Comments disappeared

[mazaya]

I have many PowerPoint presentations that I am viewing in Impress. I need to make comments on each of them which I did. I got the usual tag in the upper corner of each slide with my initials which popped open when I clicked on it so I could write my comments.

Everything seemed to be working fine. I saved each presentation in .ppt. Then I went back to view them again the comments are GONE! All of them... just disappeared.

I clicked on 'view' then 'comments' to make sure I hadn't deactivated comments by mistake but they weren't (I turn them off and on again just to be sure but nothing happened)

I spent hours writing comments on these presentations. I need them back. Please please, any help would be appreciated!

* I just noticed that comments disappeared in documents that I saved in .doc as well

[RoryOF]

Try /View /Comments (may be turned off)

[mazaya]

Tried it a few times. Didn't make any difference.

[RoryOF]

OpenOffice is not an MS Office clone; the import/export filters have been reverse engineered, with variable results as you are finding. Best to work always in OpenOffice's native formats and export out only when necessary. In preparing a presentation best to use the Notes pages rather than the Comments, as the notes can then be displayed for the presenter using Presenter Console.

[acknak]

I see the same: comments are lost on saving in .ppt. Too bad; I can't think of anything to try for this.

I couldn't find any open issue for it; it should probably be reported. [Tutorial] Reporting bugs or suggestions

[mazaya]

Best to work always in OpenOffice's native formats and export out only when necessary. In preparing a presentation best to use the Notes pages rather than the Comments, as the notes can then be displayed for the presenter using Presenter Console.

I understand but I'm correcting and commenting on my students' presentations. They use PowerPoint so I need to find a way around this... Using notes isn't ideal but I guess I could try that instead.

Funny thing though is I took a look at other files I commented on and my comments appear correctly. I can see them in files that were saved in Word 97-2003 format, but not in PowerPoint 97-2003.

[bjtpro]

Same issue here. I saved some class notes in Impress via the comments function, and they're nowhere to be found. I'm pretty bummed as my test is next week.

[acknak]

Too late now--sorry--but it's best to never depend on saving to any format other than OO's native ODF (.odp for presentations). That's by far the safest document format for working in OO.

If you have a .ppt file from your class, you can always use File > Save As and choose the ODF document format; then save your changes in the new file.

If you need to send the document to someone else, you can always save as pdf or .ppt if necessary, and your work will still be safe in the ODF document.