Pressing left arrow makes cursor go to the right and the other way around

[Veerle]

Hi,

I have Microsoft Powerpoint from the Office XP suite on a Windows XP
machine. Inside one of the powerpoint slides, there is a rectangle
with text typed into it.

When I click on the text in the rectangle, powerpoint shows the cursor
somewhere in the text. But when a press the left arrow on my keyboard,
the cursor goes to the right and the other way around. Other
rectangles on the same slide don't have this behaviour, there the
cursor goes to the left when pressing the left arrow and to the right
when pressing the right arrow.

I've already sent the file to someone else, and this person has the
same problem with this file, so it has nothing to do with my settings.

I would like to know what I've done to make this rectangle behave like
this and how I can get it undone. Or is it a bug in Powerpoint?

Any ideas?
Veerle

 

[Shyam Pillai]

Veerle,
Interesting. Can you send me a sample slide? What is the languge ID of that
text box? You can email it to Shyam @ MVPs.Org (remove spaces before and
after @).

 

[TAJ Simmons]

At first I thought it was a text box that had been rotated or flipped....but
then tried to prove it...and I can't !

TAJ

 

[Echo S]

I'm thinking that slide is set to a right-to-left language instead of one
which reads left-to-right...

 

[Chirag]

I also thought the same. I tried Urdu language for the shape but the arrow
keys work in the direction they point. Something rather interesting is going
on.

- Chirag
http://officerone.tripod.com/

 

[Veerle]

I have two rectangles on the same slide, where one behaves as expected
and where the other one has the strange behaviour explained above. Is
it possible that the language for the two rectangles are different?
How can I see this?

Anyway, I've put the powerpoint online, so you guys can download it
and check it out for yourselves:
http://home.pi.be/~inno006/mystery.ppt

Veerle

 

[Chirag]

Turn ON the ruler by selecting "View" | "Ruler" menu item. The text is being
written on the other side. I don't seem to find a way to do that! How did
you do that?

An unrelated but strange thing: Your presentation as well as the slide has
one empty tag. I don't seem to find a way to add an empty tag! How do you do
that?

Some more things: The text has msoLanguageIDBelgianDutch language id.

- Chirag
http://officerone.tripod.com/

 

[TAJ Simmons]

Veerle,

With your file on

PPT97...it works fine

PPT2002/XP...it works as you describe.....left cursor moves right...very
weird


Doing a bit of round tripping I see that the "wrong behaviour" box has got a
direction setting of ltr (left to right)
The "correct behaviour" box has got the direction setting of rtl (right to
left)

I also see the following language settings for both boxes

lang=NL-BE
lang=EN-US

Which is probably a clue to how it got that way in the first place.
Although Netherlands and Belgium both write left to right. So I do not get
it.

A fixed file is here
http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com/templates/mystery-fixed.ppt

Cheers
TAJ Simmons
microsoft powerpoint mvp

awesome - powerpoint backgrounds,
free sample templates, tutorials, hints and tips etc
http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com

 

[Shyam Pillai]

Veerle,
The text direction is set to Right to Left for the paragraph hence the
behaviour. This can be set from the UI only on certain language versions
which support multi-direction input such as Arabic.

You can set/reset it in the following code on english systems.
Set to right to left:

Activewindow.Selection.TextRange.ParagraphFormat.TextDirection=ppDirectionRi
ghtToLeft

Set to left to right:

Activewindow.Selection.TextRange.ParagraphFormat.TextDirection=ppDirectionLe
ftToRight

--
Regards
Shyam Pillai

Image Importer Wizard
http://www.mvps.org/skp/iiw.htm

 

[Shyam Pillai]

Hi Chirag,

An unrelated but strange thing: Your presentation as well as the slide has
one empty tag. I don't seem to find a way to add an empty tag! How do you do
that?

I don't see any tags for Presentation or Slide? Tags count turned up 0 for
both. See my other post for the cause of cursor behaviour.

--
Regards
Shyam Pillai

Handout Wizard
http://www.mvps.org/skp/how/

 

[Chirag]

PowerPoint 2002/2003 shows the Tag count as 0. PowerPoint 2000 shows tag
count as 1 - an empty name and value.

- Chirag
http://officerone.tripod.com/

 

[Veerle]

I don't know how I've done it...

The language id msoLanguageIDBelgianDutch is correct, that's the local
of my pc because I live in Belgium and speak Dutch.

Does anyone know how this can be undone, because I have a large
Powerpoint full of these things and I would like to get it right.

I also don't know what you mean by the empty tag thing. How can I see
that?

 

[Shyam Pillai]

Veerle,
Run this macro on the presentation with the issue and it will correct it.
' ----- Beginning Of Code -----
Sub LTRText()
Dim oSld As Slide
Dim oShp As Shape
Dim I As Integer
On Error Resume Next
For Each oSld In ActivePresentation.Slides
For I = oSld.Shapes.Count To 1 Step -1
Set oShp = oSld.Shapes(I)
If oShp.HasTextFrame Then
oShp.TextFrame.TextRange _
.ParagraphFormat.TextDirection = ppDirectionLeftToRight
End If
Set oShp = Nothing
Next I
Next oSld
End Sub
' ----- End Of Code -----

--
Regards
Shyam Pillai

Toolbox for PowerPoint
http://www.mvps.org/skp/toolbox

 

[TAJ Simmons]

I've since removed this file.

TAJ