Print Selection grayed out

Question

I want to print only selected object(s).  The Print Selection is grayed out regardless of whether I selected an equation, a chart object, or a simple rectangle.  Of course, it is also grayed out when a grouped collection of such things is selected.

What would cause the Print Selection to be grayed out?  Is it normally unavailable in Powerpoint?  If so, why is it in the dropdown list?  I noticed that it isn't grayed out so long as nothing is selected...what a teaser.  Software developer humour?

Afternote: A workaround if you have Adobe Pro is to print the entire slide, ensuring that the whole slide is blank except for the objects of interest.  You can then crop away the white space.  You might be able to use other PDF manipulation tools as well.  How easy it is in Adobe Pro also depends on the version, I suspect, as well as on the PDF writer used.

In my case, it was a chart I wanted from Excel.  After pasting it into powerpoint and inserting a math forumla as one of the axis titles, I printed the otherwise blank slide to PDF.  When cropping the PDF, I could not take advantage of the Adobe's 1-click checkbox to crop away white space.  The cropping had to be manually adjusted.  I was using PDF 24 as the writer.

However, if I print the chart directly to PDF from Excel, Adobe's 1-click cropping of margin white space worked.  Fortunately, I found that I *could* print directly from Excel because Excel had the same equation creation tool so Powerpoint became an unnecessary step.

Note that when printing from Excel, I had to plunk the chart and formula into a temporary worksheet, then print that worksheet in isolation. This is because (surprise) I could not Print Selection when the chart and equation objects were selected. That option was grayed out.

Your situation may differ, of course.  Hope this helps someone, though.  Save them an entire blooming evening.

Answer 1

Print Selection means "Print the slides I've selected" ... it doesn't print the selected shapes.

So if you haven't selected at least one or more slides, the option will be grayed out.

And if no shapes are selected, then from PPT's point of view, the current selection is the current slide ...and with a slide selected, you DO get the Print Selected option.

Answer 2

And I bet Steve agrees.

The print interface is .*^!** in 2010

Answer 3

You're right.  It *does* say "only print selected slides".

I was wrong.

However, I that brings up another beef.  Notice how cognitively noisy the "unholy" print panel is?  One of the reasons is visual clutter.  If you'll notice, every single option under the selection of what to print has 2 descriptions, sometimes almost saying the same thing, other times saying the same thing in different words.  If I supplied a table like that in a report, let's just say the feedback would be immediate and swift.  For good reason.  It would be trivial from them to combine (for example) "Print current slide" and "Only print current slide", the same thing could be said for the entire list.  So "Print Selection" in bold could be combined with the *subordinated* (and grayed out) "Only print seleted slides" into a single 3-word phrase "Print selected slides".  You don't have nearly redundant descriptions with important explanations relegated to an unnecessary subordinate companion phrase which, when grayed out, might be missed over by users who are in a hurry.  And who's in a hurry these days?  I mean, isn't that the epitome of efficient, streamline, direct, and succinct  user interface, so that users focus on what they are trying to accomplish rather than hunt through grayed out and subordinated visual clutter to find the little nuance that is different from another application which *explicitly* says print selected *pages*?

I agree that Selection could mean slides rather than shapes in VBA.  But that's precisely the point.  The word has already been defined by microsoft to mean a selection of any sort.  Which is why having a single short phrase that says "Print selected slides" is so much more useful than "Print selection" in bold (followed by a subordinated and grayed out explanation of what is meant).  It may be that VBA is not used by the majority of users, by why not be consistent and specific anyway?  I'm not talking about what is defensible on a technicality, but rather, good design of user interface.

Answer 4

Re "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" ... couldn't agree more, particularly as regards the print dialog. It's an unholy mess.

OTOH, have another look.  Beneath "Print selected" it does say "Only print the selected slides", and fwiw, this is what "Selected" has always meant in the PPT print dialog box, at least since 1990 or so.

Most users don't do VBA, so whatever specialized meaning might apply in VBA wouldn't affect how they interpret the text in the print dialog box.

And even so, in VBA, the current selection might be Slides rather than Shapes.

Answer 5

Yes, thanks.  I eventually figured out what was meant.  I also thought that it would be simple to remove all ambiguity by phrasing it as "Print Selected Slides".  From VBA'ing, the term "Selection" has a very specific meaning that Microsoft imparted to the word.  Also, didn't Old Word have something like Print Selected Pages?  The noun was very specific.  If GUI designers are going to simply gray out options and hope that users can psycically know what circumstances caused the gray-out, they can provide a bit of telepathic assistance by using specific wording.  If not, that's a perversion of the GUI philosophy, which is suppose to make things clearer than ye olde command line.  At least in the command line days, programs gave error messages.

Yes, it's a rant.  I'm still in recovery mode after migrating to Office 2010 from Office 2003, and it will probably last for the commercial life of Office 2010.  Just when I'm getting use to it, another facial revamp will occur.  Similar lingering psycological effects from the switch to the Aero "glass" look and feel of Windows 7 after the seemingly clear Windows XP days.  Why can't things stay the same if it ain't broke.