PowerPoint PC/Mac Problems

[Andy Cooper]

Hi

I¹m a business trainer, recently switched from a PC running Office 2003 to a
Mac G5 running Office 2004
I used to create my course notes on the PC by using the ³Send to Word²
feature in PowerPoint 2003 to send all my slides into a Word doc. Then I can
edit the word doc, add headers and footers and tables of contents, etc. I
amazed to find that I simply can¹t do this on the Mac.

So I created my slides in PowerPoint 2004 and then copied them to my PC. I
used PowerPoint 2003 to ³Send to Word² all the PowerPoint Files (14 of them)
and then saved the separate word files back on my Mac. I expected to be able
to combine all the word files into a single file.

On opening the word files in Word 2004 all the graphics are mucked up, and
the slides are useless. The colours are completely wrong. I¹ve tried saving
the files as an older version of Word on the PC, I¹ve tried the
<CTRL><SHIFT><F9> trick to de-link the graphics from PowerPoint but all to
no avail. I simply can¹t properly open the files in Word 2004. I even tried
MacLink Plus to convert the word files but that just crashed (the newest
version as well!).

Microsoft have no idea what to suggest.
There is also another bug in the handouts pages of PowerPoint 2004. If I
insert a page number into an existing text box, say for example to write
³Page 4² instead of just ³4² the page number prints out as <#>
It only works for page numbers if there is no text alongside the number in
the text box.

Microsoft Tech. Support have confirmed that this appears to be a bug, but
again offer no solution.
Like most people on this newsgroup, I can¹t believe Office 2004 for the Mac
is so poor, given what we are asked to pay for it (no cheap OEM versions
like for the PC).

Andy Cooper

 

[Harvey Waxman]

Like most people on this newsgroup, I can¹t believe Office 2004 for the Mac
is so poor, given what we are asked to pay for it (no cheap OEM versions
like for the PC).

If there are PP2004 users who are happy they are very silent. After reading
this group for a year I'll stick with PP.OSX, not that it would be any better
for your problem but it might be worth a try.


--
Harvey Products makers of Dinghy Dogs
The Boater's Best Friend
http://www.dinghydogs.com
Ladies' handbags and accessories
http://www.deducktibles.com
Remove thefrown to email me

 

[Benjamin Amsaleg]

Hi

I¹m a business trainer, recently switched from a PC running Office 2003 to a
Mac G5 running Office 2004
I used to create my course notes on the PC by using the ³Send to Word² feature
in PowerPoint 2003 to send all my slides into a Word doc. Then I can edit the
word doc, add headers and footers and tables of contents, etc. I amazed to
find that I simply can¹t do this on the Mac.

So I created my slides in PowerPoint 2004 and then copied them to my PC. I
used PowerPoint 2003 to ³Send to Word² all the PowerPoint Files (14 of them)
and then saved the separate word files back on my Mac. I expected to be able
to combine all the word files into a single file.

On opening the word files in Word 2004 all the graphics are mucked up, and the
slides are useless. The colours are completely wrong. I¹ve tried saving the
files as an older version of Word on the PC, I¹ve tried the <CTRL><SHIFT><F9>
trick to de-link the graphics from PowerPoint but all to no avail. I simply
can¹t properly open the files in Word 2004. I even tried MacLink Plus to
convert the word files but that just crashed (the newest version as well!).

Microsoft have no idea what to suggest.
There is also another bug in the handouts pages of PowerPoint 2004. If I
insert a page number into an existing text box, say for example to write ³Page
4² instead of just ³4² the page number prints out as <#>
It only works for page numbers if there is no text alongside the number in the
text box.

Microsoft Tech. Support have confirmed that this appears to be a bug, but
again offer no solution.
Like most people on this newsgroup, I can¹t believe Office 2004 for the Mac is
so poor, given what we are asked to pay for it (no cheap OEM versions like for
the PC).

Andy Cooper

Andy,

I don¹t really know about your word problem and would have to give the page
number a trial. But for your first point, I am not sure to understand. Do
you mean that on PPT:2004 selecting the menu File/sent to/microsoft word is
not working the way you want???

I found actually by using word great built in notes mode that I stop doing
the way you described first. I now creates notes in word, and use PPT notes
view to bring them back to PPT...

BAM

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

If there are PP2004 users who are happy they are very silent. After reading

this group for a year I'll stick with PP.OSX, not that it would be any better
for your problem but it might be worth a try.

It does seem that 2004 has set off more criticism than previous releases.

But a reminder: this is a support forum. People post here because they have
problems, so the messages tend on the whole to be about problems people are
having.

People don't generally come here to strew rose petals and turn cartwheels for
joy. ;-)

We're not a very representative sample of the average user, in other words.

Still ...

================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Corentin Cras-Méneur]

If there are PP2004 users who are happy they are very silent. After reading
this group for a year I'll stick with PP.OSX, not that it would be any better
for your problem but it might be worth a try.

I don't know about that. For instance, I never embed videos in my
presentations. On the other had, I rely heavily on PNG illustrations
with transparency. I also really like the presenter view. Unicode
support is also important to me. There is no way, despite the various
limitations of PPT 2004, that I would go back to X.
Additionally as Steve pointed out, whyen there is nothing wrong with the
software, you have no reason to post in these groups so of course, most
of the people who post here have problems and you never hear from the
other ones.


Corentin

 

[Geetesh Bajaj]

PowerPoint PC/Mac ProblemsAndy, why do you need to take the presentation to
PowerPoint for Windows - have you tried using the Send To Word feature in
PowerPoint:mac 2004?


--
Geetesh Bajaj, Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
PowerPoint Notes: http://www.indezine.com/notes
Free Templates:
http://www.indezine.com/powerpoint/templates/freetemplates.html






Hi

I'm a business trainer, recently switched from a PC running Office 2003 to a
Mac G5 running Office 2004
I used to create my course notes on the PC by using the "Send to Word"
feature in PowerPoint 2003 to send all my slides into a Word doc. Then I can
edit the word doc, add headers and footers and tables of contents, etc. I
amazed to find that I simply can't do this on the Mac.

So I created my slides in PowerPoint 2004 and then copied them to my PC. I
used PowerPoint 2003 to "Send to Word" all the PowerPoint Files (14 of them)
and then saved the separate word files back on my Mac. I expected to be able
to combine all the word files into a single file.

On opening the word files in Word 2004 all the graphics are mucked up, and
the slides are useless. The colours are completely wrong. I've tried saving
the files as an older version of Word on the PC, I've tried the
<CTRL><SHIFT><F9> trick to de-link the graphics from PowerPoint but all to
no avail. I simply can't properly open the files in Word 2004. I even tried
MacLink Plus to convert the word files but that just crashed (the newest
version as well!).

Microsoft have no idea what to suggest.
There is also another bug in the handouts pages of PowerPoint 2004. If I
insert a page number into an existing text box, say for example to write
"Page 4" instead of just "4" the page number prints out as <#>
It only works for page numbers if there is no text alongside the number in
the text box.

Microsoft Tech. Support have confirmed that this appears to be a bug, but
again offer no solution.
Like most people on this newsgroup, I can't believe Office 2004 for the Mac
is so poor, given what we are asked to pay for it (no cheap OEM versions
like for the PC).

Andy Cooper

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Geetesh,

The Mac send to Word feature only sends the text. In Windows there are
additional formatting choices. Among them is a choice to put pictures of
the slides into Word along with the text. It seems that our
correspondent chose this type of option and thus needs to use Windows PPT.

I am puzzled by the problem opening the document in Word Mac, though. As
far as I can tell the option of send to Word in PPT for Windows has a
macro that makes a table in Word and pastes small pictures of the slides
into Word. Mac Word should have no trouble with such a table.

I will try it in a little bit to see what happens.

Jim Gordon
Mac MVP
MVP FAQ
<http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;mvpfaqs>

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Back again

To test what is happening I opened PowerPoint 2003 with a new
presentation using the "Marketing" content template.

Then I went to PPT's FIle > Send to Word feature and chose to make a
document with 3 slides per page with blanks on the right side.

I saved the resulting Word document and then sent it to my Mac. The
document opened and looked just fine in Word 2004.

So there's nothing inheritantly wrong with the general process. There
must be something specific that needs to be addressed. Perhaps
something's wrong with Andy's PowerPoint 2003 (maybe didn't install the
Office updates), or with Word 2004 (maybe didn't install the updates),
or perhpas he did something completely different from what I did, or
maybe something else is going on.

-Jim

 

[Geetesh Bajaj]

Hi Jim,

Thank you for the update - I'm going to add that to my list of differences
between the Mac and Windows versions.


--
Geetesh Bajaj, Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
PowerPoint Notes: http://www.indezine.com/notes
Free Templates:
http://www.indezine.com/powerpoint/templates/freetemplates.html

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I am puzzled by the problem opening the document in Word Mac, though. As

far as I can tell the option of send to Word in PPT for Windows has a
macro that makes a table in Word and pastes small pictures of the slides
into Word. Mac Word should have no trouble with such a table.

I will try it in a little bit to see what happens.

OLE happens, as I recall. The pictures are OLE-linked or OLE-embedded PPT
slides, depending on the options the user chooses.


================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Whether or not OLE happens didn't make any difference in my test. The
slides appeared the same in Mac Word 2004 as in Windows Word 2003. I
have all current updates installed for both Mac and Windows.

-Jim

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Whether or not OLE happens didn't make any difference in my test. The
slides appeared the same in Mac Word 2004 as in Windows Word 2003. I
have all current updates installed for both Mac and Windows.

Hmmm. OK, that'd be because the OLE object includes a Windows Metafile
rendering of the slide (which is what's displayed) in addition to the OLE data
(which hides behind the WMF and is what's invoked when you doubleclick the
slide image on a PC).

As to why it's not working for Andy ... I'm out of theories.

Andy, have you tried your files on other Macs to see if the same problems
appear?


================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Benjamin Amsaleg]

Hmmm. OK, that'd be because the OLE object includes a Windows Metafile
rendering of the slide (which is what's displayed) in addition to the OLE data
(which hides behind the WMF and is what's invoked when you doubleclick the
slide image on a PC).

As to why it's not working for Andy ... I'm out of theories.

Andy, have you tried your files on other Macs to see if the same problems
appear?


================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

To my deepest regrets, on Office:Mac, Powerpoint:Mac can not embedded slides
in word nor edit slides embedded in Word:win by Powerpoint:Win

Trying to edit an embedded PPT slide in word:Mac changes the slide to an
image. This very often creates a mess during this conversion process. I
understand that this person can not work with word document with embedded
PPT slides in Office:Mac

I really hope that the next version of Office:Mac will finally bring this
key function to our platform...

BAM

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Which raises the obvious question, "why would you want to edit
PowerPoint slides in Word instead of PowerPoint?"

PowerPoint Mac can edit the slides, so why not use PowerPoint in the
first place? It seems crazy to move the slides to Word and then back
into PowerPoint. What am I missing?

-Jim

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

To my deepest regrets, on Office:Mac, Powerpoint:Mac can not embedded slides

in word nor edit slides embedded in Word:win by Powerpoint:Win

Trying to edit an embedded PPT slide in word:Mac changes the slide to an
image. This very often creates a mess during this conversion process. I
understand that this person can not work with word document with embedded
PPT slides in Office:Mac

I explored this a bit further and had a little luck in Office X by doing this:

Click to select the embedded PowerPoint slide in the Word document once I've
opened it on the Mac

Choose Edit, Copy

Choose Edit, Paste Special and pick Picture as the type.

Ctrl+Click the pasted picture and choose Picture Object, Open.

I could then ungroup the picture and manipulate the individual shapes in it.



================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Benjamin Amsaleg]

Which raises the obvious question, "why would you want to edit
PowerPoint slides in Word instead of PowerPoint?"

PowerPoint Mac can edit the slides, so why not use PowerPoint in the
first place? It seems crazy to move the slides to Word and then back
into PowerPoint. What am I missing?

-Jim

Jim,

Are you trying to say that the all concept of OLE object embedding is
stupid?

The drawing "layer" of word is really bad and not easy to use at all.

Also many of my corporate customer are used to create procedure manual with
embedded PPT diagram (or visio) adding the comments in word. Everything is
in ONE file. Updating word and PPT can be done during the same process...
Very very useful and quite key to the complete adoption of Office:Mac in
corporate environment

In fact (beside fixing the broken kerning in PPT2004) being able to embed
and edit embedded slides in Word is the TOP 1 which on our list

BAM

 

[Paul Berkowitz]

Jim,

Are you trying to say that the all concept of OLE object embedding is
stupid?

The drawing "layer" of word is really bad and not easy to use at all.

Also many of my corporate customer are used to create procedure manual with
embedded PPT diagram (or visio) adding the comments in word. Everything is
in ONE file. Updating word and PPT can be done during the same process...
Very very useful and quite key to the complete adoption of Office:Mac in
corporate environment

In fact (beside fixing the broken kerning in PPT2004) being able to embed
and edit embedded slides in Word is the TOP 1 which on our list

But you haven't answered Jim's question, Benjamin. Why don't you just edit
the slides in PowerPoint Mac? Why try to do it in Word?

--
Paul Berkowitz
MVP MacOffice
Entourage FAQ Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/faq/index.html>
AppleScripts for Entourage: <http://macscripter.net/scriptbuilders/>

Please "Reply To Newsgroup" to reply to this message. Emails will be
ignored.

PLEASE always state which version of Microsoft Office you are using -
**2004**, X or 2001. It's often impossible to answer your questions
otherwise.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Benjamin,

No, I'm not saying embedding is stupid. I am saying certain types of OLE
don't work on Mac versions of office, so you may need to rethink the
workflow.

I still don't understand starting in PowerPoint, sending to Word,
editing OLE objects (OLE objects open PowerPoint again for editing
anyway), then sending the results back to PowerPoint. To me it seems a
whole lot more sensible to keep everything in PowerPoint and when you
need an updated manual in Word format then use Windows PPT 2003 Send To
Word feature.

-Jim

 

[Benjamin Amsaleg]

But you haven't answered Jim's question, Benjamin. Why don't you just edit
the slides in PowerPoint Mac? Why try to do it in Word?

Paul,

Once a slide has been embedded into word:win from ppt:win, the only thing
you can do if you need to adjust this embedded slide on Office:Mac is to
convert the slide to a picture and edit-it as an image.


In the process you loose a lot and it is not realistic to make it work. For
example, often each letter of a word inside a rotated shape become an
individual text object... Some shape changes, some disappears,... Word does
not support connector line... It is why you need this "within powerpoint
drawing layer".

Unfortunately, in word:mac, you can not extract an OLE object to save it as
a file and work on it from there. For example, you can not save the slide as
a specific ppt file, open it in PPT:2004, make the changes and forward both
the word doc and the slide to your PC colleague for him to integrate the new
version

So yes a partial work around might be in a next version of Office:Mac, to be
able to "extract" and "save as native file" any embedded object. This would
allow for example, Mac users to use Omnigraffle to work on Visio embedded
charts, of Fast track schedule users to adjust a MS Project embedded gantt
chart

BAM

 

[Benjamin Amsaleg]

Hi Benjamin,

No, I'm not saying embedding is stupid. I am saying certain types of OLE
don't work on Mac versions of office, so you may need to rethink the
workflow.

I still don't understand starting in PowerPoint, sending to Word,
editing OLE objects (OLE objects open PowerPoint again for editing
anyway), then sending the results back to PowerPoint. To me it seems a
whole lot more sensible to keep everything in PowerPoint and when you
need an updated manual in Word format then use Windows PPT 2003 Send To
Word feature.

-Jim

Jim,

Going beyond this particular "work flow", I think that basically, Office:win
users embedded ppt slides into word because word as such poor "drawing
layer"

Doing a manual completly in PPT (I tried) is not a option. No table of
content, no index, no zillions of things ;-)

Actually, I found customer using quite extensively the embedding of
everything on Windows:
- A customer service manual with the procedure flow drawn in an embedded ppt
slide, commented and indexed in word, with additional pdf forms ready to
open and complete if needed
- a deployment procedure created in word with embedded batch files to launch
as necessary

And of course all embedded document on Win can have a live link to their
external source so the embedded excel graph you pasted in PPT update
automatically from the updated excel file...

Those are just often seen examples of how users save time with OLE on Win.

I hope that at one point, Office:Mac will mature to this level of support.
Then it will be quite a great corporate citizen !

BAM