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PowerPoint FAQ

We get a lot of questions about PowerPoint, and we seem to be able to answer some of the toughies. Below are some we thought you'd be interested in.

Unsolved Mysteries

This section of the site is devoted to those questions that should have answers, but unfortunately don't. If you have some information about any of these questions, please mail us and let us know!

What happened to PowerPoint 5.0 and 6.0?
Any way to play Screencam exe files in PowerPoint slide shows?
Know where to get a copy of PowerPoint to run on Windows 3.1?
How do you populate List Boxes using VB in PowerPoint?

DRAWING

How do I change the default colors? Each slide has what is referred to as a "color scheme". The scheme colors are the colors that appear in the little pop-ups for different controls. PowerPoint templates come with multiple color schemes built in, which you can change by using the Format/Color Scheme menu command. You can also use this to create your own schemes. Every slide can have a different color scheme. Different color schemes can be used to break out sections of a long presentation.

What happened to Recolor Picture? It's there, it's just hard to find. The recolor picture command is no longer a menu command, but is now a button on the "picture" toolbar. From the View menu, select "Toolbars..." and then "Picture". You will need to select a picture object in order for the recolor picture command to become available.

Is there a limit to the number of guides you can have? Yes, for some strange reason, you can only have up to 8 guides in each direction. To get more guides, hold down the CTRL key while dragging on a guide. (You must first turn guides on by using the Guides command on the View menu.) To get rid of a guide, drag it off the page.

How do I make my own PowerPoint backgrounds? What you're talking about, is creating templates, or "POT" files. First of all, any file can be saved as a POT file--all you have to do is use the SAVE AS dialog and select POT as the file type, replacing PPT. This action automatically takes you to the location where the rest of the templates are stored, which is sometimes useful and sometimes not. As for the file itself, you'll want to do the following things to make a good template: (easiest if you make it in this order)

1) Format the slide master, including making a nice background, setting the fonts, bullets, etc.

2) Create and apply a color scheme to the Slide Master; make sure that desired objects (text, drawings, etc) follow these colors.

You can create multiple schemes for a single template, but the master will only use one of these schemes at a time. Later, when actually in use, each slide can use a different color scheme, so sometimes it's nice to make templates with differing schemes that give each template different looks.

3) Format the page numbers, footers, as you like, and set them for being visible or not, depending on your wishes.

4) Go to black and white view, and, by using the right mouse button to click on individual objects, set the way each object on the page will print until the page resembles the way you want it to look when printed to black and white printers.

5) Insert a New Title Master. By doing this after you've done all the rest, it will automatically "inherit" all the work you've already done, so you've got a good starting place.

6) Make any changes you want to the Title Master, including changing the color scheme and black and white print settings.

7) With no objects selected, from the FORMAT menu, select FONT. Select the font that you want other text and labels to default to.

8) Go to slide sorter view and delete any slides that are there.

9) Go to slide view, where you should see nothing. From the FILE menu, select SAVE AS, and in the "save as type" drop down box select "Presentation Template"

10) close the file, and then create a new presentation from this template, evaluating what needs to be changed, and what bugs need to be fixed. Have fun!

How do I create additional pre-set color fills? There is no way to create two or multi-colored fills that you can get to display in the fill menu. A lame workaround is to just make a shape with the fills you like (combine shapes to get multicolored fills) and then keep it around and copy/paste it into your pres.

PICTURES AND OTHER IMPORTED FILES

My pictures turned to Big Red X's--what happened? You are not alone; this is a serious problem that many people are running into. It is due to a file size bug; when PowerPoint doesn't have enough memory to deal with the size of your file, the graphics get forever replaced with big red X images. If you can insert the pictures directly from PowerPoint (using Insert/Picture) as opposed to using copy/paste, the file size sometimes turns out to be much smaller (some applications create links and other exciting remnants when doing a paste operation). When saving and reopening these files, people find fewer problems. As for opening files which already have red crosses, Microsoft suggests closing the file WITHOUT saving (as saving would also save the red crosses), close all other programs to free up as much memory as possible, restart your computer, and finally reopen your file. We have tested this workaround and it seems to work; problem is that almost everybody closes the file and saves it. In this case, you must manually reinsert the picture from its original source.

Any utilities that will compress bitmaps in bulk in PowerPoint? After creating a huge presentation because of many large bitmap images, you can can try compressing the images with PowerPoint's own tool. Select Save As, and then in the dialog look in the Tools menu for the Compress Pictures command. If that doesn't give you what you want, you might consider trying a third-party utility called NXPowelite. It is designed for precisely this purpose.

How can I put Flash or Shockwave files into my presentation? Putting Flash or Shockwave files in PowerPoint is such an obvious idea that it's really too bad the PowerPoint team didn't think of it. However, it can be done in both PowerPoint 97 and PowerPoint 2000, using the VBA tools. You don't need to be a programmer to do it, but it is geeky! That said, here's what you do:

First of all, you must install the Shockwave 4 plug-in Viewer on your system. You may download this for free from the Macromedia web site at http://www.macromedia.com

Secondly, save your Flash files as SWF (Shockwave) movies, and WRITE DOWN where you saved them. (this will become clear later). Once that is done, go to PowerPoint (97 or 2000) and make a slide. From the View menu, select Toolbars/Visual Basic to bring up VB toolbar. Click on USSR Button (hammer & something) marked "Control Toolbox" -- this brings up another toolbar. In the NEW set of tools you just bought up, again click on the Hammer & something button that is now marked "Other tools" -- you will get a drop down list. Scroll down this list until you get to "Shockwave Flash Object" --release your mouse button and your cursor becomes a cross hair: draw out a rectangle on your slide (you can change the size later). Right-click on the new rectangle with big x, and from the pop-aside menu select "Properties". (Isn't this EASY?!!) A large, intimidating properties list pops up on the left side of the screen. Make sure the "Alphabetic" tab is showing. Put on your propeller hat for geeky bits.

Change "EmbedMovie" to True (which makes the shockwave file part of the ppt file, so you can give it to others). Set "Loop" to False if you don't want the movie to play endlessly; keep at TRUE if you do. After "Movie" type the absolute path of your file: i.e. c:\desktop\poobah.swf Close the properties box. Your slide will now look exactly the same. But, have no fear. Go to SLIDE SHOW, and you should see your flash movie play. And, when you return from slide show, the movie is now displayed on the screen, and you can resize it appropriately.

You can put your shockwave files on the Slide Master and they will animate on every slide. Knock yourself out.

How do I make bitmaps and captures screens display well in slide show? The trick is that bitmapped graphics only look exactly correct at one particular size. This is most noticeable in screen dumps, where you want to see a proper pixel for pixel representation. What is happening, is that during slide show, PowerPoint scales the presentation to fit the size of your monitor, and that the scaling hoses your bitmaps. To fix this you can do the following. In PowerPoint 97, right-click on the bitmap, select "Format Picture...", go to the "Size" tab, from the Scale area check the box labeled "best for slide show", and set the resolution to match your system resolution (available from the Display area of the Windows Control Panel). For PowerPoint 95 and all other versions, click on the bitmap, and from the Draw menu (or other depending on your version), select the Scale command. You must then enter a percentage based on the screen resolution of the system on which you plan to deliver your electronic presentation, using the percentages as listed below:
640x480 = 150%
720x512 = 133%
800x600 = 120%
1024 x 768 = 94%
1280 x 1024 = 75%
This will scale the bitmap to a size that, when displayed in slide show, will appear at its original size. Crazy but true!

Can the WMF format be converted to GIF? Yes, but not in PowerPoint. The way I do it, is to insert the image you want to use in PowerPoint, Word, or any other product that accepts vector based graphics, size it to the size you want to see your GIF file display, then copy/paste it into PhotoShop or some other bitmap editing package, where you can now save it as a GIF file.

Is there some way to prepare photos so they display well in PowerPoint? There are two things that make bitmaps look bad in PowerPoint. One has to do with the reduction and enlargement, and the other has to do with colors. To find out about the size issues, look at the question on bitmaps and screen captures above. As for the color issue, if your computer is set up for more than 256 colors, you shouldn't have any problems. If not, read on. If you're displaying more than one photo per slide, or a color photo against a multi-color shaded background, you may experience some color degradation in your photograph. This is due to the fact that some PC systems are configured for displaying only 256 colors at a time, and photographs and shaded backgrounds require many colors to be properly rendered. One option is to change your video settings to allow more colors (you must have a graphics card with 2 or more MB of video ram to do this) by using the Display area of the Windows 95 Control Panel. Another option is to use a product like PhotoShop to lower the number of colors in the photograph. Use PhotoShop's Indexed Color feature, and select Adaptive Palette, then keep setting the number of colors lower and lower until you get a small number that still looks good. Numbers that are powers of 2 (2,4,8,16,32,64,128, 256) will also reduce your overall file size. When you save the file, save as a GIF file, which will give you the best compression, while preserving the correct palette adjustments. JPEG format has better compression, but will always save the photo with millions of colors, thus leading to pretty harsh display problems on 256-color systems.

I'm trying to open *.wmf files, and just get garbage. What do I do? WMF files are graphics files, which need to be "inserted" as opposed to "opened." This is a subtle, yet important distinction to the product. In PowerPoint, start a new presentation (or open an existing one), and then from the Insert menu, select Picture, then select your file name.

How can I make the background of my logo transparent? Only PowerPoint 97 (version 8) and PowerPoint 2000 support transparency in graphics, but there are a few ways to work around this problem. 1) If your logo can be represented in monochrome (one color only), then try scanning it as "line art", and saving it as a monochrome bitmap. Monochrome bitmaps should come into PowerPoint versions 4.0 and higher with their backgrounds transparent. Note, however, that I use the word "should" ... it doesn't always work. 2) Set up your design so that the logo is sitting on a solid color, not a shaded part of a background. Use PhotoShop or the equivalent to save the number of colors in your logo to below 64. Import the logo file into PowerPoint using the Insert Picture command. Then, use the Recolor Picture command to reassign the logo's background color to the same color as the background of your slide (or color that the log is sitting on). This will give you the same feeling as the logo being transparent.

Why are my Excel Spreadsheets getting cropped when I paste them into PowerPoint? According to Microsoft Tech Support, PowerPoint has an internal limit of 6 x 6 inches for this type of object. Spreadsheets larger than 6" in height or width will get cropped when they are pasted into PowerPoint. This is extraordinarily stupid!

What resolution should I scan an image at in order for it to present well in PowerPoint? If you want an image to look good on the screen in PowerPoint, scan it at the screen resolution: 72. dpi. Higher does you no good--it only makes the files bigger. HOWEVER, you may find that 72 dpi images are a bit too low-res for printed output, so you might want to scan at 150, which makes a nice compromise. THEN AGAIN, if you are outputting to 35mm slides, you're talking a whole 'nother ball game. 35 mm slide output devices are very high resolution, and you'll want 300 dpi scans. These will make your presentation gigantic, but anything lower resolution will look really bad. Some people keep multiple versions going to solve this problem, but that's a pain too. such is life.

ANIMATION AND SLIDE SHOW

How do I get Animated GIF files to play in Slide Show? In order to do this, you'll need to upgrade to the new PowerPoint 2000, which does support animated GIF files. You can even use them as bullets if you want.

Any way to have smooth (aliased) fonts in Slide Show? This feature is now possible, if you're using Windows 98. From the Windows Start Menu, select Settings, then Control Panel. Click on the Effects tab, and check the box that says "Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts".

Are there any Animation Plug-ins for PowerPoint? Ravi Singh tells us that his company has created a PowerPoint '97 plug-in that allows you to play animated FLC files in slide show. We have not tried this tool, but if you want to give it a go, check it out at http://www.ravware.com/activex.htm

Why won't my branched presentations work when presented with the Viewer? The Viewer does not support branching. It's not you, it's the software.

Is there a way to go backwards in an electronic slide show? To go backwards a slide in slide show, you can use any of the following: Page up, Right mouse button, Left arrow key. For more info, see our keyboard shortcuts page.

Any way to run two different slide shows at once on two different monitors? Simple answer: no.

Any way to seamlessly run slide shows sequentially? PowerPoint 4 had a great feature called "Play Lists" that allowed PowerPoint to read a text (LST) file with the names of the presentation files in order, and it would play those files one after another in slide show. This was great for conferences, etc. Unfortunately, in fact tragically, this feature was lost in PowerPoint 95, and has never reappeared. Ugly workarounds include creating a DOS batch file, which switches between DOS and PowerPoint between each presentation (ooh, THAT's nice). A less ugly alternative involves creating an agenda slide that contains jumps to other presentations saved as PPS files, so that they're launched as slide shows. The third ugly alternative is to put a button on the last slide of each presentation that jumps to the first slide of the next presentation.

Any way to "zoom in" on a picture in slide show? There are two ways I know that you could do this; both are hacks. The most elegant, but also most time consuming would be to make more slides with the zoomed-in bitmaps on them. These could be hidden slides, which would allow you to gracefully skip over them if you didn't want to explore them, or just press the H key while in slide show to show the hidden slide. Alternatively, you can , when you need to zoom in, ALT-Tab to PowerPoint (regular view), zoom in to the picture as you like, then ALT-Tab back to slide show when you're done. Preferably, you would turn off as many toolbars as possible to make this less ugly.

Why is my slide show playing in a window? It looks like some how the presentation was set to play in a window, as opposed to the full screen. This property is set on a presentation basis, so you might see it on one presentation and not others. From the Slide Show menu, pick "Set Up Show". In the Show Type box, make sure that the option "presented by a speaker (full screen)" is checked. Most likely this has been changed to "browsed by an individual (in a window)".

How can I make objects flash infinitely in slide show? There is no automatic easy way to do this. There is a hack that will get you this effect if you really want it. Make a group of objects that flash once, and then pile on top of it more copies of the same object, each set to flash once. Set a few seconds delay between each effect, so that it won't all happen to fast. It's not great, but it's the closest you'll get to that "game show" feeling.

Any way to have OLE objects update automatically in slide show? No.

How can I go "back" in a slide show like I do in my browser? The next slide/previous slide actions use the "slide show" (one slide after another) metaphor, not the web-space metaphor (where "back" means "the last slide I saw"). If you're doing a kiosk style or self-running presentation, the best thing to do is to put buttons on each slide that navigate directly to the places they may want to go. To make a BACK button:

Draw a button (or use Slide Show/Action Buttons and select the blank button, then draw it out on the screen like you would a box). Select this button or graphic, and then go to the Slide Show menu, select Action Settings, and click the radio box marked "Hyperlink to:" and set it to "Last Slide Viewed". This button will behave like the Back button on your web browser. If you want this on all of your slides, put the button on the Slide Master (View/Slide Master).

Any way to make Right Mouse go backwards in slide show? From the Tools menu, select Options, and then click on the View tab. There is a checkbox in the Slide Show section: "Popup menu on right mouse click"--uncheck this box and the right mouse button will make slide show go backwards.

How can I change the speed of the transitions? You can't. Some effects are slower than others (fly versus crawl), but the speed is not adjustable.

Can I create links that go to web pages while in slide show? Yes, but you'll need PowerPoint 2000 to do it.

Why does the speed of animation effects change on different computers? Animations do run differently on different computers, depending primarily on the processor speed and the amount of RAM. If you are doing a lot of animation, you want to have lots of both. It may be that the second computer is not as powerful as the first. Sometimes another problem has to do with screen display speed; laptops with screen types other than active matrix displays are very slow, and tend to lag in displaying things.

Can you prevent PowerPoint from advancing slides when anything other than buttons are clicked? For example, on one page there are 12 different action buttons which lead to 12 different slides. Can you set PowerPoint to prevent it from advancing to the next slide if you happen to miss one of the action buttons and you click the background. A good example is if you are on slide 12 and you want to click an action button that moves the presentation to slide 74, but you miss and the presentation advances to slide 13. The answer to this question is YES. Go to the slide that has all the buttons on it, and from the Slide Show menu, select "Slide Transition". In this dialog, UNCHECK BOTH BOXES ON THE LOWER LEFT. This will make the slide so that the ONLY thing it responds to is clicking on the buttons.

How can I make font animation (like in Microsoft Word) work in PowerPoint? You can't.

Is there a way to make my own animations and play them in PowerPoint? PowerPoint 2000 allows you to place animated GIF files (like the ones that you see on web pages) into your pages; the animations will play in slide show. This does not work in PowerPoint 97. If you want to create "movies" that play in PowerPoint, you'll have to use something that saves as AVI files: two products I know of are Macromedia Flash and Adobe Premier. I believe Flash to be a better (easier) product. But beware that AVI files will always have an opaque background--they play "in a box" so to speak. For true animation, Flash might be a good product for you, in that you can create self-running animated files that require no player. It's a great product, but not particularly easy to learn. The on-line tutorial is a must.

SOUND AND VIDEO

Is it possible to use an Audio-CD soundtrack in my presentations? Yes, but you'll need PowerPoint 97 (or higher) and there is a bit of a trick to it. Put your Audio-CD in your CD-ROM drive. For most computers running Windows 95, this automatically starts the Windows 95 CD player and you hear your music. It is very important to CLOSE the CD Player application before you try inserting the sound in PowerPoint. If you have the CD Player application running, it won't work properly, so just remember to close that puppy down! Meanwhile, back in PowerPoint 97: from the Insert menu, select "Movies and Sounds..." an then "Play CD Audio Track..." This brings up the Play Options dialog. Set things as you like, and then click OK. You should now see a little sound icon on your presentation. If you go to slide show, you can now click on this icon, and it will play the sound. If you want the sound to play automatically: 1) click on the sound icon (the one you just inserted) to select it. 2) From the Slide Show menu, select "Custom Animation..." This brings up the Custom Animation dialog, which has several tabs. On the "Play Settings" tab, click "Play Using Animation Order"; also click "hide while not playing" to hide the icon (if you want to, most people do). You can now choose to have the sound play just on one slide, or across multiple slides by playing with these settings. 3) From the "Timing" tab, click "Automatically". Otherwise, you have to click to get the sound to play. You can use the arrow buttons to the right of the animation order box to control the order in which objects "play" on the slide. For example, you might want your title to fly in first, then have the music play, and then have bullets fly in. To do this, you'd want to make sure your sound clip was second in the play list.

Can I play QuickTime movies in PowerPoint? Yes and no. You can play QuickTime movies in Macintosh PowerPoint 3, 4, and 98. Windows PowerPoint does not support QuickTime movies, only AVI files. The trick to know about is that the movies are referenced in the file, but do not become part of the file. Therefore, you need to make sure that when you play the PowerPoint slide show you 1) have the movie file and 2) the movie file is located in the same relative path as it was when you inserted it in the first place (best to just keep the movie in the same folder as the presentation). The answer to the next question about sounds applies to movies as well.

Why don't sounds play when I move my file to another computer? When preparing a presentation (with sounds) that is to be used from different computers, it is very important to make sure that all of the sound files are located in the same folder as the presentation that you've created, and that you insert them from this location. Sound files, because of their large size, don't become an actual part of the presentation file--a link is formed to the sound file. When the presentation is played, the program goes looking for the sound at the location described in the link. This works fine on the original creation machine, but as soon as you move things to another machine, the links don't accurately describe where the files are, and things fail to play.

The first thing to know is that PowerPoint will always look for the sound in the folder that contains the presentation, so this is the best place to put them. You can't modify the links, so you have to start off by putting the sounds in the same folder as the presentation, and then inserting them into your presentation. This will create an internal link with no real address: PowerPoint knows that the sound is in the same folder as the presentation, and will look for it there regardless of what that folder's name is, or what machine it's on.

What movie format plays on both Mac and Windows? At this point, there is no good answer to this problem.

How do I make my sound files invisible in Slide Show? After inserting a sound file, you will see an icon on the slide representing that file. Select the icon, then go to the Slide Show menu and choose Custom Animation. On the Play Settings tab, you'll need to make sure that the box that says "Hide while not playing" is checked. This will make your icon disappear in slide show. To make the sound play, you'll need to click on the invisible icon. This can be tricky, so try locating the icon in a corner where you'll remember it, and/or making the icon much bigger so you won't miss "hitting" it. Note that hidden sound icons do not play at all when slide shows are configured to run within a window. This is a bug.

How do I get rid of the Virus Alert when playing mpeg Videos in Slide Show? In PowerPoint 97, disable Macro Virus Protection by selection Options from the Tools menu. In the PowerPoint 2000, set your Office Security Settings to Low via Tools/Macro/Security.

Why do my movies start and end with black boxes? There is nothing in PowerPoint that would make this happen. Most likely the first and last few frames of your movie file are black, and that's what you're seeing. You'll need to find some way to edit them out of the movie to get rid of them.

How can I make PowerPoint load embedded sound files more quickly? PowerPoint loads the image of the next slide into memory while the previous slide is playing, but I don't believe it has any way to load linked files until they are activated.

Any way to play a Sound and Animation simultaneously? No.

PRINTING

Is there a way to control how slides print in black and white? In PowerPoint 95, 97, and 2000 you can specify how every object on the page prints, separately from how it will display on the screen. It's a super-useful but pretty darned hidden feature. In slide view, click on the "B&W View" button at the far right of the main toolbar. This will show you how your slide will print to a black and white printer. To change any object, click on the object (or the background) with your RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON and select options from the "Black and White..." pop-aside menu choice. You can also do this for object on your slide master.

Any way to keep some slides from printing? Sometimes, when building a presentation, you use extra slides to get the animation effects that you want. When you print, however, you don't want these slides to print. Try making these slides "hidden" slides (the Hidden Slide button is available from the Slide Sorter View or as a menu command from the Slide Show menu). Once you've made them hidden slides, when you print you'll want to un-check the "Print Hidden Slides" checkbox in the lower right corner of the Print dialog. Make sure that you un-hide your slides again before doing your slide show, or these slides will not show up.

How do I print giant posters from PowerPoint? Although PowerPoint allows a maximum page size of 56 x 56 inches, you need to find a printer that can print on that size paper. Some of the slide imaging places have these types of printers. PowerPoint itself has no ability to tile a page to a printer--it just things of a page as a page. If your printer has the ability to cut up or "tile" a large image onto many pages than you'd want to set that through the printer settings via the Print dialog. Our printers here don't do such a thing, but maybe there's one out there that does.

Any way to print a catalog of slides with titles and file names? The best thing that exists is to use the 6-slides per page option in PowerPoint's print dialog, and to set the Handout Master (View/Masters/Handouts) to have the file name in the header or footer. If you don't want pictures of the slides, and just want titles, print the outline (again, select this in the Print dialog) and format the Outline Master (View/Masters/Outline) to have the file name in the footer. For each of these approaches you'll have to print out each presentation separately.

Why is my bulleted text printing differently from how it looks on screen? The only time when I've seen something like this happen is when there is an issue with fonts. Sometimes you get into a situation where either you have screen fonts but no printer fonts, and the printer substitutes a font that doesn't match with the screen font OR you have printer fonts for which you have no corresponding screen font, so the computer uses the "closest match" it can find. Again, you have the situation where everything looks great on the screen, but things print differently from what you see. To see if this is what your problem is, try changing all of the text to a standard windows font like Arial or Times, and then see if the problem still exists.

FORMATTING

Is there a way to adjust "kerning" or "tracking" in PowerPoint? No. sorry!

How can I get Word tables to look good in PowerPoint? Upgrade to PowerPoint 2000, which re-wrote all the table code so that it works. If you're stuck using a previous version, DON'T format the table using one of Word's preset styles. While in Word, make all the lines in the table a different color from the text in the table. Then when you're back in PowerPoint, use recolor picture to recolor the lines in PowerPoint. There are many problems about Word's use of color and PowerPoint color schemes, and this is the way I've found that gets around the problem the best. The table code in PowerPoint 97 isn't very good, and has lots of problems, mostly in the area of columns being cut off. For best results, insert tables while in PowerPoint and create them from scratch, as opposed to creating them in Word and pasting them into your presentation.

How do I get graphs to look right when the file is transferred to the Mac?Graphs that are created on the PC in PPT'97 (using PowerPoint's Graphs or Excel Charts) sometimes have translation problems when these files are opened on the Mac in PPT'98. There is a bug that shows up in build charts with blended fills. If you experience this bug, try taking the fills out, and the builds should then work properly. Other chart translation problems can be solved by double-clicking on the chart (in Mac PowerPoint '98), which opens them up in Graphing module, and then clicking "off" the chart to go back to PowerPoint. This will solve the problem for the Macintosh file, but alas, if it is a file that PC users want to share with Mac users here and there (and having two versions is impractical) you are out of luck. Microsoft is aware of these bugs.

Any way to have more than two masters, like Persuasion?Persuasion users always hate this part of PowerPoint. The answer to your question is "no".

Why do my Org Charts keep falling apart? The sad truth is that the Org Chart code in PowerPoint just isn't very good. It is common to have charts look different each time you look at them, printing problems, and strange formatting occurrences. The only good workaround is to draw your org charts from scratch using PowerPoint's drawing tools, which will not have any of these problems.

How do I change PowerPoint's ruler from Metric to US? PowerPoint, like the other Office applications, doesn't store a setting for the ruler, it looks to Windows to provide this setting. To change the setting, close all open applications, and:
From the Windows Start button, click Settings, then Control Panel.
Double-click on Regional Settings
Click on the tab labeled "Number"
Down towards the bottom of the list is a setting called "Measurement System"; set this to US, or Metric, which ever you prefer. When you re-launch PowerPoint, the ruler should then obey this setting.

Why are all my slides black and white? What happened to the colors? Check to see that the "Black and White View" button hasn't accidentally been pressed. This is on your main formatting toolbar, right next to the view percentage readout. This button toggles the presentation's view between color and what you'll see when you print. While in this view, you can right-click on any object, and by using the Black and White settings menu, change how each object prints.

Any way to change the presentation design of individual slides? Unfortunately, a template applies itself to every slide in the presentation, so you can only use one template per show. There is a workaround, however. RIGHT-Click on the background of the slide you want to change, and select BACKGROUND from the little menu that pops up. Check the box that says something like "omit background objects" This will cease to display anything from the slide master. Now go to the slide master of the template you want to use, and copy/paste the objects to this slide. You'll probably also have to change the color scheme as well, which is tedious.

How do I make a new Title Master? Go to VIEW/SLIDE MASTER; then from the INSERT menu, select NEW TITLE MASTER.

How do I make a slide use the Title Master and not the Slide Master? Select FORMAT/SLIDE LAYOUT, and pick the title layout.

SAVING, USING, EDITING AND OPENING PRESENTATIONS

Which versions of PowerPoint can open/save which other versions? PowerPoint 97, 98, and 2000 all use the same file format. All versions of PowerPoint can open the previous version's files from the same platform. Some versions allow you to down-rev save (lines in red), some allow you to open directly from a different platform (as shown in lines in blue). See the diagram below for the complete matrix of what does what. When opening Mac files from a PC, make sure to copy the file on to PC floppy from the Macintosh.

pptrevs.gif (4390 bytes)

Any tools for recovering corrupt .PPT files? There is one; we haven't tried it, but it does come from Microsoft so we'll let you judge its quality. This is an add-in that "clones" the active presentation. Supposedly, you can use this add-in to create a corruption free copy of a presentation that you suspect may be corrupted. You can find this add-in at: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q193/8/48.asp

Can I save my presentation to HTML? The answer is a qualified "yes". If you want to do this, upgrade to PowerPoint 2000. In the File menu of PowerPoint 2000, you'll see the "Save to Web" option. This dialog does a lot of things, none of which are obvious.

Clicking SAVE: This saves your presentation as HTML in such a way that PowerPoint can reopen the file, edit it, and save back to HTML. (Useful if you saw a typo, for example, and you wanted to go back and fix it.) The file created by this function will be large and will look and work really nicely in IE5. HOWEVER, it won't work at all in any verison of Netscape. So, this is the classic "Microsoft only" solution. Files are big. All links, action buttons, transitions, builds, animations, and even Flash files display properly.

Clicking PUBLISH: gives you three alternatives, all of which are one-way only (you can't open these html files back up in PowerPoint).

Option 1: Publish for IE4 and higher: does the same quality job as above (good, but only for IE); no difference in file size from SAVE.

Option 2: Publish for Netscape Navigator 3.0 and higher: creates a file that doesn't look as good as the IE versions, but does work for Netscape. You'll find that navigation buttons and links will still work, but all other effects will display but not work. Files are very small.

Option 3: Publish for both options 1 & 2: essentially, this does both 1 & 2, and people get the best one for their browser. Files are same size as adding options 1 & 2. While this creates a lot of space on the server, it probably is your best option if you don't live in an all Microsoft world.

Important Note: If you want transition effects, builds, and animation effects to work in your web pages, you'll need to change a setting. From the File menu, click on Save to Web. Then click the Publish button, and then click the button marked "Web Options..." In this dialog, make sure that the box that says "show slide animations while browsing" is clicked. Otherwise, your animations will not play, regardless of how you save the file.

How can I transfer my presentation to video? Upgrade to PowerPoint 2000, and then try using the "Presentation Broadcasting" feature.

Is it possible to save a presentation as read-only? Not really. You can save a presentation as a template (POT) file, which will open an unnamed copy of the template, but these files contain only masters, and no slides.

Is there a list of keyboard shortcuts somewhere? Yes, on this very web site. Click here to see it.

How do I get rid of Custom dictionary entries? These are stored in a file known as custom.dic. If you use the FIND command (from the Windows Start menu) you will probably find this file in: c:\\office97\office

To edit the file, launch Notepad, and open custom.dic. There you will find the list of words that you've entered into your custom dictionary. Delete any words you don't want, save the file, close the file, and then restart PowerPoint.

What is the maximum file size for PowerPoint? There is no maximum file size either in file size or number of slides. The system will barf on the file when you run out of memory, so buy lots of memory, particularly if you like to use pictures, sounds, and/or video.

How do I completely remove PowerPoint? Uninstalling PowerPoint does still leave some bits and pieces around on your machine. For a complete explanation of how to get rid of everything, check out http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q169/7/36.asp

How do I make a PowerPoint file into a self-running executable file? You can't. For those of you who don't understand what this is, it would be a presentation that would "play" itself, regardless of if PowerPoint was installed or not. The only products that we know of that do this are Macromedia Director and Macromedia Flash.

How do I merge two presentations into one? Start with one presentation, and use the "Insert/ Slides from File" command. You can also copy slides from one presentation to another, but you'll need to go to the slide sorter view to do it. If you pick up slides from the slide sorter view, then you should get everything associated with that slide. If you try to copy a slide from Slide view, you just get the objects on the slide, and not the slide itself.

Can Power Point slides be made into PDF files? PowerPoint slides and entire presentations can be made into PDF files, but you'll need to purchase a copy of Adobe Acrobat in order to do it. PDF is a format owned and created by Adobe. Their Acrobat "Reader" is free, and can be downloaded from their web site at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html. However, to save a file to PDF, you need to buy a full copy of Acrobat. Once you've done that, you can save any document to PDF, which is very useful. Also, the reader that you get with the full product has more fun features than the free one.

Why do I get errors trying to edit OrgCharts in PowerPoint? It is not uncommon to get the "There isn't enough memory to read MS OrgChart" error. Unfortunately, this part of the product is just a plain old disaster. It's not you, and unfortunately, there's not much you can do about it. I try to avoid using OrgChart, and make my charts by "hand" using the PowerPoint drawing tools. It may seem slower at first, but since it actually works, it ends up saving time.

Is there a way to copy slides into a specific location in my presentation? In PowerPoint 95 and earlier, you simply go to the slide sorter of one presentation, copy the slides you want, then switch to the slide sorter of the destination presentation, click in between the slides to set an insertion point, and then PASTE. In PowerPoint 97, however, the ability to set an insertion point mysteriously disappeared. (read: BUG) The way to accomplish this in PowerPoint 97 is to click on the slide you wish the new slides to follow, and then PASTE. This is extremely unintuitive, since in every other instance of Microsoft programs, pasting into a selection replaces the selection with the pasted items. PowerPoint 2000 fixed this bug (it allows you to set an insertion point between slides), but still allows you to paste into a selection, for those people who got used to doing it the "'97 way".

Why is my file still big, even after deleting things? For some mysterious reason, PowerPoint 97 and 2000 store lots of information in the file that does not get removed when the files are saved and closed. However, if you save the file as a new name, using the SAVE AS command, you will almost always find your files reduce in size, sometimes quite dramatically.

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES

What happened to PowerPoint 5.0 and 6.0? This isn't really an unsolved mystery, but it still feels like one to me, so I've put it here. If you have a better, more fun explanation, let's hear it! The Microsoft Office team was having a very difficult time keeping track of what versions of each product were in each version of Office, so they decided to bring all of the products up to the same version number. Since Word was at 6.0 already (while PowerPoint was at 4, and Excel at 5), all the applications made their next release (shipped in Office '95) be 7.0. Office '97 for Windows then shipped with version 8 of all the applications, and just to confuse things the Macintosh version 8 products (which shipped in 1998) were called Office '98, because it was just too darned embarrassing to ship a product called Office '97 in 1998. My favorite artifact of all of this is my Office '96 t-shirt, the shirt for which no product ever existed.

Any way to play ScreenCam exe files in PowerPoint slide shows? We know of no way to do this. The problem is that if you click on the screen while the movie is playing (as you would to show a demo) the movie disappears.

Know where to get a copy of PowerPoint to run on Windows 3.1? First of all, check our versions table on our Tips page to find out what version you're looking for. In this case, you'd want either Version 3 or 4 for Windows. As to where to find it, I'd try the good will, or a library. Anyone got any other ideas?

How do you populate List Boxes using VB in PowerPoint? John is trying to use list boxes on a PowerPoint slide, but can't figure out how to get the info in the box. In Visual Basic you'd use the AddItem routine when the form loads, but there doesn't seem to be anything comparable with a slide. Any takers on this one?

PowerPoint FAQ

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