Sunday, September 4, 2011

Applying Default PowerPoint 2010 Notes Master Layout To All Slides

 I mentioned some weeks back a problem with PowerPoint 2010 not converting OpenOffice Impress files correctly; the notes text does not wrap correctly.  I am still having this problem.  The the only solution that I have found to this problem involves creating a new slide, then copying the title and contents of the slide that is problematic into the new slide, then copying the contents of the notes section into the new slide. This involves a lot of copy and paste operations and moving the mouse; I suspect that this may have played some part in the carpal tunnel syndrome I'm now suffering.

The problem appears to be that the text box in which the notes text appears is not dimensioned to fit onto an 8.5 x 11 page. There is a notion in PowerPoint 2010 of a master note layout. There should be some way to apply the master note layout to all existing slides, thus overriding the erroneous text box dimensions. Unfortunately, I am not having much luck in finding the process for applying the master note layout to all existing slides. More sophisticated actions, such as applying a theme to all slides, seems to be easy to find instructions for doing. If you could give me any clues on how to apply the master node layout to all slides in a presentation, it would be greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: On the off chance that someone else runs into this same problem from importing from OpenOffice Impress into PowerPoint 2010, the magic solution is:

1. View -> Notes Page
2. Right mouse click in the text of the notes--not in the blank area outside the text:
3. Format Shape -> Text Box -> Vertical Alignment Top  and check Wrap Text in Shape.

You still have to do this slide by slide, but it is much faster than copying and pasting into new slides!

UPDATE 2: I then created a keyboard macro using AutoHotKey (which I have used before), to turn the entire set of operations into a single keystroke. #space::Send {RButton}#o{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Down}{Tab}T{Up}{Up}{Up}{Tab}{Tab}{Tab}{Tab}{Tab}{Tab}{Tab}{Space}{Tab}{Tab}{Enter} .  Now I only have to hit the window button and once I positioned in the notes text and it does all the reformatting of that slide. This is dramatically faster.

4 comments:

  1. Semi-unrelated:

    Back in the 1990's I developed carpal tunnel and quickly realized that using a mouse was a major part of the problem.

    Which is why I switched to a track ball and continue to use them to this day.

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  2. I too have found the trackball much easier than the mouse. Logitech makes a pretty good affordable trackball if you don't want to spend the big bucks.

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  3. I am having severe problems with the notes master application using Office 2010 and Windows 7.

    I have used the notes master page for handouts in my training classes for more than a decade, because I can re-size the slide and notes sections and give students additional notes in their training manuals related to the slides.

    To make sure I was not having carry-over problems from a previous version, I tried all of the following with a completely new presentation.

    On the notes master page, I have deleted the footer, re-formatted and re-positioned (centered) the page number, re-formatted and re-positioned (centered) the header, re-formatted and re-positioned (bottom of slide on the right), and re-sized both the slide (larger) and notes section (wider, shorter and re-positioned the tabs). On the notes master page under the Placeholders section of the ribbon, I see that everything is still checked except for the footer box (as expected).

    When I go to the notes page itself and re-apply the notes master, I see that the slide and notes sections have been changed and the page number is now centered, but the date and header are missing and there seems to be no way to get them back.

    When I go to the notes master and put a prefix on the page number (text to denote the section for this file) and try to re-apply the notes master, the fixed text does not update.

    When I go back to the notes master, I can still see all of my updates to the master. This is a severe problem that is keeping me from deploying Office 2010 at my company. I have been a power-PowerPoint user since PowerPoint-97

    Any hints?

    Cliff Cummings – Sunburst Design, Inc.

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  4. You are obviously a more advanced user of PowerPoint than me. I'm stumped.

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