weird weird weird... multiple text boxes

  • Thread starter Thread starter alves
  • Start date Start date
A

alves

Hi,

I was asked to update an entire course (310 slides in 10 files). these
files were created more than 5 years ago and who created had obviously
some problems in using powerpoint....

Basically each line is a differente text box... yes this is true!

I now want to convert them all into a single textbox, any solution? I
thought on sending it to word or anything similar and then import it
back again... but to be hoinest not sure how to do it or if there is
any easier solution!

Thanks in advance!
 
I doubt if send to word will help if the text isn't in placeholders. Your
only way AFAIK is to write or get written some custom vba to read the text
boxes and add the text to placeholders then delete the original. This is
certainly possible but there would have to be some sort of pattern so that
the correct text could be identified.

If eg all the text except titles was the same size or font ...?
 
No, No obvious pattern. often the size or font changes (eg. subtopics
or special enphasis on a given word(s))...

This is just wrong!!

PA
 
One trick that might help:

You can create a file in notepad that looks like this:

Slide 1
<tab>Bullet Point 1
<tab><tab>SubBullet 1
<tab>Bullet Point 2
Slide 2

and so on. Where it says <tab> you'd actually insert a tab character (ie, hit
the tab key).

Save as whatever.TXT then in PPT choose File, Open, change Files of Type to All
Files or Text and open the text file.

Each line w/ no tab character becomes a new slide title
Each line w/ one tab becomes a bullet level 1
Each line w/ two tabs becomes bullet level 2
and so on.

Now, if you export ALL of the text in your presentation to a text file, slide
by slide, you might get lucky and have the text boxes in the correct order. A
bit of extra editing and entering tab keys and you're ready to bring the text
file back into PPT.

This will help with the export:

Export Text to a text file, extract text from PowerPoint (Mac or PC)
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00274.htm

Before exporting, you'll want to make a copy of the presentation, delete any
shapes with text that you don't want to put into placeholders, and then
possibly set the order of the text boxes so they export in correct order.

For that you can use the Accessibility tool in the free demo of PPT2HTML
http://www.pptools.com/ppt2html/
 
Hi,

Thanks for you reply. I manage to export all into a txt file (which is
a excellent start!!!)

However, when I try to open the file in PPT it says "Powerpoint can't
open the type of file represented by AllText.txt".

I tried to convert it to word and then import and everything came up
as slide title and each line one slide...

Any suggestion? This is a good start because it is already much easier
to copy paste blocks of text from the txt file than from each textbox
in ppt.

Thanks.

PA
 
Hi,

Thanks for you reply. I manage to export all into a txt file (which is
a excellent start!!!)

However, when I try to open the file in PPT it says "Powerpoint can't
open the type of file represented by AllText.txt".
Click to expand...

Not sure why, but:

How did you try to open the file?

How is the file formatted?
It should look like this:

slide 1
point
point
point
slide 2
point
point
pint
glug
glug
glut
hic
Slide 3
and
so
on
 
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