Powerpoint 2004 Issues with Quicktime, animation, and dragging

[James Berger]

Hi -

I'm sure that some of this has crossed the newsgroups, but I'm looking for
some definitive answers (also, since MS sometimes monitors these, maybe
this will help strengthen the case for a service update).

I've just switched to Office 2004 for the Mac. I'm running OS 10.3.5 on a
15" 1 GHz Al-book with 700+MB RAM. I've noticed two problems and one
omission in PowerPoint-2004.

1) My QuickTime movies, which still embed and run beautifully in PP v.x, are
rendered terribly (low res) and run jerkily in PP-2004. Any fixes? I've tried
saving as a few alternate file formats with QT-Pro (e.g., MPEG4) without
success.

2) When I click-drag certain objects, I get a ghost image that does not track
with the true position of the object as I move it - makes image placement
tough. Have others seen this?

3) One of the prime reasons I upgraded to O-2004 was to get the animation
that allows you to bind objects to a path (such as a curve or line) and move
them along that path (such as you see in the PC-XP version). Someone
please tell me that MS simply made this option hard to find...

4) While this isn't a PP problem, I'll put it in anyway. In Word-2004, double-
clicking and highlighting a segment of text often grabs the word in front of
the word I double-click on. This isn't related to the "automatically select
entire word" option that one can toggle in the preferences panel. Minor but
annoying.

Thanks in advance for all help.

James

 

[Alan Schaevitz]

Regarding items (2) and (3) in your list:

(2) This is a known bug. It occurs if you have the Ruler turned on (View >
Ruler). If you have the Ruler off, no problem.

(3) Unfortunately, PP 2004 does not let you create custom paths. It
supports custom paths built in PC-land, but you cannot create them in
Mac-land. I think it has been stated in this forum that all the functions to
do this are built into PP 2004 with the exception of the GUI to allow you to
create them. Hopefully, this will show up in a future release.

 

[Mickey Stevens]

Hi -

I'm sure that some of this has crossed the newsgroups, but I'm looking for
some definitive answers (also, since MS sometimes monitors these, maybe
this will help strengthen the case for a service update).

I've just switched to Office 2004 for the Mac. I'm running OS 10.3.5 on a
15" 1 GHz Al-book with 700+MB RAM. I've noticed two problems and one
omission in PowerPoint-2004.

1) My QuickTime movies, which still embed and run beautifully in PP v.x, are
rendered terribly (low res) and run jerkily in PP-2004. Any fixes? I've
tried
saving as a few alternate file formats with QT-Pro (e.g., MPEG4) without
success.

This is a known issue. Here is what Nancy Cho [MS] posted:
"We have found a "temporary workaround"...but we see the problem and are
working on it. The workaround for now is to decrease the movie size on the
slide by going to the format menu and select picture. Click on the size tab
and in the scale selection, check the Best for slide show checkbox and
select the appropriate resolution for the slide show display."

Users have had mixed results with the workaround.

4) While this isn't a PP problem, I'll put it in anyway. In Word-2004,
double-
clicking and highlighting a segment of text often grabs the word in front of
the word I double-click on. This isn't related to the "automatically select
entire word" option that one can toggle in the preferences panel. Minor but
annoying.

That's a known issue too. I am not aware of any workaround aside from not
double-clicking to begin with.

(Your feedback here should be recorded. Alternatively, you can send
feedback using the web form. In Entourage X or 2004, go to Help > Send
Feedback on Entourage. Otherwise, click on this direct link to enter Mac
Product Feedback:
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/feedback/suggestion.asp>)

 

[lorry]

Echo all of your sentiments James,

I have had some success with the conversion of my video to mp4 using
quicktime pro (interesting that you havent). Downside of this conversion is
that the talks are nownot convertible to windows machines as ppt for windows
wont play mp4s!!!

Its not a ram issue by the way - my powerbook has 2 G of ram - no
difference.

Cmon microsoft this is a HUGE problem - just tell us that you are still
working on it...nothing worse than not knowing! A talk without video (for
my work at least) is not an option. Tell us a fix will be out "soon"

As for the fixed path relative path reinsert every video again
problem........

LD