Any PowerPoint gurus here?

[Edt]

Formatting question.. can anyone help please ?
Ed

[tonyhetherington]

post your question here - that way everyone gets to see the answer too!

Will help if I Can......

[Edt]

Working on a template presentation (.ppt not .pot) using PowerPoint 2000. Have made my 2 master slides for title slides & for normal text slides. Looking in view > master mode, cant insert any more masters (these 2 are the limit).

Now, back to normal mode. insert new slide > choose a slide which is 2 text columns (the 3rd style of slide in the list of slide formats).

Cant see where this slide gets it's tab settings from??

Ed

[m-five]

The other 30 or so 'styles' are based on the two 'masters' that you produce!

If there's a way to change them, then I haven't found out in 14 years of use!

[Edt]

really annoying.. using MS's own templates its work fine (2 text column format, a bullet sentence wraps properly)

Starting afresh - using one of their's as starting point. Arrgh.

Ed

[HiRich]

You are correct in that most versions of PowerPoint only allow the two slide masters (standard & title) to be applied throughout the document. As an aside, I understand that recent releases of PP for Mac OSX do allow your masters to change through the document.

For other types of new slide (e.g. 2x text box, text+object, etc.), PowerPoint should 'guess' the settings from the standard master slide. So your 2x text box master should pick up:
- Font & text size, line & para spacing, etc.
- Bullet type & indent
So the two basic 'tabs' (line start, indent) should be from the master. It should guess/interpolate the other bits like box height & width and carriage return.

For special tabs (the black "L"s), I think it ignores them and you have to set them specifically for each slide. I suggest you get the first one set up correctly, then copy/paste that slide in each time you want to use it (and of course then rewrite the copy). I haven't checked this, but I remember having similar difficulty when using a specially formatted page. Which gets more irritating when you set it up once, then find that a later page doesn't suit this formatting (so you have to manually adjust every relevant page again).

[Edt]

Well, using MS's format as a starting point is fixing it. How boring. There's zero difference between my tabs & indents and MS's, as far as I can see. However in my original template attempt, the 2 text column format didnt layout the 1st level bullets right - the wrapped lines justified under the bullet not under the 1st text word (ie too far left).

Another annoyance.. apply a template to an existing ppt.. it half does the job. Seems you then have go to each slide in turn & choose Format > slide layout > reapply

grrr terrif

Ed grr

[HiRich]

I think what you've had is a small bug in PowerPoint. It's either random or you've completed some sequence of changes that's confused it (possibly removing bullets?). I've had something similar, and all you can do is reapply the layout and then clean it up the way you want it.

Though it does help to make sure you've created some decent master templates, rather than rely on Microsoft's normal.

[m-five]

Edt said:

Well, using MS's format as a starting point is fixing it. How boring. There's zero difference between my tabs & indents and MS's, as far as I can see. However in my original template attempt, the 2 text column format didnt layout the 1st level bullets right - the wrapped lines justified under the bullet not under the 1st text word (ie too far left). Another annoyance.. apply a template to an existing ppt.. it half does the job. Seems you then have go to each slide in turn & choose Format > slide layout > reapply grrr terrif Ed grr

That's why I get paid so much for fixing other people's mess!

I do a similar job in Apple Keynote, Aldus Persuasion, Lotus Freelance, and PowerPoint of course!

Persuasion does the best masters, but Freelance is quite good as well.

Unfortunately most of my work is in Powerpoint