Text alignment problems in shapes and text boxes

[Paul_Levitt]

Version: 2004
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

All text entered into a text box or Smart Shape in PowerPoint 2004 is offset to the right. There is an "exclusion zone" taking up most of the left portion of the object.

No text can be typed in this area, regardless of the justification or anchor point selected. Changes to word wrap or "resize to fit text" options have no effect. Manually resizing the box either forces the text to wrap within the right half of the box, or forces it outside the right edge, depending on which word wrap mode is selected.

It seems that Powerpoint does not correctly calculate the size of the text box or Smart Shape when determining text position. "Centered" text is centered in the right side of the shape. "Left aligned" text will not cross the center of the shape, and is placed on the left side of the right half of the box. "Right aligned" text is correctly placed all the way to the right side of the shape.

This long standing bug renders Smart Shapes and text boxes useless for annotation or labeling.

 

[CyberTaz]

I'm not seeing this here at all, Paul. If you dbl-click the edge of the shape
to get to Format AutoShape> Text Box - Internal Margin & set the Left: margin
value to -0- does that not jam the text against the left edge of the shape
once you set the alignment to Left?

Do you have the Ruler turned on? Look there once you click in the text to it
to see if there is any Indentation applied or Tabs set.

HTH |:>)
Bob Jones
MVP Office:Mac

 

[Paul_Levitt]

Thanks for the quick response.

I've already tried setting all the margins to zero, and the ruler shows no tabs or indents. I also tried a variety of permutations of the other format text box options, with no improvement.

I've been using PowerPoint since before it was a Microsoft product (I still have the PowerPoint 1.0 hard-cover manual stored away somewhere) and it's very frustrating that it seems impossible to resolve this bug.

 

[CyberTaz]

OK, let's go back to the basics... I honestly didn't see how you could have
found the other settings & missed the margin options in the first place

Is your version of Office fully updated - 11.5.3 is where it needs to be in
order to function properly in Leopard, although About PowerPoint will show
11.5.1 as the version number. The best place to check is in:

Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Updater Logs

I'm not sure what to suggest otherwise... Rectangular shapes should not
present any such issue & I don't remember having seen any similar reports in
the time Office 2004 has been on the market. Have you tried running PPt in a
new/different User Account to see if the problem occurs there?

Irregular shapes will give that impression because "under the hood" the
shape has an embedded text box whose dimensions are constrained to fitting
completely within the shape - think of a circle which has a box drawn within
it whose corners can't extend beyond the perimeter of the circle. The
enclosed text may be up against the "edge" of the box but there will still
be a gap between it & the edge of the circle.

If the problem is with regular Content Placeholders, Text Boxes &
rectangular shapes please provide as much additional information as you
can... Is this in one specific file or all files? If not in new files what
is the vintage of the files where it is happening? Are these files you
created or did they come form another source - if another source, what? Is
there anything else you can identify?

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Paul_Levitt]

Yet more weirdness, and a possible fix-

I've also noticed that the text entered into the shapes displays with a shadow, but the formatting box doesn't indicate that shadowing is applied (the "shadow" button is off). I'm familiar with the "rectangular text box in an irregular shape" issue, and that's not what I'm seeing.

This presentation is based on a template that I've been using for years - I just do a "save as" to generate a new version. The problem with text boxes isn't usually an issue because I avoid using PowerPoint for drawing and labels - I just paste them in from other applications. This report has some new graphic elements, and I wanted to use the PowerPoint shapes to maximize compatibility with the Windows users I'm working with.

The original presentation was probably created in Powerpoint v.X, though it may date back to Office 2001.

My Office installation is completely up to date - the log confirms that all patches have been applied (although I don't see any explicit mention of a PowerPoint update in 11.5.1, 11.5.2 or 115.3).

Now here's the weird semi-solution: if I open the presentation in PowerPoint v.X, the text boxes behave properly (although all the text is STRONGLY shadowed). If I then save the file under a new file name and open it in PowerPoint 2004, the text boxes in shapes align correctly, but the shadow is still present.

 

[CyberTaz]

If this occurs only in files generated from the template I'm tempted to
believe the template is corrupt.

Does the same thing happen in a regular new blank presentation? That might
be caused by a bad preferences or plist file. You might try moving or
renaming the following files while PPt isn't running then launch PPt & see
if things change:

User/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.Powerpoint.plist

User/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/com.microsoft.Powerpoint.prefs.plist


Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Paul_Levitt]

The problem does not appear when I open a new, blank presentation. Renaming the plist files does not resolve the issue.

To summarize:

The problem ONLY appears in PowerPoint 2004.

If the same file is opened in PowerPoint v.X, text boxes behave properly.

If the file is opened, modified and saved in PowerPoint v.X, existing text boxes behave correctly when the file is opened in PowerPoint 2004. They continue to behave properly when edited or resized.

Unfortunately, new text boxes or shapes created after the "converted" file is opened in PP 2004 still exhibit the problem behavior.

I wish I could just use Keynote, but I have to exchange files with my NASA counterparts, who are using Office.

 

[CyberTaz]

Have you tried running PPt in a new User Account? What happens if you do?

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[MG Support]

I can confirm this weirdness. We have a template slightly customized to
adjust the tab indents, bullet size/color from the PPT default in v2004.
Still using the Default Ariel font. Our template was created in v2004 about 6
months ago. It works fine on machines with PPT v11.5.1 AND v2008 12.1.7 or
less (not tried every version, assume 12.1.6 and 7 at least).

Opening a file from this template using v2008. Editing, including making
changes to indents, shows that it works fine. Saving those changes and
reopening in v11.5.1 all looks fine. But can not make edits as weirdness
returns. Slightly different weirdness but similar to the weirdness as if I'd
opened the file and attempted to indent the text in v11.5.1.

It only occurs on indents level 3 or greater. The first and second indents
work fine.

The weirdness results in the test pinned well off the screen. So far you can
not even see the ruler and it is difficult to find. One character per line.
The only edits that seem to make any difference are Left/Center/Right justify
which move this column of text slightly left, center or right. No adjustments
to tab stops fix the problem, in general. The odds times you can finagle them
to work demonstrate there is a FLAW, BUG, WHATEVER in v11.5.1's text
handling.

Change fonts, font sizes, deleting MS Office font caches. Etc.... nothing
helps.

However, on a new file, as Paul found as well, all is fine.

Best I can tell is that PPT is not properly honoring the slide master due to
some change made between the v11.5 and v11.5.1 release. If I Run the v11.5
PPT just drag-coping it onto the v11.5.1 machine - 11.5 will no longer work
correctly in exactly the ways described by me and, where our testing
overlaps, bu Paul. This leads me to believe it is a library the app relies on
that was patched between the 11.5 and 11.5.1 builds, not the v11.5.1 PPT app
itself.

 

[MG support]

Oh, yes, I forgot. If you edit the Slide master and try indenting the text in
it, that screen displays the indentations normally.

If you edit an existing slide in the template, it will not indent properly.
If you create a new slide and apply a format, ex. bulleted list with
picture, THAT NEW SLIDE will work fine.
If you copy an existing slide in the template, it will not indent poprerly.
If you insert slides from the template into a new file, they will not indent
properly.

Again, this template works fine in versions of PPT that were not patched
recently (not sure which patch broke it) and works fine in Mac Office v2008
12.1.7 (and .6 I think).

 

[MG support]

Ok, only solution I've found is to select all the text in the problem text
box and copy. Delete the text box. Re-apply the "Bulleted List" template to
the slide. Then paste the text back into the new text box.

Now it works. And, on the left side 'slide sorter' view column the bulleted
text now shows up under the representation of the slide it is on. Previously,
all I saw was the slide icon and the slide title. No text showed.

Bummer part is that ALL the old presentations based on the pervious template
will not be editable without some hassle in PowerPoint 11.5.1 unless MS gets
to fixing this. We still rely on this version as v12 is slow on PPC machines
and has printing issues on every machine though initial tests look like it is
working as of the 12.1.7 patch. Could be a prior one though as we're not
chomping at the bit to move to v12 as the standard suite so don't test each
update for this fix... Usually the MS Office suite is best at vX.3.x or so,
so we've been biding our time while patches flow to help keep the disruptions
of patching software to a minimum (re: look at the problems I have now with
v11... /=).

Such is life when using software, esp. MS Office.