Ready for widescreen? How to manage aspect ratios in PowerPoint (16:9 vs. 4:3)

re: Ready for widescreen? How to manage aspect ratios in PowerPoint (16:9 vs. 4:3)

jsallen — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 01:03:26 GMT

So, basically, changing the aspect ratio of a presentation from 4:3 to 16:9 in the Page Setup dialog box under the Design tab in the ribbon ribbon will stretch or squish all the images and then you have go through the presentation and change them back one by one. Wouldn't it make more sense to retain the image's aspect ratio as it is, so the user would only possibly have to crop or resize the image? Even that could be made simpler if options to letterbox, pillarbox or crop to the original height or width appeared on screen.. I used to really like PowerPoint because of its easy and intuitive interface. It has taken a step backward.

re: Ready for widescreen? How to manage aspect ratios in PowerPoint (16:9 vs. 4:3)

michmas — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 03:16:23 GMT

Guys - this help documentation is ridiculously complicated (specifically the 'Aspect ratio conversion tables' section) . How can we expect anyone to figure this out? As an end user, I am completely baffled and frustrated that I can't find an answer to my (assumingly) simple question (and made to feel stupid in the meantime.)

An end users experience with Help documentation should be simple, clear and concise.

re: Ready for widescreen? How to manage aspect ratios in PowerPoint (16:9 vs. 4:3)

Jon Watte — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:45:14 GMT

I really, really wish PowerPoint had a "change aspect" feature that worked like "resize canvas" in Photoshop -- simply add padding at the sides; don't stretch anything! Sadly, I can't find a place to make this feature request -- mswish is dead, and Connect is for developers only.