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Disappearing Alt Text in PowerPoint

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From: Bourne, Sarah (ITD)
Date: Mar 16, 2012 12:24PM

One of our agencies is in the process of upgrading their desktop Microsoft Office to 2007. They do quite a bit of re-use and re-purposing of documents and have uncovered a problem with conversion of old PowerPoint decks.

They have files that were created in PowerPoint 97 and 2003. The authors provided Descriptions for the charts. When they are opened in and saved as PowerPoint 2007, the descriptions are still there. However, when you open the 2007 .pptx version in PowerPoint 2010, the descriptions have disappeared. They don't show up on the Format Object - Alt Text tab, the accessibility checker flags the images as missing alt text, and screen readers don't read them.

When I open the slideN.xml file from the 2010 .pptx, you can see the original Description text. Here is some sample before and after code:
Before:
<p:cNvPr id="0" name="Picture 2" descr="Original alternative text"/>
After:
<p:cNvPr id="23554" name="Object 2" descr="Alternative text added in 2010 Alt Text dialog"/>

Is there a way to recover this alternative text without re-entering it? Or a way to preserve it when saving the .ppt to .pptx? We certainly hope so, because there are hundreds of files with this problem.

I posted this issue at Microsoft Answers yesterday, but haven't gotten an answer yet. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office_2010-powerpoint/alternative-text-description-for-charts-disappears/bb5f79d7-5660-447a-94b8-ac940cad826b If you are having this problem, too, it would be nice if you would "Me Too" it at Microsoft Answers. Maybe it will get more attention.

sb


Sarah E. Bourne
Director of Assistive Technology &
Mass.Gov Chief Technology Strategist
Information Technology Division
Commonwealth of Massachusetts
1 Ashburton Pl. rm 1601 Boston MA 02108
617-626-4502
<EMAIL REMOVED>
http://www.mass.gov/itd