Tables breaking up in PP 2008

[Morten Dreier]

Hi. Our tables, which were made with tabs, and not real tables, are now
breaking up and becoming unreadable. I suppose we should convert them to
real tables, but there are a _lot_ of lectures and slides. Is there any
other automatical way to do this?

 

[Iggles14]

Morton --

From your post, I'm assuming that you used tabs in a text field to create the tables. If that's a bad assumption, ignore the rest of my post!

I am not aware of any automated way to recapture the tabs, but if you set the tabs in the Master slide view, you may be able to minimize the amount of work.

Another option is to hire a bunch of your students, or give them extra credit ...

Duncan

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Hi. Our tables, which were made with tabs, and not real tables, are now
breaking up and becoming unreadable. I suppose we should convert them to
real tables, but there are a _lot_ of lectures and slides. Is there any
other automatical way to do this?

One possible reason for this: unlike previous versions of PPT which only
allowed one set of tabs for an entire text box, PPT 2007/2008 allow each
paragraph to have its own tab settings.

When you open a file from an earlier version, it appears that any customized
tab settings apply only to the first paragraph; subsequent paragraphs seem to
inherit the default settings (note: hedging my bets here because I might be
mistaken; I've only had a brief chance to test this on 2008 and didn't have an
earlier version handy at the time).

Try using the format painter to pick up the formatting from the first para and
apply it to the following paragraphs.



================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Arnulf Kletzin]

Hi,

Powerpoint contains a bug that messes completely the text alignments up in a text field with tab settings. It took me months to get around this problem but I think I found a solution now in a previous forum: The first character in a new line must NOT be a Tab! A space would do or any other character. It's a nuisance but I do not see any other way. You can also prevent Powerpoint from automatically converting manually entered dashes into automatic bullet points.

best regards, arnulf

 

[Jeff Chapman]

Great suggestion on this, Steve - I learned something new.

Another tip: if you do a triple-click on the paragraph, it will select the
whole thing for you.
Then you can use Format Painter to apply the tab settings to another
paragraph.

(One oddity: the cursor turns into a crosshair cursor after you click on
Format Painter, even within the text box. It does work, though. Strange.)

Jeff

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Great suggestion on this, Steve - I learned something new.

Another tip: if you do a triple-click on the paragraph, it will select the
whole thing for you.

I'll file that (again) under Things I Know and Will One Day Actually Remember When
I Need Them. [later] And it worked. I used that today. Maybe it's finally stuck
... thanks.

Then you can use Format Painter to apply the tab settings to another
paragraph.

(One oddity: the cursor turns into a crosshair cursor after you click on
Format Painter, even within the text box. It does work, though. Strange.)

Jeff

================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================