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There's a few threads on this, none with a definitive answer.
It's 2022. People are using PowerPoint on monitors, not on paper. Why aren't we able to work in Pixels? Creating graphics is a complete nightmare. Even setting up an artboard to a standard 1080p size involves a conversion in inches... INCHES... come on guys. What's going on?
I've read something about the scale being dependent on your screen's resolution or something potty like that. Is that how websites work too? I think not.
Why isn't there at least an option to select pixels as a chosen unit of choice? I mean, it should (very obviously!) be the default, but heck, even if it's just an option to choose from, you'd make millions of people's lives that little bit easier, and I wouldn't have such a sore throat from yelling into my monitor in frustration every 12 minutes.
Kind regards
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A family of Microsoft presentation graphics products that offer tools for creating presentations and adding graphic effects like multimedia objects and special effects with text.
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Cheers for the response.
I guess that perhaps the main issue here, is that I'm using PowerPoint as an alternative to Adobe products so my clients can make edits. I'm not exactly using PP for what it was designed for.
However I don't think I'm alone; there are many designers having to grit their teeth, squint an eye, cover photos of loved ones and wade into the world of PowerPoint for similar reasons. It would be beneficial to those users to have the option to work exclusively in pixels across the platform by default.
My 2 cents anyway! Maybe if any other designers are reading this and agree you can make your voices heard to prove the point? I'll check this post again in a year and climb back into my box if I'm wrong...
Cheers for the quick response.
There are many scenarios, but the main one is that I need to create editable graphics. If it were up to me, I'd be in InDesign all day, but if a client needs to be able to edit a file, then I'll make it in PowerPoint. (I'm choosing it over Canva which says something!)
These graphics are usually size-specific - whether that's a social media post, which has different pixel dimensions that need adhering to depending on the platform, or maybe I'm making a graphic for a certain screen size, in which case I need my artboard set at specific pixel dimensions. It could even just be a basic presentation that I want to be in 1080p or maybe higher-res for when it's projected at a meeting. That document might need to contain photos, which obviously can't be vectors. I need to know how big that photo needs to be, in pixels. I could always import it as a massive picture and scale it down, but then I'm relying on PowerPoint to scale my graphics. It also affects file size. These are just off the top of my head, but ask yourself why every other graphics program out there worth mentioning, work in pixels by default? It's because it just makes sense.
I agree that vectors are obviously the way forward, but that doesn't mean we're even nearly at a point where we can forget about pixels.
Thanks for this. An interesting workaround, and helps to a point. It would be a lot simpler to just provide the option to work in pixels though.
It's such a bizarre move by Microsoft, especially after all this time. There must be something fundamental in the way it was built that makes it too hard to implement for whatever reason. That's the only explanation I can think of. It surely can't be someone's choice not to include the option.
Have a look at this article:
I can't answer the Why-question. But that's how Windows-based programs work. Use a Mac and you'll have the choice of pixels. On Windows you can change to milimeters and be a bit more precise than with inches.
But why do you need pixels? The future of graphics is vector graphics like SVGs, and they don't use pixels.