Animation compatibility - Mac to PC?

[sszilasi]

Greetings all - It's been a while since I've posted here - I was
running PPT '98 on OS 9 for the longest time, but in the last month
we've finally upgraded to OS X (yay!!!) and have gone straight to PPT
2004 so it looks like I've got some quick learning to do!

My first big project on the new version will be developing a PPT for a
client running PPT 2002 or 2003 on the PC (not quite sure which version
just yet) and likely to involve complex animations. I'm excited by all
the new animation features available to me - this is a *huge* leap
forward from '98! - but if I understand what I read correctly, there
are some animations that work on the Mac, but not on the PC and vice
versa?

Does a comprehensive comparison of available animations exist
somewhere? My google searches haven't turned up much yet... We'd like
to quickly get a good handle on what's going to be available to us so
we don't sound like idiots in front of the client.

We also have one PC in the agency running PPT 2003, so we could end up
developing the presentation on the Mac, and then adding animations on
the PC if need be (sounds like we'll need to do this for motion paths
at least...), but if it turns out the client is running PPT 2002 we may
still encounter version issues.

I'm a little disappointed that motion path animation is not yet
available on the Mac... P

Thanks for any help!

-Sandra

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Sandra,

PowerPoint 2004 has a built-in feature called Compatibility Checker. You
can use it to determine which features are supported by whatever
versions of PowerPoint you have for both Mac and Windows. It will
automatically fix your presentation to work with the version(s) you specify.

This link explains how the new compatibility checker works:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/produc...w_to_articles/office2004/of_compatibility.xml

All aspects of motion path animations are available in PowerPoint 2004
*except* for the user interface that lets you control them. If you wish
that Microsoft would add them to PowerPoint for Macintosh, here's the
URL to use to tell Microsoft:
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp

-Jim

-Jim

 

[sszilasi]

Thanks Jim!
The compatibility check sounds great - and so far so good... I guess I
was hoping that documentation might exist that details what animations
are available in what version so that we can know what we've got to
work with up front instead of going the trial and error route. It does
help, though, and will cut down on some testing time.

I will indeed tell Microsoft that Mac users need motion paths too.
Thanks for the link!

-Sandra

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi again,

Search PowerPoint 2004 help for this topic:
Compatibility Report: Animation effects in other versions of PowerPoint

It has a list of the new entrance and animation effects.

-Jim