Formatting Disappears

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andrea
  • Start date Start date
A

Andrea

I'm using Office 2003 with Windows XP, SP2. Today whenever I change the
formatting, save the PPT, and then open it up again, the formatting is gone.
I've been trying to insert bullets or change the font color, and I've tried
this 3 times now with the same problem, which I never had before. I emptied
the cache, rebooted, but had the same problem. Any suggestions?
 
Andrea said:
I'm using Office 2003 with Windows XP, SP2. Today whenever I change
the formatting, save the PPT, and then open it up again, the
formatting is gone. I've been trying to insert bullets or change the
font color, and I've tried this 3 times now with the same problem,
which I never had before. I emptied the cache, rebooted, but had the
same problem. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

I tried opening up a new PPT document, and I was able to format it, save it,
and retain the formatting. My other document must have gotten corrupted. How
can I fix this without having to retype all of my slides again?
 
Hi Andrea

Create a new ppt then use insert -> slides from file. Should work for you
:-)

Lucy
 
Hi,

I did that, and it worked for some of the slides and then there were some
that just would not maintain their formatting, especially the insertion of
bullets. This happened after I'd inserted a slide with no slide design (a
white background onto which I inserted a table). The slides after that were
messed up, although they did maintain the original slide design. (I checked
and the master was fine.) I tried deleting the slide that seemed to mess
everything up, but it didn't help. I ended up asking someone to work on it
from a copy of the file she already had--which had the same problems as my
copy--and she was able to reformat it and then send it back to me. I've
never had that happen before and I'm not sure why someone else could get it
to work in the same file. She did it from the original file too, not the new
one I'd created.

Andrea
 
I think this might be the issue:

Text formatting is lost when you save, close, and then reopen your
presentation in PowerPoint 2002 or PowerPoint 2003

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827759/en-us

What I do when I run into this is copy the placeholder on the problem slide,
paste it, then delete the original placeholder. I use the RnR hammer tool
(really it's called the "place exactly" tool, I think) on the free Starter
Set add-in http://www.pptools.com/starterset/index.html to make sure it's
positioned exactly where the placeholder was. Or you can, before you delete
the placeholder, double-click the placeholder and choose the Position tab.
Note the coordinates there and use those to position the copy.

Anyway, the copy is divorced from the master, so it should maintain its
formatting.
 
I finally tried this, and it works! Thanks. I do have a few questions
though. When you say to delete and then paste the placeholder, do you mean
to create a new slide and paste it there? Otherwise, it didn't work to paste
it back on the same slide. Also, I found that when pasting to a new slide, I
first had to delete theplaceholder that was already there. Is that right?
 
I cut the existing placeholder (ctrl+X) and paste it (Ctrl+V) onto the same
slide. It works for me. You have to make sure you're not pasting back into a
blank placeholder, though. Make sure to deselect it (if it's still there)
before pasting.
 
OK, this does work for me now, but I end up with an extra (blank)
placeholder on the slide if I've cut and pasted. If I've copied and pasted,
I end up with both placeholders and it's really difficult to tell which is
the new one (so it's better to cut and paste). I can just delete the empty
placeholder, but I'm wondering if there's a way to avoid that from
happening. I've tried deselecting the blank one before pasting, but it
doesn't make any difference. I don't even understand why it's there because
I just deleted it, but apparently PPT puts a new blank one there.
 
The blank placeholder is there because of the slide layout. You can change
the slide layout to a Title Only or a Blank Slide by going to Format | Slide
Layout and choosing the new appropriate layout. Of course, if it's the title
placeholders that are giving you trouble, you'll want to use the Blank slide
layout.

If you want, you can change the layout, then do your cut/paste. Just
changing the layout won't necessarily fix the problem, though, so I wouldn't
chance that. [It doesn't always happen, but I seem to recall I've seen it
act up in the same manner if I just change the layout. Or maybe I'm just
anal. :-) ] So make sure to cut/paste at some point in that workflow.
 
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