[Solved] Impress does not receive outline from Writer

[RedShark]

I am running Windows Vista Home Premium and OpenOffice 2.3.1

I have tried to use the "File/Send/Outline to Presentation" command without
success. Oh it will get Impress to open a file at Slide 1. But no data from my
outline from Writer makes it through.

I have done an outline in Impress and copied and pasted back into Writer. That
gives me a bunch of new styles that seem to be named in Dutch or German. That
could mean something or nothing, I just don't know. The new styles are:

Default~LT~Gliederung 1
Default~LT~Gliederung 2
Default~LT~Gliederung 3
Default~LT~Gliederung 4
Default~LT~Gliederung 5
Default~LT~Gliederung 6
Default~LT~Gliederung 7
Default~LT~Gliederung 8
Default~LT~Gliederung 9
Default~LT~Hintergrund
Default~LT~Hintergrundobjekte
Default~LT~Notizen
Default~LT~Titel
Default~LT~Untertitel

Any insights into this would be helpful.

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RedShark

[acknak]

Did you use the standard heading styles ("Heading 1"..."Heading 10") in your Writer document? Those are the only paragraphs that will be transferred to Impress as the "outline". As I recall, there seems to be some different experience as to whether the headings also need to be numbered using Tools > Outline Numbering, so you might try doing that as well.

[RedShark]

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I have tried using the Heading paragraph styles (Heading 1 .. 10). I have also checked to ensure that under Tools/Outline Numbering, on the Numbering tab, that Level 1 (on the left) corresponds to Paragraph Style Heading 1 (on the right) and so on until Level 10.

I have tried with short outlines and with long outlines from various templates. I've tried copying outlines from a working presentation directly back into Writer (with formatting) and tried to send that back to Impress, without success. I've tried copying outlines from Impress to Notepad (to drop the formatting) and then into Writer, again without success.

I suppose I could just do the outline in Impress from the start. But I seem to be missing something here and would like to figure it out.

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RedShark

[RedShark]

I found a workable solution. But I'm not happy about it.

As I said in my original post, I am running Windows Vista Home Premium and OpenOffice 2.3.1. And Vista has at least three (3) new ways to mess up perfectly functionable software (not just OOo).

The insides of the new operating system code can mess it up, in which case you can go into the Control Panel and use a Program Compatability Wizard to “fool” older programs into thinking they are in XP, 2000, Win98/ME, NT 4.0 or Win 95.

Or, under a new security philosophy called UAC, Vista will not allow a program to fully function unless you (as network administrator) give yourself (as the local user) permission to allow that function that one time. And the next time Vista will nag you all over again to do the same thing.

The third way Vista can mess you up is with the very pretty new graphics on it's “Aero” interface. And that is what was messing up my earlier attempts to “Send” an outline from Writer to Impress. I just spent all night trying first one thing then another before I finally found the consistent answer.

Once I adjusted the Windows Theme down from Aero, through Vista Basic, to Windows Standard then it started working perfectly fine. I did not try the Windows Classic theme, and at this point don't care.

I don't know how many people are trying to run OpenOffice on Windows Vista machines, but these are three possible areas of trouble.

__
RedShark

[acknak]

If you can consistently reproduce this behavior, then I would encourage you to file a bug report.

E.g., if I were on the receiving end of a report about this, I would want to know what happens when you:

1) Login as a new user (or as a user with no OOo profile) and run OOo, so that you start with a clean settings profile.

2) File > New > Text Document

3) Type a few headings and apply the standard heading styles to them

4) Activate Tools > Outline numbering for the heading levels

5) File > Send > Outline to presentation

Then, if that fails, try it again with the theme change.

Unless you can provide a minimal "recipe" that anyone can try, it's not likely that the issue will get any effective attention.

Here's the place to start with a report:
Open Office Quality Assurance - Report Bugs