Presentation WorkBench

Hello. I'm running into a problem when I "Create Presentation" from the Presentation WorkBench. After I have selected different slides from certain PowerPoint presentation and create presentation, the file seems to be corrupted. When I examine the presentation I noticed that for some reason the font size changed (enlarged) and the contents overlapped each other. I've attached a screen shot of the end result. I'm hoping someone can help explain this strange behavior. Thanks.

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msrinivas

What version of MB and what version of Powerpoint? Are all the powerpoints the same version or different versions?

MR2nice

We're currently upgrading to the 4.6 version of MediaBin but I'm seeing this in both v 4.5 and v4.6 as well. As for PowerPoint, we're using v. 2003. I understand that some of our users have older PowerPoint version such as 97. Would this be an issue? If so, what do you recommend? Thanks.

BrianMeek

If you've noticed how slides that are cut & paste from one presentation to another adopt the default slide layout of the target presentation, you'll understand what's happening.

When MediaBin applies the desired presentation design template to the new presentation, slides are adapted to the closest corresponding slide layout (font settings and text box positions are then reset accordlingly).

Presumably, Interwoven could offer an option of using "source formatting" (an option you're given by PowerPoint immediately after you paste an existing slide into a new presentation), but this would retain all source design template attributes (like background, font selection, etc), which may not be what you're after either.

Basically, you'll need to train users to conform to using only slide layouts pre-defined within your design templates to get consistent results with automated assembly.

Good luck with it.
-- brian

lyman

The formatting is actually accomplished by scripting Office. We have seen problems when using MS Office 2003 which we have confirmed is no longer a problem when we use MS Office 2007. This is even when all the PPT's in question came originally from Office 2003 (i.e., apparently Microsoft found and fixed a bug they never patched).

Not certain whether this is the case here or whether the template file is giving problems. You can always try varying the template to see if you like the results better.

Cheers,

Lyman Hurd

MR2nice

Thanks everyone for the replies. The strange thing is that these slides look normal before it gets processed through the WorkBench. It's after that I clicked "Create Presentation" and when viewing it I start to see the contents looking like what I've attached.

lyman

There's a reason for that. When you are working with the workbench, it simply reshuffles the existing thumbnails. When you go to create the presentation, the PowerPoint application is asked to construct a new PowerPoint containing the slides in question and using the indicated template.

Cheers,

Lyman Hurd