Powerpoint Slide Titles - How to set manually / programatically

Question

Powerpoint 2010

Issue : When you click Slides Normal then the outline tab you can see the titles. These titles being available during a kios type display by doing CTRL S which displays a Goto page menu. The problem is two fold

1) Sometimes the title is not used and replaced by a normal text box
2) Sometimes the tile may be long winded, but you want to flag this at the Outline level with a short hand version, e.g. "v8 Bug Issues" where the displayed title / text might me "Summary of v8 Bugs from 01-jan-2012 xxxx"

I could find NO special attributes on title text other that say Arial (+Heading)
When i went to a slide title which shows no title in Outline and changed the heading test to Arial(+Heading) it made no difference to the Outline page title (this is used in the CTRL S menu)

Would like to know :

>> Is it possible to repair a title to be a true title ?
>> What about the title box is special that tells powerpoint, this text is title text ?
>> Can you have a hidden title for a page so only an abbreviated title is shown in the Outline ?

While i would prefer this can be done interactively, by next choice would be via macros, then via C#.

>> Hints please ?

Many thanks

Answer 1

The title shape is a special type called a placeholder. This can be either a type ppPlaceholderCenterTitle or ppPlaceholderTitle depending upon the slide layout used. The outline view displays the text that are in this shape. You can drag the placeholder shape outside the slide area also, it will still display that text in the outline view.

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Regards, Shyam

Answer 2

Thanks for the feedback, great tip on placing the title outside the viewable area...

is the only way to know you have the title placeholder (as opposed to another text box) if the title comes up in Outline ?

Note, i found you cannot copy and paste a title between sheets, its "placeholder" attribute is lost.

Greg

Answer 3

if the shape is a placeholder:

?ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange(1).Type = msoPlaceholder

the type of placeholder :

With ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange(1)

    if .Type = msoPlaceholder then

      if .PlaceholderFormat.Type = ppPlaceholderCenterTitle or .PlaceholderFormat.Type = ppPlaceholderTitle Then

           MsgBox "Title Placeholder"

      endif

    endif

End With

Number of placeholders on the slide is dependant on the type of layout. Older versions of PowerPoint only allowed on title place holder. If the layout already has a title placeholder, then upon paste the new shape will be a regular textbox.

endif

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Regards, Shyam

Answer 4

Shyam

Thanks for the follow up information

regards