powerpoint sucks

[Guest]

Is is your motto at microsoft to create software that is appealing to the
stupidest/most basic users while completely ignoring those of us that know
what we are doing and want to do something slightly more advanced with your
software. I've just spent the past several hours struggling with
powerpoint's sound importing. First it was rather difficult to get a
background song to play during a string of slides...nothing intuitive about
that at all. Secondly, when i tried to embed the sound file (to make the
presentation portable, because people usually don't run their presentations
on the same computer they made it on), i found that first i had to change the
defaults, only to learn that there is still an upper limit on the embedding
(not mentioned in your sooooooooo helpful 'help' file) and that upper limit
happens to be smaller than a 5 minute wav file. Not only will it no embed
anything but wav files (which is stupid...i mean come on, i could expect this
crap out of office 3.1, but not 2003...do you guys have any idea of the
capability of systems nowadays to at least allow powerpoint to embed mp3
files...hell, you could probably include an mp3 decoder at no large change in
mem usage), but after i cut the wav files into multiple sections to get them
to embed, the program would refuse to play any sound at all. So after all of
this fighting with powerpoint's inability to embed large files, i gave up and
decided to just use a linked mp3 to play the background music, because its
stated that if you move the linked files with the presentation and keep them
in the same folder, then powerpoint SHOULD be smart enough to locate the
needed file even though the directory structure wouldn't be the same on a
different computer...but that turned out to be another crock of crap from
microsoft because the presentation will not play sound on any computer except
the one which originally composed the presentation. If you guys at microsoft
ever wonder why your software gets pirated...this is the reason...because you
tweak a couple of features to make your programs more appealing to stupid
people while leaving the program as a whole untouched and unupdated and all
the crappy corner cutting that had to be done in earler versions due to
software/hardware limitations is never addressed in new versions and thus
those of us who know a thing or two about computers don't want to spend $300
on the exact same crap you put out last time. Here is a hint....produce a
program that takes advantage of the technology avaliable at the time (or
close to the time) of its release. Thanks microsoft for wasting my time
AGAIN like you have done sooooo many times before with your crappy code.

 

[Luc]

Hello sniper,
No wonder you call yourself sniper. First off this is a user group not
Microsoft itself, so you are barking up the wrong tree. If Powerpoint is so
bad why don't you simply use another product which should be far superior
according to you. Second we are all trying to help one another here as far
as I know that is not stupid at all. And sure there are some aspects that we
would like to be better and userfriendlier but it is our experience that no
program, however good it is, is perfect. After all it's the result of human
effort.
So be positive and contact the real guys:
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp
Luc

 

[Adam Crowley]

Some posts make me want to offer whatever help I can, some don't.
Merry Christmas.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

What was the question again? ;-)

Seriously, I can understand your frustration and sympathize with it. And
sometimes a good vent/rant's just the thing to clear off a head of steam after
battling with some of these problems (because they ARE real problems).

But as Luc's mentioned, this is a newgroup set up by MS so that users can help
one another. Your impassioned commentary's not falling on MS ears here. Luc
posted the link for that.

The deal with the linked files is this:

You have to put 'em in the same folder as the PPT, THEN insert them. That will
create links that work on other PCs, makes sure that PPT can *find* the sound
files there. Once it's found 'em, it's up to the PC (and registry settings and
installed codecs and stuff) to make the sound work. Or not.

If you need help sorting that out, let us know.

5 minutes of WAV, by the way, wouldn't ordinarily be over the 50mb embed limit
unless perhaps you've recorded stereo at a very high sampling rate. You might
want to try downsampling that and/or reducing it to mono to get the size down.

 

[Terry Irwin]

Sniper

I am sure that if you had put your question in another
way, the kind folks here - who do this for nothing - would
have been pleased to help. I don't blame them if they
don't much feel like doing after that rant.

I can only quote one of the MVPs (Sonia Coleman) who
support this board. I quote this for all users who link
here from my site:

"The help you receive in internet newsgroups is not really
free, though it is willingly and happily provided at a
very low and reasonable cost. The price of admission is
respect and professionalism and is due and must be paid in
full with each post and reply. That's what makes it such a
great place for learning and for sharing what we have
learned."

Terry Irwin

 

[TAJ Simmons]

sniper....

http://www.powerpointanswers.com/article1062.html

TAJ