Question: The problem I am having is that the Arial font size that I save as 32 for visibility, changes to 24 the next time I pull the presentation up. I have looked at the save options and nothing has helped. Do you have any suggestions?
Answer: This might help:
Choose Tools | AutoCorrect Options -- this brings up the AutoCorrect dialog box that you can see in Figure 1. Select the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
Figure 1: Tweak AutoCorrect options
Uncheck these options:
- AutoFit title text to placeholder - AutoFit body text to placeholder - Automatic layout for inserted objects
This quick tutorial was provided with George McCaskill of Visual Exemplars, a UK based company that creates Perspector, a 3D add-in for PowerPoint.
Starting with a normal slide with around three bullet points:
one
two
three
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.
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.
This article is not about creating your own macros or scripts to automate PowerPoint. However, if you just want to run any macros or scripts that a friend shares, or you just got it from a book or newsgroup, then you are on the right page.
Open an existing presentation, or create a new one in PowerPoint. Then press Alt+F11 to access the Microsoft Visual Basic interface that you can see in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The Visual Basic interface
Choose Insert | Module, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Insert a module
This open a new module window on the right side of the interface, copy your script here, and paste it (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: The pasted script
Now you need to run this script as a macro from within PowerPoint. To do that, first exit the Visual Basic interface by choosing File | Close and Return to PowerPoint.
Now the steps you take differ depending upon which version of PowerPoint you are using.
PowerPoint 2007 users will need to enable the Developer tab on the Ribbon if it is not already visible. To do that, choose Office Button | PowerPoint Options, and select the Popular tab on the left. Then check the option that says Show Developer tab in the Ribbon.
Once you have done that, select the Developer tab of the Ribbon, and click Macro to bring up the Macro dialog box that you can see in Figure 4. Select the script you want to run, and click the Run button.
Figure 4: The Macro dialog box
Versions before PowerPoint 2007: Choose Tools | Macros | Macro to bring up the same dialog box that you saw in Figure 4. Then select the script you want to run, and click the Run button.
Remember, some scripts may do nothing at all unless you have something selected on the slide before you run them!
Sometimes, it can be frustrating trying to do the simple things in PowerPoint such as duplicating an object right above the original. PowerPoint insists on placing the duplicated (or copy/pasted) object at an offset and there's no way to fine tune that setting. Maybe there's a registry tweak or something that I'm not aware of?
So why would anyone want to place a duplicated object right above the original? There are many scenarios that require such a placement:
You want to animate one object after the the other.
You want to rotate objects.
You want to make some changes to the duplicated object and then do a trigger animation.
You might want to do something else!
Meanwhile, here are some ideas and observations on how you can work around this limitation:
If you copy and paste a slide object on the same slide, it is placed at an offset. Sometimes, you can press the up arrow key twice, and then press the left arrow key twice to place the copied/duplicated object right above the slide, but even that does not work all the time. That setting only works if the Snap to Grid option is turned on.
If you copy a slide object (anything on a slide) and paste it on another empty slide, it is placed in the exact location as the original.
If some part of the original slide object exceeds the area off the edge of the slide, then the duplicated/pasted object will be pasted within the slide area as far as possible. Of course that only works if the object is not larger than the slide area.
The quickest way to place a duplicated object right above its original is to use a third-party add-in called Toolbox from Shyam Pillai. This includes a menu option called Toolbox | Shapes | Clone Shape(s).
Another way you can place pasted/duplicated objects right on top of the original is to use the Align tools. This works best if you have several duplicated objects. Select them all, and choose Align | Align Left, and Align | Align Top.
If you have found new ways to work around these issues, do add your comments to this post.
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.
