Has any one worked with powerpoint?

I have in the past but the newer versions for Mac 2004 and 2008 are totally fucked. I can not figure out how to make a picture box. How on earth can Powerpoint lose the ability to make a simple picture box? There was a tool bar that had buttons to create text boxes, picture boxes etc it is gone replaced with a tool menu that only has a create a text box. There is a picture icon for inserting pictures but no way to create a new picture box.

There is a template that has one picture box with text boxes under it. That is the only way I can find to even be able to have a picture box. I try to duplicate that picture box which it allows me to do but I can not insert anything into it.

Final thing if I create a text box it disappears once I click somewhere else. Why doesn't it stay dimmed so you can see it?

How can a simple idea like creating picture boxes and text boxes become so convaluted that Powerpoint is primarily rendered useless.

Help oh Broeders!

Oh god, I design PowerPoint presentations all day and night. But I hate them. I use version 2004.

It's not like a layout program where a picture box is a container, and you put content into it. With PowerPoint, you're inserting the graphic directly into the presentation, and then formatting and modifying attributes such as rule and transparency after the fact.

The best way to make a picture box for layout or whatever, is to make a transparent GIF the size you want, maybe with a custom border or whatever. Then paste content OVER it and group. You're not putting anything INSIDE anything. To do more elaborate "paste into" effects, you usually have to generate the graphic in illustrator and insert it.

So, normally what you do in your workflow is assemble your assets, then you can insert or paste pictures into a slide. To do montages and overlays you can "select" the slide and using the selection tools cut out parts, paste things over top of the image.

Thanks thalo.

Older versions you could create a picture box. What you are saying now is I can just drop an image file in the slide and it will create a picture box for it? What I did was use a template already set up in Powerpoint that has a single picture box and two text boxes below it. I need two images peer page. T accomplish that I had to place a picture in the box then I was able to duplicate that picture then replace it with the next image. I then just keep duplicating that slide replacing the images with the next images etc.

What a total piece of shit software. In the past there was a tool bar that gave you the option of creating a picture box. That function is gone. Completely gone. It doesn't make any sense how they could eliminate the picture box function from such software.

Just stupid stupid stupid.

Tell me about it.

Yeah, you have to think of it as inserting the PICTURE ITSELF rather than any kind of a "Picture Box"... because you can't, for example, remove the content and put something else in that same box. Instead what you do is import a different photo. So it's a matter of making a photoshop (or whatever) template of all your picture assets and outputting them at the proper dimension.

I don't remember picture boxes in the early versions, but maybe I'm just blocking it out. I've never enjoyed working with PowerPoint. What I've done in the past is work in Keynote and transfer... now I basically do everything I can in other software, and then just whack together the presentation. I'll use Flash before I'll animate in that POS program.

Yeah, so what I'd do for you is just pre-size and trim your assets to the size of the "picture box"... and put a placeholder on each slide for layout. If you're not doing anything funky like a transition or animating the picture, it should be pretty easy.

Yeah what I am doing is pretty basic just putting in images. I was like what the fuck there is no picture box tool. Then in the Gallery icon under slide layouts they have a template with a single picture box with two text boxes underneath. I was able to zoom through from there. The picture boxes would just automatic re-size to the images that were being replaced.

Still I don't understand the logic of getting rid of the picture box tool. Makes no sense. Why take it away? Especially when they have a template with a picture box in it. They used to have a template with picture boxes side by side just what I needed in this case.

One thing I am not getting is why the text boxes totally disappear. Without any text in them you do not even know a text box is there. You have to fish with the mouse to relocate them. Is there a way to have the boxes outline themselves while in work mode or something like that.

Hah it gets worse in Office 2011. There is the same nonsense, plus more stuff. They seem to focus on eye-candy and disregard the same legacy issues that have been around for ages.

Gladly I'm switching to iWork, which also has issues, but it's much closer in consistency and usability than Office will ever seem to be.

Hey Trifid long time no typing.

I have been helping an Art Historian try to switch from using slide projectors to powerpoint. As of now it can not happen on the grounds that the color is reproduced so horribly bad he can not teach his lessons properly. It is a combination of DLP/LCD projectors poor color reproduction plus powerpoints total lack of color management.

I am going to attempt to use Keynote instead because it does offer some degree of color management. At this point I am not sure if it will be enough to hurdle the poor quality of the DLP/LCD projectors. LCD's are better for still images. DLP is made specifically for video.

But yeah Office apps suck certainly.

So you say you are wondering how the Powerpoint is coming along. In a nutshell anyone using Windows is a moron. The more I have had to use it the more it exposes itself as a total piece of shit. Setting aside the fact that Powerpoint presentations made on the Mac do not render the same when opened in Powerpoint on Windows i.e. soft edged drop shadows for images become hard edged drop shadows. This is ridiculous. How can any professional rely on such garbage behavior.

Second the person I am working with has shaky hands. The basics are hard enough navigating to the folders to launch files are a task. Please some one explain to me how in Windows from Powerpoint a simple open dialogue box the user is able to move files and folders around like you are in a Finder window. The person I am working with was somehow able to move multiple folders to several different places all at once from a fucking open dialogue window. All by trying to double click to open a folder.

Windows is worthless.