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is there any way to turn on the "Overtyping" feature in Powerpoint 2007 (you press the Insert key and then typing new characters replaces any existing characters to the right side of the insertion point)?

In Word 2007 it's disabled by default, but it's possible to activate manually (Microsoft Office Button Button -> Word Options -> Advanced -> Under Editing options, select or clear the Use overtype mode check box)

In Powerpoint 2007 there are no such checkboxes. Any way to enable it through some VBA/Macro magic?

Thanks

fixer1234
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Siim K
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    +1, good question. It seems there is no overtype mode available for PowerPoint (any version). – Nicu Zecheru Aug 10 '10 at 17:42
  • As an aside: in (older versions of) Word there's an indicator "INS" in the status bar at the bottom. Double-clicking that also toggles insert mode. (Also: in my experience users eventually are much happier by learning to first select the text to be replaced, and then just start typing. That works well even if the number of new characters does not match the original number. But your use case might be totally different of course.) – Arjan Sep 01 '10 at 13:33

1 Answers1

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Good question. An odd feature to be missing from a program as feature laden as powerpoint.

The 2007 powerpoint object model doesn't indicate there's help here either. The TextRange object only contains functions for insert, find/replace, and cursor position.

It might be possible to write a macro that deleted the character to the right of the cursor as you typed each character, simulating typeover, I don't think you want to go there.

DaveParillo
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  • Thanks for a thorough answer. I'm actually going to accept yours since looks like there really is no (reasonably) easy way to achieve it. – Siim K Sep 27 '10 at 18:43