Share presentations with users who don't have thinkcell

This section covers some issues that arise when your coworkers use PowerPoint without thinkcell installed.

Load files from thinkcell in PowerPoint

Any files created by PowerPoint with thinkcell installed are 100% compatible with PowerPoint. This means that coworkers and customers who do not have thinkcell installed can open and edit the files without noticing any difference. The thinkcell elements appear as regular PowerPoint shapes such as textboxes and PowerPoint chart objects.

Reimport thinkcell elements from PowerPoint

Consider the following scenario:

1. A presentation has been created using PowerPoint with thinkcell installed, and contains thinkcell elements.
2. The same presentation has been edited in PowerPoint without thinkcell, and some of the shapes that are part of a thinkcell element have been altered.
3. Now, you want to use thinkcell again to further modify the elements.

In this scenario, when you attempt to select a thinkcell element that has been altered without thinkcell, the software will recognize the element as inconsistent and display the following message box:

In order to proceed, you will need to decide whether to continue using the PowerPoint edited version without thinkcell functionality or to reimport the element to thinkcell.

You should carefully consider the following consequences before making your decision:

• Manually carry over changes to thinkcell reimports the element to thinkcell and restores the intelligent thinkcell element functionality, but discards all changes made without thinkcell. If you wish to preserve any of the changes then they must be manually re-applied to the thinkcell element.
• Continue editing without thinkcell functionality continues to use the PowerPoint edited version and ensures that all changes are preserved. The intelligent thinkcell element functionality, however, is lost and standard PowerPoint tools must be used to further edit these shapes and objects.

If you decide to use Manually carry over changes to thinkcell, then the following toolbar is displayed, letting you compare slides containing the alternative versions of the thinkcell element:

The toolbar lets you quickly and easily view the slides containing the PowerPoint and thinkcell versions of the element.

You may want to compare the thinkcell element with the PowerPoint version and compare and copy, for example, data values to reflect any changes that you wish to preserve in the thinkcell version.

Having made any necessary changes, click the Finish button to remove the PowerPoint version from the presentation and end the reimport process.