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MS POWER POINT 2000 ProblemsLAST UPDATED: 11 March 2009 14:47:16 -0600 Translate this page
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PROBLEMS WITH THE CUSTOM SOUNDTRACK ADD-IN MY HYPERLINKS DISAPPEARED PROBLEMS WITH MUSIC ADD-IN FROM POWERPOINT 97 MY GRAPHIC WONT UNGROUP PROBLEMS OPENING OR INSERTING POWERPOINT FILES PROBLEM WITH ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IN GRAPHS POWERPOINT STARTS, THEN HANGS POWERPOINT 97 USERS CANT VIEW MACROS MY GRAPHS CHANGE FORMAT WHEN I COPY SLIDES MY CHARTS CANT BE EDITED BY OTHER POWERPOINT USERS I CANT SEE MY FILE TYPES INCONSISTENT PAGE-UP/PAGE-DOWN BEHAVIOR GRAYED-OUT PLAY SETTINGS IF YOUR GRAPHIC ISNT IMPORTING PROPERLY I CANT RUN A MACRO OR LOAD AN ADD-IN I CANT INCREASE THE HEIGHT OF A CALLOUT I CAME, I ZOOMED, IM LOST GET THE FAQS GRAYED-OUT PLAY SETTINGS FREE POWERPOINT KNOWLEDGEBASE FIXING POWERPOINT PROBLEMS FIX A PROBLEM WITH THE FAVORITES FOLDER ERROR MESSAGE--THIS TYPE OF FILE CANNOT BE OPENED BY POWERPOINT ERROR MESSAGES ABOUT OLEAUT32.DLL COULD NOT EXPORT ALL SLIDES ERROR MESSAGE COLORS LOOK WRONG ON SOME COMPUTERS OOPS--UN-REARRANGE YOUR TOOLBARS AVOIDING MACRO VIRUS WARNINGS WHEN HYPERLINKING AVOID A NASTY LITTLE GOTCHA THE CASE OF THE MISSING MENU ITEM I CANT EDIT POINTS! IT WONT IMPORT! HELP! POWERPOINTS ACTING UP--PARTS 1 and 2 WHERE DID THE SQUARES COME FROM GET RID OF THOSE PESKY MACRO VIRUS WARNINGS WHERE DID THE TITLES GO WHEN I TYPE SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE A LINK... SOLVING PROBLEMS WITH ORG CHART WHAT IS A PPZ FILE AND WHAT DO YOU DO WITH IT WEVE CONVERTED TO OFFICE 2000, BUT... RESTORING DEFAULT TOOLBARS/MENUS RESOLVING PRINTING PROBLEMS HOW DO I USE THIS VBA STUFF A POWERPOINT MOVIE TROUBLESHOOTER USE DEJA.COM FOR FAST POWERPOINT HELP UNLINKING LINKED GRAPHICS DO I NEED OFFICE 2000 SR-2 DO I HAVE POWERPOINT SR-1 COVER UP! MY WEB PRESENTATION DOESNT WORK CLIP GALLERY ASKS FOR CD CHARTS DONT UPDATE AUTOMATICALLY CANT SYNCHRONIZE A PRESENTATION TO SOUND AVOID DRAG AND DROP FOR GRAPHICS AN UNGROUPING GOTCHA PNG IMAGES TOO DARK IN POWERPOINT BROKEN LINKS IN TABLES
PROBLEMS WITH THE CUSTOM SOUNDTRACK ADD-INProblem: You start PowerPoint and see the error message PowerPoint couldn't open the Visual Basic for Application project in ppmusic.ppa. This happens when you previously had PowerPoint 97 installed on your computer and downloaded and installed the Custom Soundtrack Add-In. When you upgraded to PowerPoint 2000, the installer retained any add-ins from your PowerPoint 97 setup. Although most PowerPoint 97 add-ins work well with PowerPoint 2000, not all of them do--and when they don't, you'll see this error message (or a similar one referencing a different .ppa/add-in file). To avoid seeing this message in the future, you'll have to manually remove the problem add-in. Not to worry--it's a walk in the park. Here's how: Choose Tools, Add-Ins. On the add-ins list, click the name of the add-in the error message referred to. Then click Remove. This removes the add-in from the list and from the Windows registry file so it doesn't automatically load in the future. Click Close, then restart PowerPoint.
PROBLEMS WITH MUSIC ADD-IN FROM POWERPOINT 97If you installed the PowerPoint Soundtrack add-in for PowerPoint 97, then upgraded to PowerPoint 2000 afterwards, you may be getting nasty-grams from PowerPoint in the form of error messages such as Couldn't open VBA Project The Soundtrack add-in was designed for PowerPoint 97 and doesn't work properly with PowerPoint 2000. There's an update available from Microsoft to fix this problem at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q218/5/25.asp Note that this is an update to the already installed Soundtrack add-in. If you never installed the add-in in PowerPoint 97, there's no way to add it to PowerPoint 2000. As long as you don't remove or delete the file, you can replace it and have it work in PowerPoint 2000.
PROBLEMS OPENING OR INSERTING POWERPOINT FILESIf you run into problems when opening PowerPoint files or inserting slides into other programs, it may be because PowerPoint's registry settings are incomplete or damaged. You can use PowerPoint to re-register itself or repair some damaged registry settings. To do this, follow these steps: Locate PowerPoint's main .exe file. Start Windows Explorer and press F3 to open the Find Files dialog box. In the Named text box, type POWERPNT.EXE and in the Look In box, type in or browse to the drive where Office is installed. Click Find Now to start the search. Once POWERPNT.EXE is found, choose Start, Run. Clear any existing text from the Open text box, then drag the PowerPoint program icon from the Find Files window to the Open text box. Add quotation marks to the beginning and end of the text, then move the cursor to the end of the line and type /regserver The text in the Open box should now look something like "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Powerpnt.exe" /regserver Click OK. PowerPoint will start, display its splash screen, correct the problem entries in the Windows registry, and then quit automatically.
PROBLEM WITH ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IN GRAPHSFor reasons as of yet unknown, some Office users experience a problem with text they type into the datasheet of a chart in MSGraph (the mini-app that pops up when you insert a chart into PowerPoint or other Office applications). The symptom: You type text normally, but it either comes out ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS or disappears altogether. If this happens to you, try one of the following: Delete the text and retype it. Hold down the Shift key while you type your text to make it come out in lower case. Quit the MSGraph app (click anywhere on the PowerPoint slide outside the chart), then restart MSGraph by double-clicking the chart.
POWERPOINT STARTS, THEN HANGSIf PowerPoint seems to start up normally, then appears to lock up and quit responding, it may be because there are files in your Recent File List that contain characters that PowerPoint can't display properly in the Startup dialog box. Specifically, it may be due to files that include an ampersand symbol (&) in the filename. To solve the problem, you have to temporarily disable the Startup dialog box, clear the problem filename from the Recent File List, then finally re-enable the Startup dialog box. Here are the steps to do just that. If PowerPoint is still running (or trying to and failing), press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to bring up the Task Manager. Select PowerPoint, then click End Task to force it to quit. Next, use Explorer or My Computer to locate any PowerPoint file that doesn't include an ampersand character in its name. Double-click the file's icon to launch PowerPoint, bypassing the Startup dialog box. Once PowerPoint starts, choose Tools, Options and click the View tab. Deselect the Startup Dialog option, then click OK. Choose File, Save As and save the current presentation under a new name at least ten times. Make sure that the new name doesn't include an ampersand. That will cause the presentation with the problem name to fall off the bottom of the list. Once that's done, you can choose Tools, Options again and re-enable the Startup dialog box. And by now, you'll have guessed our final bit of advice--don't save any more presentations with an ampersand in the filename!
POWERPOINT HANGS AT STARTUPIf you have a lot of PowerPoint add-ins loaded--especially ones that create a lot of custom toolbars and buttons--you may eventually run into a problem with PowerPoint hanging at startup, usually so badly that you have to press Ctrl-Alt-Del to recover. Here's what's probably causing this: PowerPoint stores any toolbar, button, or menu customizations in a special PCB file. Unfortunately, it seems to record customizations by adding to this file, not by replacing the old configuration with the new one, so the PCB file grows with every change. Most add-ins create a new toolbar at startup, then delete it at shutdown, so every time you start or quit PowerPoint, the PCB file grows larger. The more add-ins you have loaded, and the more toolbars they create, and the more often you start and quit PowerPoint, the faster the PCB file grows. Sooner or later, it reaches a size where PowerPoint is no longer able to cope with it. The next time you start PowerPoint and an add-in tries to create its toolbars, PowerPoint freezes up. Totally. Fortunately, the fix is simple: Locate and delete the PCB file. Quit PowerPoint if it's running, then start Windows Explorer. In the left pane, select the drive where Windows is installed. Choose Tools, Find, Files Or Folders, or press F3 to bring up the Find All Files dialog box. On the Name & Location tab of this dialog box, type *.PCB in the Named text box; make sure there's a checkmark next to Include Subfolders; and then click Find Now. Within a few seconds, you should see at least one PCB file listed in the results pane. The one you're after will be named PPT.PCB if you're on a single-user computer or Your User Name.PCB if you're on a computer with multiple users. Click the file in the results pane and press Delete to delete it. Now start PowerPoint again. Because you've deleted the PCB file, it will lose any menu and toolbar customizations you've done, but it will create a new PCB file for itself. Any further customizations you do will be recorded there.
POWERPOINT 97 USERS CAN'T VIEW MACROSPowerPoint 97 users may not always be able to view and edit macros created in PowerPoint 2000. One of the new security features in PowerPoint 2000 is called digital signatures. These signatures help you verify that the macro code inside a PowerPoint or other Office file came from a known, trusted source (and because of that, is probably safe to run). PowerPoint 97 doesn't support digital signatures. PowerPoint 97 can't update the signature when the macro code is edited, so it doesn't allow you to modify the macro. If you need to convert a digitally signed macro so that it can be edited in PowerPoint 97, copy it from PowerPoint 2000's Visual Basic Editor, paste it into Notepad, and save it as a text file. You can then copy the macro code from the text file into a new VBA macro in PowerPoint 97.
MY HYPERLINKS DISAPPEAREDIt's a good idea to reign in your urge to hyperlink if you're working with very large PowerPoint presentations. PowerPoint stores hyperlink information--together with the other Document Summary information for your presentation--in an area that allows only 64 KB of data. You may be able to store as much as 32 KB worth of hyperlink info there, but once the available storage space runs out, that's it. After that, PowerPoint can't store new hyperlinks or edits to your existing links. Your new/edited links will be gone the next time you open the presentation. There's no way to predict exactly how many hyperlinks that translates into, since it will depend on the amount of text in each link, but here's a short VBA macro that will tell you how many characters (or bytes) all the URL hyperlinks in your presentation uses. To run this macro, copy the text below, then in PowerPoint choose Tools, Macro, Macros. Type WebLinkDataTotal in the Macro Name text box, then click Create. When the macro editor appears, click anywhere between Sub WebLinkDataTotal() and End Sub, and paste in the text you copied from this tip. Finally, press the F5 key to run the macro. You'll see a message that tells you how many bytes of available space you've used for your Web links. ' Copy all the text from here to the end of this tip ' Sums the length of all URL hyperlinks in presentation Dim AllLinks As Hyperlinks Dim SingleLink As Hyperlink Dim AllSlides As Slides Dim SingleSlide As Slide Dim MyPresentation As Presentation Dim TotalLength As Integer Set MyPresentation = ActivePresentation Set AllSlides = MyPresentation.Slides For Each SingleSlide In AllSlides Set AllLinks = SingleSlide.Hyperlinks For Each SingleLink In AllLinks With SingleLink TotalLength = TotalLength + Len(.Address) End With Next SingleLink Next SingleSlide MsgBox "Total length of all URL hyperlinks in presentation: " & vbCrLf & TotalLength
MY GRAPHS CHANGE FORMAT WHEN I COPY SLIDESWhen you copy slides from one presentation to another, graphs on the slides may change their formatting. The fonts and colors might change to match the fonts and color scheme of the presentation into which you're copying the slides. Normally, this is a good thing, since you'd want graphs to graphically match the presentation in which they appear. If you want the chart to retain its original colors, here's how you can make it happen. After you've copied the slide into the new presentation, right-click the chart and choose Show Picture Toolbar (if the Picture toolbar isn't already visible). Click the Recolor button on the Picture toolbar (it's the fourth button from the right). In the Recolor Chart dialog box, choose None, then click OK. The chart will revert to its original colors.
MY GRAPHIC WON'T UNGROUPSometimes an imported graphic is close, but not exactly what you need. Normally, you'd ungroup the graphic so you can edit the shapes that make it up, but sometimes PowerPoint isn't able to ungroup a graphic. When you try, you see that all of the ungrouping options are unavailable. There are two different types of computer graphics: vector and bitmap. Vector graphics are made up of individual objects--lines, rectangles, circles, text, etc.--that you can manipulate one at a time. Bitmap (sometimes called raster) graphics are a collection of pixels--dots--that might happen to look like lines and rectangles but aren't really. Since there are no individual objects in a bitmap graphic, PowerPoint can't ungroup them. File types like GIF, TIF, JPG, PNG, and TGA always contain bitmap images. To make changes to bitmap graphics, you must open them in an image-editing program like Microsoft Photo Editor, PaintShop Pro, Corel PhotoPaint, or Adobe Photoshop, etc. Save the edited image, then insert it into PowerPoint using Insert, Picture, From File.
MY CHARTS CAN'T BE EDITED BY OTHER POWERPOINT USERSIf people using older versions of PowerPoint can't edit the charts in your presentations, even though you may have saved them as an earlier-version PowerPoint (PPT) format file, it may be due to a changed default setting in the Options dialog box. To ensure that others can edit your charts when you save to an earlier version of PowerPoint, choose Tools, Options and click the Save tab. On the Save tab, select the option Convert Charts When Saving As Previous Versions. Then, click OK. Now save your presentation again to the appropriate previous version of PowerPoint. Note: To save to a previous-version format, choose File, Save As. In the Save As dialog box, choose the version you want to save to from the Save As Type drop-down list box. Finally, give the presentation a different name and save it.
INCONSISTENT PAGE-UP/PAGE-DOWN BEHAVIORHave you ever noticed that the Page Up and Page Down keys act inconsistently in PowerPoint? Here's why: In previous versions of PowerPoint, you could have only one view (Slide, Outline, Notes, etc.) active at a time. In PowerPoint 2000, you can have all three visible on the screen at once, each in its own "pane." That can be quite a handy way to work, but it can also be the source of confusion when each view treats keys like Page Up and Page Down differently. In Slide view, Page Up/Page Down move you to the previous or next slide respectively, but in Outline view, Page Up moves you to the previous page IN THE OUTLINE, which might represent two, three, or 30 slides, and the Slide view pane follows along. The trick is to keep an eye on the status bar, which will tell you either what slide you're on or indicate that you're in Outline or Notes Slide view. That way, you know which pane will handle your Page Up/Page Down keystrokes. Or simpler yet, decide which pane you want your Page Up/Page Down keystroke to apply to, click anywhere in that pane to activate it, and THEN press Page Up/Page Down.
IF YOUR GRAPHIC ISN'T IMPORTING PROPERLYPowerPoint uses graphics import filters of various sorts to import graphics when you choose Insert, Picture, From File. Many of these graphics formats have a wide variety of capabilities and options, and not all of these options are completely supported by PowerPoint or the graphics filter. If you're having trouble importing a particular type of graphic, send email to mshelp@microsoft.com and put this number in the subject line of the email: Q210396 You'll receive an informative article about the limitations of PowerPoint's graphics filters by return email.
I CAN'T SEE MY FILE TYPESYou may have this problem on your machine, or you may occasionally run into it on somebody else's computer: You choose Insert, Sound, From File (or Picture, or some other file type). The File dialog box appears and may show you some files to choose from, but the Files Of Type drop-down list box doesn't show you what file types PowerPoint considers acceptable. Instead, it may simply display "Sound Files" or the like. Yet, if you do the same thing on other machines, you DO see a list of file types. What gives here? Simple: Windows Explorer is set to hide file extensions, and PowerPoint is picking up and using Explorer's settings. To change the settings so you see file types, start Windows Explorer. Choose View, Folder Options. Click the View tab and deselect the Hide File Extensions option. PowerPoint should now show you all the file types and extensions you paid for.
I CAN'T RUN A MACRO OR LOAD AN ADD-INIf your security level in PowerPoint is set to High, PowerPoint won't let you run macros in a presentation, and it won't let you load add-ins that contain unsigned macros. "Signing" is a special process developers use to identify themselves and their products to PowerPoint--it's a way to ensure you that the add-ins and macros are safe and don't contain dangerous viruses. If you're certain that the presentation or add-in came from a reliable source, you may want to allow the macros to run even though they're not signed. Choose Tools, Macro, Security and set the Security level to Medium rather than High. Close the presentation and reopen it, or unload the add-in, then reload it. You'll now be able to use the macros. You may want to set the Security level back to High when you've finished using the presentation or add-in.
I CAN'T INCREASE THE HEIGHT OF A CALLOUTYou use one of PowerPoint's Callout AutoShapes, but no matter how you drag this way and that on the sizing handles, you can't get its height to change, though you can change its width. This happens when the Callout shape has the Resize AutoShape To Fit Text option enabled, either for the shape itself or because the shape inherited this setting from PowerPoint's defaults for new objects. To change this so you CAN resize the shape freely, double-click the shape to bring up the Format AutoShape dialog box. Click the Text Box tab and deselect the Resize AutoShape To Fit Text option. If you want to make sure that other shapes don't have this option turned on automatically, click the Colors And Lines tab and select the Default For New Objects option. Then click OK. You'll now be able to change the height of the shape to anything you like.
I CAME, I ZOOMED, I'M LOSTIn our previous tip, we showed you how to change the Zoom setting in PowerPoint's Slide Sorter view to see more or fewer slides on screen at once. There's only one little problem: When you change the Zoom level, PowerPoint redraws the Slide Sorter screen and the currently selected slide may no longer be visible. While you could use the scrollbar to bounce up and down looking for the slide you're working on, there's a much simpler trick. Press the Up Arrow, then press the Down Arrow to have PowerPoint bring the currently selected slide back into view. Pretty easy, huh?
GRAYED-OUT PLAY SETTINGSIf you select multiple OLE objects, then try to apply animation settings, you'll soon find yourself frustrated. The animation settings will be grayed out. PowerPoint doesn't allow you to apply play settings to multiple OLE objects at once, so you'll have to select them and apply settings one object at a time. Since you can select the objects in the Animation Settings dialog box, you don't have to keep returning to the PowerPoint slide to select them. What's an OLE object? Nearly anything you insert into a PowerPoint presentation from another application either by copying and pasting or by choosing Insert, Object.
GET THE FAQSWe've mentioned this in previous tips, but it bears repeating: If you're looking for a quick solution to a PowerPoint problem, need to learn how to perform some particular task, or just want to see what the Web has to offer in the way of templates, clip art, sounds, and other files, visit the PowerPoint FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page at http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq There's always something new being added there, so it's worth making the site a regular stop on your browser tours. On the same site, you'll also find a new, incomplete but growing FAQ devoted to PostScript, PDF, and related topics at http://www.rdpslides.com/psfaq and even a FAQ devoted to a program called Friday that you can use to create and maintain a FAQ site of your own, just like the others on this site: http://www.rdpslides.com/friday
FREE POWERPOINT KNOWLEDGEBASEThere's a wealth of information in the Microsoft Knowledgebase, but it can be difficult to track down. If you're just interested in technical info about PowerPoint 2000, check out this download: http://download.microsoft.com/download/powerpoint2000/Utility/2.0/W9X/EN-US/ppt2kkb.exe Simply type the URL in your browser, save the file to disk when prompted, and once the download is complete, run it to start the installation.
FIXING POWERPOINT PROBLEMSIf you run into problems with PowerPoint or the other Office programs, don't panic. There are a number of fairly simple things you can try that fix most common PowerPoint/Office and even Windows problems. First, visit the PowerPoint FAQ at http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq Under the heading "IMPORTANT STUFF," you'll find two links--"Don't use PowerPoint for anything serious until you've done this" and "General problem-solving procedures." Follow the suggestions in each of these links. If that doesn't solve the problem, it's time for the heavy artillery: the Office Installer. First, make sure you have your Office 2000 installation CDs handy, then choose Start, Settings, Control Panel and double-click Add/Remove Programs. Locate Microsoft Office 2000 in the list of programs and double-click it, then click Add/Remove. You'll see a brief startup message from the Office installer, then the Microsoft Office 2000 Maintenance Mode dialog box appears. When it does, click Repair Office. In the next dialog box, choose Repair Errors In My Office Installation. If there are problems with the Office icons on your Start menu or desktop, select the Restore My Shortcuts option. Finally, click Finish. The Installer will prompt you for any further information or CDs it needs. Simply follow its instructions. Good luck!
FIX A PROBLEM WITH THE FAVORITES FOLDERWhen you choose File, Open, the Open dialog box shows you a convenient list of folders on the left side of the dialog box. If you click the Favorites folder, PowerPoint wants to preview the first file it finds there. What it finds in Favorites by default is two links to Internet sites. The instant it finds the first one, it tries to initiate a connection to the Internet, presumably to show a preview of the "file." This happens without you having to click anything. If that's not where you want to go today and you click the Cancel button on the Internet dialer, PowerPoint locks up and quits working. If the same thing happens on your computer, it means every time you open the Favorites folder, PowerPoint will crash. Not good. Here's what you can do to fix the problem: The first time you go to the Favorites folder in the File Open dialog box, carefully note the names of the two Internet links there. Then, browse to your Windows\Favorites folder, locate these two link files, and delete them or move them to another folder. It's now safe to use PowerPoint's Favorites folder again.
ERROR MESSAGE--THIS TYPE OF FILE CANNOT BE OPENED BY POWERPOINTYou may see the error message This type of file cannot be opened by PowerPoint for various reasons. Your PowerPoint file may have become corrupted or may have been saved as the wrong file type. If you receive this message when trying to use the Send To feature in Word to send a file to PowerPoint, it could be the result of installing an older version of the PowerPoint Viewer after having installed Office. This can cause the Viewer--rather than PowerPoint--to take over as the program that handles other programs' requests for PowerPoint services. Since the Viewer has a much more limited set of capabilities, this can cause a problem. To resolve the problem, quit all Office programs, then choose Run from the Windows Start menu. In the Open box, type POWERPNT /REGSERVER and then click OK. If PowerPoint doesn't start and quit automatically, quit manually. If this doesn't solve the problem, start PowerPoint, then choose Help, Detect And Repair and follow the instructions on screen.
ERROR MESSAGES ABOUT OLEAUT32.DLLSome programs mistakenly install older, out-of-date versions of some critical Windows system files. That can cause problems for your other programs that depend on the newest version of these files. If you start PowerPoint and see the error message The AGENTSVR.EXE file is linked to missing export OLEAUT32.DLL:277 it means you're probably a victim of this type of installer mischief. Here's what you should do. If PowerPoint doesn't close immediately afterwards, select Help, Detect And Repair. Click Start in the Detect And Repair dialog box. Office Setup starts and replaces the outdated copy of OLEAUT32.DLL with the updated one it needs to run. If you can't start PowerPoint because of this problem, choose Start, Settings, Control Panel, then double-click Add/Remove Programs. Locate Microsoft Office 2000 in the list of programs and double-click it. Wait until you see the Microsoft Office 2000 Maintenance Mode dialog box, then click Repair Office. When prompted again, click Finish. You may see error messages during the repair procedure because of the outdated copy of OLEAUT32.DLL. If so, click Ignore in each error message dialog box, and the repair procedure will continue.
COULD NOT EXPORT ALL SLIDES ERROR MESSAGEIf you try to export slides from PowerPoint to some graphics file formats, you may see an error message like PowerPoint was unable to export all slides. This is likely to happen if you choose one of the following export formats: Windows Bitmap (*.bmp, *.dib) Targa (*.tga) Tagged Image File Format (*.tif) PC Paintbrush (*.pcx) These options may appear in the Save As dialog box listed under Save Files Of Type because another program like Picture It! has been installed and has listed its own graphics filters in the same area of the Windows registry that PowerPoint uses for its own filters. Even though these filters appear in PowerPoint's dialog box as available options, PowerPoint can't actually use the filters, so you get the error message mentioned above. Choose a different file export type instead; PNG and JPG are good all-around choices.
COLORS LOOK WRONG ON SOME COMPUTERSSometimes a presentation that looks great on one computer turns to mud on another, or provokes psychedelic-colored flashes as you change slides. Why is that? Look to the video settings. Depending on the amount of memory in the video adapter in the computer, Windows may be set to display anything from 16 colors to millions of colors. To check this, right-click the Windows desktop and choose Properties. Click the Settings tab and look to see how many colors are shown under Color Palette. That's the maximum number of colors that can be displayed at any one time on this computer. If it's set to 256 or fewer, try changing it to a higher setting, if that's available. When PowerPoint displays a presentation, it can use only as many colors as the Color Palette setting permits. If the Color Palette is set to High Color/16-bit Color (16,000-plus colors) or True Color/24-bit (millions of colors), it will have all the colors it needs to do its work. If the Color Palette is set to Paletted/8-bit (256 colors) or less, then PowerPoint has to alter the colors in your presentation to fit into the limited available palette. The results aren't always pretty and can cause odd "palette flashes" when you move from one slide to the next and PowerPoint changes the palette to suit the new slide. Whenever possible, set your computer to at least High Color and preferably True Color mode before starting your presentation.
AVOIDING MACRO VIRUS WARNINGS WHEN HYPERLINKINGWhen you create a hyperlink to files or objects outside your PowerPoint presentation, you may see a macro virus warning when you follow the hyperlink during a slide presentation. Considering all the nasty viruses out there, this is probably a good thing, since it forces us to think twice before running a potentially damaging link in PowerPoint files we've received from others. On the other hand, this is also a very annoying thing when we're showing presentations with hyperlinks on our own PCs--where we KNOW all the external objects or programs are perfectly safe. Microsoft has a very detailed technical bulletin about PowerPoint security settings, what they mean, and how you can change them to make it act a wee bit less protective. To get a copy of it, send an email to mshelp@microsoft.com and type Q212290 in the subject header. The short answer is to use the Run Program option instead of Hyperlink in action settings. For example, instead of hyperlinking to MYFILE.TXT, choose Run Program and type NOTEPAD MYFILE.TXT Of course, replace with your correct drive:\folder info.
AVOID A NASTY LITTLE GOTCHAIn some circumstances, when you perform a drag-and-drop, then undo it, not only are you deleting the newly dropped item, you may also be deleting the SOURCE from which it came. For example, if you drag a slide or object from one presentation into another, then choose Edit, Undo or press Ctrl-Z, you'll delete the object from BOTH presentations, not just the one in which you dragged the object. This happens because of the way drag-and-drop works. When you drag from one presentation to another, you're not copying the object--you're moving it. In other words, the drag-and-drop operation deletes the object from one presentation and puts it into the other. When you undo this, you delete the object, but by that time, the drag-and-drop operation has deleted the original, leaving you empty handed. To avoid this problem in the first place, hold down the Ctrl key while you drag and drop objects from one presentation to another. This tells Windows to COPY rather than MOVE the object, so it leaves the original untouched. If you forget to do this and accidentally get into this bind, immediately switch to the source presentation and choose Edit, Undo or press Ctrl-Z, which will bring back your inadvertently deleted object.
OOPS--UN-REARRANGE YOUR TOOLBARSSuppose you've had fun rearranging your toolbars and toolbar buttons--but you got a little carried away. It's nice to know that you can reset PowerPoint's toolbars to their default settings with just a few mouse clicks. Here's how: At the right end of each docked toolbar, you'll see a small downward pointing diamond-shaped icon. On floating toolbars, the same icon appears to the left of the toolbar's name in the title bar of the toolbar. Click this icon to see a pop-up menu with the option Add Or Remove Buttons at the bottom. Point to this option, and a much more elaborate pop-up menu appears. Near the bottom of this pop-up menu, you'll see Reset Toolbar (if you don't see it, click the downward-pointing diamond icon at the bottom of the pop-up menu to scroll additional choices into view). Click Reset Toolbar, and PowerPoint removes any customizing you've done to this particular toolbar, getting rid of any buttons you've added to it and restoring any you may have removed. You CAN go home again.
THE CASE OF THE MISSING MENU ITEMPowerPoint 2000 tries to simplify your life by showing you an abbreviated set of menu items that feature only the items most often used by most people. If you want to see the other available menu options, click the bottommost item on the opened menu (it looks a little like a down-pointing arrowhead). PowerPoint remembers the menu options you choose and rearranges the menus on the fly so that your most-used menu choices are at the top of the drop-down menus. When menu options change this way, it can be disconcerting. If you'd rather your menu options stayed put, here's what you can do. First, right-click any toolbar and click Customize on the pop-up menu that appears (or choose Tools, Customize from the menu bar). Next, click the Options tab of the Customize dialog box and deselect the Menus Show Recently Used Commands First option. Finally, click the Close button. Now PowerPoint will show you all of the options on its menus.
I CAN'T EDIT POINTS!If you tried our recent tip that explained how to edit AutoShapes, you may have found that you couldn't use Edit Points to change some shapes, even though you followed our instructions to the letter. We'll explain why in just a bit, but first, here's a summary of the tip, in case you missed it: PowerPoint won't let you use Edit Points to alter AutoShapes, but you can convert an AutoShape into editable PowerPoint objects. First, select the AutoShape. Copy it using Ctrl-C or by choosing Edit, Copy. Choose Edit, Paste Special and select Enhanced Metafile to paste the AutoShape back into PowerPoint. This converts the AutoShape into a normal PowerPoint object that you can edit with PowerPoint's graphic editing tools--except that sometimes you can't use Edit Points after giving an AutoShape this treatment. Why? Because Edit Points only works with one object at a time, but some AutoShapes are composed of multiple objects. When you convert them to normal PowerPoint objects as described, they turn into multiple grouped objects, and there's the clue you were looking for. If Edit Points is dimmed (unavailable) when you select one of your converted AutoShapes, try ungrouping it. Click the Draw button at the lower left of your screen and click Ungroup on the pop-up menu. You can then pick any of the individual objects that make up the shape and use Edit Points to your heart's content. The only hitch is that PowerPoint won't allow you to use Edit Points when a rectangle or ellipse is selected.
IT WON'T IMPORT!PowerPoint can import a huge variety of file types when you choose Insert, point to the picture, then click From File, but once in a while you might find that it can't insert certain types of files. PowerPoint relies on a variety of graphics "filters" to import pictures. If the filter it needs to import your picture isn't installed, you won't be able to include the picture in your presentations. Depending on how your copy of PowerPoint was first installed, you may need to re-run Setup to install additional graphics or presentation translation filters, but before you do that, there are a couple of other things you can try. Use Clip Gallery to import the picture, then bring the picture into PowerPoint from Clip Gallery. Clip Gallery sometimes does a better job of importing pictures than PowerPoint itself. Choose Insert, Picture, then click Clip Art. When Clip Gallery appears, click Import Clips, select the picture file you're trying to import, then click Import. If Clip Gallery reports no errors, you should be able to insert the newly added clip into your presentation just as you would any other piece of clip art. Or, you can use a different program. If PowerPoint can't open your picture, try Word, PhotoEdit, or any graphics programs you have installed on your computer. If you can open the file in any program, you can usually select the picture, then copy and paste it into PowerPoint. Alternatively, choose File from the menu and then click Save As. When the Save As dialog box appears, check to see if there's a drop-down list box named Files Of Type or something similar. If so, see what types are available. You may be able to save the file in a format that PowerPoint can insert directly. If you plan to use the picture again in other presentations, this would be the best option. That way, you'll have the picture in a format that PowerPoint finds digestible, ready to be inserted (via Insert, Picture, From File) whenever you need it.
HELP! POWERPOINT'S ACTING UP--PART 1 OF 2If PowerPoint doesn't seem to be acting the way you think it should, here are a few quick tricks you can use to help pinpoint the problem or in some cases, fix it. * Save your work, quit PowerPoint, re-start PowerPoint, and try to re-create the situation that caused the problem. Computer problems can be random, one-time occurrences. There's no sense spending a lot of time trying to troubleshoot a problem that only occurs once. * Restart Windows, then try to re-create the problem. Sometimes all PowerPoint and Windows need is a fresh start to "clear their heads." * Restart Windows in Safe Mode and try to re-create the problem. If you use Windows 95, restart the computer and when you see Starting Windows 95 on the screen, press F8 until a menu appears. Choose Safe Mode from the menu. If you use Window NT, choose the VGA mode from the startup menu. If you use Windows 98, hold down Ctrl while your computer restarts, then choose Safe Mode from the Windows 98 Startup menu. If the problem can be duplicated normally but not in Safe Mode, it usually means there's a problem with one of your drivers (drivers are programs that allow Windows to work with the hardware installed in your computer). Most often, the problem is in the video drivers; you can usually download updated video drivers from the video board manufacturer's Web site. * Changing the graphics acceleration is another alternative to replacing video drivers. Choose Start, Settings, Control Panel. When the Control Panel window appears, double-click System. Click the Performance tab of the System Properties dialog box, then click Graphics. Change the position of the Hardware acceleration slider bar from Full to None, then click OK. You may need to restart your computer at this point. Changing the Hardware acceleration setting to None may slow down your computer a little. If you find that the problem disappears with acceleration set to None, try advancing the setting toward Full a little at a time until the problem reappears, then set acceleration back one notch.
HELP! POWERPOINT'S ACTING UP--PART 2 OF 2If you run into a problem with one or more of PowerPoint's features not working correctly or not working at all, it's good to know that PowerPoint (and in fact all of Office 2000) comes with powerful fix-it medicine pre-installed and ready to use. Choose Help, Detect And Repair, then click Start. This starts up a thorough test and repair program that checks for and fixes missing or outdated files and incorrect registry settings. If Detect And Repair doesn't correct the problem, you might need to reinstall Office. Don't worry--this isn't as drastic as it sounds. Begin by quitting any running programs. Select Start, Settings, Control Panel. In the Control Panel window, double-click Add/Remove Programs. In the Add/Remove Programs dialog box, click the Install/Uninstall tab, click Microsoft Office 2000 in the list of installed programs, then click Add/Remove. This starts the Office 2000 setup program. On the startup screen of the setup program, click Repair Office and follow the setup program's instructions from there. You can also use the setup program to add features to Office that may not have been originally installed with it, or to remove features you have no need for. Follow the same steps as above, but click Add Or Remove Features instead of Repair Office. Locate the feature you want to add or remove. To add a feature, click the icon next to it and choose Run From My Computer or Run From CD. If you choose CD, you'll have to have your Office 2000 CDs handy to use this feature. To make the feature available on PowerPoint's menus without actually installing it on your hard drive, choose Installed On First Use. When you choose this feature in PowerPoint, the setup program will start, ask you for one of your Office CDs, and install the feature at that time. This is handy for features you think you might use in the future but don't currently need. To remove a feature that's already installed, choose Not Available.
GET RID OF THOSE PESKY MACRO VIRUS WARNINGSSometimes it seems that any feature that brings added security also makes life a little more difficult for us honest software users. Macro virus protection is an example of this. Virus protection is unquestionably a good thing, but when you turn it on in PowerPoint, you'll see a warning message every time you open a PowerPoint file that contains macros. You'll also find that certain action settings trigger macro virus warnings, even though there are no macros in your PowerPoint file. For example, if you insert a hyperlink that runs a program, PowerPoint may bring up a warning message. That can be a very, very good thing if you're playing a presentation from somebody you don't know and trust, but it's not very professional looking when it pops up in the middle of one of your own presentations. If you run into this problem, check your Security settings. Choose Tools, Macro, then select Security. As long as you're only running your own presentations, it should be perfectly safe to set PowerPoint's Security Level to Low. Don't forget to change it back to Medium or High when you're done.
WHERE DID THE TITLES GOPowerPoint has a handy slide show feature that lets you navigate directly to any slide in your presentation. During your show, right-click on the screen; choose Go, By Title; and pick the slide you want to jump to from the pop-up menu. Sometimes, though, you'll just see something like "Slide 8" on the pop-up menu instead of any useful text. This occurs when there's no text in the slide title placeholder on the slide--which is the case when you create your own titles with the Text tool rather than using PowerPoint's placeholders. (Hint: Look at the presentation in Outline view. If there's no text next to the slide icon of any slide, you'll see "Slide XX" in the By Title pop-up menu.) Generally, it's best to use PowerPoint's title placeholder for your title text, but sometimes there are reasons not to. If you aren't using the title placeholder but still want to have your slides identified meaningfully in the By Title pop-up menu (and in the Outliner), here's how to go about it. First, choose View, Master, Slide Master. Click the title placeholder and assign it a very small text size, shrink it, then move it just off the slide. Click the Close button. Now when you view your presentation as a screen show, you won't see any text in the title placeholder on screen, but you can still type text into it in Normal view or in the Outliner. Your text will appear in the By Title pop-up menu so you can jump to meaningfully named slides instead of having to remember what exactly was on Slide 42.
WHERE DID THE SQUARES COME FROMOccasionally, you'll open a PowerPoint presentation on a Windows 95 or Windows 98 computer and see square characters instead of symbols. This can happen when the presentation was created on a computer running Windows NT 4 and the symbols were inserted with the [Normal Text] option rather than using a standard symbols font. NT 4 supports many more characters in its normal text fonts than Windows 95/98, so Windows 95/98 can't display some symbols that NT 4 can. Have the NT user who created the presentation change the special symbols. They should use one of the standard shared Windows Symbol fonts that are common to all Windows systems rather than the [Normal Text] option. These standard fonts are Symbol MT Extra Monotype Sorts Wingdings
WHEN I TYPE SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE A LINK...PowerPoint's AutoFormat feature often converts text that resembles a link automatically, and it applies its default formatting for links as well. Sometimes that's really convenient, but other times it's a downright nuisance--like when you aren't typing a link! There are two ways to calm PowerPoint down and save your sanity: Choose Tools, Options; click the Edit tab; and deselect the AutoFormat As You Type option. This will disable all of PowerPoint's autoformatting, including its habit of converting your link-lookalike text into links. Whew! If you'd rather not lose all autoformatting, then type your text-that-looks-like-a-link, and when PowerPoint converts it to a link, press the "Oh, no, you don't" magic keystroke combination (better known as Ctrl-Z).
WHAT IS A PPZ FILE AND WHAT DO YOU DO WITH ITOnce in a while, you may run across a file with a PPZ extension. If you try to open these files in PowerPoint, you won't get very far--they simply won't open. A PPZ file is a PowerPoint Animation file, a streaming format intended for Web use, not for exchanging presentations among PowerPoint users. The best way to open one is to ask whoever sent it to you to send you the original PowerPoint PPT file instead. If that's not possible, check out this Microsoft Knowledgebase article: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q155/8/42.asp If you prefer to receive the article by email, send email to mshelp@microsoft.com and type Q155842 as the subject line. You'll receive the text of the article by return email, usually within minutes.
WE'VE CONVERTED TO OFFICE 2000, BUT...If you're using PowerPoint 2000 but need to share presentations with coworkers and others who still use older versions of PowerPoint, you can always choose File, Save As and specify the appropriate older version of PowerPoint in the Save As Type drop-down list. But let's face it--that's a nuisance to have to do every time you save a file, and it's too easy to forget. That annoys the neighbors. You can set PowerPoint always to save in a particular format, if you like. Choose Tools, Options and click the Save tab of the Options dialog box. Choose the version you want as your default save type in the Save PowerPoint Files As drop-down list and select the Convert Charts When Saving As Previous Version option. Click OK. From now on, PowerPoint will automatically save presentations in the appropriate older-version format. PowerPoint 2000 and 97 share the same file format, so you don't need to do this if everyone else you work with has PowerPoint 97. Keep in mind that pre-97 versions of PowerPoint don't support bitmap compression, so when you save to PowerPoint 95 and earlier, your files will get quite large if they include many pictures.
SOLVING PROBLEMS WITH ORG CHARTThe version of Org Chart that comes with Microsoft Office generally works pretty well, but some users are plagued with "Not enough memory" error messages whenever they start Org Chart. Despite what this error message says, the problem has nothing whatever to do with the amount of memory installed in your PC. The problem, believe it or not, is fonts. Too many fonts will give Org Chart a bad case of indigestion. There's no hard-and-fast rule for how many fonts you can have installed before Org Chart starts to complain. The number seems to depend on where the fonts are installed on your system and on the length of the font names. Most people seem to run into trouble when about 500 fonts are installed. So if Org Chart starts complaining about lack of memory, uninstall some fonts from your computer. To do so, click Start, Settings, Control Panel, then double-click the Fonts icon. To delete a font, click its icon to highlight it, then choose File, Delete from the menu, or right-click it and choose Delete from the context menu. It's a good idea to make a copy of the font and put it in some other folder first--you never know when you might want to use the font again later. Happy deleting!
RESTORING DEFAULT TOOLBARS/MENUSPowerPoint lets you organize and customize toolbars, toolbar buttons, and menu commands in pretty much any way you like, but you may occasionally find that you need to return your fine-tuned, personalized copy of PowerPoint to its normal defaults. For example, suppose you want to show co-workers how to perform some task in PowerPoint. You'd want your copy of PowerPoint to look and act like the copy they'll be using on their own machine. Fortunately, it's simple to revert to PowerPoint's default toolbar and menu settings, then restore your customizations later. PowerPoint stores your customization changes in a file called PPT.PCB, which it stores in \Windows\Profiles\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\PowerPoint where <username> is your login name. If you don't have profiles enabled, PowerPoint stores this file in \Windows\Application Data\Microsoft\PowerPoint\PPT.PCB When you need to set PowerPoint back to its out-of-the-box defaults, quit PowerPoint, locate PPT.PCB in one of these two locations, and rename it to something else. To restore your customized version of PowerPoint, quit and change the filename back to PPT.PCB. All of your customizations will be restored the next time you run PowerPoint.
RESOLVING PRINTING PROBLEMSHaving problems printing your presentations? Before you start making forehead-shaped indentations in your desktop, here are a few things to try: Turn off background printing in PowerPoint: Choose Tools, Options and click the Print tab. Deselect the Background Printing option. While you're there, select the Print TrueType Fonts As Graphics option if you're using a non-PostScript printer. Check your printer driver options: If you use a non-PostScript printer, click Start, Settings, Printers. Right-click the icon for your printer and choose Properties from the context menu. On one of the tabs, you'll find a Spool Settings button. Click it, then change Spool Data Format to RAW. If you also see an option for printing TrueType text as graphics, select that as well. If your system is a bit short on hard disk space, choose the option Print Directly To The Printer. (This disables printer spooling, which can eat up quite a bit of temporary disk space; however, it can slow down the printing process. If you have plenty of space on your drive, don't change anything.) It's also a good idea to defragment your hard drive regularly and make certain that you always have plenty of available space on the drive where Windows is installed. Print spooling requires a lot of temporary drive space; if you run out of space while you're printing, the print job will fail and your programs may crash.
HOW DO I USE THIS VBA STUFFYou've undoubtedly run across snippets of Visual Basic (VB) or Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code on the Internet. Some of this stuff is pretty useful, but if you don't know how to get it into PowerPoint so you can put it to use, it doesn't do you much good. It's really pretty simple once somebody explains the Basics (pun intended, of course). And somebody has. There's a simple tutorial on saving and using VB/VBA code snips in PowerPoint on the PowerPoint FAQ Site at http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/ Look for the VBA section and click on the link "How do I USE this stuff in PowerPoint?" Good luck!
A POWERPOINT MOVIE TROUBLESHOOTERIf you've ever run into trouble getting movies to play in your PowerPoint presentations, or especially getting them to play correctly on other computers, you'll want to head straight for the Microsoft PowerPoint Movie Troubleshooter at http://support.microsoft.com/support/PowerPoint/ppt2000 Good luck!
USE DEJA.COM FOR FAST POWERPOINT HELPWe frequently sing the praises of the PowerPoint newsgroups at but sometimes you need an answer FAST and don't have time to wade through a welter of newsgroup posts to find the one or two that answer your immediate question. Deja.com to the rescue. Deja.com archives and indexes all of the messages in thousands of newsgroups and makes them available for your searching pleasure... for free! To try it out, visit Type in the terms you want to search for and go. For example, we chose just Recent messages, typed PowerPoint convert in the search text box, and got 268 hits relating to AVI, DVD, EPS, HTML, and just about every other format under the sun. Adding Corel to the search text narrowed it down to 21 posts about converting CorelDRAW and Corel Presentations files to and from PowerPoint (a much more manageable number). Don't forget to check the advice under the Search Tips and Power Search links. There are lots of good tips for fine-tuning searches to avoid getting too many extraneous hits.
UNLINKING LINKED GRAPHICSWhen you insert images and graphics into your presentations using Insert, Picture, From File, PowerPoint normally embeds the contents of the file in your presentation. It also allows you the option of linking your graphics. If you choose to link rather than embed, it helps keep the size of your PPT files down and also lets you update every presentation that contains a given linked graphic simply by editing the graphic file itself. That can be very useful and a real timesaver, but there's a dark side. Suppose you send us a copy of a presentation that includes linked graphics. The graphics themselves aren't in the PPT file--they're just links that point to the source file. And they all point to wherever the file is on YOUR computer, not ours. Our copy of PowerPoint simply displays a Missing Graphic icon instead of your lovely pictures. With most other types of links, you can edit the link to break it and embed the information in the PowerPoint file, but you simply can't do this with linked, inserted pictures. PowerPoint doesn't give you access to the link information. However, it does allow macros to do this, and there are several publicly available macros that will fix up your presentation so that the graphics are either linked in a way that will work on other computers or delete the links and embed the graphics in the PPT file. The FixLinks tool that's part of the free PPTools Starter Set will leave your graphics linked but set the links up so that they point to the same folder as the PowerPoint file itself, no matter where that is. All you need to do is distribute the PPT file AND any linked graphics in the same folder. You can find this handy tool at http://www.rdpslides.com/pptools Microsoft has a macro that completely breaks the links and instead embeds the graphics in the PPT file itself, in case you prefer to distribute a single standalone PPT file and no extra files. You'll find it at http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q241/3/78.asp
DO I NEED OFFICE 2000 SR-2In addition to the Office SR-1 update mentioned in our previous tip, Microsoft has recently released Service Release 2 (SR-2). This update to SR-1 includes fixes for several of the Office programs but relatively few for PowerPoint 2000. For more information about the SR-2 update and download links, visit http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q278/2/69.ASP If you use Outlook, do a little extra homework before applying SR-2. It includes several security fixes for Outlook. These "fixes" may prevent you from viewing or opening files attached to incoming email. To learn whether and how this will affect you, and to find out about possible workarounds, visit MVP Sue Mosher's sites: http://slipstick.com/outlook/esecup/getexe.htm and http://slipstick.com/outlook/ol2000sp2.htm
DO I HAVE POWERPOINT SR-1Microsoft often updates its software to fix various problems and bugs. PowerPoint 2000 has gotten several updates in Service Release 1 (SR-1). To learn more about what's been changed or fixed in SR-1, visit http://search.support.microsoft.com/kb/c.asp Choose Office 2000 in My Search Is About. Then, select Keyword Search Using All Words. Type Service Release 1 in the search text box, then click Go. That will bring up several article titles you can click to find out more about SR-1. Or you can download it if you want to update your copy of Office 2000. Here's the URL for the one we found most useful (be sure to copy it into your browser as one looooonnnnggg line of text): To find out which version of Office/PowerPoint you have, choose Help, then click About Microsoft PowerPoint. Check the version number displayed at the top of the dialog box. If you have SR-1 installed, it will say so there.
COVER UP!PowerPoint may not have a menu or toolbar command to do everything you want it to, but you can often find a way of making it sit up and do tricks Microsoft never even thought of teaching it. One of our favorite tricks is covering stuff up to make it seem to disappear. PowerPoint's animation effects allow you to bring graphics and other objects "on stage" in a variety of ways, but it's a little weak in the "I'm done with you, now go away" department. Since you can't make things go away, you simply cover them up--or hide them with another object--to make them invisible. Most often, this other object is a rectangle, circle, or other AutoShape set to the same color as the background so that it too is invisible for all practical purposes. There's only one little problem here. Suppose your background isn't a flat color. Suppose it's a gradient or a texture instead. A small blue-to-black gradient rectangle won't be invisible against a blue-to-black gradient background, and there's no way of figuring out the exact background colors under the small rectangle so you can set its colors accordingly. Or to be more precise, there's no way for us human-types to do it, but it must be our lucky day--PowerPoint will do it for us. Try this out for yourself: Choose Format, Background, click the Color drop-down list box, and click Fill Effects. Select the Gradient tab and choose one of the more colorful two-color gradients, such as Horizon. Click OK, then click Apply to assign the gradient fill to your slide background. Now, draw a small rectangle anywhere on the slide and assign it the same gradient fill and No Line. Notice that unless you size it up to fill the entire slide, it won't disappear against the background. But watch what happens when you try this: Choose Format, AutoShape. Click the Colors And Lines tab, then click the Color drop-down list box and choose Background. Better? Now watch what happens as you move the rectangle around. Better! And once you've given an object a fill of Background, it will automatically change to match the slide background, should you change that later. This little trick works perfectly with gradient fills and patterns and with most, but not all, of PowerPoint's textured fills. It won't work with Picture fills, however.
MY WEB PRESENTATION DOESN'T WORKYou've saved your PowerPoint presentation as HTML, PowerPoint created a whole folder full of files, and you've carefully uploaded them all to your site. Arghh! But it still isn't working correctly. What went wrong? It could be one of several things. First, check the names of the files in the folder you uploaded against the names of the same files on the Web server, paying special attention to capitalization. Some servers don't care whether the filenames are upper case, lower case, or some mix of the two, but UNIX servers do. To a UNIX system, Myfile.htm, MyFile.htm, Myfile.HTM, and Myfile.Htm are all different files. The horror, the horror. If the links in your HTML files point to MyFile.htm but it was uploaded as Myfile.htm, the link will break. Next, make sure you've uploaded all the necessary files to the correct places. For example, suppose you save Myfile.PPT to HTML, name it Myfile, and save it in your \Webfiles folder. PowerPoint creates a folder called Myfile in \Webfiles, then creates a gazillion HTM, GIF, and other files in that folder. But note carefully: It also creates Myfile.htm in \Webfiles. You need to upload Myfile.htm to your main Web folder. This is the URL you should link to or give out to people who wish to view the presentation. You then need to create a Myfile folder in the main Web folder, then upload all the files in \Webfiles\Myfile to the Myfile folder on your Web server. So long as the filename capitalization is correct and you upload all the necessary files to the right places on your Web server, your Web-based presentation should work perfectly.
CLIP GALLERY ASKS FOR CDWhen you try to insert a clip into a slide using the Clip Gallery, you may receive a message asking you to insert a specific CD. Most of the Office 2000 clip images are left on the original CDs rather than being installed on your computer in order to save hard disk space. When you see this message, it means you've chosen one of these CD-based images. If it appears only occasionally, just insert the requested CD and click Retry when prompted. If you'd rather not see the message and you have plenty of hard disk space, you can install all of the clip images on your hard drive. Office Standard comes with approximately 3 MB worth of clip images, Office Professional includes 270 MB worth, and the Premium and Developer editions include almost 500 MB worth of clips. After ensuring that there's sufficient space on your hard drive: Close any programs that are running. Choose Start, Settings, Control Panel, then double-click Add/Remove Programs. Click your Office installation listing, then click Add/Remove to start the Office 2000 installer in Maintenance Mode. In the installer, choose Add Or Remove Features. Click the plus sign next to Office Tools, then click the plus sign next to Clip Gallery. Click the Clip Files icon. Click Run All From My Computer on the shortcut menu. Then, click Update Now. Setup installs the additional clips to your computer, and you should no longer see messages asking for CDs.
CHARTS DON'T UPDATE AUTOMATICALLYUsers occasionally report problems with Microsoft Graph charts that contain linked data. Specifically, the charts don't automatically update even though the data they're based on has changed. The reason for this is that the link is from PowerPoint to Microsoft Graph to the data, not from PowerPoint to the data directly. PowerPoint doesn't "know" about the link, and until you double-click the chart in PowerPoint, Graph isn't even running, much less aware that there's a link that needs to be checked for possible updates. If you want your charts to update automatically when the data behind them changes, it's best to create them in Excel and then paste them into PowerPoint.
CAN'T SYNCHRONIZE A PRESENTATION TO SOUNDThis isn't so much a "how-to" as it is a "You can't do that, so there's no sense beating your head against a wall trying" tip. The unfortunate truth is that PowerPoint has no support for synchronizing slide changes with a soundtrack. You might be able to fiddle with your slide transition timings to get the slides to change at the right moment, but it will be a LOT of work to get it right, and in the end it will work correctly only on your own computer--and possibly not every time even there. The slide transition timings will change from one computer to another, so you can never be sure that the slide changes will sync up with your sound track. If you really need to create a presentation that's synchronized with a soundtrack, consider recording a video of your PowerPoint presentation while you manually change the slides in sync with the soundtrack.
AVOID DRAG AND DROP FOR GRAPHICSIt's best to avoid drag and drop when you want to import pictures and other graphics into PowerPoint. Instead, choose Insert, Picture, From File, then choose the graphic file you want to import into your presentation. Drag and drop creates an OLE link to the graphic and can make your PowerPoint files double (or more!) the size they'd be if you were to use Insert, Picture, From File to bring in the same image. And we all know how complex file-size issues can be.
AN UNGROUPING GOTCHAIn a previous tip, we mentioned that you can break links to embedded spreadsheets by ungrouping them in PowerPoint in order to cut down on the size of your PowerPoint files. This also converts your embedded or linked spreadsheet into a collection of PowerPoint drawing objects. It's no longer a spreadsheet, so it won't act like one. Among other things, all formulas from the original sheet will be lost. Here's how you get around this problem: Leave all of your linked information linked while you're still working on the presentation. When you've finished editing the presentation, make a copy of each slide that contains linked content (spreadsheets, charts, graphs, Word tables, and so on). Move all of these duplicate slides to the end of the presentation and hide them so they don't appear in screen shows or printouts (unless you specifically instruct PowerPoint to print them, that is). Select all of the duplicate slides in slide sorter view and drag them to the end of the presentation. Then, while they're still selected, choose Slide Show, Hide Slide. Now you can go back to the original slides and ungroup any OLE linked or embedded content. If file size is an issue, you can save a new version of the presentation without the hidden slides that still have live links. That gives you two versions of the presentation: one nice compact one that's easy to email or otherwise distribute, and another full version you can go back to if needed to make further changes to the linked or embedded spreadsheets and charts.
PNG IMAGES TOO DARK IN POWERPOINTIf you're an Adobe Photoshop user, you may run into this problem: You save your image from Photoshop as a PNG file for use in PowerPoint. It looks great in Photoshop, but it's way too dark when you bring it into PowerPoint. This is due to a bug in Photoshop versions 5 and 5.01, but apparently not in later versions. Photoshop saves the PNG with an incorrect Gamma value. It's not worth going into what Gamma is, but if it's incorrect, the image may appear too dark or light in other programs. The workaround is quite simple. Save the image from Photoshop to some other format--such as BMP, TGA, or TIFF (but not JPG)--and import that into PowerPoint instead. The image will then display properly in PowerPoint. Apart from that, the result is identical, since PowerPoint converts these image formats to PNG when it imports them. You still end up with PNG in your PPT and the same zing in your presentation.
BROKEN LINKS IN TABLESIf you create a table in PowerPoint 2000 and then add hyperlinks to the text in the tables, the links will work fine... as long as you view your presentation in PowerPoint 2000. However, when someone views the presentation in PowerPoint 97 or the free PowerPoint Viewer (which is really a PowerPoint 97 Viewer no matter what it may be called), the links don't work. This happens for two reasons: One: PowerPoint 2000 supports tables natively--that is, PowerPoint 2000 can make its own tables, where earlier versions relied on Word to do the table-setting chores. PowerPoint 2000 tables display nicely in earlier versions of PowerPoint or the Viewer, but they're converted from tables to a group of rectangles and text that just happens to LOOK like a table. That leads us to... Two: Hyperlinks and actions don't work in PowerPoint 97 or the Viewer when the objects they're assigned to are grouped with other objects. In other words, you can draw two rectangles and assign each a hyperlink or action, and they'll work fine in any version of PowerPoint. But if you group them, the actions will work only in PowerPoint 2000. So there's the answer: PowerPoint 2000 tables become groups of objects in earlier versions of PowerPoint, and hyperlinks/actions inside groups don't work. Fortunately, the solution to the problem is equally simple: Ungroup the table (or other group of objects) in PowerPoint 97 or PowerPoint 2000. And if you regularly share your PowerPoint 2000 presentations with others who use different versions of PowerPoint or the Viewer, it'd be a good idea to make sure that any hyperlinked objects are ungrouped before you distribute the presentation.
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