Placeholders In Place Of Images In Powerpoint

November 17, 2006 12:06 PM

Help! Time-sensitive: My boss's boss, when editing, sees transparent placeholders inside his powerpoint everywhere there is an image (Images do show up, though, in actual slideshow - so they're there). Changing zoom didn't fix it. Everyhting shows up ok on my computer. My Google-fu is failing me, and he's counting on me - got a quick fix?
posted by parma to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Does Powerpoint have different view modes, like Word and Excel? Maybe the placeholder option is in the app preferences?
posted by luriete at 12:13 PM on November 17, 2006

Thanks luriete - No luck with that...
posted by parma at 12:28 PM on November 17, 2006

When the ppt was made, where the graphics "copied & pasted" in? It's much more reliable to "insert picture."

Also, if it's a mac and the ppt was made on a PC (or usually vice versa), perhaps you need to install the right image viewing ... codec? If it's a mac to pc, then installing quicktime usually solves the problem.
posted by porpoise at 12:37 PM on November 17, 2006

Mac or PC? What version Powerpoint?
posted by JigSawMan at 12:39 PM on November 17, 2006

Sorry - PC, 2002 SP3
posted by parma at 12:40 PM on November 17, 2006

The strange thing is we're in a large corporation and everyone has the same machine and specs - PC (Dell) with office 2002 SP3 installed. I can view the images in edit (Normal) mode fine. But he sees placeholders in edit (Normal) mode.
posted by parma at 12:43 PM on November 17, 2006

A couple things I would check:
1. Try switching to a different print driver. I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, but I've seen a lot of weird problems in PowerPoint caused by a disagreeable print driver.

2. Check his graphics card settings and turn hardware acceleration down or off (right click on desktop --> properties --> Settings tab --> Advanced button --> poke around until you find hardware acceleration. Strange that his computer is the same specs as yours, but maybe his settings got changed somehow. Maybe compare them to yours.
posted by SampleSize at 1:28 PM on November 17, 2006

3. In PowerPoint: Slide Show --> Set Up Show --> check or uncheck "hardware graphics acceleration"

4. Same place: Try changing the resolution, though usually "[Use current resolution" works just fine.
posted by SampleSize at 1:31 PM on November 17, 2006

Thank you all! I will try these when he comes back. (I wish I could replicate the issue on my own computer so I could trouble-shoot better.)
Thanks again!
posted by parma at 2:16 PM on November 17, 2006

Have you found a fix for this?
The president of my company is having the same issue. Deleting the image and replacing it with "insert picture" will fix the problem, but he receives presentations from different sources and it is a frequent annoyance to him. (and thus to me)
posted by tresbizzare at 5:41 PM on November 17, 2006

This is probably late for you, but we've had problems similar to this in Word at my work, and my friend brought up a great point:

Does it print (or in the case, present) like you want it to? If so, then don't sweat how it looks in edit mode. Yeah, it's annoying, but as long as it looks ok to the customer, screw it.

If your boss's boss is anything worth his position, he should be able to recognize the truth (and economics) of this.

But of course, your situation may be more nuanced than this.
posted by toomanyplugs at 8:08 PM on November 17, 2006

Hi all, thank you much for all your help.

For those asking about the final result, he said, and I quote, "**** it, I'm just gonna use my mac".

So... in my mind, that made the idea of this ppt coming over from mac to pc much more likely. (I didn't suspect this until now - I should have asked.) And if that indeed can be an issue - then that is probably the source of the problem.

(My own boss gets about 5 minutes a week max with him as busy as he is, so I didn't get the chance to sit and chat too much about all the different angles and potential issues.)

Finally, toomanyplugs, you are correct. It doesn't matter at the end if the printout is what we are aiming for. But of course if the issue is his ability to change things around, you can see how not being able to see what you are doing quickly becomes irritating...

(And like you, tresbizzare, he gets these from many different sources, so re-inserting is too time consuming.)

Well, thanks all again!
posted by parma at 7:33 AM on November 20, 2006