Hi Susan,
You can only use the Picture tools for images that are "owned" by
PowerPoint (e.g. images that were inserted using the Insert -> Picture
commands or the content layouts placeholders Insert Picture button).
There are many ways of inserting pictures into PowerPoint and some of them
restrict PowerPoint's (and Word and Excel) capability to manipulate them
because they are "owned" by the application that they came from (Copy ->
Paste) or by the default owner application for that particular image format
(Drag->Drop from Windows explorer).
If you have some images that are not "owned" by PowerPoint you can force
them by:
1) Select image
2) Edit -> Cut
3) Paste Special -> Picture (PNG) (or Picture (GIF); Picture (JPEG); Device
Independent Bitmap; Bitmap)
Now the Picture toolbar should pop up when these images are select.
IMPORTANT: By breaking the images association with it's "owner" application
you will lose the ability to double-click on the image and edit the image
in whatever application was it's owner.
If you always use the Insert -> Picture commands (or content layouts
placeholders Insert Picture button) to insert your images into PowerPoint
you will be able to avoid the situation where the Picture tools are not
available for some of your images.
Of course, if you (or anyone else reading this message) have any
suggestions for the the picture tools in future versions of Office, don't
forget to send your feedback to Microsoft at:
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp
As with all product suggestions, it's important that you not just state
your wish but also why it is important to you that your product suggestion
be implemented by Microsoft. Microsoft receives thousands of product
suggestions every day and we read each one but, in any given product
development cycle, there are only sufficient resources to address the ones
that are most important to our customers so take the extra time to state
your case as clearly and completely as possible.
IMPORTANT: Each submission should be a single suggestion (not a list of
suggestions).
John Langhans
Supportability Program Manager
Microsoft Office PowerPoint for Windows
Microsoft Office Picture Manager for Windows
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