In this new normal more and more online customer meetings are being done. I use powerpoint with animated clock countdown timers and integrated music at for instance the beginning and coffee breaks of the meetings. I start up slide mode and everything starts as it suppose to. I am using Teams to share it with customers by selecting window and then the powerpoint application. So far so good.

My problem is that as soon as you select another application on your screen by clicking on it the powerpoint animation and music stops until you activate the powerpoint application again. This means that you can not do anything at the same time on your computer while waiting for the clock to end.

Is there a way around this that you could implement in powerpoint so that the animation and sound is not interrupted when working with another application?

Please have your developers use and become proficient at a basic graphic design program. Graphic designers by and large are your primary users and happen to use software that has a designer's logic to it. Powerpoint's basic functionality and workflow consistently ignores this "best practice" development approach and causes so many discontinuities (read: Frustration) that if it wasn't so maddening it would be laughable. That said, there are some basic things that would make the program more user friendly:

1. Bezier curves: This is a extremely critical function! Illustrator provides fine controls that makes curves easy and quick to do - here are a few:

a) make points/nodes constrainable to vertical/horizontal/45 degree axes using the shift/click combo.

b) Make points/nodes moveable my arrow key increments by using the arrow keys.

1. Preferences: (related to Bezier curves) Make it possible to specify (objects/shapes and shape nodes) increments if moves using the arrow keys.




2. Get rid of you ribbon and your format pane - and use a dockable/undockable tools strategy - . Your attempts at making tools user context sensitive nearly always guesses what the user's next move and it gets in the way instead of helps. It's more efficient for a designer to choose the next move - your approach gets in the way.




3. Short cut keys: provide greater customization control. This might actually solve the lion's share of user workflow impediments. Adobe does this very well - follow their experience in this respect...because it is clear that they are listening to graphic designers who do intense production work all day long.




4. Shapes: Why make it 2-3 clicks to get to the shape making tool? It should be available as a single click - and it should be a short cut key for basic shapes like squares and ellipses. These two shapes are the foundation for any design space - don't bury them under so many clicks!

Text/font:

a) Should ALWAYS maintain formatting of the original copy!!!!

Format tool: So extremely cumbersome as it is. Use a simple eyedropper instead and make a standard shortcut key to access it....your rule should always be to eliminate the number of clicks it takes to get to the action a designer/user is trying to perform. Again - Illustrator (and other design programs like Sketch.

The basic suggestions I've provided above would go a long ways to making your users more happy using Powerpoint. Your font/text formatting also needs some work.

Feel free contact me if you'd like. I could get you thousands of designers to provide the same input I just did - and this is just a start. I will not fill out a survey so don't send me one. This is a matter you will only be able to address effectively if you have direct contact with those who use your products day in and day out like me.

In all Office for Mac programs, we currently have the ability to change the global Theme or Theme Colors or Theme Fonts.

Additionally, we can create custom Theme Color Sets in PowerPoint for Mac, which will flow to all the other Office for Mac programs. But we currently don't have the ability to create a custom Font Set in any of the Office for Mac programs. The workaround is to create the Font Set in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint on a PC (if you have one or you have to ask a friend) and THEN you have to copy that XML file from the PC's Themes Font folder and paste it in the Mac's Themes Font folder.

Ideally, we should be able to customize Color Sets and Font Sets in any Office for Mac app. We currently canNOT do that.

However, at the very least, this request is to add the Customize Font Set option in PowerPoint, similar to where the Customize Color Set option is.

PowerPoint for Mac > Design tab > Variants > Color Set > Customize Colors (EXISTS)
PowerPoint for Mac > Design tab > Variants > Font Set > Customize Fonts (DOES NOT EXIST)

Thank you!