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PowerPoint Horizontal Guide Line Disappears (Bug)

Anonymous
2019-03-13T22:52:46+00:00

I frequently use the vertical and horizontal "guides" in PowerPoint. These are the dashed lines that appear when you press Alt+F9. Today, I moved the horizontal guide down to be flush with the bottom edge of the page in Slide view. When I released the mouse button, the guide completely disappeared. I can find nothing to bring it back. If I create a new presentation and press Alt+F9, the guide reappears at the normal "0" position. But if I drag it down to the bottom edge of the page, POOF!, its gone. 

I've searched online extensively and have not been able to find any fixes to this version, Office 365 with the latest updates.

Microsoft 365 and Office | PowerPoint | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-03-14T01:29:43+00:00

    Ok, so not a bug. Still, a very poor design, in my opinion.

    There is no reason to permanently hide the guides, especially when the guide is moved to the page edge. For example, if you have a bitmap object on a slide which exceeds the page dimensions and you want to draw something over top of the bitmap without going past the page edge, the guides would be extremely helpful to have. 

    What is wrong with requiring people to just press Alt-F9 again to hide the guides?

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  2. John Korchok 231.6K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2019-03-14T14:48:40+00:00

    It might take a delicate touch to get it to the edge without going off. Here's some VBA from Steve Rindsberg that allows you to add guides at exact distances without dragging: Adding, Deleting and Moving Guides. I tested this and you can add guides at 0 points, right at the edge of the slide.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-03-14T05:27:43+00:00

    And as (the other) John says dragging OFF slide deletes the guide if you release the mouse. Dragging to be flush with the edge of the slide should not.

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  4. John Korchok 231.6K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2019-03-13T23:56:00+00:00

    That's one method of deleting guides, by dragging them off the slide. It works the same way whether you drag a horizontal guide to the top or bottom, or a vertical guide to the left or right. This was introduced in PowerPoint 2013 for Windows and PowerPoint 2016 for Mac. Sorry, not a bug.

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