Extra spaces appearing in text

Hi Jeanette, thanks for the speedy response.

There is a workaround that solves my problem on the link you suggested but I was hoping I wouldn't have to resort to a workaround.

This seems like a pretty glaring error to me - any ideas when a proper fix is planned? 

Yeah, really sorry for the inconvenience. To a great extent it's a PowerPoint issue that's somewhat out of our control, but we do recognize it as a problem and hope to address it, just not sure of the timeframe.

You're not alone Steven, I was just checking as I get the same annoying problem when I apply Bold to a word. At least there is a workaround.

Hi Scott. Yeah we're lucky there is a workaround although it kinda takes the rapid out of rapid development

This is not a "fix" and only a marginal workaround. Using character spacing to control the extra spaces does not work in every instance. It's sort of hit and miss. And, as Steven say, "it kinda takes the rapid out" of the process when nearly every page in a 60-slide product requires manual trail-and-error tweaking. I am terribly disappointed with the quality of the text in my final product.

Hi Cindy,

I apologize that you're not satisfied with your output.  Feel free to submit a support case to us & we'll see if there's anything that we can do to make it better:

http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/

For anyone interested, I created a PowerPoint Macro that will apply the .1 pt Expanded Character Spacing to all text for the entire PowerPoint file. As noted above this Macro automates the workaround in our KB with a single click. I would recommend performing a Save As with a new name or create a backup of your original PowerPoint file prior to running this Macro.

Simply download this Macro Enabled PowerPoint file, extract the FixSpacing.pptm and follow the instructions on the first slide.

Please note, this method is not supported by Articulate but was provided to help streamline our workaround.

Thanks for the Macro!

You're welcome Scott. Let us know how this works out for you.

I've added a Blog article to my site. From there you can view a Screenr showing how to use this macro.

I was searching through the old forums and this problem has been hanging around since 2007. I too am having spacing issues with hyperlinks in Engage. It's frustrating that such a basic function as adding a link would cause it to add arbitrary spaces and tabs. This is truly an Articulate problem as I make sure the text I import comes from notepad with not extra charachters, then add the hyperlink in engage. This is one of the reasons I have a love/hate relationship with Articulate.

Engage text formatting is a real pain, something I am sure will be fixed in the next release or the beta testers will not have done their jobs properly

I agree with Kriss, and I am surprised at Phil's response.

In-line text formatting is basic functionality and it should be a no-brainer to work on a fix, without relying on Beta testers to report it. If the testers didn't catch it before the latest release -- or any of the fixes that have followed -- then clearly the Alpha test design was lacking, and Beta testing was missing something important. I would think Beta testing should include testing the text formatting function and aesthetics of on-screen text in the products built with these tools.

I have spent countless hours fixing up text in a quite simple project to make it "good enough" because there's no way to do exactly what the client wants -- unpaid time because the software I recommended we use to meet her needs has this major flaw.

For those who are using the macro kindly provided by David Burton, please keep in mind that it's not a one-shot trust-the-macro deal if you have multiple types of formatting applied to text. You still have to go back and make adjustments on a case-by-case basis, as spacing differences are inconsistent. For example, in one place you may need to reduce space by 20%, in another by 70%, and in yet other cases you may need to completely remove spaces between words. Just thought you might want to know.

Cindy I was talking specifically about engage, engage text formatting is awful, there are so many thjings wrong with it I can not believe that it passed testing in the first place. 

 I am also being a realist in that Studio 09 has undergone a number of updates and this has not been fixed.  We are all aware that studio is currently being updated, it is unlikely the text editing will ever be fixed in engage 09, I am then holding out hope that engage 12/13 will have all of these issues fixed, if not in the first beta (you are correct this needs to be done at alpha stage really) but by the time it is released.

Hey all, I am having a similar problem, and the workaround to change the character spacing is not working.  After making that change, I'm still getting a lack of space between the words "you" and "must" as shown below, and it's also inserting an extra "c" at the end of the first line.  Any ideas on how to fix this?

BTW, this does NOT show up when playing the animations in PPT, but DOES happen when I'm either previewing the slide, or viewing the published version.  Thanks for any help!

Hey Wade!

You're welcome to send us your files so we can take a closer look and work with you to find a solution. If you'd like to do that, please create an Articulate Presenter package, then upload the zip file to our server. You can review how to do this here: 

Send to Articulate Presenter Package – Articulate Presenter ’09 Help

Upload the resulting zip file from your computer to our server using this upload form: 

Articulate Support - Upload Your Files for Review 

Please be sure to include a description of your issue, your version of PowerPoint, version of Windows and version of Presenter '09, which you can find in Help and Support -> About Articulate Presenter. Please also include the URL for this thread so I can follow up with you personally in the forums. And feel free to come back and leave your case number here so I can keep a close eye on it. Thanks!

Peter,  thank you.  I have uploaded the file as directed.  I appreciate any help.  ~Wade

Sure thing, Wade. And just out of curiosity, what animations are you using? For your reference, here's our list of supported and unsupported animations:

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/?p=400

Someone will be contacting you shortly. Thanks for your patience

Thanks, Peter.  I'm using "ascend" for all of them...so it looks like that's supported.  Awesome link though...that'll help in the future.

Subtraction.

This may not satisfy everyone, but when publishing to Flash adds a space you don't want, the simplest of workarounds is to delete the space in your PowerPoint. I have never had an instance of this not solving the problem.  It works with hyperlinks, italics, bolding.

Addtion.

When text published in Flash looks smashed together or as if spacing was removed, it's simple enough to add a period or two in the PowerPoint textbox and change the color of the periods to the background color of the text.  They dissappear but the spacing remains.

These are not elegant or long-term solutions, but over time I have learned that they're quick and they solve the problem.

Wade,

According to the data embedded in your .pptx, the text should have the OpenType font 'Prestige Elite Std' applied. However, the screenshot provided appears to be a different font, perhaps (Calibri). To fix this corruption, please deleted the text box with this issue and recreate. 

The link below is what the OpenType  'Prestige Elite Std' font should look like.

http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-US&event=displayFontPackage&code=1145

Note: When pasting your text into notepad (used to strip formatting) and copied and pasted back into a new PowerPoint text box, you might notice the font style does not match what was originally copied; regardless of applying the same font and size.

I hope this helps!

David,

Yep, that worked.  Awesome!  You guys rock!  We did indeed develop an earlier version with Prestige font, but changed it to Calibri.  I would like to know why this happens so that in the future I can decide whether to edit what we have or start over with new text boxes.  Can you help with that?  Why was this a corruption?

Thanks again!

Wade

Wade,

I think we can chalk this up to file corruption. Due to the complexity of the embedded PowerPoint file structure, this happens more than you might know. Just make sure you don't work with PowerPoint/Articulate files while they reside on a network.