Okay, this is going to sound really odd, but I think I figured out what the issue is.

In a burst of "what the heck, I'll give it a shot", I went to the PowerPoint options to see if there was a setting that jumped out at me as a potential cause.


In the Advanced section under the Display heading, I checked the box that says "Disable hardware graphics acceleration".


I fired up my presentation, and lo and behold the sliced up shapes were no more.

To verify it wasn't a fluke, I closed and opened PowerPoint several times and all my shapes stayed whole as I scrolled through the slides in design mode and as I ran the presentation scrolling through the slides.

For added testing, I went back into the options, unchecked the box, and ran the presentation again - shapes were getting cut up again. Went back and rechecked the box and it stopped.


Not sure what the overall root cause is. Could be something to do with the laptop hardware, could be Microsoft needs to fix something, or it could just be a crazy fluke that I was unlucky enough to experience with a unique set of hardware and software setting.

Either way, hopefully this will help someone else!