Wednesday, September 26, 2007

PowerPoint of No Return

As a public service, I present this handy guide to navigating Microsoft PowerPoint's UCU (Utter Contempt for the User) interface. Here are some common commands and what they do:

Paste--When used with copied or cut text, changes all fonts, point sizes, and text colors to those that the user has never used anywhere ever. When used on copied or cut graphics, randomly changes the size and position to only the most undesirable.

Paste Special--The PowerPoint equivalent of a slot machine. Randomly changes text characteristics to ones that have never been specified by anyone anywhere ever. Las Vegas oddsmakers have put the odds that the pasted text style will in some way resemble that which the user specified to be 5 quadrillion to 1 against.

View Master--Lets you format all the slide title and bullet styles, background images, etc., that will be ignored when creating slides.

Save As--Lets you save your presentation in any of a variety of file formats that will be unreadable by any other program.

Format > Font--Lets you spend a great deal of time selecting all the type specifications that will then be ignored.

Format > Bullets and Numbering--Applies bullets or numbers to slide text in a manner that in no way reflects user intention.

Tools > AutoCorrect Options--Turns ordinal numbers to superscripts, URLs to hot links, and other thoroughly undesirable text "corrections." Turning this feature off requires the sacrificing of a goat at the exact moment of the vernal equinox.

Insert > Text Box--Creates a frame in which text can be typed, and then placed only at random, unwanted locations on a slide.

View Show--An easy way of seeing all the things in your presentation that you will need to fix.

Help--Contains an online link to the American Psychiatric Association Web site.

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