Differences in Use between Impress and PowerPoint

Contents

Overview	ii

Copyright and trademark information	ii

Feedback	ii

Acknowledgments	ii

Modifications and updates	ii

Accessing different views	1

Color gradients and borders	1

Multimedia	2

Narration	2

Sound	2

Video	2

Chart animations	2

Pack and Go	2

Fields	2

Action settings / Interaction	3

Animating a slide show	3

Object effect animations	3

Differences in animation effects	4

Slide transition effects	4

Fitting text to a frame	5

Overview

This document builds on the information given in “General Differences in Use between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office” by describing specific differences in use between PowerPoint and Impress.

Copyright and trademark information

The contents of this Documentation are subject to the Public Documentation License, Version 1.0 (the "License"); you may only use this Documentation if you comply with the terms of this License. A copy of the License is available at:
http://www.openoffice.org/licenses/PDL.rtf

The Original Documentation is Differences in Use between Impress and PowerPoint. The Initial Writer of the Original Documentation is Ian Laurenson © 2004. All Rights Reserved. (Initial Writer contact: hillview@paradise.net.nz. The Initial Writer contact is to report errors in the documentation. For questions regarding how to use the software, subscribe to the Users Mail List and post your question there: http://support.openoffice.org/index.html.)

All trademarks within this guide belong to legitimate owners.

Feedback

Please direct any comments or suggestions about this document to:
authors@user-faq.openoffice.org.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the OOo Authors team for proofreading this work, particularly Daniel Carrera, Peter Kupfer and Jean Hollis Weber.

Modifications and updates

Version	Date	Description of Change
1.0	19 November 2004	First published edition

Accessing different views

Impress provides equivalent views to those provided by PowerPoint, and it has an additional view for customizing the layout of handouts. The two main differences in views between the two programs are: they have different names (see Table 1), and Impress gives you quick access to all of its views from the main editing window.

In PowerPoint the buttons for quickly changing the view are in the the bottom left corner. In Impress, the equivalent buttons are on the top right side, just above the vertical scroll bar.

In PowerPoint, the Notes view is only accessible from the View menu.

In Impress the buttons in the bottom left corner toggle between Slide view and Master view. To quickly access the Master Slide view in PowerPoint, you need to hold down the Shift key while clicking on the Normal View button.

Impress includes a button that allows access to objects in the background, and different layers.

Impress also provides a Handout view for fine tuning how a handout will look. This is equivalent to (but more flexible than) PowerPoint's print option for handouts.

Table 1. Comparison of view names between PowerPoint and Impress.

PowerPoint Name	Impress Name	Main use
Normal	Drawing	Editing the contents of the slide
Slide Sorter	Slide	Rearranging the order of the slide show
Slide Show	Start Slide Show	The actual presentation (starts from current slide)
Outline	Outline	Editing the text
Notes Page (from Edit menu)	Notes	Appending notes to a slide
N/A	Handout	Changing the number and position of multiple slides to be printed on a page
Master	Master	Placing and modifying those things which are consistent in all slides in the presentation

Color gradients and borders

Impress does not support some of the formatting features that PowerPoint does. For example, Impress does not support three-color gradients, double and triple borders, or round-dotted borders. When import with PowerPoint slides, Impress will change three-color gradients to two-color, double or triple borders to single, and round-dotted borders to square dots.

To improve the results of the import, make the necessary adjustments in PowerPoint before importing to Impress. Change three-color to similar two-color gradient fills, and change double and triple border lines to a single border line with appropriate width. Round-dotted border lines that are mapped to rectangle-border closely resemble the original line style in PowerPoint so that manual editing should not be necessary.

Multimedia

Narration

Voice-over narration is not supported by Impress.

There appear to be no settings for multimedia custom animations, such as the ability to play a sound for the next x slides.

Sound

The author experienced some problems with sound in OOo 1.1.1 that are not present in OOo 1.1.3.

Dragging and dropping a sound file from the Gallery places a control button on the slide, which plays on being clicked when running the slide show.

Video

Similarly with Insert > Object > Video... there were problems in Ooo1.1.1 that are not present on OOo1.1.3.

Chart animations

There is no facility in Impress for Chart Effects as there is in PowerPoint, such as presenting a series or category at a time. On import the charts simply appear. A workaround is to have multiple copies of the chart with each one set up to display as desired.

Pack and Go

This feature in PowerPoint allowed a PowerPoint file to be split up over several floppy disks and assured that all related files were included. This facility is not included in Impress, nor can Impress open such files.

Fields

Date fields are exported as text, so they don't automatically update.

Fields are shown with gray background when editing so that they are recognizable as fields.

Action settings / Interaction

PowerPoint provides action settings for mouse over, but Impress doesn't have this option, only on mouse click, so mouseovers get mapped to mouse clicks. PowerPoint has an option for highlighting the object on mouse click / mouse over; Impress doesn't have this, so it gets ignored on import.

Animating a slide show

Object effect animations

In OOo the object effects are the equivalent to MSO's custom animation. You can accomplish most of the same functions, but the process is slightly different.

To access the object effects, go to Slideshow > Effects. This will display a docked/floating window (Figure 1). For more information on how to work with docked/floating windows, see the General Differences in Use chapter.

To begin, choose an effect category. These categories don't show whether the effect is an entrance, exit, or emphasis like MSO does. In OOo, the effects are sorted first by the motion the object takes, then by its direction.

Options Categories Figure 1. Animation Effects docked/floating window (shown as floating).

Differences in animation effects

On export/import of Impress/PowerPoint files the names of the effects change. However, the result and appearance are essentially the same. See Table 2.

In Impress you can only have one type of animation per text box. In PowerPoint it is possible to assign each bullet in an outline to enter a different way.

Table 2. Comparison of animation effects between PowerPoint and Impress.

PowerPoint	Impress
Appear	Appear
Blinds	Fade Horizontally
Box	Fade To Center
Checkerboard	Checkerboard
Diamond	Appear
Crawl	Fly In From bottom
Dissolve	Dissolve
Flash once	Appear
Peek	Short Fly In from Bottom
Random Bars	Horizontal lines
Spiral	Spiral Outward Clockwise
Split	Close Vertical
Stretch	Stretch Vertical
Strips	Fade From Top Right
Swivel	Rotate Horizontally
Wipe	Cross-Fade From Top
Zoom	Fade From Center
Random effects	Vertical Lines

Slide transition effects

In the same way that object animations have a mapping between PowerPoint and Impress, slide transitions also have different names between the programs, as summarized in Table 3.

Note: For both text effects and for slide transitions, if you choose one of the effects from the Favorites menu it will, by default, have sound. The sound can be disabled by changing the effect options (see Figure 1).

Table 3. Comparison of slide transitions between PowerPoint and Impress.

PowerPoint	Impress
Blinds Horizontal	Fade Horizontally
Blind Vertical	Fade Vertically
Box In	Fade To Center
Box Out	Fade From Center
Checkerboard Across	Horizontal Checkerboard
Checkerboard Down	Vertical Checkerboard
Cover Down	Fly In From Top
Cover Left	Fly In From Right
Cover Right	Fly In From Left
Cover Up	Fly In From Bottom
Cover Left Down	Fly In From Upper Right
Cover Right Down	Fly In From Top Left
Cover Left Down	Fly In From Upper Right
Cover Right Up	Fly In From Lower Left
Cut	No effect
Cut through Black	No effect
Dissolve	Dissolve
Fade Through Black	No effect
Random Bars Horizontally	Horizontal Lines
Random Bars Vertically	Vertical Lines
Horizontal In	Close Vertically
Horizontal Out	Open Vertically
Split Vertical In	Close Horizontally
Split Vertical Out	Open Horizontally
Strips Left Down	Fade From Top Right
Strips Left Up	Fade From Bottom Right
Strips Right Down	Fade From Top Left
Strips Right Up	Fade From Bottom Left
Uncover Down	Uncover Downwards
Uncover Left	Uncover To Left

Fitting text to a frame

Fitting text to the frame, or text box, behaves differently between the two programs. In PowerPoint, the program automatically resizes the font proportionally as the text exceeds the size of the text box. In Impress, if the option Fit text to frame has been selected, the program allows text to be typed outside of the text box. When you select another object, signifying that typing has finished, Impress resizes the text as if it were resizing a picture. This often leads to scrunched unattractive text.

The best way to avoid this is to avoid making a slide where the text goes beyond the size of the text box. This is good work practice for making a presentation anyway.

To change the Fit to frame property in Impress:

Select the text box, by moving the mouse until the pointer is on the border of the text box and the pointer changes into resize or move arrows; click.

Format > Text....

On the Text tab are the options for automatically adjusting frame size or font size:

Fit width to text: Resizes the text to fit the width of the drawing or text object.

Fit height to text: Resizes the text to fit the height of the drawing or text object.

Fit to frame: Resizes the text to fit the entire area of the drawing or text object (to be able to check this option the other two options must be unchecked).

This setting can also be changed in Graphics styles.

Fitting text to a frame

Differences in Use between Impress and PowerPoint	4

Title:	Differences in Use between Impress and PowerPoint
Version:	1.0
First edition:	November 2004

Overview

Differences in Use between Impress and PowerPoint	iv

Differences in Use between Impress and PowerPoint

Jean Hollis Weber

2004-10-31T19:50:05