What happened to <footer> variable in PowerPoint 2007

[GmailUser]

Hi,

I had a training course yesterday on Office 2007 and tried out some of
my powerpoints I had done in PPT 2003. On the footers of the master
slide of my powerpoints for all of my courses, I had something very
practical saved in a slide design template, e.g. in a text field at
the bottom of the master slides:

SWE101: <footer>
Autumn 2007

It seems <footer> has disappeared when I opened these slides in
PowerPoint 2007. What happened? I didn't have much time during my
training to play around with it, and the instructor seemed to be
uninformed about <footer> from powerpoint 2003.

The advantage to this approach is that when I repackage handouts or
slides for a course during a new semester, I only have to update the
design template, which contains the course title and the semester
part, and then apply it to my slides. Ideally, I'd use fields like in
Word, but PowerPoint never supported these as far as I could tell.

I thought going to Office 2007 would give me more features and not
less... I agree that SmartObjects are very cool, but it's going to be
a step backwards if I will lose the <footer> variable. What about
<date/time>? It seems that <#> has stayed, at least on the tests I did
yesterday.

Before I upgrade (contradiction of terms?) to 2007 on my own PC, I'd
like to be sure that this isn't going to break on all of my
PowerPoints for all of my courses...

Thanks in advance!

 

[Austin Myers]

My recommendation, install the trial version and see what happens to older
presentations before jumping in with both feet.



Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCPro, PFCMedia and PFCExpress
www.playsforcertain.com

 

[GmailUser]

My recommendation, install the trial version and see what happens to older
presentations before jumping in with both feet.

No offense, but that's a pretty common-sense recommendation, really.
That can't be how one gets on the MVP team...

I think I found an answer. Maybe an MVP could confirm for the sake of
others. Installing 2007, even a trial version, is not any fun only to
find out <footer> has been nuked.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/HA101077171033.aspx?pid=CH100668191033

My conclusion is that the <footer> variable from 2003, which could be
inserted into text fields on masters, has been abolished in 2007.
Otherwise, M$ would mention it on this help page shown above.

Sounds like the same is true for the <date/time> variable. Too bad,
since these fields could flow dynamically into text fields with other
(static) text.

I may be able to find a layout that tolerates a fixed size of a
dynamically flowing footer field (as opposed to a variable), by
putting other text around it.

 

[Austin Myers]

No offense, but that's a pretty common-sense recommendation, really.
That can't be how one gets on the MVP team...

Umm, yes it is. Well, you gotta throw in a bunch of acronyms no one
understands. Honestly, the reason I suggested this is there are many
saying other "things" don't always translate well either. I have a couple
presentations that 07 completely trashes the embossed fonts on. :-(



Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

Provider of PFCPro, PFCMedia and PFCExpress
www.playsforcertain.com

 

[Echo S]

How did you insert your footer in the PPT 2003 file? There are a couple of
ways you can get text in there, and I think they don't all behave quite the
same.

So, if you typed SWE101: and have <footer> in there to pick up the info from
the View | Header and Footer dialog, it should work fine. It does here,
anyway.

BUT. I was talking to Steve Rindsberg about this same subject earlier this
week, and he was telling me that the < and > are not just < and >
characters -- you can't just type them from the keyboard. Maybe that's the
problem?

Try opening a new, blank presentation in PPT 2003, go to View | Master, and
type SWE101: before the <footer> tag. Then go to View | Header and Footer
and type the info in the Footer box. View | Normal and see if it takes. Save
and close the file and open it in PPT 2007 and see if the appropriate footer
info is still there. It does work here.

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Footers, slide numbers etc. work a bit differently now, and your old ones may
not transfer, but try this:

Open one of your old files in 2007
On the Insert tab, Text group click Header & Footer
Put a check next to Footer and type in the text you want.
Click Apply to All.

You can use the Slide Master view to format the footers for all of your slides.

In other words, you can still get there, I think; you just take a few different
turns along the way.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

My conclusion is that the <footer> variable from 2003, which could be
inserted into text fields on masters, has been abolished in 2007.
Otherwise, M$ would mention it on this help page shown above.

Fact of the matter is that there never was a <footer> variable or date/time or any
other variable in the same sense that there are field codes in Word, for example.

There were (and in PPT 2007 still are) special bits of data that PPT understands as
places to substitute date and slide number, but you can't type them in yourself.
However, if you create a text box and on the Insert tab/Text group choose Date/Time
or Slide Number, PPT will insert the magic and you'll get the appropriate info.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any equivalent way of getting a footer
wherever you like, but see my other post for a way around that.

As to installing the trial version, I wouldn't do that just yet. Since you have
another way of trying your files in 2007, use that rather than risk messing up an
existing previous-version Office install.

 

[GmailUser]

How did you insert your footer in the PPT 2003 file? There are a couple of
ways you can get text in there, and I think they don't all behave quite the
same.

In 2003, I go to the slide master. By default, it has 3 text fields
that have <date/time>, <footer> and <#>. It's true that these are not
"typed in" but exist by default.

So, if I want to get:

SWE101: <footer>
Autumn 2007

I just click the cursor on the text field with the <footer> before it,
then type text in front of it (SWE101: ) and hit carriage return after
the <footer> part and type the next line. This info was saved in
a .dot file, which I can just update (with the info for a new semester
or course name), and apply to an existing PPT file. For example, if
the subject of my powerpoint was "Intro to OO programming", I only had
to update the .dot with the course name and semester info, and the
"Intro to OO programming" was already in the Footer part (<footer>
variable, if you will) of the dialog box that was proper to the PPT to
which I apply it.

I might have 15 modules, "Intro", "How to debug", "Understanding UML",
etc. for different courses. These modules are reused, and it was nice

So, if you typed SWE101: and have <footer> in there to pick up the info from
the View | Header and Footer dialog, it should work fine. It does here,
anyway.

Yes, that is how it works. But in 2007, it seems to "replace" the
contents of the <footer> variable, with the whole text field from my
2003 master slide. I guess it's confusing, since the master still

BUT. I was talking to Steve Rindsberg about this same subject earlier this
week, and he was telling me that the < and > are not just < and >
characters -- you can't just type them from the keyboard. Maybe that's the
problem?

Try opening a new, blank presentation in PPT 2003, go to View | Master, and
type SWE101: before the <footer> tag. Then go to View | Header and Footer
and type the info in the Footer box. View | Normal and see if it takes. Save
and close the file and open it in PPT 2007 and see if the appropriate footer
info is still there. It does work here.

I unfortunately can't run PPT2007 today to try this out. But, when you
say "appropriate footer info is still there", do you mean some
<footer>-type placeholder is there?

I'm not complaining about the *contents* of the footer placeholder
disappearing, but rather that I can't wrap text *around* the footer.
Having a <footer> allowed me to wrap customized text around the fixed
text (true contents) of my powerpoints. In other words, in 2007 I seem
to lose the variable-like nature of the placeholder.

One of the things that I found while surfing yesterday was that the
slide masters work differently in PPT2007. There is now a single slide
master and the rest are thumbnails. It seems like when 2007 takes a
2003 file, only one of the master slides is the "true" (topmost)
master. Again, without being able to play in 2007, I am not sure about
this assumption. But I seem to recall when I opened my 2003 file in
2007, I was looking at a thumbnail of the master slide which didn't
have the <footer> text placeholder. Perhaps the <footer>-like
placeholder still exists, but I was just not working with it on the
true slide master.

I found an example of how footers appear in 2007. Can anyone tell me
if in the following exercise, it's possible to type text into and
around the 'footer' word (assuming it's on the master slide as it's
shown in the image)?

http://office.microsoft.com/trainin...ID=RP102296711033&CTT=6&Origin=RC102296661033

The image is at http://office.microsoft.com/global/images/default.aspx?AssetID=ZA102249111033
in case the link above doesn't work.

Sorry if these things are vague - I guess it's obscure what I'm trying
to do, and not having 2007 to play with in front of me is very
frustrating. I have a friend who has PPT 2007 and I will try it on her
PC.

Thanks for all the ideas, nonetheless. Regards,

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP]http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007?http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kithttp://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyanceshttp://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html

Hi,

I had a training course yesterday on Office 2007 and tried out some of
my powerpoints I had done in PPT 2003. On the footers of the master
slide of my powerpoints for all of my courses, I had something very
practical saved in a slide design template, e.g. in a text field at
the bottom of the master slides:

SWE101: <footer>
Autumn 2007

It seems <footer> has disappeared when I opened these slides in
PowerPoint 2007. What happened? I didn't have much time during my
training to play around with it, and the instructor seemed to be
uninformed about <footer> from powerpoint 2003.

The advantage to this approach is that when I repackage handouts or
slides for a course during a new semester, I only have to update the
design template, which contains the course title and the semester
part, and then apply it to my slides. Ideally, I'd use fields like in
Word, but PowerPoint never supported these as far as I could tell.

I thought going to Office 2007 would give me more features and not
less... I agree that SmartObjects are very cool, but it's going to be
a step backwards if I will lose the <footer> variable. What about
<date/time>? It seems that <#> has stayed, at least on the tests I did
yesterday.

Before I upgrade (contradiction of terms?) to 2007 on my own PC, I'd
like to be sure that this isn't going to break on all of my
PowerPoints for all of my courses...

Thanks in advance!

 

[Echo S]

I still don't know how you're populating the <footer> text, though. Here, I
add that via View | Header and Footer. I did what you did. I went to the
slide master, clicked before the <footer>, and typed SWE101:. Then I clicked
after the <footer>, hit Enter, and typed Autumn 2007. Then I go to View |
Header and Footer and type in the text that I want to show up in the
<footer> part. But you mentioned applying templates, and I'm not sure how
that figures into things.

Anyway, If I open that 2003 file in 2007, then the text I added via View |
Header and Footer is there when I look at Insert | Header and Footer.
(Header and Footer is on the Insert tab of the ribbon in PPT 2007, not on
the View tab.) But I also see the text I entered in the footer placeholder
before and after the <footer> text. (For example, in 2007 I see SWE101:
jadskfj jkjd Autumn 2007 -- jadskfj jkjd is the nonsense text I put in via
View | Header and Footer in PPT 2003. In PPT 2003, I just see the nonsense
text jadskfj jkjd in the Header and Footer dialog box.)

What I can't do, which is something I hadn't realized before your latest
reply, is force a line break between the <footer> text and text I entered
after it. There should be a line break there because I pressed Enter. I
suspect that's a bug.

The footer behavior is different in 2007 than in 2003 because in 2003 and
prior, it confused a lot of users. There were so many ways to get text into
the footer area (type it on the master, add it via Header and Footer
dialog), and users often couldn't figure out how to get rid of text that
someone else had entered. So now, if you type info in the footer
placeholder, it shows up in the Insert | Header and Footer dialog as well.

But yeah, I'm not seeing a way to create the <footer> thing in 2007. I think
the Header/Footer dialog and Footer placeholder and how they work together
need to have some more thought put into them.

And yes, the slide masters are very different in 2007. One master with many
layouts that inherit their settings from the master. (You can still add
multiple masters so you can have different designs if you want.)

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html

How did you insert your footer in the PPT 2003 file? There are a couple
of
ways you can get text in there, and I think they don't all behave quite
the
same.

In 2003, I go to the slide master. By default, it has 3 text fields
that have <date/time>, <footer> and <#>. It's true that these are not
"typed in" but exist by default.

So, if I want to get:

SWE101: <footer>
Autumn 2007

I just click the cursor on the text field with the <footer> before it,
then type text in front of it (SWE101: ) and hit carriage return after
the <footer> part and type the next line. This info was saved in
a .dot file, which I can just update (with the info for a new semester
or course name), and apply to an existing PPT file. For example, if
the subject of my powerpoint was "Intro to OO programming", I only had
to update the .dot with the course name and semester info, and the
"Intro to OO programming" was already in the Footer part (<footer>
variable, if you will) of the dialog box that was proper to the PPT to
which I apply it.

I might have 15 modules, "Intro", "How to debug", "Understanding UML",
etc. for different courses. These modules are reused, and it was nice

So, if you typed SWE101: and have <footer> in there to pick up the info
from
the View | Header and Footer dialog, it should work fine. It does here,
anyway.

Yes, that is how it works. But in 2007, it seems to "replace" the
contents of the <footer> variable, with the whole text field from my
2003 master slide. I guess it's confusing, since the master still

BUT. I was talking to Steve Rindsberg about this same subject earlier
this
week, and he was telling me that the < and > are not just < and >
characters -- you can't just type them from the keyboard. Maybe that's
the
problem?

Try opening a new, blank presentation in PPT 2003, go to View | Master,
and
type SWE101: before the <footer> tag. Then go to View | Header and Footer
and type the info in the Footer box. View | Normal and see if it takes.
Save
and close the file and open it in PPT 2007 and see if the appropriate
footer
info is still there. It does work here.

I unfortunately can't run PPT2007 today to try this out. But, when you
say "appropriate footer info is still there", do you mean some
<footer>-type placeholder is there?

I'm not complaining about the *contents* of the footer placeholder
disappearing, but rather that I can't wrap text *around* the footer.
Having a <footer> allowed me to wrap customized text around the fixed
text (true contents) of my powerpoints. In other words, in 2007 I seem
to lose the variable-like nature of the placeholder.

One of the things that I found while surfing yesterday was that the
slide masters work differently in PPT2007. There is now a single slide
master and the rest are thumbnails. It seems like when 2007 takes a
2003 file, only one of the master slides is the "true" (topmost)
master. Again, without being able to play in 2007, I am not sure about
this assumption. But I seem to recall when I opened my 2003 file in
2007, I was looking at a thumbnail of the master slide which didn't
have the <footer> text placeholder. Perhaps the <footer>-like
placeholder still exists, but I was just not working with it on the
true slide master.

I found an example of how footers appear in 2007. Can anyone tell me
if in the following exercise, it's possible to type text into and
around the 'footer' word (assuming it's on the master slide as it's
shown in the image)?

http://office.microsoft.com/trainin...ID=RP102296711033&CTT=6&Origin=RC102296661033

The image is at
http://office.microsoft.com/global/images/default.aspx?AssetID=ZA102249111033
in case the link above doesn't work.

Sorry if these things are vague - I guess it's obscure what I'm trying
to do, and not having 2007 to play with in front of me is very
frustrating. I have a friend who has PPT 2007 and I will try it on her
PC.

Thanks for all the ideas, nonetheless. Regards,

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP]http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007?http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kithttp://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint
Annoyanceshttp://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html

Hi,

I had a training course yesterday on Office 2007 and tried out some of
my powerpoints I had done in PPT 2003. On the footers of the master
slide of my powerpoints for all of my courses, I had something very
practical saved in a slide design template, e.g. in a text field at
the bottom of the master slides:

SWE101: <footer>
Autumn 2007

It seems <footer> has disappeared when I opened these slides in
PowerPoint 2007. What happened? I didn't have much time during my
training to play around with it, and the instructor seemed to be
uninformed about <footer> from powerpoint 2003.

The advantage to this approach is that when I repackage handouts or
slides for a course during a new semester, I only have to update the
design template, which contains the course title and the semester
part, and then apply it to my slides. Ideally, I'd use fields like in
Word, but PowerPoint never supported these as far as I could tell.

I thought going to Office 2007 would give me more features and not
less... I agree that SmartObjects are very cool, but it's going to be
a step backwards if I will lose the <footer> variable. What about
<date/time>? It seems that <#> has stayed, at least on the tests I did
yesterday.

Before I upgrade (contradiction of terms?) to 2007 on my own PC, I'd
like to be sure that this isn't going to break on all of my
PowerPoints for all of my courses...

Thanks in advance!

 

[GmailUser]

But yeah, I'm not seeing a way to create the <footer> thing in 2007.

Thanks. I finally played last night with PPT2007 on my friend's laptop
for around 20 mins with a new file. I looked at the master slide and
its thumbnails, etc.

Conclusion: <footer> as a placeholder that can be inside a text box
has been eliminated (answering the question which is the subject of
the posting). The footer still exists, but it's an entire text box.

<#> still exists, and you can use it as you could in 2003. That is,
you can type stuff like "Slide:" before the "<#>" placeholder, or even
enter carriage returns around it, etc.

I have not played enough with the date/time, but I got the impression
it's also an entire text box like footer.

Too bad Office 2007 is more ergonomically consistent with respect to
menus, etc. but is now inconsistent now with <#> and footer, date/
time... It's definitely a step backwards.