Text Changes By Itself

[Gregory Wright]

Here is the situation I am having. We're using Powerpoint 2003 SP2.

1) We have a slide master, however, one slide keeps changing the font size.
I will make it Arial Narrow 20, and it will revert part of the text box to
Arial Narrow 18, the other part stays at 20, after saving and closing.

2) Whenever we insert a new text box, the font defaults to subscript. But
the master has nothing in it about subscript.

Any ideas?

 

[mr tom]

Could it be that your presentation has becoem corrupt?

If you fancy doing some exploring, ensure the VBA toolbar is displayed -
View, Toolbars, VBA, then click the rightmost icon (looks like an 8 on it's
side). This will open the MS script editor.

This is the nuts and bolts of how your presentation is encoded.

I don't know much about it, but if you want to get under the bonnet, and if
nobody else can help, then you might want to take a peek.

 

[Echo S]

1) is a bug. I can't find the KB article for PPT 2003, but here's the one
for 2000: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/243657/en-us (why this is fixed
with a service pack in 2000 but still occurs in 2003 is beyond me. Sheesh.)

Oh, here's the 2003 version: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827759/en-us

Basically, what's happening is the text is reverting to the settings
specified on the slide master, and any formatting overrides you've made are
being lost when you save the file.

The workaround to apply the blank slide layout should work. Or you can try
creating a new master exactly for that slide. The article used to say you
could try re-ordering the slide masters, but I think that introduces
potential for more problems than it solves.

You can also copy the textbox (placeholder) and paste it on the slide and
delete the original placeholder.

2) Add a textbox to a slide, enter text and format it the way you want.
Right-click and "set autoshapes default." This may make your regular
autoshapes -- rectangles, ovals, etc. -- show up blank, though. So after you
set the textbox, draw an oval, format it with an appropriate fill and line
color, then right-click and choose "set autoshapes default" again.