Problems with text wrap failing badly

[AlainRoy]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: intel

I'm having serious problems with text wrap in PowerPoint 2008.

I have a presentation that looks good in PowerPoint 2004, but bad in PowerPoint 2008. I put images up online here:

<http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~roy/powerpoint_2008_problem/>

If you look at the second bullet point in the PowerPoint 2008 image, the text is wrapped very poorly. It looks like this:

* Dozens to thousands of cheap(er)
C
PUs (such as SPARC)

In contrast, PowerPoint 2004 displayed it like this:

* Dozens to thousands of of cheap(er) CPUs
(such as SPARC)

I would not be surprised if the text wrapping was slightly different, but this was seriously disrupting, putting a C on a line by itself.

Other slides had similar problems. I tried changing font sizes, alignment, and so forth, but failed to make the situation better. With different settings it sometimes looked even worse.

I'm worried about my ability to use my laptop to show people's PowerPoint presentations. Will it dramatically change the way people's presentations appear on my computer? Is it a problem with the presentation? With PowerPoint 2008?

Thanks,
-alain

 

[Matt Centurión [MSFT]]

Hi Alain, thanks for writing about your issue.

Can you make that presentation available on that same site (or at least a
..ppt with that slide?) for us to take a look at?

Thanks,

Matt
MacOffice Testing
Microsoft


Date: 4/22/08 9:50 AM / From: "(e-mail address removed)"

 

[AlainRoy]

Certainly, I should have done that right away. The whole presentation is here:

<http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~roy/powerpoint_2008_problem/2008-04-16-limnology.ppt>

It's a little more than 6MB.

-alain

 

[Jeff Chapman]

Hi Alain, you're talking about slide 6, right? I've got it open in PPT 2008,
and it looks great here. I did notice a funky character that looks like a
left elbow connector with an arrow after the phrase "(such as SPARC)". It
almost looks like an upside-down carriage return. I have double-byte
character support installed, so perhaps it's showing me a garbage character
that isn't showing up correctly on your end. But other than that, the
alignment and work breaks look fine as far as I can tell. (I'm running PPT
2008 v. 12.0.1, BTW.)

Jeff

 

[AlainRoy]

Yes, Slide 6.

If I make the font size smaller, it accentuates the problem. At 20 points, it looks like this:

* Dozens to thousands of
c
h
eap(er) CPUs (such as SPARC)

If you look at the web page I posted, the funny character shows up there too.

The problem is definitely happening for me. The question is why? Is there anything I can provide to help you debug the problem? The output from the Apple System Profiler? Is there any sort of debug output from PowerPoint? Is there anything else I should try?

I am using PowerPoint 2008 for Mac, Version 12.0.1 (080305). I'm running Mac OS 10.5.2 on a MacBook Pro.

-alain

 

[Jeff Chapman]

Hello again, Alain,

I don't doubt that the problem is occurring on your system. It isn't
happening on mine, though. I noticed you're running Leopard. I'm running
Office 2008 under Tiger, v10.4.11, so there's one difference, but I don't
know if that accounts for your problem.

What happens when you recreate the slide from scratch? Try inserting a new
slide and then adding in the text boxes again (don't copy from the previous
slide). Same results?

Jeff

 

[Enric Mañas]

It's a little more than 6MB.

And it will reduce *by 50%* if you round-trip it

HTML "Round-tripping" to repair corruption
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00526.htm

Seems as if after many ")" there is an Arial Unicode character...

Do a Search for ")" and delete the spaces and the *Arial Unicode phantom*
after them... Save... Test how do you see it now...

Cordialmente

Enric

 

[AlainRoy]

Jeff--making a similar slide showed no problem, until I copied and pasted that funny character. That immediately caused the problem to manifest itself. If I remove that character from the original slide (and other slides that showed the problem), the problem went away.

It's good to know how to fix the problem, but I'm still concerned. I often use my laptop to show other people's presentations. If they give me a presentation that shows okay in their version of PowerPoint, but not in mine, do I have to search for the funky Unicode characters to clean it up?

Is this a bug in PowerPoint 2008 that we see this behavior, or was it a bug in PowerPoint 2004 that we didn't see the behavior?

Is there something special about my environment (Mac OS 10.5) that causes me to have the problem, but not you?

I guess it's still a bit mysterious.

Thanks!
-alain

 

[Enric Mañas]

Alain,

I often use my laptop to show other people's presentations.

This is often *really* a *big* problem...

;-)

If they give me a presentation that shows okay in their version of
PowerPoint, but not in mine

Really?

The title "Chemical Engineering" in Slide 45 (just as an example) shows (is
it) centered in *any* PowerPoint version? In which version might it "show
okay"?

;-)

I guess it's still a bit mysterious.

As mysterious as the 21 tabs in the titles and in the text boxes...

As mysterious as the multiple line breaks before and after text...

As mysterious as the chaotic interlines used (different for every line in
every paragraph)...

As mysterious as the chaotic misuse of 11 fonts in a 46 slides
presentation...

As mysterious as the different English-es used for the text...

As mysterious as how someone uses Notes pages (without slides... with
inserted text boxes... etc.)

Summing up...

As mysterious as *how* some people *use* PowerPoint's possibilities and/or
may copy-paste from different presentations to build a new one... I feel
*The real Mystery* is poor PowerPoint being able of showing anything at
all...

;-)

Very cordialmente

Enric

 

[Joon Y. Choe]

Alain-I have the same problem you mentioned w/PP 08, and it seems you have
somehow fixed it. I don't quite understand how. Would you be mpore patient
and walk thru it for me please? How do you make it show the "funny
characters"?

Joon