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PowerPoints 2007 - Changes Will Not Save
Mark L. Walberg
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, my boss has a PowerPoint presentation that has some shapes with text. There are nine of them and she wants the text centred within the shape. On four of the shapes, the text is centred and remains centred each time she opens the file. The problem is with the other five shapes.
Each time she selects the text in a shape and changes the alignment of the text to Centre (with the button on the Paragraph group in the Home tab on the Ribbon), the text centre-aligns itself like it should. All five of the "problem" shapes do this. She then Saves the presentation with the Save button in the Quick Access Toolbar, and closes the file. However, when she re-opens the file, the change to the alignment of the "problem shapes" has not been saved--all those shapes are back to a Left Alignment.
She has sent me the file and I've been playing around with it a bit. I've made sure that the file I open after making and saving the changes is the exact file I saved the changes to, but the results are still the same. I've tried Save As instead of Save and the results are still the same. I tried adding a new shape, typing text on that shape, Centre-aligning the text, and saving the file... the new shape/text appears as it should when I re-open the file but the changes to the "problem shapes" are ignored.
All of this is operating with the file in the old format (.ppt) (so, in Compatibility Mode). I assume she has created and is working with the file in this format because she will be giving this presentation at another location on campus that, more than likely, will not have the 2007 Office suite installed. In fact, I just checked, and she says that she used a template from another file that was also the old format (.ppt) when creating this file, so it has always been worked on as the old format.
What I have found, just now, is that if I make the changes to the "problem shapes" and save the file as the new format (.pptx), the changes to the "problem shapes" are retained in the save. Cool! I thought I had fixed things. I then did a Save As to the old version (.ppt), closed, and re-opened the file. Dinger... the shapes are problematic again.
So, this is the problem: why are the changes to the alignment of the text in the "problem shapes" not being saved when saving this file in the old format (.ppt)? I know that the old format can centre text within shapes. I was also able to add a new shape, centre the text within it, save it and have the change behave normally when re-opening the file, all while operating in Compatibility Mode.
My Googling, for the most part, only find results where people are having trouble saving PowerPoint files to network drives with Vista, so it hasn't really been that helpful. Hopefully someone here has an idea? Thanks for your time.
Each time she selects the text in a shape and changes the alignment of the text to Centre (with the button on the Paragraph group in the Home tab on the Ribbon), the text centre-aligns itself like it should. All five of the "problem" shapes do this. She then Saves the presentation with the Save button in the Quick Access Toolbar, and closes the file. However, when she re-opens the file, the change to the alignment of the "problem shapes" has not been saved--all those shapes are back to a Left Alignment.
She has sent me the file and I've been playing around with it a bit. I've made sure that the file I open after making and saving the changes is the exact file I saved the changes to, but the results are still the same. I've tried Save As instead of Save and the results are still the same. I tried adding a new shape, typing text on that shape, Centre-aligning the text, and saving the file... the new shape/text appears as it should when I re-open the file but the changes to the "problem shapes" are ignored.
All of this is operating with the file in the old format (.ppt) (so, in Compatibility Mode). I assume she has created and is working with the file in this format because she will be giving this presentation at another location on campus that, more than likely, will not have the 2007 Office suite installed. In fact, I just checked, and she says that she used a template from another file that was also the old format (.ppt) when creating this file, so it has always been worked on as the old format.
What I have found, just now, is that if I make the changes to the "problem shapes" and save the file as the new format (.pptx), the changes to the "problem shapes" are retained in the save. Cool! I thought I had fixed things. I then did a Save As to the old version (.ppt), closed, and re-opened the file. Dinger... the shapes are problematic again.
So, this is the problem: why are the changes to the alignment of the text in the "problem shapes" not being saved when saving this file in the old format (.ppt)? I know that the old format can centre text within shapes. I was also able to add a new shape, centre the text within it, save it and have the change behave normally when re-opening the file, all while operating in Compatibility Mode.
My Googling, for the most part, only find results where people are having trouble saving PowerPoint files to network drives with Vista, so it hasn't really been that helpful. Hopefully someone here has an idea? Thanks for your time.
Mark L. Walberg on
0
Posts
What version of PPT are you targetting with this?
I shall try that now--I should have thought of it earlier. Still, I'm curious why it's behaving this way (although workarounds are useful for this specific situation).
We are both running PowerPoint 2007, so when we open the file in the old format, it runs in Compatibility Mode. We're checking on what version the presentation computer has, but I'm assuming it only has 2003 installed.
[Edit]
Well, deleting the "problem shapes" and copy+pasting one of the working ones (and changing the text) has provided an acceptable workaround. I'm still curious about why it was behaving like that, but we'll probably never know.
Yeah, I suppose... I guess I just thought it wouldn't (shouldn't) have problems with Compatibility when the 2007 version isn't doing anything the 2003 version isn't normally capable of. :P
You'd think that, but IE8 totally shits itself with some of our in-house development tools even when running in IE7 mode.