PPT 2007: How can I avoid selecting the page number?

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Guest

When I'm editing a slide in normal view, not the master slide view, I don't
expect to be able to select objects in the footer, like the page number.
This is how all earlier versions of PowerPoint worked. But in PowerPoint
2007, every time I click and drag to select a bunch of objects, I can easily
include the page number or other information in the footer even though I
don't intend to select that.

I have looked through the options, and I can't find a way to turn off this
very annoying behavior. If I hit Ctrl-A to select all, for example, I only
want to select the objects on my current slide, not those on the master
slide! How can I get PowerPoint 2007 to do what I want?

Thanks,

-- Michael
 
One way I know of is to click Home tab, look for editing section, then click
Select > Selection and Visibility. Uncheck Footer and Slide Number
Placeholder. You will have to do this manually to each slides. Not sure of a
better solution, see if others have any.
--
Shawn Toh (tohlz)
Microsoft MVP PowerPoint

Site Updated: April 30, 2007
New PowerPoint Games - Pixels Neon
http://pptheaven.mvps.org
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This is a change from how previous versions of PPT worked, and I suspect it
was driven by user feedback. People often want to bring things from the
master so they're on top of elements on the slide -- like place the page
number from the master on top of a full-slide picture, for example, and
there has never been an easy way to do that.

I wish there were a way to specify that the master elements *not* be
editable, but I can't seem to find one. I thought maybe using the new
Selection and Visibility pane (Home | Editing | Select | Selection Pane ) to
turn off the visibility on the number placeholders on the slide master and
layouts would work, but it doesn't seem to.

You can, though, turn these off on the individual slides using the S&V pane,
which means they aren't selected when you Ctrl+A, drag a marquee, or
otherwise select multiple objects.

Alternatively, turn them off in Insert | Header and Footer and then add them
back when you're finished editing. I know none of these is an ideal
solution, but I can't think of anything better than those options right at
the moment.
 
This is a change from how previous versions of PPT worked, and I suspect it
was driven by user feedback. People often want to bring things from the
master so they're on top of elements on the slide -- like place the page
number from the master on top of a full-slide picture, for example, and
there has never been an easy way to do that.
Click to expand...

I've used PowerPoint extensively for more than a decade and have not ever
needed to do that, but I can understand that this might be useful in some
situations. But changing the selection model for EVERY slide just to allow
some weird corner cases seems like a very bad UI design decision!
You can, though, turn these off on the individual slides using the S&V pane,
which means they aren't selected when you Ctrl+A, drag a marquee, or
otherwise select multiple objects.
Click to expand...

Sure, you can hide the page numbers, etc., but then they don't show up
during a slideshow either. I want to see them all the time, both during
editing, and during the slideshow, but I don't want to accidentally edit
them. They are part of the master for a reason! They should not be editable
as part of the current slide.
Alternatively, turn them off in Insert | Header and Footer and then add them
back when you're finished editing. I know none of these is an ideal
solution, but I can't think of anything better than those options right at
the moment.
Click to expand...

This is about the only viable workaround I have heard so far, but even this
is very annoying. Thanks very much for doing your best to come up with a
suggestion, but I think the best answer is to add this to Microsoft's bug
list for Service Pack 1 for Office 2007! Is there some way I can lobby to
get that to happen?

I've never felt the need to complain about anything before, but this issue
is really annoying. Right now, I'm trying to edit a presentation, and I want
to copy an illustration from one slide to another. There's no room on the
current slide to put the copied illustration down in an empty spot, so
normally, I'd just drop it on top of the footer while I move things around to
make room for the figure. But now with PPT 2007, I'm going to end up
selecting the footer items when I grab the objects that I copied from the
other slide. Aaargh! Very annoying.

Thanks again for your help,

-- Michael
 
This is about the only viable workaround I have heard so far, but even
this
is very annoying. Thanks very much for doing your best to come up with a
suggestion, but I think the best answer is to add this to Microsoft's bug
list for Service Pack 1 for Office 2007! Is there some way I can lobby to
get that to happen?
Click to expand...

Using the web interface, post the issue as a suggestion instead of as a
question. The suggestions with the most votes are supposed to bubble to the
top somehow. (But I'll also try to make sure a human sees it.) Who knows --
maybe it will get changed in a SP or in the next version or something.
 
Thanks very much for your help! I have posted this issue as a suggestion, so
hopefully others will vote for it, and better yet, I hope MS will notice and
fix this in SP1!

-- Michael
 
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