PowerPoint does not Render Correctly

[MarkC]

When uploading a PowerPoint to Confluence (5.1.2), I've noticed that it does not render correctly. For instance, if you create a box in the PowerPoint and include a text box inside of it, when it renders in Confluence the text overflows the text box even though it fit inside of it in PPT.

If you draw an arrow, such as the plain, basic arrow, the line renders but the arrow pointing the direction does not.

Additionally, if you have text that is displayed in a different text orientation, such as English text in a text box with the text writing from top to bottom with text sideways, it renders in Confluence inside the text box. However, it re-orients the text and displays it left to right but crushes it inside the text box.

Is there a problem with how Confluence renders PowerPoints? Or is there some setting I'm possibly missing?

[fsim · Accepted solution]

The viewppt macro in Confluence is not perfect, I must say. The issues you mentioned are highlighted in the following bug reports/ improvement requests:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-27100

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-18029

So it's just a limitation with the product and not caused by a configuration/setting. Sorry about this

[Crystelle Spinnler]

For those of use that would like to use Confluence for project reporting but are still required to maintain a deck in ppt this would be a great feature to have. We would only have to create the update once to serve both purposes. I am sure that are many other uses but that is the one that jumps out at me at this moment. Overall, I think Confluence does a great job but I think to really utilize the JIRA integration you should be looking harder at how business users and PM's would use it if we could convince them to convert. This sort of "product limitation" makes it a very hard sell and SharePoint becomes a formidable contender. JMTC

[brookula]

I have successfully fixed this in Confluence 5.10.8 on RHEL 6.6

You'll need elevated rights in the OS. Do this in a nonprod env first to prove it works for you.

update setenv.sh

CATALINA_OPTS="-Dconfluence.document.conversion.fontpath=/usr/share/fonts/msttcore ${CATALINA_OPTS}"

yum install curl xorg-x11-font-utils fontconfig
wget ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/dag.wieers.com/redhat/el6/en/x86_64/dag/RPMS/cabextract-1.4-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
sudo rpm -i cabextract-1.4-1.el6.rf.x86_64.rpm
download the msttcore rpm from https://sourceforge.net/projects/mscorefonts2/?source=typ_redirect and transfer it to confluence app server
rpm -i /tmp/msttcore-fonts-installer-2.6-1.noarch.rpm

stop confluence

Delete the files in
<confluence_home>/viewfile/
<confluence_home>/shared-home/dcl-thumbnail/
<confluence_home>/shared-home/dcl-document/

Start confluence

[brookula]

https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/the-text-in-a-powerpoint-excel-or-word-document-looks-different-when-using-the-viewfile-macro-200213562.html

[Rebecca Bever]

@brookula I was looking for a fix everywhere and this did the trick! I did notice that even though the text is now in fact rendering after uploading it to confluence all of the text gets shifted around a bit and makes it very difficult to view and then cleanup. Any thoughts on this and ways to fix this?

Thanks in advance!

[brookula]

One of the notes in the link I provided provides a clue as to why the text doesn't match perfectly.

"Make sure that the document is using the correct fonts. For example, the msttcorefonts package does not include Wingdings but one called Webdings. In Windows this will fallback correctly, but not with Confluence. This also occurs for fonts such as Helvetica. Use Arial in the document instead."

Atlassian also notes that the viewfile macro is going away in a future release. The macro is dependent on the office connector which has known performance issues.

I encourage my users to do the workaround of downloading the file and viewing it in PowerPoint instead of using the viewfile macro. This is rarely successful. Users want what they want.

[Rebecca Bever]

Thanks for your response!

Yeah, sadly the extra step is kind of a deterrence. While searching for a confluence slide/powerpoint alternative (was hoping for something Excellentable) I did find GoEdit which creates a checkout/checkin system for the users: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/de.kontextwork.goedit/cloud/overview

Regardless, if we go this route or not we'll make it work. Thanks for the post.

[Ashok Manthina]

Any update?

[Jim]

Any responses on this? We are having similar problems...

[Jorge]

We have the same problems and sometimes it doesn't load the presentation at all. Or sometimes it loads some slides only.

[Matthew Brent]

Here is the issue link for the cropping problem: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-28606

[Henrik]

Mostly the problem I get is that it cuts off the bottom of all slides, which means that slides decks are missing lines of text.