Powerpoint: Unwanted conversion to bitmap for animated vectorgraphics

[Desperate Househusband]

Dear All,

I have the following problem in Powerpoint 2003 (which would
admittedly belong in another group), but it seems like the only
possible solution might be to use VBA to get more control.

I am pasting vector objects into Powerpoint, which display well -
until I add animation, at which point in the Slide Show view they get
re-sampled into very ragged looking bitmaps.
After some hard searching, I find a statement by Microsoft saying that
this is the default behavior for some animated objects to support all
their flash new effects (although I only want boring old "Appear"),
and I can't find any way to turn it off (note that the problem is NOT
present in older versions of Powerpoint).

Is there a way to program the animations in PPT with VBA to get access
to relevant options to disable this behavior (and have the vector
graphics appear with the same quality as they have when not animated?)

(A specific example of the graphics are MS Word OLE objects pasted
into PPT )

If someone knows of a non-VBA workaround, please advise me where to
move this thread...

Many thanks,
MT

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

You can programmatically apply animations using VBA, but that would simply
automate what you're already able to do manually, and would have the same side
effects. IOW, no help there.

But you could, at least in theory, write VBA code that moves shapes around,
changes visibility, fills, and that sort of thing and so side-step PPT's own
animation and its side-effects.

You might try ungrouping and then regrouping the vector objects after pasting
them into PPT though. That would convert them into native PPT shapes which
might not get the dog-eared-bitmap effect auto-applied.

 

[Desperate Househusband]

Dear Steve,

Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately ungrouping leads to total
scrambling with these particular MS-Word objects (including Word
bullet point lists and Mathtype equations).
I have tried some other Paste options, but they do not preserve the
objects either.

So I guess you are implying there are no secret miracle extra options
to suppress this behavior when invoking Animations with VBA... what a
pity.
Admittedly, I also didn't really know how one would select some of the
objects on each slide for VBA animation in a streamlined way (a lot of
hard-coding?)

It is a bit ironic that these re-render-as-bitmap problems only seem
to arise starting from Office 2003...

Kind regards, MT

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

So I guess you are implying there are no secret miracle extra options
to suppress this behavior when invoking Animations with VBA... what a
pity.

Afraid not. Generally it works t'other way round. The VBA end of things is
buggier than the manual end. ;-)

Admittedly, I also didn't really know how one would select some of the
objects on each slide for VBA animation in a streamlined way (a lot of
hard-coding?)

No doubt; at the very least, you'd apply what're called Tags to the objects
that need animation and let the code sort out what to do based on the tags.