Open XML II - Lesson 1: Practice in PowerPoint
This is an additional practice for lesson 1 of the Office Online Training course Open XML II: Editing documents in the XML (link to come). In the course itself, you were able to practice in Word. This additional practice session provides steps and a sample file for practicing tasks from this lesson in PowerPoint.
Note: It is strongly recommended that you view lesson 1 of the above-referenced course and complete the Word practice session in that course before proceeding with this practice session.
You may want to print these instructions before beginning the exercise, so that you can easily keep them visible. To download the sample file required for this exercise, click here.
******************* ready to begin? .... here you go.... *******************************
After you download the sample file, open the file in PowerPoint. Then, notice the formatting of the open sample slide. The Title Slide layout that is applied to the slide has been modified to include a rounded rectangle behind the title text placeholder. Also notice that an additional frame shape appears around the edge of that layout.
In this exercise, you will edit the fill color and reflection for the rounded rectangle shape.
1. Save a copy of the PowerPoint document with a .zip file extension, as follows:
• Click the Microsoft Office Button and then click Save As. In the Save As dialog box, in the Save as type list, select PowerPoint Presentation (*.pptx).
• Type “Sample.zip” in the File Name box, including the quotation marks.
• Select the Desktop as the location in which to save this file. Then, click Save.
2. Close the document. Then press CTRL+D to view your desktop and double-click the file to open the ZIP package.
3. In the ZIP package, double-click the ppt folder to open it. Notice that this folder includes subfolders for the slides, layouts, and masters included in the presentation. Because the rounded rectangle you are going to edit is located on the title slide layout, double-click the slideLayouts folder to open it. Then drag the file slideLayout1.xml to your desktop to create a copy of the file on your desktop. (slideLayout1.xml is the Title Slide layout)
4. On the desktop, double-click the copy of slideLayout.xml that you just created. This will open the file in your default XML viewer. On the desktop, right-click the copy of slideLayout1.xml that you just opened and then click Edit.
The same file is now open in your default XML viewer and your default XML editor.
5. In your XML viewer, locate the first shape in the file, which is indicated by a
To confirm that you have found the correct shape, note that the default name given to the rounded rectangle in this file is Rounded Rectangle 7. The number 7 is assigned by PowerPoint because this was the seventh object placed on that slide layout. Notice that the properties for the rounded rectangle shape are quite long because this shape has several types of complex formatting, including a bevel, 3-stop gradient fill, and reflection.
6. Scroll down slightly to locate the gradient fill settings. These begin with the tag a:gradFill and look like the following image. Notice that many of the tags that define graphic formatting start with the prefix a instead of p. The a represents Office Art.
• The gradient fill formatting includes the list of gradient stops and information about the type and behavior of the gradient, such as the a:lin tag, which indicates that this is a linear gradient.
• The a:lumMod and a:lumOff tags included in the formatting for each gradient stop represent the percent variation from the primary scheme color used at each stop. As with many percent values in Office Art attributes, these percentages are multiplied by 100,000. So, for example, 50% (or 0.5) is represented as 50000.
• The pos attribute inside each gradient stop (a:gs) tag represents the starting position of that gradient stop. It is also a percent value represented as the percent times 100,000.
7. In your XML editor, locate the gradient stop list and change the color for all three stops from accent1 to bg1. The abbreviation bg1 stands for Background 1 and represents the Light 1 theme color, which is white in this sample document.
Save the file but leave it open and return to the XML viewer.
8. Refresh the page in your XML viewer to show your changes and confirm that no error messages appear. In Internet Explorer, press F5 to refresh the page.
9. In your XML viewer, look directly beneath the gradient formatting to find the effect list, which includes only a reflection in the case of this rounded rectangle. The reflection tag looks something like this.
• Most of the attributes in the reflection tag are also expressed as percentages multiplied by 100,000. So, for example, the endPos attribute, which stands for End Position for the reflection (or percent of the original shape that appears in the reflection) is 38.5%, represented as 38500.
• The stA and endA attributes represent the start and end Alpha values. Alpha is the percent opacity (the opposite of the percent transparency). The reflection shown here begins at 50% opaque and ends at 0.003% opaque (99.997% transparent).
10. In your XML editor, locate the reflection tag. Change the endPos to 60% (60000) and the start Alpha value to 40% (40000). Then save and close the file.
11. Refresh the page in your XML viewer to confirm your changes. If you made the changes as indicated in the preceding step, the beginning of the reflection tag now reads:
12. If you can see all of your changes in your XML viewer, close the viewer. Then copy the slideLayout1.xml file that you just edited and paste it back into the slideLayout folder inside the Sample.zip ZIP package, replacing the existing slideLayout1.xml file.
13. If you don’t want to make more changes in the XML, change the file extension back to .pptx. To do this, select the file and then press F2 to activate the file name. Change the file extension to .pptx and then press ENTER to accept your changes.
14. Double-click the file to open it in PowerPoint. If you made the changes as described in the exercise, notice the following differences:
• The rounded rectangle now has a gradient fill that ranges from light gray to white.
• The reflection is now slightly less opaque than previously and it is longer, running behind the first line of the subtitle.
Keep in mind for your future documents that reflection is one type of graphic effect that you cannot customize in PowerPoint. When you need a reflection setting that is not available from the Reflection options on the Drawing Tools Format tab (such as a different opacity or length, or different distance between the shape and its gradient), you can customize that in the XML just as you have done here.
Congratulations! You have just successfully completed editing the XML for a PowerPoint presentation!