PowerPoint 2003 ~ The Other Changes, Pt. 2
~~Kathryn
Jacobs, PowerPointAnswers
Last year, I wrote about
the changes in PowerPoint 2003 that would most positively impact
your use of the tool. Now it is time to look at the last three changes made
and decide if they are good things or not.Smart Tags
Remember the Smart Tags that Word and Excel started using in Office XP?
With Office System 2003, the Smart Tag technology has been added to
PowerPoint as well.
Smart tags are little boxes that pop up next to content to try to assist
you with expanding the content. For example, there is an "info" Smart Tag
that lets you pull additional information about a name from your Outlook
contact list. In addition, you can program your own Smart Tags to add
content to your PowerPoint presentations.
Smart Tags are very useful in some situations, especially those relating to
repeatable data. I have not used them much, because the work I do in
PowerPoint does not tend toward those areas. If you want to learn more about
Smart Tags, let us know here at All 'Bout Computers and someone will write
up a detailed article on them.
Inking Support
Inking support is the ability to add inked comments and drawings to your
presentations while they are running. There are two sides to the inking
support:
- The ability to add ink to presentations from a Tablet PC and have it
translated to text
- The ability to draw on slides during a slide show and have the
drawings and annotations be kept
(I am going to focus on the second version of inking support.
The inking support for Tablet PCs we will reserve for another
article.)
In previous versions of PowerPoint, if you wanted to mark on your slides,
you could, but you could not save the markings. To get around this, most of
us got used to using the Meeting Minder to take notes and add action items
to a presentation.
With the release of PowerPoint 2003, you can now quickly change your
pointer from an arrow to one of a number of styles and colors of pens and
save the markups as graphic elements when you leave presentation mode.
Case Study: Presenting the first draft of your
presentation
You have spent the last three days putting together a presentation to
announce your company's latest product. You are ready to have the rest of
your team see the presentation and offer comments and suggestions.
Everyone is in the room, and you bring up the first slide:
Immediately, someone raises the point that you misspelled guaranteed.
Rather than stop the presentation and change the content, you press Ctrl-P
on your keyboard. This changes your arrow pointer to a pen. If you were to
right click at this point, you would see there are three different pen types
you can choose from, as well as a number of different colors you can choose
for each type:
You set your pen to the red felt tip, as shown in the menu, and write
directly on the slide "Fix Typo". Notice also that there are options to
change the pen to an eraser or to erase all of the ink on your slide. They
are not active in this screen shot since there is no ink currently on the
slide. Once there is ink on the slide, the eraser options allow you to
remove pieces of your ink (Eraser, then click on the ink to be removed) or
all the ink on the slide (Erase All Ink on Slide).
Next, someone suggests you should have a lighter background for the
slides. Rather than hashing out a new background here in the group, you make
a note on the slide to find a better background. Your slide now looks like
this:
You now are ready to move to the next slide in your presentation.
However, if you just click, you leave a red dot on the screen. Since you are
in pen mode, all regular clicks are considered annotations, not navigation.
To move, you can either:
- Right click and select next slide
- Right click, change back to the arrow, and click to move to the new
slide
- Ctrl-P to change to the arrow and click to move to the next slide
- Simply press the right arrow key on your keyboard to move to the
next slide.
When you finish your presentation, you will get a new message box:
If you choose keep, each of your inked slide markings will be turned into
individual graphics on the slide. Each piece of ink can be moved, removed,
re-colored, stretched or shrunk, just as with any other graphic.
Inking in the viewer
You can also use the inking options while viewing slides with the
PowerPoint 2003 Viewer. When you do this, you will be asked not only if you
want to save your ink annotations, but you will also get asked whether you
want to overwrite the existing file or create a new one.
Font Embedding Changes
This one is bad news for a lot of us. In PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft added
a "feature" that checks to see if any of the fonts embedded in your file are
non-shareable.. This sounds like a good thing. Unfortunately, it can be a
real hassle if you don't understand the font sharing rules.
When does the check occur?
This is the truly bad part of this change. The check for shareable fonts
doesn't happen when you embed the fonts. Instead, it happens when you open a
presentation file. However, if you try to open that presentation on a
machine without the font, PowerPoint will pop up this error message:
You will be able to open this presentation for viewing, but not for
editing or re-saving.
HINT: If you really need to open a file
getting this error, open it with an older version of PowerPoint. Once you
open the file in the older version, you can change the fonts to
shareable/editable fonts, save the file, and then work with the file in
PowerPoint 2003. If you don't have an older version of PowerPoint, you will
need to find someone else who does.
The Embedding Rules
In the past, PowerPoint trusted that if you embedded a font, you had the
right to embed and share the font. Because the privilege was being abused
(knowingly or not), it was felt that PowerPoint should do more checking to
ensure that fonts were not being shared illegally.
When a font designer creates a font, they can set the font up with
various levels of sharing rights. True Type fonts, which are the only fonts
which can be embedded and shared, can be classed anywhere from "No embedding
allowed" to "Installable embedding allowed". These classifications determine
whether PowerPoint will allow a presentation file with embedded fonts to be
opened.
According to Help, the rules are very basic. Any font delivered with
Windows can be embedded but shouldn't be, since it will always be on the
system receiving your file. Any font delivered with Office can be embedded,
as they are fully shareable. (But again, they probably don't need to be
embedded, as they will be on any system with PowerPoint installed.) Other
fonts will be embedded only if they have no license restrictions.
In this case the Help is wrong. Okay, maybe just misleading. When you try
to save a presentation file with font embedding turned on, you can embed
most fonts. If the font is not embeddable due to license restrictions, you
will get this message:
However, you will not get this message on True Type fonts that are
not totally restricted. But you won't be able to re-open the files for
editing with these inbetween fonts either. Basically, the limits for what
can be embedded have not kept up with what can be edited after embedding.
A real life example:
Let's look at four different fonts and their properties to see the
difference.
- AlefBetN - This font's embedding attributes are set to
Restricted license embedding. No embedding is allowed on this font. You
can not embed it (you get the error message above). If you embedded it
in a previous version, you won't be able to open the file.
- Eras Bold BT - This font's embedding attributes are
set to Preview and Print Embedding allowed. It can be embedded for
viewing and printing, but not for editing. So, you can view
presentations with this font, but you can't edit them. You won't see an
error on save, but you will on open.
- Curls MT - This font's embedding is set to Editable
embedding allowed. The font can be installed for use on another machine
in a temporary manner. The font can be embedded with no errors on either
open or close.
- Comic Sans - This font's embedding attributes are set
to Installable editing allowed. The font can be embedded with no errors
on either open or close.
So how do I know if my fonts can be embedded with
2003?
Microsoft has a bunch of information on their site regarding typography,
sharing fonts and other such topics. Included in this section of their site
is a tool you can add to your copy of Windows which will let you check the
properties of the fonts on your system. Great information. I strongly
recommend you check it out.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/default.mspx
Final Thoughts on 2003
There is one other "invisible" change to PowerPoint that came with Office
Systems 2003. PowerPoint is now included as a part of Office Small Business
Edition. This is a good thing, since it gives small business a great way to
get into the product. In fact, you can even use 2003's Small Business
Edition upgrade as a valid way to add PowerPoint to an existing Small
Business installation.
The change to Small Business isn't all great news. Because the computer
manufacturers (Dell, etc.) still wanted a version of office without
PowerPoint, Microsoft gave them one. The version without PowerPoint is now
called "Office Basic" and is only available through the computer
manufacturers.
That covers all of the new features with PowerPoint 2003. Personally, I
think the good out weigh the bad. When the changes to the font embedding are
weighed against all the plusses of this new version, such as the new
distribution capabilities, the research pane additions, and the inking
capabilities, you definitely come out with one of the best PowerPoint
versions in quite a while. <<<back to contents
Kathryn Jacobs,
Microsoft MVP, PowerPoint and OneNote
Get PowerPoint answers at
http://www.powerpointanswers.com
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Cook anything outdoors with
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Kathy is a trainer, writer, Girl Scout, parent, and whatever else there is
time for.
I believe life is meant to be lived. But, if we live without
making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived.
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