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Here's a question that I was asked recently:

Geetesh, I hope it is OK if I ask you a question about PowerPoint. You seem like the expert that can help me. I have a Mac with PowerPoint 2004 installed on it. My daughter created a PowerPoint at school on a 2007 version and can't make it work on our 2004. Should we buy the new 2008 version of Microsoft Office for the Mac. If we do, is that compatible with the the 2007 version. I want her to be able to take her work from school and be able to work on it at home. What do you think? Thanks for your time.

I am guessing your daughter created a PowerPoint presentation in the new PPTX file format that is native to both PowerPoint 2007 for Windows and PowerPoint 2008 for the Mac. So, yes upgrading to PowerPoint 2008 on the Mac will allow you to open and save PPTX files that will let your daughter take her work from school to home, and back.

Alternatively, you can get the free Open XML File Format Converter for Mac that will let you open and save these PPTX files from within your existing PowerPoint 2004. This is a great solution if you just need to view the PPTX files in PowerPoint 2004. On the other hand if she needs to work on those files at home, and move them often between home and school, then I suggest you upgrade to PowerPoint 2008. Since she is a student, you can get the three-license version of the Microsoft Office 2008 Home & Student version for around $100.

Labels: office_mac, powerpoint_2007, powerpoint_2008

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This quick tutorial was provided with George McCaskill of Visual Exemplars, a UK based company that creates Perspector, a 3D add-in for PowerPoint.

1. Starting with a normal slide with around three bullet points:
   
   
• one
• two
• three
  
  
2. On the Perspector panel, select "Convert PowerPoint bullet list to a 3D list". Choose the "Simple Flow Across" image to end up with what you can see in Figure 1.
   
   
   Figure 1: A Perspector 3D list.
   
   
3. Now do some simple Perspector editing like adjusting the angle of the flow in 3D, change font size and color (select all first), and save the Perspector image. As a final flourish, add a PowerPoint 2007 image reflection to the saved Perspector image (see Figure 2).
   
   
   Figure 2: A Perspector list with PowerPoint 2007 effects.
   

Labels: perspector, powerpoint_2007

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Echo Swinford, PowerPoint MVP resolves the mystery of the algorithm behind the changing cases in PowerPoint!

Do you use Shift+F3 to toggle through the change case options on selected text in PowerPoint, and wonder why sometimes only the first word gets a capital letter, but at other times all the words get capitalized?

Here's a more detailed example -- suppose I double-click to select all the words in a text box on the slide: fetal and neonatal disease. I hit Shift+F3. I expected to get Fetal And Neonatal Disease and then, if I hit Shift+F3 again, FETAL AND NEONATAL DISEASE.

Instead, the first time I hit Shift+F3, I get Fetal and neonatal disease. The second time, I get all caps, and the third time I'm back to all lower case as expected. But how do I know when to expect sentence case (e.g., Fetal and neonatal disease) and when to expect title case* (e.g., Fetal And Neonatal Disease)?

*And yes, I know it's not a true title case -- in fact, you'll notice that in 2007 this is now called "Capitalize Every Word," not "Title Case."

I think this has to do with punctuation, or, rather, an invisible paragraph marker at the end of text.

Here's what Beth Melton, Word MVP (thanks, Beth!) and I figured out:

If you select text in a Title Placeholder and Shift+F3, you'll get title case.

If you select text in a manual textbox, which you get depends on what you've selected and also HOW you've selected it. In the case of selecting all text in a textbox, for example, "fetal and neonatal studies"...

• If you triple-click the text to select all text in the textbox, Shift+F3 gives you sentence case. (Fetal will begin with a capital letter.)
  
  
• If you select all the text by dragging the mouse over the text from left to right, Shift+F3 gives you sentence case. (Fetal will begin with a capital letter.)
  
  
• If you select all the text by dragging them mouse over the text from *right* to *left*, Shift+F3 gives you title case. (All Words Begin With A Capital Letter.)
  
  
• It's as though triple-clicking or selecting from left to right also selects an invisible marker*, which indicates the text should be a "sentence."
  
  
• Selecting from right to left does not select that last invisible marker, which indicates the text should act as a title.
  
  
• If you're selecting just part of the text in a text box, e.g., selecting only "and neonatal," then it doesn't seem to matter if you use left-right or right-left -- you get title case with all words capped. Of course, if the last word of the "paragraph" is included in that partial selection, e.g., "and neonatal disease," you'll need to use a right-to-left selection to avoid that final invisible marker.
  

Personally, this all seems overly complicated to me. Sure wish we could see the non-printing characters; I probably would have figured this out years ago....

*I'm assuming an invisible paragraph marker because if you try the three ways to select text and then paste the text into a new empty textbox, the first two ways give you an empty "paragraph" below, while the third way (right-to-left) doesn't.

Echo Swinford runs EchosVoice, a site containing many PowerPoint tips. She is also author of Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances and PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit.

Labels: case, language, powerpoint, powerpoint_2007

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Here's a question that I received from someone who once sent me an animated Christmas game! He's probably got a lot of other animated stuff that might get you either mad or mesmerized (or both!) -- but for now, here's his question: I'll spare you the details but can you now no longer ungroup charts in PowerPoint 2007?

The answer is yes, you can -- but the route to ungroup nirvana might be new -- but fear not, let me get you there:

1. First of all, create your chart -- and just to be on the safe side, duplicate the slide that contains the chart. That's because once you ungroup your chart, you can no longer edit the values within the chart.
2. Make sure you do not double-click the chart -- just select it, right-click the edge of the chart, and choose the Save as Picture option.
3. This brings up a dialog box of the same name -- now choose EMF within the Save as type dropdown box, provide a name and location, and save the chart as an EMF graphic.
4. Insert a new slide within the presentation, and then insert a graphic by first selecting the Insert tab of the Ribbon, and then clicking the Picture button.
5. In the resulting Insert Picture dialog box, navigate and choose the EMF graphic you saved previously, and click Insert to get back to your slide with the graphic inserted.
6. Next, select the graphic on the slide, right-click and choose Group | Ungroup. PowerPoint might warn you that this is an inserted picture, not a group. Disregard this warning and click Yes. Right-click the graphic again, and choose Group | Ungroup.
7. This should ungroup all the elements of the chart so that you can recolor them, add effects, or animate them individually of each other.

Labels: charts, graphics, powerpoint_2007

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