looking for PPT annoyances

[Echo S]

Hey, all --

I'm working on a book for O'Reilly Media called PowerPoint Annoyances. If
you're familiar with Excel Annoyances http://tinyurl.com/durnb or PC
Annoyances http://tinyurl.com/8mjk3 or any of the other Annoyances titles,
then you're already familiar with the type of format PowerPoint Annoyances
will follow. (It's basically "the annoyance" with "the fix" right after.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/excelannoyances/chapter/ch03.pdf has a sample
chapter from Excel Annoyances if you're interested.)

I've been able to think of a couple hundred annoying things about PPT all on
my own <g> -- but I could sure use some help coming up with more! So if
there's something in PPT that annoys you, I'd love to know about it.

We generally try to keep newsgroup stuff here in the newsgroup, but I'll
confess that I'm a bit leery of flooding the newsgroup with everyone's PPT
annoyances! So I've set up an email address you can email your annoyances
to: ppt.annoyances at-sign gmail.com If you prefer, you can just post
them here -- you never know, it could end up being a fun thread!

Thanks for your help.

 

[Echo S]

Wow, I'm amazed. I've only received one email (thanks, David!) and there are
no posts to this thread.

And here I thought I'd at least get more than the four that the O'Reilly
folks got when they posted something like this to some e-list or 'nother...

Oh, well.

Echo

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

I sent this via email, but I'll post it here to help get the ball
rolling, so let's roll ...

I don't know if you want any that include VBA (I suspect not). Here are a
few off the top of my head:


1. Features that change from version to version. For example, I believe
that it was PPT 2000 that changed kiosk mode. The change was changed back
in 2002. In every version except 2000, files in kiosk mode jump back to
the first slide after 5 minutes. In 2000, they don't.


2. On the subject of kiosk mode, it is annoying that you can't control
jumping back to the first slide. Why can't I specify that it jumps back
after 1 minute or 10 minutes or never.


3. Printing handouts is a major annoyance. There should be a way to pick
a larger variety of handout layouts, and why is it that the layouts under
Send to Word are totally different than the regular handout layouts.


4. I want to put whatever I want in slide titles, but I can't link to
slides with commas in the titles. This is annoying!


5. Printing from the Viewer should provide more options, especially
printing handouts.


6. Your announcement has only been out for a few minutes, and I'm sure
that you already have a dozen people complaining about automatic layouts.


7. PowerPoint should be able to do anything Word can do in the same way,
including grammar check and word count.


8. There must be easier ways to convert Word documents to PowerPoint so a
normal looking document (not just ones with Header 1 and Header 2) turns
into something more reasonable in PowerPoint.


9. There must be long lists of times that people want to hide or show the
cursor when PowerPoint doesn't want to.


10. Can we individually control the "Loop continuously until Escape"
feature of a custom show (independent from the main slide show)?


This is fun, but I don't think all of these have solutions, so I'm not
sure you can put them in your book. Good luck.

--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.loyola.edu/education/PowerfulPowerPoint/

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

Since a colleague was just having this problem (and she looked very
annoyed), I'll have to add this one:

11. Anything to do with the smooth operation of sounds, particularly
multiple sound files over multiple slides, is really annoying. She had
four songs that she wanted to play through 220 slides, but she couldn't
get the slides to continue playing and get each of the four songs to
play. Thousands of people use PowerPoint to do picture slide shows at
weddings, graduations, bar mitzvahs, hernia operations, etc. It should be
easy to throw this together.

While we're at it:

12. Why did I have to write her a macro to easily insert the pictures and
get them sized and centered properly? PowerPoint should do this. The
macro was easy for me, but not for most people trying to do this.

--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.loyola.edu/education/PowerfulPowerPoint/

 

[Talon]

Echo,
After all the help you and others have given us, the least we can do
is help you one this small (for us) task.
I get irritated when I want to enlarge the type size on the slide and
have to click the slide bar to drop down more size choices. Why must
the size you already have be the largest one shown in the listing
unless you make a useless click to the slide bar to go bigger. Going
smaller is fine since it shows thesmaller listing OK.
Just lazy I guess but it is ridiculous to not expand the listing on
the drop down to show everything available at once.

Talon

 

[Echo S]

Thanks, Talon! That's a good one I hadn't thought of.

Appreciate it.

 

[Echo S]

Thanks, David! You've come up with a number of annoyances I hadn't already
thought of.

 

[Echo S]

Since a colleague was just having this problem (and she looked very
annoyed),

LOL!

<snip>

More good ones. Appreciate it.

 

[Joe Fisher]

Echo..don't forget my problem with high contrast/background..it was *very*
annoying...
Worse yet, there was abolutely no documentation, at least that I could find,
on how to fix it. Until you mentioned it, I had no clue that was it.

 

[Echo S]

Oh, yeah. That one will definitely be in there!

(Really glad we got that one figured out, too!)

Echo

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

To roll the ball a bit further:

Dumb default settings

Dumber UI notions (Hiding things on the menu? How in heck is that supposed to
make a feature more discoverable)?

Anything to do with with PowerPoint's image linking. It's unworkable, it's
annoying. Hiding it isn't the answer, MS. FIXING it is.

Any problem with an answer that starts out with "The MCI media player in
Windows ..." isn't an answer, it's an annoyance. ;-)

PPT 2002/3: With a presentation open, click Insert, New Slide. PowerPoint ...
umm ... does nothing. Huh?

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Animated text that looks like the dog couldn't digest it.

Text in exported bitmaps that looks like the dog ate it at the same time as the
animated text.

 

[John O]

My top annoyances...any maybe there are answers already.

Inserting images needs a shortcut key. Ctrl-D would be nice (matches Adobe
products)

Blurry screen captures.

Anti-aliasing by default. (I believe I can overcome this by inserting very
high-rez images, but that introduces other problems)

As I'm working on notes in the notes pane, there's no keyboard command to go
to the next slide. I have to grab the mouse to see the next slide. MS is
normally great about keyboard shortcuts, but this one would be very handy to
me.

John O

Echo...does O'Reilly still ask authors to use that amazing Word template
full of styles?

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

My top annoyances...any maybe there are answers already.

Inserting images needs a shortcut key. Ctrl-D would be nice (matches
Adobe products)

Oh well. Since Adobe uses it, that pretty much guarantees that Microsoft
won't
--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.loyola.edu/education/PowerfulPowerPoint/

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

File corruption and files disappearing. People do stupid things, but the
last saved version of the file should still work unless it has been
deleted.
--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.loyola.edu/education/PowerfulPowerPoint/

 

[Gregg]

I'll throw a dozen in...

1) That #!%&#! AutoCorrect-Automatic Layout for Inserted Objects
option!!!
2) No keyboard shortcut for starting the show on the current slide
(like F5).
3) No intuitive method to access the full-screen outline view. It's no
longer in the menu or view icons (unless you know the shift+ctrl+sorter
trick).
4) You can't make tab settings per line.
5) That #!%&#! AutoCorrect-Automatic Layout for Inserted Objects
option!!!
6) You can't send to Word as PowerPoint greyscale/bw.
7) Pasting Web-snarfed graphics defaults as HTML object, which can
import unwanted code.
8) Moving or copying an AutoShape via the mouse using shift, for linear
restriction, many times causes the AutoShape to incorporate a text
frame upon release. (And, I know of no way short of vba to restore it,
not even undo.)
9) You can't loop or repeat a group of custom animations.
10) There's no native control to copy a custom animation.
11) Ungrouping an animated grouped object looses the animation and
regrouping does not restore the animation effect.
12) That #!%&#! AutoCorrect-Automatic Layout for Inserted Objects
option!!!

-Gregg

 

[Echo S]

Good ones, JohnO. Thank you!

Re

Echo...does O'Reilly still ask authors to use that amazing Word template
full of styles?

Oyeah <g>

Echo

 

[Echo S]

File corruption and files disappearing. People do stupid things, but the
last saved version of the file should still work unless it has been
deleted.

Yeah, that's definitely annoying.

I'd add the whole font embedding thing (for PPT 2003) to that as well!

Echo

 

[Echo S]

Thanks, Gregg! You hit on some of my "favorite" annoyances -- and then some!

Appreciate it.

Echo

 

[Austin Myers]

My number one!

I should be able to disable any and ALL macro warnings on MY machine.