The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Power Point’ Category

Office suites trick I was unaware off: you can use images as background of shapes, then distort by moving the corner points

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/05/26

Video thumbnail

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The below example is in Excel, but it holds for many other drawing tools in other office suites as well (like the ones in OpenOffice and successors like LibreOffice, Apple Pages in iWork, and others from the list of office suites):

  1. Insert a shape
  2. Move the corners so it covers the area you want a screenshot in
  3. Modify the shape background to contain the screenshot as background

(you can exchange steps 2 and 3 if you wish, and even go for more complex shapes – including ones where you can add corner points – to better fit the area where you want the distorted screenshot to appear).

Example in (typo was indeed in the tweet) [Wayback/Archive] Excel Dictionary on X: “Are you ready for this Excel tip? Get ready to learn how to easily scew images. 🤯”: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Excel, Office, Power Point, Power User, Visio, Word | Leave a Comment »

Converting Power Point

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/01/15

I have a lot of old Power Point slide decks that I want to reuse in current presentations. By now however, I learned prepare all my presentation stuff in either Markdown or reStructuredText: far easier to publish and put under version control.

After searching, I could only find one tool that is still maintained doing a decent job doing a PowerPoint to Markdown conversion: [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – ssine/pptx2md: a pptx to markdown converter. The tools which works great, in big part of PowerPoint content being highly structured with styles like title, subtitle and various heading levels and content types.

The thing it does not document is the prerequisites, which are these:

Future enhancements

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Development, Lightweight markup language, MarkDown, Office, Power Point, Power User, Python, Scripting, Software Development, venv | Leave a Comment »

Markdown has been the Internet’s lingua franca for documentation. Microsoft finally the documentation format with markitdown: Python tool for converting files and office documents to Markdown.

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/12/17

Finally an easier way to convert Office documents (and other formats) to markdown: [Wayback/Archive] GitHub – microsoft/markitdown: Python tool for converting files and office documents to Markdown. (after Google added a Markdown export feature to Google Docs about half a year ago, and basic Markdown formatting about 2 years ago – see below):

There are quite a few dependencies in [Wayback/Archive] markitdown/pyproject.toml at main · microsoft/markitdown · GitHub, so be prepared for that.

Supported formats (added links for clarity):

The MarkItDown library is a utility tool for converting various files to Markdown (e.g., for indexing, text analysis, etc.)
It presently supports:
  • PDF (.pdf)
  • PowerPoint (.pptx)
  • Word (.docx)
  • Excel (.xlsx)
  • Images (EXIF metadata, and OCR)
  • Audio (EXIF metadata, and speech transcription)
  • HTML (special handling of Wikipedia, etc.)
  • Various other text-based formats (csv, json, xml, etc.)

Google was first though:

  1. [Wayback/Archive] Google Workspace Updates: Compose with Markdown in Google Docs on web
  2. [Wayback/Archive] Google Workspace Updates: Import and export Markdown in Google Docs

There is speculation on why Microsoft introduced it just now ranging from “they need it for AI training” to “just late to the game”. I’m with the latter. Apple is even later, so if you want to convert Apple Notes to markdown, then you can use [Wayback/Archive] Import from Apple Notes – Obsidian Help.

Via various sources, including:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in CSV, Development, Excel, HTML, HTML5, JSON, Lightweight markup language, MarkDown, Office, PDF, Power Point, Power User, Software Development, Word, XML/XSD | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Resize a table in Word or PowerPoint for Mac – Office Support

Posted by jpluimers on 2019/11/08

Why does it take forever for Microsoft Office suite programs to function the same across their various components and over operating systems. It has been like 2 decades and still sizing columns/rows in tables is a nightmare.

[WayBack] Resize a table in Word or PowerPoint for Mac – Office Support.

In my case PowerPoint: it is so different from Excel, and even different from Word, that it gives me headaches.

This is what PowerPoint 2011 could do; more recent versions are only marginally better:

PowerPoint

You can resize a whole table to improve readability or to improve the visual effect of your document. You can also resize one or more rows, columns, or individual cells in a table.

Do any of the following:

Resize a table

  1. Click the table.
  2. Rest the pointer on any corner of the table until Table Resize Cursor appears, and then drag the table boundary until the table is the size that you want.

Change the row height in a table

  1. Rest the pointer on the row boundary that you want to move until Horizontal split arrow appears, and then drag the boundary until the row is the height that you want.

    If you have text in a table cell, the row must be the same height or taller than the text.

Change the column width in a table

  1. Rest the pointer on the column boundary that you want to move until Vertical split arrow appears, and then drag the boundary until the column is as wide as you want.

    If you have text in a table cell, the column must be as wide as or wider than the text.

Change the row or column to fit the text

  • Rest the pointer on the column boundary until Vertical split arrow appears or the row boundary until Horizontal split arrow appears, and then double-click it.

Make multiple rows or columns the same size

  1. Select the columns or rows that you want to make the same size, and then click the Table Layout tab.
  2. Under Cells, click Distribute Rows or Distribute Columns.

    Tables Layout tab, Cells group

–jeroen

Posted in Office, Office 2011 for Mac, Power Point, Power User, Word | Leave a Comment »

Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances: When I double-click a .pps/.ppx file, the PowerPoint icon appear on the taskbar…

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/01/05

From [WayBack] 1. Presenting Your Presentation – Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances [Book]:

PowerPoint Opens Minimized

THE ANNOYANCE: I can’t get my presentation to open properly when I double-click it. I can see the PowerPoint icon on the taskbar, but it won’t maximize or restore. How can I view the presentation?

THE FIX: Your slide show is set to display on the secondary monitor, which is no longer attached to your computer. Open PowerPoint from Start → Program Files and select File → Open to open your presentation. Then select Slide Show → Set up Show and choose “Display slide show on primary monitor.”

–jeroen

Posted in Office, Power Point, Power User | Leave a Comment »

Download link for Office 2013 Language Pack Options

Posted by jpluimers on 2015/07/20

In case I need to re-download some language related Office 2013 things again: Office 2013 Language Pack Options.

–jeroen

Posted in Excel, Office, Office 2013, Outlook, Power Point, Power User, Word | Leave a Comment »

Multiple office versions on one computer: it is possible, but you should not do it

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/01

Wow, I didn’t even know this was possible, but I recently came across a few people that had actually done this: run multiple versions of Office on one computer.

Microsoft even has a couple of knowledge base articles on it and indicate it is not recommended (wow!), installation/update orders, and potential issues you will face.

I’ve added the respective office version ranges for each link:

–jeroen

Posted in Excel, Office, Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, Outlook, Power Point, Power User, Word | Leave a Comment »

Classic Menu for Office 2010 and 2013 Programs

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/11/04

As with Office 2007 and up, quite a few features – including menus and keyboard shortcuts – have been removed or changed.

Microsoft has many posts on them, some of which are here:

The menu part can be remedied with ease: Bring Back Classic Menus and Toolbars to Outlook 2010 and 2013 [WayBack].

Works like a charm, and you can purchase for individual Office programs, or for 3 suite combinations [WayBack].

–jeroen

Posted in Excel, Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Office, Power Point, Power User, Word | 1 Comment »

PowerPoint high cpu usage

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/07/15

Every once in a while, a hidden POWERPNT.EXE consumes 100% of one CPU core (on a single core, that is deadly, on a multi-core system it drains your battery pretty fast).

This was the cause:

One reason is you have preview pane enabled and have selected a PowerPoint File. To preview it an invisible copy of PowerPoint is opened and may not close when you deselect. This doesn’t normally use much cpu though.

–jeroen

via PowerPoint high cpu usage.

Posted in Office, Power Point, Power User, Windows | Leave a Comment »

Still struggling with some PowerPoint 2007+ features (:

Posted by jpluimers on 2013/07/08

After having used the “classic” office since Office 95, there are still a few features that I can access blindly in Office 2003 and before, but have a hard time remembering in Office 2007 and beyond.

Most of those are the ones you rarely use, but the “classic office way” somehow made it in the autonomous nervous system.

It doesn’t help that the corresponding keyboard shortcuts fail to work in the “modern” Office versions any more either.

A few links on some PowerPoint features:

–jeroen

Posted in Office, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013, Power Point, Power User | Leave a Comment »