This morning I lost one and half hours of work because powerpoint decided to hang on me. (not crash).  Then when I finally decide to kill it and start it again it decided it was a good choice to corrupt my presentation and not offering me any recovering option.  So I had to get the last version from GIT again (thanks God I put everything in git) and start all over again.

Now a crash is always bad, no question about it. Loosing data worse.  But we are all used to it, especially under windows (sorry no denying it). So I shouted a single curse and start working again. In the next 5 hours I worked on the presentation Powerpoint decided to crash another 8 times on me. This time I came prepared and saved every step in my git repository.

So how to crash/hang your powerpoint? well it is easy:

1. Create a nice little graph in Excell.
2. copy paste this into a power point slide.
3. Click on the graph, and while selected add some arrow in it. (if you add the arrows ontop of the slide it is slightly less crashy)
4. Select the graph, click ‘edit data’.
5. Change some values in the excell sheet (so the graph will update)
6. Go back and select one of the data lines.
7. Notice that powerpoint is not responding anymore
8. Curse
9. Try to close powerpoint.
10. Force close powerpoint
11. Open powerpoint
12. 50% you lost a lot
13. go to point 1.

Next time I guess I am gonna invest a bit more time and use beamer. Stupid powerpoint.

Other things that can get you completely mad in office 2007:

1. When you are in ‘edit data’ for a graph, hitting the arrows key is the worse thing you can do. Screw up guaranteed. (I always expect the cursor in the entry box that has focus to move, not to add fields from the sheet).
2. Trying to select a small piece of line between 2 larger blocks.  Even if you click right on it, and there is no overlap of other objects. It will select the larger object next to it.
3. trying to embed a video.
4. Having the video actually show up on the beamer.
5. Having the video show up on the beamer (after it worked during the test) during the presentation.
6. Have an animation of a block that resizes from AxA to BxC.  Yes we can make it spin, bounce, move along a curve, grow X%, but there is no animation to let it resize to an exact size/position. (that I could find)
7. If you switch a graph from bars in the vertical direction to horizontal bars, reverse the order of the sets. (you normally read from left to right , top to bottom not left to right bottom to top…)
8. Allow me to easy enter a multi line entry in a excell cell. Because I need it in the the graph legend (right word?).  Fastest way was typing it in word, and then copy pasting it in the cell.
9. etc.