PowerPoint Notes

PowerPoint: Sounds from the Clip Art pane do not play!

I received this question a while ago from someone using PowerPoint 2003:

I inserted a sound from the Clip Art task pane onto the slide and the sound icon shows up but it won’t play the sound when I am on that slide while playing the whole presentation. Please help!

OK — the answer for this question works not only for PowerPoint 2003 but also for most other versions:

1. Right click the inserted sound, and choose Custom Animation from the resultant menu. This will bring up the Custom Animation task pane.
2. With the sound clip still selected, click the Add Effect | Object Actions | Play — this will add a play animation for the selected sound clip within the Custom Animation task pane — select the animation within the task pane.
3. Now change the Start event to After Previous.
4. Save your presentation.

Now your sound will play automatically when you get to that particular slide within your presentation!

Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tagged as: Clip Art, Play, PowerPoint, PowerPoint 2003, Sound

Outlines from TextEdit on Mac OS X Don’t Import in PowerPoint?

I recently tweeted about my new article that showed how you can import an outline you create in TextEdit on Mac OS X straight into PowerPoint to create your slides quickly and easily — soon I received a tweet response from Joel Heffner who could not make this happen. To cut a long story short, we found that this happened because PowerPoint cannot work with outlines that are encoded as Unicode (UTF-16).

What you need to do is choose TextEdit | Preferences — and then select the Open and Save tab shown in Figure 1, shown below.

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Figure 1: TextEdit Preferences

Make sure you choose Unicode (UTF-8) or Western (Mac OS Roman) — and then create your outline using this link: Creating PowerPoint Outlines in TextEdit — Mac. Other encoding options may also work — but Unicode (UTF-16) does not!

Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tagged as: Outlines, PowerPoint Mac, Textedit

Slide Numbers: Make Slide #1 Start on the Third, Fourth, or Another Slide

Typically, you can start your slide numbering with any number. So yes, your first slide can be numbered fourth. But what if you want the opposite? Maybe, you want your fourth slide to be numbered first! This question was asked on Microsoft Answers, and Chirag Dalal of OfficeOne had an awesome answer. Here is what you need to do:

1. Place your actual first three slides at the end of the presentation and start your presentation from your fourth slide. PowerPoint would number your slides from 1 and that would be the correct number for your fourth slide. Yes, we are using the fourth slide only as an example, and in your case, your choice of slide number could be whichever you like.
2. Remove the slide numbers from the last three slides (which are your actual first three slides, as we shall soon see).
3. Create a Custom Show so that your last three slides are placed as the first three slides in the Custom Show and the remaining slides follow those three slides.
4. Next, tell PowerPoint to display the Custom Show when you start the slide show. To do this, choose the Slide Show | Set Up Show menu item (or the Slide Show tab of the Ribbon | Set Up Slide Show option). Select your Custom Show in the Show Slides section, and click OK.

Now, when you start the slide show, PowerPoint will show your first three slides without slide numbers and will sport the slide number 1 on your fourth slide, and 2 on the fifth slide, and so onward.

I wish to thank Chirag for his permission to explain this process on this post.

You May Also Like: If you want to learn about a workaround that lets you number Slide Sections individually, look at Numbering Slides from 1, Multiple Times in PowerPoint.

Filed Under: Techniques
Tagged as: Chirag Dalal, Custom Shows, PowerPoint, Slide Numbers

Open PPTX in PowerPoint 2004 for Mac

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.

Filed Under: Troubleshooting
Tagged as: Office Mac, PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2008

Register the Default Version of PowerPoint

If you have multiple versions of PowerPoint installed, you might find that when you double-click on a PPT or PPTX file, it opens in a version of PowerPoint that’s different from the one you want it to open!

Now you can reinstall all your versions of PowerPoint (and Microsoft Office) again in the sequence you want — and that might take a few hours, or you might do a few registry tweaks — and that’s not for the faint of heart, or even if you are scared of the registry!

So it was a great thing that one of our readers decided to share this DOS batch file with us that makes the whole process painless. Having said that, do this at your own risk — and if you are comfortable!

Damian McDonald is the founder of Visual Newmedia which has over 15 years’ experience in developing communication solutions for a number of leading global brands.

Here is the code you need to paste in your batch file — just replace this line:

set PathStart=C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOFFICE

to reflect the name of the partition where your copy of Microsoft Office is installed — for example, if you installed to the D drive, the above line would change to:

set PathStart=D:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOFFICE

OK — here is the batch file:

REM **********************************************

REM Version 1.1 Date: 29/11/09
REM By Damian McDonald
REM www.visualpresenter.com.au
REM Registers the required Version of PowerPoint if it exists.

set PathStart=C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOFFICE
set PathEnd=powerpnt.exe
set DirNum=11
set Version=2003
@echo Off

:Start
CLS
ECHO. Select the Version of PowerPoint to register.
ECHO.
ECHO 1. PowerPoint2003
ECHO 2. PowerPoint2007
ECHO 3. PowerPoint2010
ECHO.

set choice=
set /p choice=Enter your selection or Q to Quit.
if not ‘%choice%’==” set choice=%choice:~0,1%
if ‘%choice%’==’1’ goto 1
if ‘%choice%’==’2’ goto 2
if ‘%choice%’==’3’ goto 3
if ‘%choice%’==’q’ goto end
ECHO “%choice%” is not valid please try again
pause
Goto Start

:1
CLS
ECHO.
set DirNum=11
set Version=2003
IF NOT EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” ECHO PowerPoint %Version% does not appear to be loaded.
IF NOT EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” pause
IF EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” ECHO Registering PowerPoint %Version%.
IF EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” /regserver
Goto End

:2
CLS
ECHO.
set DirNum=12
set Version=2007
IF NOT EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” ECHO PowerPoint %Version% does not appear to be loaded.
IF NOT EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” pause
IF EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” ECHO Registering PowerPoint %Version%.
IF EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” /regserver
Goto End

:3
CLS
ECHO.
set DirNum=14
set Version=2010
IF NOT EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” ECHO PowerPoint %Version% does not appear to be loaded.
IF NOT EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” pause
IF EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” ECHO Registering PowerPoint %Version%.
IF EXIST “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” “%PathStart%%DirNum%%PathEnd%” /regserver
Goto End

:End
@echo on

REM **********************************************

Thanks Damian!

Filed Under: Uncategorized
Tagged as: Multiple Versions, PowerPoint, Programming