Hari,
You're very methodical and observant, and you ask lots of good questions. Some
of them don't have really good answers other than "That's just the way MS
designed it" but they generally designed it the way they did for good reason.
I'll give it my best shot.
STEP 3- Then I went to Insert and selected a Text Box and drew the same on
the first slide. As soon as I unselected the textbox it was no longer on the
slide. I checked -- select multiple objects-- menu bar and it displayed
text-box as being not there on the slide.
Earlier versions used to allow blank text boxes. This can cause other problems
later on, so now if you create a text box and don't enter any text, PPT deletes
the text box when you de-select it. This is A Good Thing. If you enter just
one character, even a space, the text box should stay there.
Cutom animation dialog box and the names in the select multiple objects is
:-
Title 1 is actually Rectangle 2
Text 2 is rectangle 3
Rectangle 3 is rectangle 4
Shape 4 is TextBox 5
Isn't PPT fun? Each shape has what you might call a "real" or "internal" name
that PPT assigns it when the shape's created. Each shape also has a .Name
property that is the same as the "real" name by default, but which can be
changed in code. The custom animation box shows the "real" names (or I think
in some cases the text in the shape?).
a) Since I opened a new PPT session, why should PPT give the numbers as 2
and 3 instead of 1 and 2 in STEP 1. Any reason behind the same?
Because it does. ;-)
There's something called "The Serenity Prayer" that starts out " ... grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change"
That's pretty good advice for life and even better advice for life with
PowerPoint.
b) In STEP 2 I created a rectangle from drawing toolbar and in STEP 4 I
could create a Text-Box. Whats the difference between a Text-Box and a
rectangle. In what situation does one use a text-box and when a rectangle?.
I see that I cannot write anything within a rectangle.
A text box is in many ways just a special case of Rectangle. You could
consider it a rectangle that's been optimized for use as a text container,
since we so often need to do that. And of course, it REQUIRES text. You can,
by the way, enter text within a rectangle. Click it, start typing.
So, when we create a
flow-chart kind of thing using this rectangle do I have to use a textbox
over a rectangle in order to give the illusion of text written inside a
rectangle? Are there any better/other ways?
I'd just use a rectangle. And programmatically you access its text exactly as
you would a text box.
Shape.TextFrame.TextRange.Text = "Look at me! I'm writing in rectangles!"
c) I see that in a text-box the outer line/border is not visible while in a
rectangle it is visible.
Or not, depending on the defaults or attributes that you assign. The rectangle
can have no Line color, the text box can be given a line color and thickness.
Again the 2 shapes from STEP 1 have dotted border.
What does one do in powerpoint which requires these 3 shapes to have
different kind of border characteristics?
The shapes with the dotted border are placeholders, inherited from the slide
master. Until you type something into them or otherwise add content, they
don't really exist (they won't print or appear in slide shows). The dotted
outline, I suppose, indicates this ghostly quality of their tenuous existence.
<g>
Again if i write something within
the shapes of STEP 1 the doted border vanishes. what's the logic behind the
same.
By adding content, you've made it real. It will be forever grateful.
(ok, to some extent I can appreciate rectangle having border as that
would be needed in a flow-chart kind of situation. Other that is rectangle
of any use?)
As sub-parts of other drawings ... try drawing a building w/o rectangles, for
example. No fair using the Guggenheim Museum.
e) I see that STEP 2 rectangle and STEP 4 text-box have a green handle when
I select them and with it I can rotate them to any angle. On the other hand
the STEP 1 rectangle dont have that green handle. Why is it so?
That'd be the Title text placeholder, I think? I suppose MS saw no need for
rotating title or body text. In something like ten years of doing newsgroup
support for PPT and other similar programs, I don't recall anyone asking for
this feature. It makes sense then that they wouldn't implement it.
h) Based on the DISPLAY name differences between custom animation dialog box
and select multiple objects menubar in STEP 5, I have some sub-questions:-
1) I understand that programmatically if I want to refer to a shape then
for small - scale purposes I would stick with the names in the select
multiple objects. But my doubt is ... is it posssible for a person to second
guess the name (not the number) which will be displayed in the custom
animation dialog box based on the default display name in the select
multiple objects. It's because in one of the posts David M said -- Ignore
the names of those shapes (they are not the real names of the shapes), but
they are followed by a number. That number is the Index number of the
object. --
No, it's not. If you create three rectangles one after the other, they'll
likely be called Rectangle 1, 2 and 3. Send Rectangle 3 to the back and its
index number is now 1.
Create three rectangles, delete one, create another and it's now Rectangle 4,
but there's no shape at index 4.
Again: there is NO connection between names and Index numbers, other than a
very tenous one at the time the shapes are first created on a brand new slide.
So on what basis does Power-point assign names in the cutom
animation dialog box.
See earlier: in short, the shape name it assigns when the shape is created
plus the text in the shape, if any.
2) Is it possible for a person to know non-programmatically what is the
type/kind of a object. Like is it possible for me to second-guess by
clicking on a particular shape or by selecting some menu option whether a
particular shape is actually a text-box kind of shape or a rectangle kind of
shape. Between text-Box and rectangle difference would be that I cannot
write inside the later, but what about the huge number of shapes provided in
powerpoint, how do I know what type they are non-programmatically?
It will be obvious in some cases. In other cases, you might need to rely on
specific behaviors: if it looks like a rectangle and has no text in it, it's a
rectangle. If it has text in it and you delete the text, then if it
disappears, it's a text box. If it sticks around for more abuse, it's a
rectangle.
Hope that helps some.
