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Serving Multiple Masters

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Posted by Ken Molay
September 23 2008 2:03 PM EST

 2 comments

Slide_master

A colleague recently forwarded me a note telling of problems they had encountered during a webinar. They uploaded PowerPoint slides to the web conferencing software and found that there were many conversion errors. The cause turned out to be the use of multiple slide masters in the PowerPoint deck.

The representative sent back this fascinating statement: "The problem was due to the presenter's slides using 2 sets of Master Slide formatting. This is not how normal slide decks are set up."

Wow. That sentence makes me bristle. If you have a limitation on what your software can handle, that's fine... Let me know the boundaries I have to work within. But don't presume to tell me what is "normal" in the preparation of my collateral and presentation materials! It so happens that when assembling slides from multiple companies into a single presentation deck it is exceedingly "normal" to use multiple slide masters so that each company can maintain its own branding.

I've never thought about this scenario before. I just assumed that whatever graphics happened to be sitting on the slide would be converted as is... Whether they come from the master or the individual slide. But who knows how the different conferencing products handle that conversion process? Now I'll have to add a new test to my PowerPoint Torture Test slide deck.

Naturally, products that use screen sharing to display slides don't care about the construction of the slides (GoToWebinar is probably the best-known example). They just show whatever is visible on your computer screen. But if you are using iLinc, WebEx, Live Meeting, Connect Pro, ON24 or any of the other products that go through an upload and conversion process, it would behoove you to test the functionality if you happen to use multiple slide masters.

Tags: PowerPoint, slide master, slide conversion, slide upload

  

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Comments:

  • Ken, Your point/complaint is well taken. However, as a long-time user of WebEx who has dealt with this issue, a couple of points need to be made. First, if you're merging multiple slide decks into a single mega-deck, this is going to result in a very long upload period, so why do it? Second, it's a lot easier to simply upload each deck separately - they'll appear in WebEx as separate tabs. This overcomes both the conversion issue you spoke to, and the excessive upload period that a huge deck requires. Finally, if you've got multiple presenters, it's very easy for each to find their tabbed presentation, whereas, in a single deck if a presenter accidentally moves forward or back too many slides and gets lost, there's no easy way to find out where they were in the presentation. That's a much smaller problem if each deck is loaded separately.

    Posted by Larry Kilbourne, LK Associates, http://www.lkphd.com
    About 1 month ago

  • Larry, All of your points are true, reasonable, and practical. Except that we're still trying to tell users what to do in order to satisfy the way the conferencing software wants to work. I believe the conferencing software should be the one to conform. Sometimes the presentation deck is being used for other purposes in addition to the conference upload. Maybe you are printing it or turning it into a PDF for distribution. Or you plan to show it on a projector at a local meeting. In these cases, it is much easier to work with a single deck than multiple files. Why should I be forced to keep multiple versions around just to make my web conferencing software happy?

    Posted by Ken Molay, Webinar Success, http://www.wsuccess.com
    About 1 month ago

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