Merging presentations

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MC - 18 Feb 2006 15:22 GMT

Recently I merged several presentations into one show file. (copy/paste
method.) When I did, I lost the animations in SOME, not all, of my
slides. Some of these presentations were created by others, but all with
Powerpoint XP 2002 or higher and all on PC, not MAC. I tried simply
importing the single slides that were corrupt (with their animations),
and again, they lost the animations.
Does anyone have any ideas on why this occurred and how to remedy the
problem? We ended up running the shows separately and could not make a
show file, but it was hectic backstage.
Thanks!
Melon

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Michael Koerner - 18 Feb 2006 15:36 GMT

If the animations were unique to a higher version of PowerPoint, they will
not transfer down to a lower version Which version are you importing the
slides to?

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Michael Koerner [MS PPT MVP]

| Recently I merged several presentations into one show file. (copy/paste
| method.) When I did, I lost the animations in SOME, not all, of my
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
| Thanks!
| Melon

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MC - 18 Feb 2006 16:22 GMT

> If the animations were unique to a higher version of PowerPoint, they will
> not transfer down to a lower version Which version are you importing the
> slides to?

All the art directors that created the presentations were using
Powerpoint/Office 2003. BUT the speakers/clients occasionally
downloaded their speeches and worked on them and we don't know what
versions they had. When they returned the individual presentations, they
still ran fine in 2003 - as standalones. The problem only developed
when we tried to merge.

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Michael Koerner - 18 Feb 2006 16:52 GMT

2003 will handle all the animations. Have you tried opening the
presentations up side by side and dragging the slides from one presentation
to the other. Or the insert slide form file, and maintain slide formatting?

What type of animations are we talking about?

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| > If the animations were unique to a higher version of PowerPoint, they will
| > not transfer down to a lower version Which version are you importing the
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
| still ran fine in 2003 - as standalones. The problem only developed
| when we tried to merge.

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MC - 18 Feb 2006 17:20 GMT

> 2003 will handle all the animations. Have you tried opening the
> presentations up side by side and dragging the slides from one presentation
> to the other. Or the insert slide form file, and maintain slide formatting?
>
> What type of animations are we talking about?

When I merged the presentations, I clicked "Keep Source Formatting." The
slide animations were simple text builds that did not carry over. But,
as I mentioned, this was not universal and only occured on SOME slides.
I have been told that sometimes the corruption has to do with a memory
or cache problem and once it is saved, the corruption is saved along
with the file???
I'm going to do some experimentation on my workstation computer (we were
using our laptops on show site) and try to recreate the abberation. I
will try merging with the side-by-side/drag method, as you suggested,
and also with the "insert slide" method and see what happens. Stay tuned
for further posts, please! BTW, the overall size of the merged show file
was exceeding 100MB, but I've done that before without problems and I
have a GB of RAM on the laptop.
Thanks for your ideas,
Melon

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Michael Koerner - 18 Feb 2006 18:34 GMT

One other thing is to make sure that all the service patches have been
applied to your PowerPoint

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| > 2003 will handle all the animations. Have you tried opening the
| > presentations up side by side and dragging the slides from one presentation
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
| Thanks for your ideas,
| Melon

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MC - 18 Feb 2006 18:59 GMT

> One other thing is to make sure that all the service patches have been
> applied to your PowerPoint

Will check this also as I go through my "tests." That's a possibility,
since I don't really recall installing any patches for Office on the
laptop. But that would mean that the other operator also had failed to
do the same, since he was having the identical merging problem. Hmmm...
I'll be testing this afternoon and be in touch.
Thanks!
Melon

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MC - 18 Feb 2006 19:14 GMT

> One other thing is to make sure that all the service patches have been
> applied to your PowerPoint

Here's an interesting glitch - If I say "Use Design Template Formatting"
under the 'paste options' after I copy & paste (OR drag & drop) the
second presentation into the first, the text animation remains. If I say
"Keep Source Formatting", which is what we usually do to retain all the
original attributes, the text animation disappears - even in the Custom
Animation Task Pane on the right! Now how odd is that?
Melon

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Michael Koerner - 18 Feb 2006 20:22 GMT

It should be the other way around according to the help file see below.

To retain the slides' original formatting, click the Paste Options button,
which appears under the slides you pasted, and on the button menu, click
Keep Source Formatting.
If you decide that you want the current design template styles to apply,
click Use Design template formatting (this is the default).

You also might want to look at the Trouble Shooting animations in the help
file depending on how the animations were put in could also have a bearing
on that they do not run when moved.

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| > One other thing is to make sure that all the service patches have been
| > applied to your PowerPoint
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
| Animation Task Pane on the right! Now how odd is that?
| Melon

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MC - 18 Feb 2006 20:40 GMT

> It should be the other way around according to the help file see below.
>
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> file depending on how the animations were put in could also have a bearing
> on that they do not run when moved.

Yes, I know - it is backwards! All these presentations were created
using the same template, but there is a lot of custom work within each
file and sometimes, special backgrounds are applied from
Photoshop-created .jpg files. So, in reality, clicking "Use Design
Template Formatting" should not really change anything between the two
files - right? And that is what I have to click to retain the simple
animation.

I have narrowed this down to a corruption of the first file into which I
am trying to import the second presentation. If I merge Presentation #2
with any other Presentation file, it works correctly and follows the
proper formatting of "Keep Source Formatting," keeping the animations,
as it should. So, some setting (?) in the first file is corrupt or maybe
theproblem is in the Masters and the client has done something to alter
the template? This would maybe make sense.

You've been very patient and without seeing the actual problem/glitch, I
know it's hard to diagnose. Stepping through it this way may have helped
me pinpoint the culprit. Do you know of anything I could check in that
first file or a way to re-save it so that the other files could be
merged correctly?

Many thanks,
Melon

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Michael Koerner - 19 Feb 2006 14:04 GMT

You might want to look here
HTML "Round-tripping" to repair corruption
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00526.htm

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| > It should be the other way around according to the help file see below.
| >
[quoted text clipped - 32 lines]
| Many thanks,
| Melon

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