Crossing platforms with PowerPoint

Same problem here. Apparently during the nice and easy drag and drop of web images that Safari allows, web images are converted to TIFF (Mac TIFF that is). This happened with one of my own (gif) images. The Mac TIFF is not readable on a PC.

Bad Safari, bad, bad.

- Lynda Ellis, University of Minnesota

Actually, bad MBU, bad, bad. The Microsoft Mac Business Unit very nicely uses the operating system facilities for can opening whatever picture format is handed to it, but when it writes the PowerPoint file it really should be writing it in a format that Windows Office can read.

This is a case where the developer (Microsoft) is responsible since only they know that their product lines are limited in how many image file formats they can read.

Also, Mac TIFF is a misnomer. Many developers called the standard byte-swapped-variety of TIFF "Mac format" simply because Macs were (at one time) the most popular platform that could use it. These days it is Microsoft lagging behind the curve on its ability to process whatever industry standard files are available.

I have had the same problem with cross platform images on PPT files generated on the Mac. I came to the same conclusion that you did -- the only way to be safe is to save all images to files and load them through the "Insert" menu selection. But a bigger problem for me than that is the different ways Windows and Mac PowerPoint applications handle movie files. On previous versions of PowerPoint (both Mac and PC), the file formats were completely compatible -- whatever created in one worked on the other. Now, since the 2003 version of Windows Office, the Mac and PC versions of Powerpoint store movie file information differently and won't even recognize the other format. If a presentation has links to movie files in it, I have to create separate pages for running the PowerPoint on PCs vs. Mac. I also love the wonderful restriction that Windows PowerPoint has in that it only plays movie files that can be decoded by the Microsoft Media Player (NOT the Windows Media Player -- which has all of the most recent codecs). Apparently, the Microsoft Media Player (mplay32.exe) has not been updated since the dawn of time and only plays the most basic and oldest movie codecs. This makes creating a cross-platform Powerpoint file with movies one helluva royal pain in the you know what! Does Microsoft care about this?

Any suggestions?

Coincidentally, I hit a similar issue in the last couple of weeks - while working on a presentation with a co-author who use PowerPoint for Windows. The issue related to inserting equations (using MSEquation Editor and/or Mathtype) and charts (from Excel) into the presentation. Some objects (charts and equations) went through correctly; some charts went through but with incorrect colors; some equations did not go through at all. And the issue seems to be atht some went through satisafctorily form MacLand to Windows land - but did not come back correctly for the next round of editing.

I am working on both a G4 PowerBook and an Intel iMac; unfortunately, I have not yet found a solution, but while investigating the issue I did come across a program that looks very interesting - viz Crossover (at http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/). It is currently in beta form and attempts (reasonably successfully, I found) to run Windows-based programs without the overhead of running Windows itself - compared with Parallels. There is also, potentially, the $ saving associated with not having to own a copy of Windows. However, at the university where I work, we have site licences for Office and Windows, so there is no direct incremental cost saving in my case.

For me - the time for the presentation has come and gone - we just used the Windows version - so reconciling the two PowerPoints is not a top priority any longer - but for next time, I am interested to see how this matter might be resolved.

StephenB

This is not a new problem; Mac users have been dealing with it for years, and I've not seen any permanent fix. The best short-term fix I've found is to re-save the troublesome images in formats that MS Office handles best- GIF tends to work well, and baseline "optimized" JPEGS often work where normal "baseline" JPEGs don't. It also seems to help to place photos in presentations using the "insert picture from file" command, rather than drag-and-drop. But in truth, I've seen signs that there's simply bad coding involved, as Bob Peterson suggests. I can save the same image in the same format 3 times, and PowerPoint will import it incorrectly the first two times but do it correctly the third.

And THAT's why, later today, I"ll spend 15 minutes testing and resaving my presentation for Thursday on a friend's Windows XP laptop.