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Re: couple of questions

for

From: Philip Kiff
Date: Feb 6, 2018 4:41PM

> 4. Controlling the Order in the PPT doesn't always produce the reading order you want in the PDF.

That's an understatement!

Having said that,  here are some notes towards improving your control of
the reading order of a PowerPoint that is published to PDF:

- The main editable item controlling the order seems to be the order of
objects in the object "Selection Pane", found in the Format menu

- You can change the default order of slide elements for different slide
layouts when you are in the Slide Master view by changing the order of
the placeholders in that view. But start with the master layout and get
those objects ordered correctly first!

- The order of objects in the object "Selection Pane" is the reverse of
the logical order: it represents the order that things are "painted"
onto the slide. The things that are painted last will be read first
because in the logic of PowerPoint, they are "on top" of the other
things. So if you want the Title to occur first, then the Title
placeholder in a template should be at the *end* of the list of objects
in the Selection pane for that template.

- If your slides use only objects that match the placeholders, then the
order of your slide's content is close to matching what is defined in
the template. If you add objects that aren't in the template, then those
objects may be in orders that don't make sense. In some cases, you may
then be able to use the object Selection pane for an individual slide to
adjust the order of additional objects added to a template just on that
specific slide.

There. Isn't that about as clear as an unmuddied lake?

And I'm not at all sure that what I've said is even correct!

Phil.