Strange Theme Thumbnail and Auto Preview Behavior in PPT 2007

  • Thread starter NY Law Firm Trainer
  • Start date
N

NY Law Firm Trainer

I have created eight themes for use with my firm’s PPT 2007 template. They
can each be applied successfully, and perform functionally once applied. But
when I’m hovering in front of one theme’s respective thumbnail in the themes
gallery…various random, arbitrary and inconsistent elements from my other
themes display in Auto Preview. Moving across the gallery, all thumbnails
generate the Auto Preview mix-up, and during a subsequent hover across, Auto
Preview shows new and different wrong stuff for each Thumbnail. And again,
once a theme is actually applied, it delivers the desired format and content.
Does anyone have any intel on this, and/or know of a fix?
 
E

Echo S

I'm not ignoring you (and I doubt anyone else is, either! :) ), but I
don't know the answer to this. I've asked a colleague who's actually more
well versed with the new themes than I am -- hopefully I'll hear something
back.

If you want to email me some sample themes, I can look and see if I can spot
anything. It's echos at indy dot net. If you'd include the body of your post
so I can remember what I'm looking at, that would be great.
 
E

Echo S

The following information is from Stephanie Krieger, MS Office MVP. She
knows way more about themes than I do, so I asked her about your issues.
Here's what she says:

<quote>

When you add any type of image or shape to the slide master or a slide
layout, PowerPoint adds an attribute userDrawn=â€1†in the XML to tell
PowerPoint to leave that behind if you apply a different theme (logic being
that it could be your logo or something else that you want to keep
regardless of design, since you put it there). The problem is that this
attribute doesn’t get stripped out automatically when you save the file as a
theme.

Themes containing objects with those userDrawn attributes can cause that
intermittent ghosting issue with LivePreview that the user seems to be
referring to.

The themes SDK includes instructions for removing the userDrawn attribute
from any master or layout XML parts, in case that’s helpful.

I just tried to reproduce the problem, by the way, and was able to pretty
easily. Here’s what I did:

1. Create a blank, new presentation.
2. On the title slide layout, I inserted a shape and a PNG image.
3. Then, saved the file as a theme.
4. Create another new, blank presentation.
5. Point to the newly-saved theme in the themes gallery, and you see the
objects you added on the title slide layout in LivePreview (as you should).
Don’t apply the theme.
6. Continue to point to other themes to see them in LivePreview on your
blank, default title slide. Intermittently, one or both of the objects from
the theme you created will appear in LivePreview with another theme that
they don’t belong to.

After this, I went into the zip package and removed the userDrawn attribute
from both of those objects.Then, I repeated steps 4 through 6 above and the
objects no longer appeared at all with other themes.

</quote>

The Theme SDK Stephanie refers to is available as part of the Help files in
the Theme Builder Utility. You can get the Theme Builder Utility from
Connect. It's at http://connect.microsoft.com/ThemeBuilder (Looks like the
userDrawn info is on pages 53-54.) Holler if you have trouble finding it and
I'll post the relevant text -- but I think you may find the SDK useful, so
it would be good to get it just in general.

--
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


Echo S said:
I'm not ignoring you (and I doubt anyone else is, either! :) ), but I
don't know the answer to this. I've asked a colleague who's actually more
well versed with the new themes than I am -- hopefully I'll hear something
back.

If you want to email me some sample themes, I can look and see if I can
spot anything. It's echos at indy dot net. If you'd include the body of
your post so I can remember what I'm looking at, that would be great.

--
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


NY Law Firm Trainer said:
I have created eight themes for use with my firm’s PPT 2007 template. They
can each be applied successfully, and perform functionally once applied.
But
when I’m hovering in front of one theme’s respective thumbnail in the
themes
gallery…various random, arbitrary and inconsistent elements from my
other
themes display in Auto Preview. Moving across the gallery, all thumbnails
generate the Auto Preview mix-up, and during a subsequent hover across,
Auto
Preview shows new and different wrong stuff for each Thumbnail. And
again,
once a theme is actually applied, it delivers the desired format and
content.
Does anyone have any intel on this, and/or know of a fix?
 

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