I hate MS like pure poison, but....

Gord_in_Toronto said:
When WP ignored the MS paradigm and did its own file lists and etc it was great. The closer it moved toward integration with Windose$, the worse it got. :(
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Funnily enough, I have the opposite impression. I don't like WordPerfect or most of the xOffice stuff out. I actually really like Word.

.. although I generally don't use it. Most of what I write I spellcheck in Firefox. I have MS Office primarily for OneNote.
 
Rolfe said:
Tell me guys, if I create a presentation and then put it online, how will it look to the average punter on their home computer? It looked like hell on my computer, and still looks far from right on Libre Office (because of the missing notes), but I accept I'm not the average punter.

I haven't yet investigated options to lock the thing when it's finished. Is that possible? My goal is either to make the presentation available to read, with what I would be saying if I were presenting it in the notes field, or to record it as a complete slide-show, audio and all. Will that be OK for most viewers?

Rolfe.
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Don't know about locking a PowerPoint document, but how about turning it into a PDF document, one slide per page? Then people can page through it in page-per-screen mode as if it were a slide presentation, and it's also tamper-proof.
 
Rolfe said:
But actually I'm quite a fan of PowerPoint.

I'm trying to create a PowerPoint presentation which isn't work-related, but I only have PowerPoint on my work computer, which is putting a crimp in my style. On my home computer I only have a really crappy PowerPoint viewer which displays incredibly badly and doesn't allow viewing of the notes at all.

What's the best and cheapest way to acquire PowerPoint for home use? Needs to be fully functional, and doesn't really need to be the absolutely latest version.

But if it's some deal where I have to acquire Word as well, I'll pass, thank you.

Rolfe.
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Is it possible to use the OpenOffice version and save it in PowerPoint format?
 
Floyt said:
Don't know about locking a PowerPoint document, but how about turning it into a PDF document, one slide per page? Then people can page through it in page-per-screen mode as if it were a slide presentation, and it's also tamper-proof.
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My difficulty at the moment is the notes pages. The content of the actual slides is obviously only a framework supporting the presentation. Given as a live presentation it would have me explaining a lot of stuff on top of the slides, and even some places where elements fly in during the explanation.

However, I may not be able to do it as a live gig at all, and in any case the audience would be limited. I need to be able to present the text as well as the slides online, for people to access as and when they want to. I could try recording it in audio format in real time, but in a way it would be more useful to use the notes field for that.

PowerPoint itself is very good in that way. You can just look at the slides if you want to, or you can open up the notes field and read the detailed explanation. Libre Office isn't playing that game. The position of the notes pages is bizarre, and anyway they're showing up blank.

I've been using printouts from PowerPoint with the notes pages, which are very good as hard copy - slides at the top, and then the programme formats the notes to fit on the rest of the A4 page. That would be excellent as a PDF, but I don't know a way to save in that format.

Actually, I suppose my problem is two-fold. One is working on the presentation at home, without PowerPoint on my computer. To be honest Libre Office isn't cutting it - it's no better than what I was doing, which was just typing into WordPerfect, then swiping that off a memory stick into PowerPoint at work. The other is figuring out how anyone might access the finished presentation once I put it online.

If nearly everyone has the real PowerPoint on their computers, the latter solves itself, really. I'm coming to the conclusion I need to get PowerPoint itself on my own computer though.

Can anyone recommend an inexpensive way of doing that?

Rolfe.
 
TheL8Elvis said:
You have the word lawyer in your user name and don't use WP ??

I thought the legal profession was the biggest industry/group still using WP. :boggled:
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I have used Word since 1994 (on a Mac). It's OK (guess I am used to it by now) I suppose but they seem to have trouble making the dictionary work. I like to add proper names to my dictionary so I can see mis-spellings at once but in every other iteration of the software this feature does not work. Why?

Can anyone say what's so great WP? Might give it a go.
 
I began on Word on a Mac in about 1991 or 1992, but very soon switched to WP for Windows on a PC.

WP is much, much more intuitive than Word. I almost never need to look anything up, I can find out how to do what I want to do by scanning the menus, or just trial and error.

WP does what you tell it to do, not what it thinks you ought to be doing. When I use Word it's always trying to change my font or my formatting or anything else that takes its fancy. WP does as it's told.

WP has a fantastic feature called "reveal codes". A field that allows you to see and edit every single code in the document. So if it is doing something you don't like, you can look at the codes, find out why, and zap it. Basically the codes work very much like html - italics on/italics off, and so on.

The result is much more compact files, by the way. The full wordprocessed document is usually not much larger than the text would be as a simple text file.

You can drag your margins anywhere you want and they'll go there and stay there. It does parallel columns. (I thought I just hadn't found the right command for that in Word, I am gobsmacked it doesn't do it.) Although the default customisation tends to look uncomfortably like Word these days, you can soon get rid of that. It even lets you customise all your menu buttons so they have actual words rather than those stupid icons.

Did I mention it's intuitive?

It's the cat's pyjamas.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
I began on Word on a Mac in about 1991 or 1992, but very soon switched to WP for Windows on a PC.

WP is much, much more intuitive than Word. I almost never need to look anything up, I can find out how to do what I want to do by scanning the menus, or just trial and error.

WP does what you tell it to do, not what it thinks you ought to be doing. When I use Word it's always trying to change my font or my formatting or anything else that takes its fancy. WP does as it's told.

WP has a fantastic feature called "reveal codes". A field that allows you to see and edit every single code in the document. So if it is doing something you don't like, you can look at the codes, find out why, and zap it. Basically the codes work very much like html - italics on/italics off, and so on.

The result is much more compact files, by the way. The full wordprocessed document is usually not much larger than the text would be as a simple text file.

You can drag your margins anywhere you want and they'll go there and stay there. It does parallel columns. (I thought I just hadn't found the right command for that in Word, I am gobsmacked it doesn't do it.) Although the default customisation tends to look uncomfortably like Word these days, you can soon get rid of that. It even lets you customise all your menu buttons so they have actual words rather than those stupid icons.

Did I mention it's intuitive?

It's the cat's pyjamas.

Rolfe.
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And don't forget copying blocks of text (if newer versions still do that). :cool:
 
Yes, well, we were talking about getting me a cheap copy of PowerPoint for home use. I see MS wants about £120 for it, which is daylight robbery.

I can always figure out how to get on my office Thin Client online and use the bloody programme that way. I don't suppose IT will give me a local copy on my own PC even if I beg....

Rolfe.
 
I seem to remember it turned out much cheaper than the headline price, once I got into the details. They weren't impressed by my position that it was an upgrade from WP7 (which it was), but somehow it became an upgrade from MS Works, which I got with my computer whether I liked it or not. And of course that's the price for the whole caboodle, not just one element. (I agree its presentations element sucks asteroids.)

My God are they on X6 now? I swear it's only five minutes since I upgraded from 7 to X4 (14, basically).

Rolfe.
 
Good grief, Darat, go away. I'm now considering upgrading to X6, when I had no such thought in my head five minutes ago.

Built-in eBook publishing now.... I'm drooling....

Rolfe.
 
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