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September 2, 2009 9:35 AM

PowerPoint 2003 confusion...why are the slide titles images instead of text boxes? Halp!

I was trying to help a colleague out with a PowerPoint 2003 presentation, and I ran into something weird.

She had asked me to help her change one slide background (which was mysteriously a different color than all the others) to match the other slides. I got the background right but it slide title text was the wrong color. I clicked on it to change it, but instead of being a text box it appears to be an image!?! And I can't seem to get the font/color/effects just right to match the other titles.

I wasn't there for the creation of the file so who knows how she got it this way. I tried to "insert new slide" and it gave me what I would expect - a text box for the title and a text box for the body.

I thought I knew my way around PowerPoint pretty well but I am totally stumped. Any ideas?

posted by radioamy to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Do all the other slides have text boxes instead of images? Is it that big a deal to just re-type the slide? Or even just the title into a text box and delete the image?
posted by brainmouse at 9:39 AM on September 2

All the slides have images for the titles, except for when I try to create one.

If I can't figure out the problem I will probably go through and re-do all the titles, but the whole things is just weird and I'm trying to get to the root of it!
posted by radioamy at 9:44 AM on September 2

Possibly a deck that was originated outside of Powerpoint as a PDF and then imported as images into powerpoint? Is it only the titles, or is other content images too?
posted by momentofmagnus at 10:01 AM on September 2

It's just the titles. It's weird.
posted by radioamy at 10:06 AM on September 2

Sudden thought: probably a deck done in 2008 Powerpoint with some fancy schmancy text effect native to that version on the titles, but then saved back into the older Powerpoint format. The newer PPT used the .pptx extension - if you had that version they'd be editable within the newer PPT. But if you've got only the older saved back version, and are editing in the old version, they'd come up as images.
posted by momentofmagnus at 10:20 AM on September 2

Thank you momentofmagnus! I checked, and she created the presentation on her laptop which has Office 2007, but was editing it on her desktop which has Office 2003.
posted by radioamy at 10:37 AM on September 2