Comment feature appears to work inconsistently across platforms

[Martin Haeberli]

Hello!

A colleague sent me a powerpoint deck from windows to my Macintosh that had
his comments. I couldn't view them, even though I chose to "view comments"

I then added my own comments and sent it back to him.

He was able to view both his comments on mine on his windows system.

He is running Office 2002 on XP; I'm running Office 2004 on Mac OS X with
the latest updates.

Advice is welcome; I have tried searching the newsgroup etc. for hints so
far to no avail.

Thanks,

Martin

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Hello!

A colleague sent me a powerpoint deck from windows to my Macintosh that had
his comments. I couldn't view them, even though I chose to "view comments"

I then added my own comments and sent it back to him.

He was able to view both his comments on mine on his windows system.

He is running Office 2002 on XP; I'm running Office 2004 on Mac OS X with
the latest updates.

Advice is welcome; I have tried searching the newsgroup etc. for hints so
far to no avail.

Windows PowerPoint 2002 and up use a new style of comment that's different from
previous versions. While old-style comments are visible in all versions,
new-style ones aren't visible in older PPT versions. I'd guess that Office
2004 still uses the old-style comments too, judging by your description.

The Windows PPT user can run the code here to convert the comments into
something you can read:

Convert PowerPoint 2002 comments into PowerPoint 2000 comments
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00462.htm

This same functionality (and the ability to create old-style comments in the
first place) is part of our PPTools StarterSet Plus addin, an inexpensive
upgrade to the free PPTools StarterSet at http://starterset.pptools.com )

--
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
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Apologies for the delayed response.
Just back from PowerPoint Live 2004
Had a great time, learned a lot
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