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Pen doesn't work during slide show in PowerPoint 2003

Problem

In PowerPoint 2003, when you run a slide show, you aren't seeing the expected annotation pen and other tools that normally appear on a popup toolbar in the lower left corner of the screen.

Solution

First, check your PowerPoint and SlideShow settings:

If that doesn't restore the missing tools, your copy of PowerPoint may be missing a few bits. Thanks to PowerPoint MVP Sonia Coleman's research, we now know that if you do a limited install of Office 2003 and don't install the Microsoft Handwriting Component under Office Shared Features, you can't use the pen feature in slide show mode.

To repair the problem,

By default Handwriting Components are set to "Install on first use" during a typical install, but if the person doing the install has set this feature to "Not Available" the pen tools will never appear.

Search terms:pen,slideshow,show,annotation,drawing


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Pen doesn't work during slide show in PowerPoint 2003
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00669_Pen_doesn-t_work_during_slide_show_in_PowerPoint_2003.htm
Last update 07 June, 2011
Created: