Three PowerPoint 7 questions

[Sox]

My office has migrated to Office 7. They also disabled help and on-line help
so that option is not available when I'm actually using PowerPoint 7 (I have
Office 3 at home)

1. For some reason the "ribbon" with the commands refuses to stick. If I
click one of the Menu items ("Home", for example), the ribbon will appear
long enough to select one (and only one) command but immediately dissapears
again. Any way to make it quit doing that -- makes it a pain in the neck to
do common reptitive tasks like "increase font" or "decrease font" wihtout a
lot of extra clicks just to make the ribbon appear.

2. How do you select multiple objects in PowerPoint 7 ? I'm used to clicking
and dragging to "lasso" more than one object, but PowerPoint 7 doesn't seem
to recognize that action.

3. How do you set the size of an object? In PowerPoint 3, for example, I can
right-click a rectangle, "Format Autoshape", select the "size" tab, and set
it to, for example, a height of exactly 0.23". That question's related to
the second one because what I want to do is select three colored rectangles,
align them, then set them all to the same height. That's an automatic set of
mouse clicks in PowerPoint 3, and apparently some kind of state secret in
"7".

Thanks

 

[Chirag]

1. Right-click on the Ribbon and select "Minimize the Ribbon" to remove the
check against it. This will bring the Ribbon back to normal in your
PowerPoint 2007.

2. You can still to the same in PowerPoint 2007 - hold mouse button on an
empty region on the slide and drag it around - all objects completely within
the rectangle area get selected.
2.1 You can select multiple shapes from the Selection Pane too. Select
"Home" tab, "Select" menu in the "Editing" group and click "Selection Pane"
menu item.
2.2 Another way is to select one shape, hold shift key and select other
shapes.

3. In PowerPoint 2007, select a shape, select the "Format" tab under
"Drawing Tools", you can set the Height and Width of the shape through the
items available in the Size group. Those Size tools are smart and they
convert the sizes appropriately. So, if your system is configured for
Metric, you can still enter 0.23" and they will convert it to centimetres
automatically.

- Chirag

PowerShow - View multiple PowerPoint slide shows simultaneously
http://officeone.mvps.org/powershow/powershow.html

 

[Lucy Thomson]

Hi Sox

My office has migrated to Office 7. They also disabled help and on-line
help so that option is not available when I'm actually using PowerPoint 7
(I have Office 3 at home)

Just on a side note, we tend to call them 07 and 03 as 2007 is actually
Office 12 and 2003 is Office 11... just want to avoid any confusion

1. For some reason the "ribbon" with the commands refuses to stick. If I
click one of the Menu items ("Home", for example), the ribbon will appear
long enough to select one (and only one) command but immediately
dissapears again. Any way to make it quit doing that -- makes it a pain in
the neck to do common reptitive tasks like "increase font" or "decrease
font" wihtout a lot of extra clicks just to make the ribbon appear.

Double click one of the tabs and the ribbon will be there permanently.

2. How do you select multiple objects in PowerPoint 7 ? I'm used to
clicking and dragging to "lasso" more than one object, but PowerPoint 7
doesn't seem to recognize that action.

I can still lassoo - double check Home Tab -> Editing area (on the far
right) -> Select drop down -> Select Objects is highlighted. Alternatively,
holding shift while you click objects allows you to select multiple ones.
Oh, and there is a new feature the Selection Pane that you can find on that
Select drop down.

3. How do you set the size of an object? In PowerPoint 3, for example, I
can right-click a rectangle, "Format Autoshape", select the "size" tab,
and set it to, for example, a height of exactly 0.23". That question's
related to the second one because what I want to do is select three
colored rectangles, align them, then set them all to the same height.
That's an automatic set of mouse clicks in PowerPoint 3, and apparently
some kind of state secret in "7".

Double click an object and it will go to the Drawing Tools Format tab (you
must have an object selected for this tab to appear) and the size options
are on the far right. If you have trouble resizing right click the object ->
Format Object -> Text Box -> ensure 'Resize shape to fit text' is *not*
selected.

Thanks

The move to 2007 can be frustrating but I found adding commands such as the
alignment ones to the Quick Access Toolbar really helped, as did the 'where
have all the commands gone' workbook. For more info see here:
PowerPoint 2007 equivalents of older version commands (and Commando)
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00845.htm

Lucy