B
Bill Weylock
We publish research studies that have charts on every page. We use fairly
basic 3D pie, bar, column and line charts for the most part, and we are
careful to specify only Arial or Trebuchet fonts at normal screen-font
sizings. (12,11,12,14,16,18,20, 24.....)
Usually charts are built right in PowerPoint because we found they were most
stable and clients like it.
We work in 2007, saving to 2003 compatibility format...
Our production people send me a deck that looks very nice, but it does not
have all the data and often does not have data arranged the way I decide it
should be (on the fly) or by client request.
The moment I click on a chart, however, big problems happen and do not go
away.
We are asked not to Convert the charts to 2007 format, because clients have
complained that they get error messages opening our decks in 2003. But as
soon as I click the chart, fonts begin to misbehave stubbornly. It seems to
have something to do with the need to resize the chart to fit into a space
on the slide. It results in wildly fractional font sizes.
The most frequent problem is muddy letter drawing and negative kerning:
letters look as if they were generated by an old Atari (yeah, I¹m that old
but still cheerful) and are jumbled together. Still readable, mind you, but
sloppy as all hades.
Okay, so I click and open the chart again. Immediately when the chart enters
edit mode, the fonts get all cooperative and look the way I want them to.
When I click out and go back to slide view, they are nasty again. Nothing I
have thought to do affects this.
I get best results by going down a font size and saving the chart as I close
it. Arial 10 usually looks minimally acceptable.
Our work is suffering because clients figure we don¹t care or are too stupid
to manage our computers properly.
Is this rare?? I don¹t see any other discussion of it, and I expected to.
By the way, if I convert to 2007, the problems usually go away. I never get
quite what I expect, but the text next to the graph no longer looks designed
by an angry 8 year old. I do get warnings every time I save the file in
2003, and clients may have unpleasant results trying to deal with a partly
2007ed file.
I am grateful in advance for any help you can offer. This is making my life
less livable than you would want for me.
Thanks!
Best,
Bill
Imac 2.8Ghz -10.5.1
Office 2008/2007 - Windows XP Pro SP2
basic 3D pie, bar, column and line charts for the most part, and we are
careful to specify only Arial or Trebuchet fonts at normal screen-font
sizings. (12,11,12,14,16,18,20, 24.....)
Usually charts are built right in PowerPoint because we found they were most
stable and clients like it.
We work in 2007, saving to 2003 compatibility format...
Our production people send me a deck that looks very nice, but it does not
have all the data and often does not have data arranged the way I decide it
should be (on the fly) or by client request.
The moment I click on a chart, however, big problems happen and do not go
away.
We are asked not to Convert the charts to 2007 format, because clients have
complained that they get error messages opening our decks in 2003. But as
soon as I click the chart, fonts begin to misbehave stubbornly. It seems to
have something to do with the need to resize the chart to fit into a space
on the slide. It results in wildly fractional font sizes.
The most frequent problem is muddy letter drawing and negative kerning:
letters look as if they were generated by an old Atari (yeah, I¹m that old
but still cheerful) and are jumbled together. Still readable, mind you, but
sloppy as all hades.
Okay, so I click and open the chart again. Immediately when the chart enters
edit mode, the fonts get all cooperative and look the way I want them to.
When I click out and go back to slide view, they are nasty again. Nothing I
have thought to do affects this.
I get best results by going down a font size and saving the chart as I close
it. Arial 10 usually looks minimally acceptable.
Our work is suffering because clients figure we don¹t care or are too stupid
to manage our computers properly.
Is this rare?? I don¹t see any other discussion of it, and I expected to.
By the way, if I convert to 2007, the problems usually go away. I never get
quite what I expect, but the text next to the graph no longer looks designed
by an angry 8 year old. I do get warnings every time I save the file in
2003, and clients may have unpleasant results trying to deal with a partly
2007ed file.
I am grateful in advance for any help you can offer. This is making my life
less livable than you would want for me.
Thanks!
Best,
Bill
Imac 2.8Ghz -10.5.1
Office 2008/2007 - Windows XP Pro SP2