Date Formatting on Title Slide

[Guest]

I'm pulling out my hair on this one! I use PowerPoint XP, 2003, and 2007
on various machines.

(1) I want the title slide's single date format, the four digit year, to
automatically update. I've been unable to find - anywhere - how to do this.
Why Microsoft would have an oversight like this, I'll never know. I don't
want to use the Slidemaster placeholders (which I hate!) but merely update
the year. I use PPT for college teaching and want to NOT have to even
think about the year.

(2) Better still, I'd like some help on how do create a script that could
figure out the month and date and add it in front of the date (year) as a
"Spring", "Summer" or "Fall" semester prefix. I'm Visual Basic impaired - I
program only in Delphi, so I do understant OOP and property boxes.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks.

--Bob--

 

[Glen Millar]

Hi,

You can insert the date via (PPT 2007) Insert tab, Date and Time button, and
select a check box to update automatically. Is that not suitable?

--

Regards,
Glen Millar
Microsoft PPT MVP

Tutorials and PowerPoint animations at
the original www.pptworkbench.com
glen at pptworkbench dot com
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Please tell us your:
PowerPoint version
Windows version
Are you using VBA?
Anything else relevant?

 

[Guest]

Glen,

Not suitable. That's not what I need. Most people that talk with me about
PPT consider me to be close to an expert on using it for teaching.
Unfortunately, MS NEVER takes us educators to heart until we complain about
one of their products.

I can insert the date as you suggested. That is not the problem. There is
no way to insert just the four digit year - by itself - and have it
auto-update.

But I DID find a workaround. Select any of the date formats in PPT that
includes the four digit year. Insert a rectangular autoshape with
"Background" as its default color. Move this object over the text in the
date that is to be hidden, then bring it to the top so that it always masks
the part to be hidden. Then group the text box and the autoshape.

OF course with a complex background it gets trickier. And as the month
names get longer it takes some tweaking.

THE underlying problem, again, is PowerPoint's lack of a four digit year as
a date option. Check in any version. It's not there.

--Thanks--
Bob.