Text size or other formatting is lost when you save, close, and reopen a presentation

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

Problem

When you save (or sometimes save, close, and reopen) your file, various text formatting is lost. This might be the font size, color, or other attributes. It may happen on regular text, or it may happen on the slide titles. Yeah, it's embarrassing, especially if you first notice it when the slide is being displayed in front of hundreds of people on a 10-foot screen. (Been there, done, that.)

Solution / Workaround

Here's Microsoft's explanation for what's happening and a couple of workarounds for PPT 2003.

Or see this for PowerPoint 2000

Basically, the slide master isn't being applied properly to the slide. At one time, Microsoft suggested reordering the slide masters for PPT 2003, but that may simply move the problem to other slides.

So, in addition to Microsoft's current suggestions to create a new master or not to use multiple masters (and delete all unused masters), here is another suggestion:

• Format the problem textbox (actually, it's a text placeholder), copy it, and paste it back onto the slide.
• Delete the original text placeholder.

This makes the text box into a regular textbox -- it's no longer a text placeholder tied to the slide master, so the text should not reformat willy-nilly.

Of course, this also means if you update the text placeholder on the master, those changes will not be reflected on this slide.

Additionally, Microsoft's suggestion for PPT 2000 to apply the blank slide layout is a good thing to try for PPT 2003 also.
From the main menu bar, choose Format, Slide Layout and choose Title Only. If the problem text is the slide title, choose Blank instead.

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