How to turn off backgrounds of all slides?

[david7365]

I am trying to view an old PPT file using Impress. The background of each slide has turned into horizontal black lines in Impress, obscuring the text of each slide. Not really impressive. I don't know much about PPT presentations, but I've managed to turn off the black lines for one slide, leaving the background white, which is perfect. I've tried selecting all the slides in the slide sorter mode, but can't quite manage to turn off the background. Any ideas? I'll try to download a Microsoft viewer as a workaround. (Just wondering, why can't bugs like this still happen in OpenOffice, is it lack of volunteers?)

ADDED: I tried the free web-based Microsoft legacy viewer in Dropbox, and it displayed only the folders. All the files, including the PPT file, were grayed out and could not be opened. Thus does decrepitude indeed fall upon all old technology. I then downloaded the old Microsoft viewer and that worked perfectly, showing each slide against a white background. I guess OO has simply moved on and abandoned presentations from 2007. So be it.

[RoryOF]

Select first slide, Right click on it and select Slide > Slide Design from the popup. Press the load button and find a slide design with background that suits you - as you click on a slide design name you will see a preview in the bottom left window. Click OK to load this into your available designs, then select that thumbnail in the Slide Design window and check the "Exchange background" checkbox on the dialog. Press OK, and all slides should now change to the new background (just now tested several times).