Fixing PowerPoint annoyances: how to fix the most annoying things about your favorite presentation program

326 Pages·2006·13.06 MB·English

by  Echo Swinford

FIXING

POWERPOINT
ANNOYANCES
™
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FIXING

POWERPOINT
ANNOYANCES
™
How to Fix the Most Annoying Things
About Your Favorite Presentation Program
Echo Swinford
Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Paris • Sebastopol • Taipei • Tokyo
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Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances™
How to Fix the Most Annoying Things About Your Favorite Presentation Program
by Echo Swinford
Copyright © 2006 O’Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Illustrations © 2006 Hal Mayforth
Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472.
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Print History: Editor: Brett Johnson Indexer: Johnna VanHoose Dinse
February 2006: First Edition. Production Editor: Genevieve Interior Designer: David Futato
d’Entremont
Compositor: Phil Dangler
Copyeditor: Linley Dolby
Illustrators: Robert Romano, Jessamyn
Proofreader: Ann Atalla Read, and Lesley Borash
The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. The Annoyances
series designations, Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances, and related trade dress are
trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc.
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resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
0-596-10004-3
[C]
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Contents
INTRODUCTION XV
1. PRESENTING YOUR PRESENTATION 1
Setting Up Your Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Slides Look Crooked 2
The Slides Look All Skinny on the Bottom 2
I Can’t Hear the Sound 2
Slides Won’t Move Forward 3
Silence Is Golden 3
Image Doesn’t Show on Projector 3
Viewing Your Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Presentation Keeps Locking Up 4
Video Doesn’t Show on Projector 6
PowerPoint Opens Minimized 6
Use White Backgrounds for Acetates 6
Use Contrasting Text and Backgrounds 7
Learn How to Navigate Your Presentation 8
Navigating to Hidden Slides 8
Back Up During the Presentation 9
Get Rid of Slide Show Starting Screen 10
Get Rid of End of Slide Show Screen 10
Hide the Arrow 10
Draw Straight Lines with the Pen 11
Access Files from Your Presentation 11
Avoid the Hyperlinked Files Message 12
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Things That Drive Presenters Crazy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Change Note Size in Presenter View 13
Practice with Only One Monitor 13
Start Slide Show from the Current Slide 14
Create a Self-Running Presentation 14
Kiosk Mode Is Broken 15
Loop Your Presentation Continuously 15
Show a Range of Slides 15
Add Current Date and Time 16
2. DUMB DEFAULTS 19
Stuff Keeps Moving Around . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Turn Off AutoFit Body Text to Placeholder 20
Inserted Pictures Change the Layout 20
Reverse Flipped Images 21
Prevent Text from Moving Around 21
Force Complete Menus 23
Make Toolbar Icons Stay in One Place 23
Customize PowerPoint to Suit Your Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Restore Missing Images and Charts 24
Restore Grayed-Out Commands 24
Restore New Animations 25
Bring Back Color Views 25
Make Sure You Have a Qualifying Product 25
Change the Username in Comments 26
Avoid Saving in Notes Page View 26
Add Save as HTML to the Menu 27
Outline View Icon Gone 27
What’s Going on with These File Sizes? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Turn Off Fast Saves Feature 29
Choose the Correct “Save as type” Option 29
Ungroup Your Excel Charts After Pasting 31
Slides, Templates, and Other Related Defaults . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Specify a Default Template 32
Specify a Default Slide Layout 34
Create a Default Chart Style 35
Add a Placeholder to the Slide Layout 36
Find a Template on the Task Pane 37
File→New Doesn’t Do Anything 37
Turn Off Snap to Grid 37
Make PowerPoint Rulers Show Centimeters 38
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Activation, Versions, and Corruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Transfer Your Settings to a New Computer 39
Office Tells Me to Reactivate 39
Edit PPS Files 40
Help Files Only Available Online 40
Understand the Background Printing Setting 40
Dealing with Different Versions of PowerPoint 41
Password-Protect Your Presentations 42
My Presentation Is Corrupt 43
3. FORMATTING AND EDITING 47
Templates and Masters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Locate Your Templates 48
Force Templates to Show in the Task Pane 49
Find More Templates 49
Create a Template 51
Add a Title Master 52
Slide Thumbnail View Disappears 52
Create Multiple Masters 53
Distinguish One Master from Another 54
Apply a Template to Only a Few Slides 55
Masters Disappear from the Presentation 55
Deleting Slide Masters 55
Font Size Changes on Title Master 56
Add Placeholders to the Masters 56
Add a Color Scheme to a Template 57
Add Color Schemes Without Applying Color Schemes 58
Apply Multiple Masters in a Presentation 58
Determine Which Master Will Apply 61
Can’t See Text When You Type 61
The Automatic Contrast Is Ugly 62
Set a New Default Template 62
Set a New Default Master Slide 62
Set Default Graphs and Org Charts 66
Determine Default Colors for Charts 66
Add Filename to Every Slide 67
Number Slides XX of YY 68
Numbers Still Show on Title Slide 70
Add Slide Numbers 71
Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Move Slide Layouts 71
Reapply a Slide Layout 72
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Set Default Font 72
Set Default Text Box and AutoShape Settings 73
When You Draw a Line or a Rectangle, Nothing Shows Up 74
Not All Slides Appear After You Paste 74
Changing Font Locks PowerPoint 75
Group Objects 75
Align Objects 76
Make Grid Visible 76
Change the Grid Setting in PowerPoint 97 and 2000 76
Arrow Keys Jump by Leaps and Bounds 77
Text Ends Up in Placeholder 77
Change Text Case 77
Change Text Case Adds Strange Capitalization 78
Go from Word to PowerPoint 78
Set Hanging Indents on Bulleted Text 79
Using Bulleted and Non-Bulleted Text Together 80
Create Small Caps 82
Line Spacing Cuts Off Text 83
Set Font Size Increments 83
Set Tabs on a Slide 84
4. IMPORTING 85
Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Don’t Drag and Drop or Paste Graphics 86
My Presentation Tries to Connect to the Internet 87
Inserted Pictures Are Really Big 87
Can’t Make Part of a Picture Transparent 88
Too Much of the Picture Is Transparent 90
Transparent Parts Turn Black 91
Rotate Images 92
Batch Import Images 93
Crop Images Before Insertion 95
Add Pictures to a Photo Album 95
Flippin’ Graphics Flip 95
Excel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Excel Data Cut Off 97
Colored Text Turns Black 98
Get Rid of Gridlines 99
Extract Data from an Embedded Excel Chart 99
Paste the Whole Workbook with the Chart 100
Font Size Goes Wacky When I Resize 101
Create Separate Chartsheets 101
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Fonts on Chart Not Visible 102
Excel Headers and Footers Don’t Transfer 103
Clip Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Clip Art Task Pane Doesn’t Show Clips 103
Clips Take Forever to Load 104
Recolor a Clip 105
Search Just Black and White Clips 105
Inserted Clips Look Fuzzy 107
Nothing Happens When I Click Properties in an Online Clip 107
Word, PDFs, and Stuff from the Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Change the Default Paste Action 108
Use Animations from the Web 108
What Does the Little Blue Circle with a Question Mark Mean? 109
Pasted Buttons Don’t Work 109
Use Animated GIFs 109
Import a Word Outline 110
Insert a Gantt Chart from Microsoft Project 110
Import PDFs into PowerPoint 111
5. ORGANIZATION CHARTS, DIAGRAMS,
AND DRAWING TOOLS 113
Organization Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Edit Existing Org Charts 114
Out-of-Memory Errors 115
Add More Lines to a Box in an Org Chart 116
Add Another Head Honcho 118
Organization Chart Exceeds Limit 122
Diagrams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Change Fonts and Other Formatting 122
Ungroup Objects in Your Diagram 123
Diagram Change Erases Customizations 124
Move Text Boxes in a Diagram 124
Add Arrows to the Cycle Diagram 124
Other Drawing Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Connect Connectors 126
Make Selected Tool “Sticky” 128
Draw a Half-Circle 129
Edit Points Refines Drawings 131
Edit Points Not Available 133
Alignment Tools Are Grayed Out 133
Contents ix
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