Overtype in PowerPoint

Question

As a translator I often need to replace all the text in PowerPoint presentations. If I could overtype the existing text (as in Word) this would facilitate my work enormously and avoid repetitive stress from continually having to delete the existing text. Overtype does not seem to be a standard function available in the normal PowerPoint setup. Is there any way to activate it?

Answer 1

Thanks for replying. I have no access to anybody technical so an add-on is not feasible. I was hoping to get someone from Microsoft to offer a solution, since I can hardly believe why such a basic and useful function should have purposefully be denied PowerPoint users. It just does not make sense to me. I wonder whether it is hidden away somewhere.

Answer 2

How odd. I'd never noticed this, but you're right.

I suspect you already know this but ... If you select the text you want to change first, anything you type will replace the text you've selected.

Not at all the same thing, I know.

You could also keep notepad or a similar simple text editor window open; copy the text you want to edit into it, edit, then copy and paste back atop the original.

Or if you or someone you know is mildly handy with VBA, you could write a simple add-in.  VBA's text boxes DO support overwrite, so you could have a textbox on a form pick up the current text, you'd edit it there, then it'd reapply it to the selected shape.