Stuff missing from PPT 2007 Beta2

[Guest]

I find several things we rely upon missing in PowerPoint 2007, and some other
odd quirks.

1. Cannot add buttons to the ribbon, particularly the add/decrease line
spacing buttons.

2. Line spacing adjustment does not allow kerning less than 1.0 lines

3. Cannot edit master backgrounds of some legacy PowerPoint shows.

4. The "Animations" tab on the toolbar is a misnomer. It should be
"Transitions", since except for one pane, it's all about transitions, not
animations. Animations, meaning animating elements inside of a slide, should
be its own ribbon with the same treatment as transitions (nice).

5. In general, you really should do something about locking transitions and
other timed events to a real-time clock. In the past transtions and
animations have been tied to processor clock speed, so if you run it on a
faster computer, everything speeds up. Likewise a slower computer makes
everything run slower. This produces unpredictable results in distribution.

6. And while I'm rambling, why can't we play a DVD chapter???

More to come...


Steve P.

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[Steve Rindsberg]

Hi,

1. Cannot add buttons to the ribbon, particularly the add/decrease line
spacing buttons.

More particularly, any buttons. You can only add buttons to the Quick Access
toolbar. That's it. Most unfortunate.

2. Line spacing adjustment does not allow kerning less than 1.0 lines

Kerning refers to spacing between letters, not between lines; it doesn't apply to
line spacing. I'm not sure if this is what you mean, but if you set Line Spacing
to Exactly, you can dial in the spacing you want in points rather than full lines.

3. Cannot edit master backgrounds of some legacy PowerPoint shows.

Can you edit the backgrounds of these same shows in, say, 2003?

 

[Guest]

Sorry. I meant "leading" not "kerning" (been away from typography too long).
Aha! The Exactly button. But still the up/down buttons were a whole lot
more convenient!

As far as the masters, this one file has filled rectangle as a background
that doesn't take up the whole screen, two logos on the bottom and line of
text at the top in the master. They are uneditable in 2007, but edit fine in
2003. (Client's going to be using them in 2003, so it doesn't really matter,
but it's the principal of the thing.)

Steve P.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Sorry. I meant "leading" not "kerning" (been away from typography too long).
Aha! The Exactly button. But still the up/down buttons were a whole lot
more convenient!

I'll buy that. And "Exactly" isn't Exactly intuitive. But you'll notice if you
compare the two that PPT and Word's type settings have converged. I'm guessing that
the Wordies had the final say over a lot of the implementation (fair enough ... the
interface has to change in PPT no matter what; may as well change it to what Word
already has and spare Word users some of the pain).

Look at the bright side. We can now set tab stops paragraph by paragraph, something
PPT's never been able to do before. We inherited that from Word too.

As far as the masters, this one file has filled rectangle as a background
that doesn't take up the whole screen, two logos on the bottom and line of
text at the top in the master. They are uneditable in 2007, but edit fine in
2003. (Client's going to be using them in 2003, so it doesn't really matter,
but it's the principal of the thing.)

Odd. You'd expect it to work the other way in some instances ... some 2007 effects
will become bitmaps in earlier versions.

Is this proprietary or can you email a copy to a couple of us to prod at?
I'd like to have a look if it's small enough; steve at-sign pptools dot com

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

1. Cannot add buttons to the ribbon, particularly the add/decrease
line

spacing buttons.

You can, just not very easily. You either need to learn some XML (called
RibbonX) or use a 3rd party add-in. For more on both topics, take a look
at my website. Note that I am currently working on updating everything
on it to work with B2TR and organizing it better.

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
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[Echo S]

I find several things we rely upon missing in PowerPoint 2007, and some
other
odd quirks.

Steve R's got you covered on the other stuff, so...

6. And while I'm rambling, why can't we play a DVD chapter???

http://www.pfcmedia.com -- check into PFCPro for this functionality.

 

[alayne]

When you use Exactly for line spacing, it doesn't allow you to decrease
the leading. 0pt is the minimum, and then it only lets you increase by
6, 12, 18, 24 etc. That's not "exact" at all! How do I squash my
paragraph??? Arg!

 

[Echo S]

Use .8 or so in the Exactly setting box.

(FWIW, I know this dialog sucks -- it may be good for Word users, but it
sucks for PPT users. Unfortunately, my complaints weren't enough to get it
changed. Ah, well, maybe next version. At least we have the behavior still.)

 

[Echo S]

Oh, yeah, meant to mention you can type in the leading box, too. I usually
just type in 9 or 15 or whatever. (I'm not a big fan of the default 6-pt
setting, either.)

What really frustrates me, though, is the lack of a Preview button -- or
live preview with this dialog. So I have to close the box, check the
results, reopen it and make changes, lather, rinse, repeat. It's trial and
error, and it really sucks. The settings aren't even what we're used to
(they're set in points instead of lines), so it's even harder than
necessary. AND it's two clicks to get to that dialog, even though I added
"line spacing" to my QAT. (So here's a hint -- add the Paragraph [dialog
launcher] to your QAT instead so you can open that dialog with one click.)

Sorry about the mini-rant, but this dialog box really does frustrate me. I
suppose you couldn't have guessed that?! LOL!

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PPT 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/

Use .8 or so in the Exactly setting box.

(FWIW, I know this dialog sucks -- it may be good for Word users, but it
sucks for PPT users. Unfortunately, my complaints weren't enough to get it
changed. Ah, well, maybe next version. At least we have the behavior
still.)

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PPT 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/

When you use Exactly for line spacing, it doesn't allow you to decrease
the leading. 0pt is the minimum, and then it only lets you increase by
6, 12, 18, 24 etc. That's not "exact" at all! How do I squash my
paragraph??? Arg!

 

[Echo S]

3. Cannot edit master backgrounds of some legacy PowerPoint shows.

You know, it just occurred to me that you may be running into something
another user ran into last week.

Basically, when you're in 2007 Master View, you should notice one master
slide and then a bunch of slide layouts related to that slide.

Some things on the individual slide layouts won't be editable, because they
inherit their stuff from that slide master. So either edit it on the slide
master, or cut it from the slide master and paste it onto the individual
slide layouts as appropriate.

It's unfortunate that there aren't really many visual cues to tell you that
you're on a slide layout when you're in the slide master view, and not on a
slide master. If you see a dotted line beside the slide thumbnail you're on,
it's a slide layout. Scroll up to find the associated slide master. (I find
it especially easy to lose my place if I'm working with more than one slide
master, because that generally means a lot of layouts so it's a really
extended task pane!)

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

When you use Exactly for line spacing, it doesn't allow you to decrease
the leading. 0pt is the minimum, and then it only lets you increase by
6, 12, 18, 24 etc. That's not "exact" at all! How do I squash my
paragraph??? Arg!

In case you missed Echo's point amid all the flying lather (Hey Echo ... chillpill
time! <g>) just type the value you want into the combo box (in points).

Same, by the way, with font sizes. You're not limited to the fonts the combo box
offers. You want 17.3 point type, you got it. (the combo won't SHOW you the decimal
but if you do 17.3 then change it to say 17.9, you'll see the text size jump.

 

[Echo S]

In case you missed Echo's point amid all the flying lather (Hey Echo ...
chillpill
time! <g>) just type the value you want into the combo box (in points).

But type the line spacing in lines in the line spacing box after choosing
"Exactly" from the dropdown. If you need your lines closer together, type .9
or .8 in there. Much smaller than that, and you'll cut off the ascenders and
descenders of most fonts.

Then type the size in points in the space before box to set the size between
"paragraphs."

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

But type the line spacing in lines in the line spacing box after choosing
"Exactly" from the dropdown. If you need your lines closer together, type .9
or .8 in there. Much smaller than that, and you'll cut off the ascenders and
descenders of most fonts.

I dunno kiddo. I type .9 there and get a jumbled mess. In old typesetter's
terms, 24/24 or "set solid" (meaning 24 point type on 24 point leading) is as
tight as you'd normally want it. 24/.9 is a bit ... er ... extreme. ;-)

Stevie Wonder described it well. "Up tight, out of sight"

But you meant to use 24/24.8 rather than 24/24 right? FWIW, I've just tried
some 20 point text set solid in a couple of fonts and not lost a single
descender (in 2007; I've definitely seen the descenders get whacked in earlier
versions). Might just be the type faces I chose at random in 2007 though.

 

[Echo S]

I dunno kiddo. I type .9 there and get a jumbled mess. In old
typesetter's
terms, 24/24 or "set solid" (meaning 24 point type on 24 point leading) is
as
tight as you'd normally want it. 24/.9 is a bit ... er ... extreme. ;-)

Ah, crap. Choose "multiple" from the dropdown, not "exactly." Then type in
..8 or .85 and see if that doesn't do it.

See, you're supposed to do what I mean, not what I say!

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I dunno kiddo. I type .9 there and get a jumbled mess. In old

Ah, crap. Choose "multiple" from the dropdown, not "exactly." Then type in
..8 or .85 and see if that doesn't do it.

See, you're supposed to do what I mean, not what I say!

You've confused "psychic" with "psychotic". I'm the other, not the one.

And for anyone who's waded this far ... a knugget 'o knowledge.

Why use exactly vs multiple?

Suppose you set 24 point text using Exactly and 26 points.

If you later need to change the text size, the leading stays at 26 points (or
rather, you'll need to go in and change it because it won't look right).

With the leading set to a Multiple, it's effectively saying "Make the leading
xx percent of the text size." Change the text size, the leading changes
proportionally with it. Useful.

You'd think you could set the leading Exactly in points and then switch it to
Multiple to have the computer do the grunt of figuring out the right multiple
value. But no. Duh.