Earlier this morning, Jonathan pointed me at an online help page for
wrapping text around images in Microsoft Powerpoint 2007. I was both shocked and amazed that such a help file even existed—especially in 2009! Microsoft actually wants you to hack together a solution to wrapping text, even though they have long automated the task in Word.
It's one thing for a company to provide helpful documentation on how to perform a complex design decision, but it's entirely another for someone like Microsoft to post such a bogus "help" file. Anyone could hack something together like that. What Microsoft should be doing is providing tools to do this automatically within Powerpoint, just like they do with Word.
It took only a few clicks and I didn't even have to use multiple text boxes. I just positioned my image after setting the alignment. Why is it that Microsoft doesn't have a similar solution for Powerpoint? They have a solution for a problem, but instead of actually cross-implementing it (which I imagine could be a bit of a chore), they hand it off to people like you and I.
When it comes to product suites, cross-implementing features is key. It's a selling point, a usability concern, and above all else it just makes sense.
Don't make me think.
Text wrapping in Powerpoint 2007. It only takes four boxes to wrap text around the image.
Text wrapping in Word 2007. What takes a hack job in Powerpoint, I did in a few clicks.