page=A1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100427191554/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html |url-status=live |archive-date=April 27, 2010 |access-date=September 19, 2017}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan. ... Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making. Not least, it ties up junior officers ... in the daily preparation of slides, be it for a Joint Staff meeting in Washington or for a platoon leader's pre-mission combat briefing in a remote pocket of Afghanistan.}}

The ''New York Times'' account went on to say that as a result some U.S. generals had banned the use of PowerPoint in their operations:<ref name="NYT-Bumiller-2010" />

{{Blockquote|"PowerPoint makes us stupid," Gen. [[James Mattis|James N. Mattis]] of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. [[H. R. McMaster]], who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat. "It's dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control," General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. "Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable."}}

Several incidents, about the same time, gave wide currency to discussions by serving military officers describing excessive PowerPoint use and the organizational culture that encouraged it.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/essay-dumb-dumb-bullets/ |title=Dumb-dumb Bullets |last=Hammes |first=Thomas X. |author-link=Thomas Hammes |date=July 1, 2009 |website=Armed Forces Journal |issn=0196-3597 |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6YlvTTCxK?url=https://filetea.me/t1s4y7by8yxTcuTjnsQfO5ZRA |url-status=live |archive-date=May 24, 2015 |access-date=September 18, 2017 |df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/the-tx-hammes-powerpoint-challenge-essay-contest |title=The T. X. Hammes PowerPoint Challenge |last=Burke |first=Crispin |date=July 24, 2009 |website=Small Wars Journal |issn=2156-227X |archive-url=https://www.webcitation.org/6Ylw4vDnF?url=https://filetea.me/t1sZXwaBBkaTwx02K12wmPwCA |url-status=live |archive-date=May 24, 2015 |access-date=September 19, 2017 |df=mdy-all }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130117031309/http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/09/army-colonel-fired-for-powerpoint-rant-090210w/ |archive-date=January 17, 2013 |title=The PowerPoint rant that got a colonel fired |last=Sellin |first=Lawrence |date=September 2, 2010 |website=[[Army Times]] |issn=0004-2595 |url=http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/09/army-colonel-fired-for-powerpoint-rant-090210w/ |url-status=dead |access-date=September 19, 2017}} {{webarchive|format=addlarchives|url=https://archive.today/20150524000432/http://archive.armytimes.com/article/20100902/NEWS/9020339/The-PowerPoint-rant-that-got-a-colonel-fired |date=May 24, 2015}}</ref> In response to the ''New York Times'' story, [[Peter Norvig]] and [[Stephen Kosslyn|Stephen M. Kosslyn]] sent a joint letter to the editor stressing the institutional culture of the military: "... many military personnel bemoan the overuse and misuse of PowerPoint. ... The problem is not in the tool itself, but in the way that people use it—which is partly a result of how institutions promote misuse."<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Norvig |first1=Peter |author-link1=Peter Norvig |last2=Kosslyn |first2=Stephen M. |author-link2=Stephen Kosslyn |date=April 29, 2010 |title=A Tool Only as Good as the User |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/opinion/l30power.html |department=Letters to the Editor |newspaper=New York Times |issn=0362-4331 |edition=New York |publication-date=April 29, 2010 |page=A24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100503115425/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/opinion/l30power.html |url-status=live |archive-date=May 3, 2010 |access-date=September 19, 2017 |df=mdy-all }}</ref>

The two generals who had been mentioned in 2010 as opposing the institutional culture of excessive PowerPoint use were both in the news again in 2017, when [[James Mattis|James N. Mattis]] became U.S. Secretary of Defense,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/01/20/senate-confirms-mattis-secretary-of-defense.html |last=Sisk |first=Richard |date=January 20, 2017 |title=Senate Confirms Mattis as Secretary of Defense |website=Military.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170122191417/http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/01/20/senate-confirms-mattis-secretary-of-defense.html |url-status=live |archive-date=January 22, 2017 |access-date=September 18, 2017 |df=mdy-all }}</ref> and [[H. R. McMaster]] was appointed as U.S. National Security Advisor.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/02/20/trump-picks-army-lt-gen-mcmaster-national-security-adviser.html |last=McGarry |first=Brendan |date=February 20, 2017 |title=Trump Picks Army Lt. Gen. McMaster as National Security Adviser |website=Military.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170222001809/http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/02/20/trump-picks-army-lt-gen-mcmaster-national-security-adviser.html |url-status=live |archive-date=February 22, 2017 |access-date=September 18, 2017}}</ref>