PwrPnt'04: Dragging Problems...

[Jonathan L Jacobs]

OK, just upgraded to Office'04. I'm going to post any bug I find in any app
on this list because I don't think there's a list for Office over at the
Apple's discussion site (which is great, BTW).

Bug.

When dragging grouped items, images, text boxes, whatever the mouse pointer
does not _exactly_ coorelate to where the item you are draggin will be
dropped. This is really annonying, especially when I'm trying to use Guides
to snap everything in-line. I've tried it with and without snap to grid
turned on, with with out ruler enabled. Seemingly everything. This is not a
problem with PwrPntX.

Hardwar/OS: 21" Studio display, Mac Dual G4 PowerPC 1.4GHZ, 2GB ram, 160 GB
HD, running Panther (10.3.4),

The file is a 36" x 42" poster with some large and small text and about a
few drawing objects.

Thanks,

Jonathan jacobs
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Joshua LeVasseur]

I can confirm this bug. Happens to me even when I want to drag around
single boxes.

After a while PowerPoint crashes.

Potential work around? Probably autosave every 20 seconds.

-Josh

 

[Alan Schaevitz]

I agree. The drag and drop is a bummer. The faint image of what you are
dragging (box, line, etc.) tends to be somewhat above the spot you are
really going to drop it. You have to look at the location of the "fist"
icon to guess where it will drop. This makes it almost impossible to place
an image correctly. I am forced to use the "nudge" tool to move the image
more precisely. This is definitely a bug.

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks for posting this to the newsgroups. I'm pretty sure that Microsoft
knows about this particular bug.

Microsoft tracks bug reports in a database. The more reports of a particular
bug, the higher its priority when it comes time to fix things. So it's
really important that once you have confirmed that it really is a bug that
you send feedback directly to Microsoft. Posting to the newsgroups is an
excellent way to figure out if you're just missing something or it's really
a bug.

The way to get your bug tracked in the Microsoft database is to use the
Feedback option on the PowerPoint Help menu. Your description of the problem
is excellent, so you could just copy it and paste it into the form.

In addition, Office 2004 has new built-in error reporting features. So if
PowerPoint quits unexpectedly (crashes) you will be prompted to report the
problem to Microsoft. The information that is sent to Microsoft is system
information, hardware configuration information, and the crash log that
MacOS generates (which you can read in the Console application in your
utilities folder).

The new error reporting feature is very robust. It will create an entry in
the bug database with details of your crash. But let's say that even with
that information Microsoft doesn't have enough info to figure out exactly
what is causing a particular crash. They can flag the system so that the
next time a particular crash occurs the system can ask you what you were
doing immediately prior to the crash.

And even more! Let's say there's a bug that causes a crash only for people
who use gridlines. Microsoft's MacBU could (in theory) make a patch that
fixes that one particular problem. When a crash occurs, the crash reporting
system would notice that there is a fix for this problem and offer to upload
a patch. That way everyone in the world does not need to get the update -
only those who are affected.

So I hope I convinced you to send feedback using the Help menu and to be
sure to click the SEND button every time PowerPoint crashes and the error
reporting feature kicks in. Those steps will go a long way to ensure that
the bug you discovered will be repaired.

-Jim
--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info

-Jim