Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 63120
Master Document for presentations
Last modified: 2014-05-02 10:40:13 UTC
Hi, I'm using impress intensively and a feature I'm really missing is the ability to create a presentation by gathering other presentations, like one can do with writer and its concept of "master document". Indeed, I tend to create very focused presentations : team.odp, product.odp, market.odp, figures.odp.... Then, to create a presentation for a specific customer, I assemble these pieces into one new and unique document. The problem is that it happens that, while doing this process, I sometimes want to update a part of the presentation (like the product part). So right now, I have to do it in the customer's specific presentation, and then, I have to do it all over again in my product.odp presentation to keep it updated. This is really bad for productivity and one should be able to only link to other Impress documents to elaborate a presentation. I hope my explanation was clear, do not hesitate to ask me questions if it wasn't... Thanks, thibs
If you use Insert - File you can open the + and choose single slides (more than one with Ctrl down) to be inserted from another presentation. In that dialog you can check to link them. Does that not work for you?
Reassigned.
To regina : I tried your solution, it is indeed a good workaround as it basically allows me to do what I expected with master documents. However, I think this feature is too hidden and the procedure to insert document is different from the one we have with master documents in Writer. This could confuse users (actually, it confused me :)). This feature should have a lot more exposure than it has now. It is just too great in terms of productivity to be hidden. This features allows you to reinvent your entire presentations workflow. Before, it was a nightmare : you had to keep all your presentations up-to-date once you changed a single word. I can tell you that being able to link to other slides, it now feels like heaven :) Thanks, thibs
After further investigations, I can add some comments here : * The "Insert file..." feature in Impress is not consistent with the one which exists in Writer. In Writer, this feature does not let the user the possibility to "just link" to another Writer document. In a way, this makes sense because to achieve such an operation in Writer, the user has to use the master document feature. However, this makes the "Insert file..." feature inconsistent between the various OpenOffice.org modules, which is definitely not good because it confuses the user. * The "Insert file..." feature in Impress is well implemented because only the relative path to the linked document is saved. So, provided your colleague has the same file hierarchy, he can open your Impress file without any problems. Cool :) However, for consistency's sake, I still think this feature should be implemented ala "Master document" and not in "Insert file...". My 2 cents, Thanks, Go OOo ! thibs
This Issue requires more information ('needmoreinfo'), but has not been updated within the last year. Please re-test with one of the latest versions of OOo - the problem(s) may have already been addressed. Either use the recent stable version: http://download.openoffice.org/index.html or consider trying the new OOo 3 BETA (still in testing): http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/ Please report back the outcome so this Issue may be closed or progressed as necessary - otherwise it may be Resolved as Invalid in the future. You may also wish to search for (and note) any duplicates of this Issue that may have advanced further : http://www.openoffice.org/issues/query.cgi Regards, Andrew Cleaning-up and Closing old Issues as part of: ~ The Grand Bug Squash, pre v3 ~
In the new releases of OOo (3.0.1), the issue remains the same. Linking to other documents dynamically is implemented in Writer under the concept of "Master document", whereas in Impress it is implemented under the "insert file" functionality. I agree that this might lead to confusion for people trying to find the master document feature in impress. In fact, I find it annoying that Impress has many differences compared to Writer in features that are supposed to be similar. So I think it it will be very useful if "master document" or “Master Presentation†feature is added to Impress in order to keep all OOo products consistent with each other, and to eliminate one extra thing a user has to learn about OOo. (i.e. learn the mechanism once in writer and apply it in impress, not learn it in writer and then learn it again in Impress!) -Nawwar Kabbani
This Issue requires more information ('needmoreinfo'), but has not been updated within the last year. Please provide feedback as requested and re-test with the the latest version of OpenOffice - the problem(s) may already be addressed. You can download Apache OpenOffice 3.4.1 from http://www.openoffice.org/download Please report back the outcome of your testing, so this Issue may be closed or progressed as necessary - otherwise the issue may be Resolved as Invalid in the future.
Confirmed with AOO410m18(Build:9764) - Rev. 1589052 2014-04-22 12:11 - Linux x86_64 Debian