Stop automatic resizing of shapes

[wotte]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: intel

Hi folks -

I have been pulling my hair out on this one: If I create a shape on a slide (e.g. square, circle, arrow), and later decide to resize it, it will snap down to a very small size and refuse to go to any size I try to specify.

See a video here:
<http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~wotte/FrakkingPowerpoint.mov>

 

[Matt Centurión [MSFT]]

Hi Wotte,

By any chance does this only happen in Presentations created in previous
versions of PowerPoint? What happens in a new presentation in 2008?

Thanks,

Matt
MacOffice Testing
Microsoft


Date: 3/20/08 8:55 AM / From: "(e-mail address removed)"

 

[wotte]

Hi Matt -

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, this appears to happen only with legacy documents - I am working from a template that we have had for some time.

When I created a new document, it did not present with the same defect. Also, creating a new document in PowerPoint 2007 did not present when saved to either pptx or ppt.

Is there a workaround beyond re-creating the template from scratch?

It it will help with the debugging process, I will be happy to provide the file in question.

Thanks,
/-Will

 

[wotte]

Hi Matt -

Also, for what its worth:

I created a new presentation, copied the slide master over and the content. The same undesirable behavior presented in the new document.

hth,
/-Will

 

[wotte]

I have done some more investigating: Legacy shapes have 'shrink text to fit' selected by default, unchecking that seems to allow them to be resized arbitrarily.

This behavior is unexpected, and the name of this checkbox should be changed. It is not shrinking the text to fit the box, it is shrinking the box to fit the text.

 

[Matt Centurión [MSFT]]

Sorry I didn't get to your other messages earlier.. But yes! That's exactly
the issue.

The work-around is to open your templates, create a shape... Uncheck this
checkbox, right-click the shape and choose "Set AutoShape defaults. Then
delete the shape and save your template.

That way, new shapes created when using this template will not have this
issue.

Also for documents already created, you can try selecting-all and unchecking
this box.

Let us know how this works!

Matt
MacOffice Testing
Microsoft



Date: 3/20/08 2:19 PM / From: "(e-mail address removed)"