Setting slide image size on notes master

[Scott Meyers]

I have a PPT 2002 deck of ~300 slides, of which perhaps 80 or so originally came
from a different presentation. When I print the notes pages, those ~80 slides
have images that appear much smaller than the slide images on the rest of the
pages. Changing the slide image size on the Notes Master doesn't make the slide
images a uniform size.

Googling around hasn't yielded any information on this problem, but
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00684.htm shows a macro to fix it, which suggests that
this is a known issue. Before I execute the macro, I'd like to know more about
the cause of the problem and whether there is an alternative way to fix it.

I'm running PPT 2002 (i.e., PPT XP) on WinXP.

Thanks,

Scott

 

[Echo S]

I can't give you more information -- I'm sure someone else will pop in soon
with that -- but I can tell you to most definitely run the macro on a COPY
of the presentation! That way you at least have an "out" if it blows up.

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PPT 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances http://tinyurl.com/36grcd
PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/32a7nx

Don't Miss the PPTLive User Conference! Atlanta | Oct 11-14

 

[Scott Meyers]

If you're worried about running the macro, run it on a COPY of your actual
presentation (always a good practice for any major changes you make to any
presentation, really).

My bigger concern is unanticipated side effects of running the macro. Given that
the PPT file has somehow become corrupted (in the sense that the notes pages are
no longer following the template defined by the notes page master), I worry that
seemingly benign actions (such as performed by the macro) might have other
effects I don't want, e.g., content or formatting changes in the slides
themselves. Running the macro on a copy of the presentation means I can get
back to where I was before running the macro, but it offers me no help in
determining whether running the macro did things other than what I expected.
It's unpleasant to discover in the middle of a presentation that aspects of
slides "the macro could not possibly have affected" are not what they should be.

Thanks for your help.

Scott

 

[Scott Meyers]

If you're worried about running the macro, run it on a COPY of your actual
presentation (always a good practice for any major changes you make to any
presentation, really).

Since I started this thread, there have bigger fish to fry, so I didn't get back
to this problem until now. I ran the macro on a copy of my presentation, and it
did exactly what it said it would do: make the slide image on each notes page
the same size as the slide image on the notes master page. Unfortunately,
that's all it did, and as a result, the notes themselves remained in exactly the
same place. Because the slide image was now bigger, this mean that the bottom
of the slide image now overlapped the notes text. Not exactly what I had in mind.

Or for a more tedious but more permanent fix: visit each notes page, delete the
slide image, then use Format, Notes Layout; put a check next to "Slide image" and
"Reapply master" then click OK.

It turned out to be easier than this. For each notes page with an incorrect
slide image size, I just had to reapply the notes page master. This is easy to
do from the keyboard:

ALT-o (Open the Format Menu)
L (Select Notes Layout Submenu)
R (Check Reapply Master)
ENTER (Do it)

Still, there were a lot of pages, and this was tedious, so I decided to make the
above a macro. I chose Tools>Macro>Record New Macro, typed in a name, performed
the above actions, observed that the page I was on was modified appropriately,
then stopped recording the macro. When I went to apply the macro again,
however, nothing happened, and checking the source for the macro revealed why:

Sub ReapplyNotesSlideMaster()
'
' Macro recorded 10/23/2009 by Scott Meyers
'

End Sub

As you can see, there is nothing in the macro. Does anybody have any idea why?

I'm running PPT XP (i.e., PPT 2002).

Thanks,

Scott

 

[Scott Meyers]

Change the size of the notes text placeholder on the notes master, then modify the
macro. Change ppPlaceholderTitle to ppPlaceholderBody ... that should do it.

Isn't there a simple way to get a macro that simply reapplies the notes master
page to each notes page in a presentation?

Scott