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Software Sucks

Todays sucky software is PowerPoint, in oh so many ways. I feel a Jesse moment coming on - "Today I am mostly complaining about PowerPoint":

  • Why can't I have two presentations open on different screens? I can open two presentations, and they show as separate windows, but move one to my second screen and they both move. I have a presentation with a whole bunch of art in it, and I use that in other presentations, but having to alt-tab is such a pain.
  • Why, when I cut and paste within the same text area, does the pasted text get a different font to the source text? In presentations showing code I use a code font (such as Lucida), and I copy a word, paste it elsewhere and suddenly it's now Arial. What gives? Yes I know I can paste special and use unformatted text, but that's extra steps.
  • Why can't I split the presentation, in a similar way to Word where you can split the document and scroll the portions independenly. I tend to write presentations and then do the agenda and summary; I'd like to have the agenda in one area (and not scroll), while I scroll around the rest of the document.


I didn't sign up for the next Office beta because I knew I wouldn't have time to use it properly, but I hope they've sorted some of these.

[Listening to: Everything's the Same - Anika Moa - Thinking Room]
posted on Tuesday, February 07, 2006 3:15 PM Print
Comments
 re: Software Sucks
DarrenB
2/17/2006 8:28 PM
> Todays sucky software is PowerPoint, in oh so many ways.
Don't get me started. Have you ever tried applying a new template to an existing PPT file? You get most of the setting but not all. To get the rest you have to re-apply layout to the slides. Only that'll remove any bold/italics/underline etc styling in your placeholders. So in the end you just write scripts to automate the process. grrrr

> Why, when I cut and paste within the same text area,
> does the pasted text get a different font to the source text?
Ah that'll be "smart cut and paste", where by "smart" I mean it thinks it is being clever by applying the styles defined in the template at the same time as pasting, thus ensuring any text you paste adheres to the template.

I usually get a smart tag appearing when I paste allowing me to "keep source formatting". If you don't see this try Tools | Options | Edit | "Show Paste option buttons". Of course this just makes cutting and pasting and two phase operation. You can try turning off "smart cut and paste" but I've found this doesn't help.

You could set the template's style: view the side master (View | Master | Slide Master), then click in the grey border outside the slide (yes really) and set a font face & size. Then when you paste in a textbox it'll default to that font. Of course that assumes you want all textboxes in the same font, which is never true as we need code boxes and annotation boxes and diagram boxes and...

If you've not found them look out for the eye dropper controls (you need to customise your toolbars to add them) as they let you pickup and apply styles after copy and paste has messed things up.

darren.
 re: Software Sucks
MS Testing Lab Rat
5/25/2006 11:28 PM
I agree!! Even when trying to record a macro to fix the problem - the stinkin macro record doesn't work! What the hell Paste now takes just as long as typing...
 re: Software Sucks
MS Testing Lab Rat
5/26/2006 1:08 AM
Just found a macro command that works - Use

ActiveWindow.Selection.TextRange.PasteSpecial(ppPasteText)

You can add the macro to the tool bar then hit the macro whenever you want a unformatted text paste - eeesh why does it have to be soo hard to figure out?
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