Tables with rounded corners

[Twanglow]

A client of mine has had an outside designer come up with a new look
its PPT templates. Trouble is, the designer isn't a Powerpoint
specialist, and now I've been asked to translate the new look into
Powerpoint itself. Leaving aside the whys and wherefores of this way of
approaching the job (!), one feature of the new look is tables with
rounded corners. Anyone got any idea if it's achievable, 'cos I can't
find out how? I have PPT X (for Mac) - client is Windows-based and are
pretty much up to date. I'm a freelance graphic designer/copywriter,
also not a PPT specialist, but I do have some experience. Thanks

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

A client of mine has had an outside designer come up with a new look
its PPT templates. Trouble is, the designer isn't a Powerpoint
specialist, and now I've been asked to translate the new look into
Powerpoint itself. Leaving aside the whys and wherefores of this way of
approaching the job (!), one feature of the new look is tables with
rounded corners. Anyone got any idea if it's achievable, 'cos I can't
find out how? I have PPT X (for Mac) - client is Windows-based and are
pretty much up to date. I'm a freelance graphic designer/copywriter,
also not a PPT specialist, but I do have some experience. Thanks

You can create a table normally then ungroup it. That converts it into a
collection of rectangles and lines. You can then select all of the rectangles
and use the Change Autoshape command (on the drawing toolbar in the PC version;
not sure where it is in which Mac PPT version) to convert the rectangles to
rounded corners.

You'd then want to delete the lines, most likely.

Having done this, you no longer have a table, of course. It's a collection of
rectangles with text in it.

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

 

[Twanglow]

Thanks for that Steve. It's obviously not going to be a neat solution
but it gets us closer than we were before. Now working on grouping sets
of cells so they are contained within a single rounded box -
unsuccessfully so far. Any further thoughts gratefully received!

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thanks for that Steve. It's obviously not going to be a neat solution
but it gets us closer than we were before. Now working on grouping sets
of cells so they are contained within a single rounded box -
unsuccessfully so far. Any further thoughts gratefully received!

Get a baseball bat, arrange a meeting in a small room with the client? ;-)

Hmm. If you have a table that's been ungrouped, you could select the needed
what-once-were-cells-but-now-are-rectangles and group them. Then draw the
rounded rectangle, send it behind the group and ... does something like that
do it?

If so, it'd be not too big a step further to write a little macro that does the
bulk of the work.


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

 

[Twanglow]

Get a baseball bat, arrange a meeting in a small room with the client? ;-)

Hmm. If you have a table that's been ungrouped, you could select the needed
what-once-were-cells-but-now-are-rectangles and group them. Then draw the
rounded rectangle, send it behind the group and ... does something like that
do it?

If so, it'd be not too big a step further to write a little macro that does the
bulk of the work.

Kind of works, but it's very 'manual'. I'm playing with merging cells
that I want to have inside a single border, before ungrouping it and
drawing the border, though that works better for vertical stacks of
columns than it does for horizontal ranks. And then I'll look at the
macro that might automate parts of that. But the main focus of my
activity is to compose an email to my client, constructive in tone yet
baseball-bat-blunt in nature, that suggests that if that's where they
wanted to get to, they should maybe have started from somewhere else.
Thanks for the suggestions Steve, much appreciated.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Kind of works, but it's very 'manual'. I'm playing with merging cells

that I want to have inside a single border, before ungrouping it and
drawing the border, though that works better for vertical stacks of
columns than it does for horizontal ranks. And then I'll look at the
macro that might automate parts of that. But the main focus of my
activity is to compose an email to my client, constructive in tone yet
baseball-bat-blunt in nature, that suggests that if that's where they
wanted to get to, they should maybe have started from somewhere else.

*very* wise. Be kind. But be firm.