I have tried the help, knowledge database and searched user forums and I don’t want to call the hell called Microsoft tech support so I thought to see if any of you can help. I am running PowerPoint 2003. Everytime I copy and paste text PowerPoint pastes as the Design Template Formatting. An icon appears and I can click and choose Keep Source Formatting.
I HATE the Design Template Formatting, there is NO flexibility. I also hate having to click the icon to choose Keep Source Formatting. Is there any way I can get this program to default to Source Formatting when I paste text? I will give up my first born son for this information.
There is no good way to turn this off. There is a reasonable workaround if you are pasting text over and over that you want to have the same format.
With nothing selected go to the format menu and select font. When the dialogue box opens pick the font and font size that you will need. Now when you paste text it will automatically take on the font and size you selected. This doesn’t completely solve your problem, but alleviates the frustration in some instances.
Are you uising Windows or a Mac? I hate this feature too and I was thinking of writing a macro to get around it. If you are using Windows I could share it, if you are using a Mac it won’t work.
Thank you!!! Its not the perfect solution, but it does help a lot. I am also on Windows and if you write that macro I will throw in a slightly used 1983 Chevy Chevette (its not a convertable but most of the windows roll down)along with the first born son.
I don’t know about the technical question referenced, but I think PPT can be great, if used correctly. I think the key is simplicity to the point of minimalism. The less backgrounds and animations, the better.
The key to a solid PowerPoint presentation is animation, lots of animation. If things are flying in left and right, with wipe and spiral transitions, you audience will be so busy admiring your somehow impossible technical mastery of a Microsoft program, they won’t even notice if your content is bollocks
Not to be an ass with this suggestion, but why not use Flash? It has a quick and easy option to make slide presentations. I find it as easy to use as ppt, plus the more you learn, the more you’ll be able to do, and the better your presentations will be. The finished file will play on any computer with flash viewer installed, which is pretty much any computer out there, AND you don’t need to open any program to view it. Just click on the file and it opens in a window. You can view it full screen, or any size, and you can zoom into slides. You can make your presentations as simple or as complex as you want. Without knowing anything, i could make anything I could have done in ppt in flash. Now that I know a few things, i can pretty much do anything i want in my presentations.
Only down side, you have to make one file for macs, and one file for pc, which only takes about 10 seconds to do.
For design professionals, Flash is preferable. Or, if you have content you have made in other programs and you don’t care about animation, simply make a pdf. I haven’t used it for ages, but Acrobat has a very basic slideshow feature. This is great if you work in a layout program like Quark all the time and you don’t want to worry about getting up to speed on another program.
For me, the main reason for using ppt, is that you may be combining a lot of material in terms of charts and tables from other Office programs. I work with financial firms and there are many charts that must be constantly updated. The other reason is that there is a larger base of workers out there that can use PowerPoint and the learning curve for Flash is a little steeper. We have people on hand 24/7 who can edit these documents right down to the last moment on the jet on the way to the client. It would be harder/ more expensive to find Flash artists. When we need more elaborate animation, we create it in Flash or After Effects and embed it.
BTW, you can simply change the extension of a PPT file to PPS and it will automatically open to the screen show in full screen mode.
Also, IAB – I tried to make the macro – PowerPoint VBA will not allow it (Word will, but alas, not PPT)
If you’re using powerpoint a lot and don’t want to deal with optimizing file sizes (especially if do a lot of cut and pasting, rather than paste>special) I would really recommend that you try NXPowerlite: http://www.nxpowerlite.com/
Flash is great, but when you’re creating presentations almost daily, Flash is just not a good option. It’s still great for final presentations, but its not quick enough for day to day stuff, especially when you have to rely on presentations for constant communication between many distributed members on a project (and when those others often need to copy and paste info from those presentations).
It is a sad day when you realize that powerpoint is one of your most frequently used CAD tools…
PowerPoint is ubiquitous, Flash is not. The presentations I create need to be edited by several different people, few of which even know the existence of Flash. Also, it would be cost prohibitive to hire a Flash monkey to only do presentations. Nice idea, but hard to implement.
Agreed. Stick with convention unless there’s a strong reason not to.
I pump a lot of Powerpoint, and 99% of those slides are about communicating static information in the right way. My best presentations take on a life of their own and live on forever on corporate intranets or passed around in emails and occasionally cherry-picked for other presentations given to or by Sr. Management or Engineers. Flash would certainly limit that, and for what? Flying logos?
Whenever I NEED animation to communicate something, I output from Flash or AfterEffects to animated .gif and simply place it in the slide.
Yes, if you pres needs to be edited by others, ppt is the only way to go.
As for ubiquitous, I’ve seen more computers that couldn’t run ppt than those that couldn’t run a flash presentation. You do know that you don’t need the program to view a file, just the player, which any computer that has been online in the last 5 years has.
Also, not sure why you assume that just because it’s flash it has to involve animation and complexity. The slide show feature does not require any extra intellect to use than ppt, and is just as quick (quicker for me), so why would you have to hire a flash monkey?
One the other hand, however, I know where y’all are coming from. I am also required to use ppt, it just causes many problems and is very limiting. And all because it’s jst what everyone is used to.
Many people don’t realize it, but in PPT XP it is possible to to create fairly elaborate animations. There is even a basic timeline hidden in the program. I don’t use it much, but it is convenient when you just want something to move from one spot on a slide to another.
One of my biggest pet peeves is having to be someone’s lacky and put their slides into a presentation. Its not that f-ing hard and they should do it themselves, I would never ask having someone else do my portion of a presentation. By you just mentioning the Flash slide show you may have doomed me to something worse than using PowerPoint, being a presentation flunky.
One of my biggest pet peeves is having to be someone’s lacky and put their slides into a presentation
This is the sum of my work life. In fact, it is what I am doing right now (or at least what I was doing before I took a break to surf for the 1000th time today). That is why I am going back to school to study industrial design.
I know more about PPT than any one should. I have considered writting a book about it. More of a book about presentation style than about how to use PPT. I got the idea after seeing hundreds of the most hideous presentations on earth. You will have some CEO standing in front of a screen with a presentation that I wouldn’t take to a PTA meeting! A company’s print materials are usually one step better, but becuase everyone has PPT on there machine, they think that anyone can prepare a presentation.
On one side you have business people who you constantly have to struggle with on aesthetics. They have what I call “Horror Vacui” the fear of negative space. If they see a slide that isn’t packed, they want to add more to it. “It looks like we have nothing to say”. Then on the other side you have designers who have no concern for the limited screen space and the legiblity (“these charts are so… bloated”).
I realize you are all on Windows, but I thought I would mention Mac’s Keynote 2. It blows powerpoint out of the water in all areas, cooler transitions, interface, use with movies, and you can export the file as a ppt, quicktime, or flash document. Our managers all switched to mac laptops and this was one of the main reasons why.
