Auto-Duplicate Placeholder on the Same Slide - Across Many Slides

[lstanga]

Hello,

I have many slides, each with a text placeholder, always in the same spot, otherwise identical.

I want to modify each slide so that the text placeholder is duplicated at another spot on the slide. I want to do this for every slide. Copy and paste will be very inefficient.



This is for a live theatre production that uses projected super-titles for translation. Thousands of them. We want to project the same titles in multiple places on the stage. We have entered the text in one placeholder, and now we want them all duplicated. It would ideal if the original placeholder a "master", so that if we have to make a change, the duplicated boxes also change.

If that is possible, here's another dream request. In my perfect world, I could duplicate the text in one spot identically, and in another spot with a different shape. The text would appear in three places, two places in a vertical column, and then again in a horizontal line. I might be able to do without this, but it sure would be nice.

Thanks for your input. Feel free to suggest anything, even if it's outside of PowerPoint. I hate the thought of ten hours of copy/paste!

I am using PowerPoint 2003 on Vista, but I have other members of my team with (unspecified) more recent versions, on both Mac and Windows 7, and they could do this task instead of me.

Thanks,

Lenard

[Kimberly]

View > Master > Slide master. I am trying to remember how this was in version 2003, it has changed. The thing you want to be careful in 2003, is that if you aren't careful, you will change every single slide, not just most of them.

I would go to Slide master view and then insert a new master and add the placeholder, and whatever else I wanted for every one of these slides. When you leave Slide master view, the new design appears in the Slide Design task pane under Used in this presentation.

[lstanga]

Originally Posted by Kimberly

I would go to Slide master view and then insert a new master and add the placeholder, and whatever else I wanted for every one of these slides. When you leave Slide master view, the new design appears in the Slide Design task pane under Used in this presentation.

Thanks for the reply, Kimberly. I'm hoping this will work, and I've been digging around in slide master view trying to find out how this will help, but I'm having trouble and I may not understand you.

Just to be clear, I've got a thousand slides, each with it's own (different) text, and on each of those slides I want to duplicate the existing text so that the text appears in two (or more) places on the same slide.

I've tried what you suggest, but I can't make it duplicate the text. I may be missing something in what you are saying, can you give me more details? I really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Lenard

[lstanga]

To anyone following this, and to visitors from the future, here is how I solved it.

I extracted my existing text from the PowerPoint file to a spreadsheet, using the method suggested here http://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/powe...tion_text.html . It works, I used the PDF method with copy/paste, the extract to text method didn't work.

The spreadsheet becomes the new master. Wish I had started with a spreadsheet, it's easier to enter data there anyway.

Then, I bought the PPT Merge tool from http://www.pptools.com/, which gives PowerPoint the same functionality of Words mail merge. I placed an identical field in three locations on my slide, and imported all of the data from the spreadsheet. Works great, and each of my three locations can be formatted independantly.

Thanks all. And good luck, visitors from the future.