Centimeters are wrong

PPTools
Shape Styles brings the power of styles to PowerPoint. Apply complex formatting with a single click
Merge Excel, CSV or tab-delimited data into PowerPoint presentations to create certificates, awards presentations, personalized presentations and more
FixLinks prevents broken links when you distribute PowerPoint presentations
Optimizer saves disk space and bandwidth, shrinks your PowerPoint presentations to the right size for email, screenshow or printing
PPT2HTML gives you full control of PowerPoint HTML output, helps meet Section 508 accessibility requirements
Prep4PDF preserves interactivity in PowerPoint presentations when you convert to PDF
Image Export converts PowerPoint slides to JPG, PNG, GIF, WMF and more

For various reasons having to do with matching up grids between different units like inches, centimeters, points and so forth, older versions of PowerPoint don't use the standard 2.54 cm = 1 in conversion factor when converting between centimeters and inches:

Real world: 1 inch = 2.54 centimeters
As reinterpreted by PowerPoint: 1 inch = 2.4 centimeters

PowerPoint is off by approximately 6%

PowerPoint Centimeters Different From Actual Centimeters explains the reasoning behind this in more detail. The same explanation applies to

• Microsoft PowerPoint 2000, 97, 7.0, 4.0 and earlier (Windows)
• Microsoft PowerPoint 98, 4.0 and earlier (Mac)

Later versions use the correct 2.54 cm to 1 inch conversion factor.

[Special thanks to Brian for this additional information]
PowerPoint 2001 (Mac Classic) and PowerPoint X (Mac OS X version of 2001, also released in 2001 after PowerPoint 2001) both use the correct centimeter conversion of 2.54 cm = 1 inch.

I created a slide on PowerPoint 2001 set to centimeters in Mac OS 9, and it preserves the size when opened on PowerPoint 2004 (Mac OS X), also set to centimeters (set to Metric in OS X). But when I opened the same one on PowerPoint 2000 (system set to Metric), it shrunk the size as predicted.

Contents © 1995-2008 Stephen Rindsberg, Rindsberg Photography, Inc. and members of the MS PowerPoint MVP team. You may link to this page but any form of unauthorized reproduction of this page's contents is expressly forbidden.

content authoring & site maintenance by

Friday - The Automatic FAQ Maker