PowerPoint 2003 rotation problem. Difficult issue.

[Mike_M]

Aren't they all? ;-)
Desktop computers running Windows XP with latest updates. We use a product
called Pivot Pro to rotate the desktop to portrait mode.
http://www.portrait.com/us/products/pp_overview.html. We have a base Ghost
image we use to setup these computers including some PowerPoint slide shows.
We have been doing this with PowerPoint 2002 but recently started using PPT
2003. Things appeared to be fine (the slide show playing in a portrait
orientation) until someone messed around with a slide show and then all
slide shows would not rotate. We have reimaged some drives about 50 times
and tested various things including graphics driver versions, Pivot Pro
versions, hardware acceleration, etc., add nauseum. We have been able to
narrow the failure down to the following steps following a clean image that
works:
1. Open a slide show to edit.
2. Select Slide Show->Setup Show.
3. Press OK.

From that point on, forever and forever, slides shows will not rotate.

If we cancel out of that screen they continue to rotate fine. A further
oddity (yes there is more) is that if we set the show to be, "Presented by
an individual (window)" then they will rotate fine. But when we set to
kiosk or full screen they won't rotate. Over the last couple of years I
have read alot about hardware acceleration, pivoting and such and how
programs using Direct X and OpenGL calls are affected by this. I have
turned hardware acceleration completely off to see if that would fix the
failed rotation but it doesn't. The Pivot drivers intercept (for lack of a
better word) the video drawing and rotate. This has worked fine with
Powerpoint, WMP, streaming video and all the other content we put on these
computers. Now with the advent of PowerPoint 2003, the full screen slide
shows fail to rotate. It may be a red herring but the fact that the slide
show settings causes the failure to occur points me to a bug in PPT.

Any thoughts (pertaining to the issue)?

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Aren't they all? ;-)

Well, at least the ones you show up with, bud. Though that's more to do with
the fact that you nail the easy ones before you get here, I expect.

What happens if you do Slide Show, Setup Show and change the Slide Show
Resolution to something other than Use Current ...? Don't waste a newly
reimaged drive on this one ... try on an already bunged one.

 

[Mike_M]

If it ain't hard it ain't worth it! Well that fixed it. It isn't a final
solution since this is all done automatically through my software but it
points to the problem area. Have you seen/heard/experienced some problem
with Use Current Resolution before? I wonder if there is some break down in
PPT2003 with the Use Current Resolution that causes a disconnect between PPT
and Pivot. Or maybe PPT uses a different mode of drawing or whatever. The
desktop is set to 1024 x 768 so when it is rotated is is reported in PPT
(under the resolution drop down) as 768 x 1024. Anything in that area you
can think of?

Thanks for the light at the beginning of the tunnel. <g>

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

If it ain't hard it ain't worth it! Well that fixed it. It isn't a final
solution since this is all done automatically through my software but it
points to the problem area. Have you seen/heard/experienced some problem
with Use Current Resolution before?

No, but after all these years, I got good instincts. <g> Re the rez problem,
is there any chance you could try running the same code on a tablet that lets
you switch from portrait to landscape?

I wonder if there is some break down in

 

[Mike_M]

Unfortunately I don't have one of those tablet things. I'll open an
incident with MS.

Thanks.

 

[Mike_M]

And the answer is:

"I have done more research and was able to find out that this is a known
issue with PowerPoint 2003 that is likely the cause of changes made in
Office 2003 due to Inking and TabletPC architectures and the given scenario
with this driver is an unexpected (non-tested) design limitation of
PowerPoint. We have been made aware of this problem.

I apologize for not having this information for you sooner.



Tech Support Dude goes here, MCP | Support Engineer | Microsoft Office
Support"

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

And the answer is:

"I have done more research and was able to find out that this is a known
issue with PowerPoint 2003 that is likely the cause of changes made in
Office 2003 due to Inking and TabletPC architectures and the given scenario
with this driver is an unexpected (non-tested) design limitation of
PowerPoint. We have been made aware of this problem.

Well bummer. I was hoping they'd have more for you than that, but at least it
was a nice *polite* "Too bad, bub." ;-)

 

[Mike_M]

Yep. That MSDN subscription is good for something. ;-)
I was able to work around the problem by using a newer version of the driver
for our Matrox graphics card. It has rotation built into the actual card
and works with PPT 2003.
So a good time was had by all.

TTFN