Why don’t motion clips animate?
MS has put up http://dgl.microsoft.com to provide additional clip art for programs such as PowerPoint and Publisher.
One thing you should know about DGL is that the clips you download will come packaged as either CIL files or as MPF files.
CIL and MPF files are like WinZip files–they package up the clips along with keyword search terms and such into one nice little file.
When downloading CIL/MPF files, you should have the choice to either Save to Disk(i.e., your computer) or Install.
I usually choose Save to Disk mostly out of habit, but also because I seem to have fewer problems installing from a saved copy on my harddrive than I do installing things over the web.
Anyway, if you do choose Save to Disk, then after the file is downloaded, you need to go find it on your computer and double-click the CIL file. That will install the clips to the Clip Gallery and you’ll be good to go. MSKB 160475 has more information on this. http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q160/4/75.asp
MPF files are basically the same as CIL files, but MPF is the format recognized by the Office XP Clip Organizer. CIL is recognized by Clip Gallery 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0.
The DGL site is brand spankin’ new, and because of this, we’re seeing new, challenging errors cropping up in the DGL newsgroup. I’ll try to keep track of some of them below.
The system cannot find the file specified.
I’m hearing from users that deleting Temporary Internet Files solves this problem. The reason it crops up all of a sudden is because your Temporary Internet Files have finally “hit the wall” so to speak, and there’s not enough room in the temporary internet file folder left for DGL to do what it needs.
The users who experience this typically have a LOT of temporary internet files on their drives. We’re talking 40+MB! Performing some basic disk maintenance seems to keep this issue from being an issue.
If you get this error, please try this fix and then email me and let me know a) how many temporary internet files you had, b) how large the files were (altogether), and c) if it solved the problem or not. estimate@echosvoice.com
Error 0x080004005 is sometimes associated with Real’s RealDownload. If RealDownload is present, remove it and see if that clears this up.
And please let me know if it does. Or doesn’t, for that matter. echos@indy. net
Why don’t motion clips animate?
This is because PPT 97 doesn’t support animated GIFs. PPT2000 and PPT2002 do, though. (There’s more info about PPT and GIF on the Gotchas! page.)
Here’s what I usually post to offer workarounds to this:
There are a couple of ways to get anigifs into PPT97.
1. Convert the GIF to AVI, which PPT97 handles nicely. Gif Construction Set is one converter. http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html I think another is Animation Shop Pro by JASC. PPT MVP Sonia Coleman (link below) has a brief tutorial on how to convert.
2. You can drag and drop your GIF into PPT. (This slick trick is courtesy of PPT MVP Austin Myers.) Instructions for this can also be found at http://www.soniacoleman.com in the Quick Tricks section. This isn’t a good solution if you’re planning to distribute your presentation to anyone or use the PPT viewer to show the file.
Oh, and Word will run anigifs if you save as HTML.
Interestingly enough, PPT 2002 (aka PPT XP) has a new feature that allows rotating/flipping of clip art, but if you open a file with rotated/flipped clipart in PPT 97 or 2000, the rotation/flip disappears and the clips revert to their original state.
The really weird thing is that if you then save the file in PPT 2000 or 97 and reopen it in PPT 2002, the clips are still rotated/flipped.
If this is happening to you, head to http://www.mvps.org/skp/ to get Shyam’s “unflip” addin to fix this.
The workaround in PPT 97 and 2000 is to select your clip, go to the Draw menu and select Ungroup (say yes to “Do you want to convert?”) then Group it. You can now flip the clip.
