Formatting lost with old windows presentations

wjones · October 29, 2019, 1:05am

Hi,

I’ve recently swtiched to linux and libre office (and I am in generally really happy I did).

I have only wrong thing which is really bugging me and I have failed to find the right words to put into google to fix it.

For my job I need to give a lot of presentations (I lecture at a university). This involves a lot of presentations written in windows powerpoint using a standard university template. These usually need to be updated a little bit every year, so I can’t just use the old ones.

When I open them, they look fine except some of the sizing has gone off (which is fine, I can deal with that). It is only when I save them and then reopen them on a windows computer later (in front of all my students, so I look like a moron) that things have changed to make the presentation unuseable: I think it must be something to do with the background template, because it turns both the text and background into white. But this only happens with a file I have opened and saved using libreoffice (regardless of which format I save it in) and then try to open it on a windows computer.

I’m sure I’m being stupid, but does anyone have any help for me?

Thanks in advance,

Will.

ve3oat · October 29, 2019, 1:15am

Expensive suggestion – Is there no opportunity to use a Linux laptop to make the presentation in class?

wjones · October 29, 2019, 1:18am

It’s a good idea. I can do that in one of the rooms I teach in (I just bring my laptop in, which does work), but in the others the screen will only run off the computer in the room. Thanks though!

ve3oat · October 29, 2019, 1:42am

If you have recently switched to Linux, one might assume that you are also using a recent version of LibreOffice. But what is the version of Windows and MS Office on the classroom computer?

wjones · October 29, 2019, 2:12am

That’s right. I’m on Version: 6.2.7.1. Build ID: 1:6.2.7-0ubuntu0.19.04.1.

It’s Windows 10 on all their computers. I’d have to check the edition of office tomorrow.

ajlittoz · October 29, 2019, 7:04am

Please change tag common to impress with retag link.

You mention this happens in any format. But it looks you’ll always be confronted to compatibility problems: classroom computers only have MS Office, right? MS Office and LibO have a different notion of page, this is the first source of compatibility issue, the second being the bullets.

Not using Windows, thus not being able to anticipate permission issues, what if you put LibO suite on the same USB key as your presentations and launch Impress from the stick?