Unable to edit slide properties - Edit is dimmed

Question

Can anybody clue me in to why my Edit button would be dimmed? None of the slides are locked.  By clicking on 'Select All', the Edit button activates, but of course then I can only edit all slides -
Can someone tell me how to remove media from a slide if I can't get to the Properties of the slide??
This is driving me nuts - why can't I edit properties of slides?
Attached a screenshot.
Thanks for the vent

Answer 1

Poregon,
That's okay...venting is good.
After looking at your screen shot, I'm wondering how you ended up w/ the Edit button at all.  By default, the Slide Manager dialog box should have only showed the "Select All" button...and then, and ONLY then, the Edit button would have appeared.  And for what its worth, the default functionality of the Slide Manager is to provide slide-by-slide adjustment to it's properties such as setting the slide title, advancing by user and locking a slide, just to name a few.
The Edit button (once you've selected more than one slide) will only allow you to modify the presenter's info, lock slide and advance by user options, so it's pretty restricted in terms of the parameters you can set over multiple slides.
And unless I'm completely wrong, as far as "removing media from a slide" is concerned, that's not something the Slide Manager is capable of doing.
What you're seeing in the listing of multimedia assets in the Slide Manager dialog box is simply a visual feedback element; meaning, that the Slide Manager is just visually identifying the kinds of things that your slides are using....like audio, animation and flash files.  But if you want to manage those assets, you need to look in the appropriate places...like the Edit Audio or Edit Flash dialog boxes.  In order to eliminate a flash file, all you have to do is go to the slide where the flash file exists and simply delete it from the slide.  Same thing goes for animations; and since those are PowerPoint items, that's a simple matter of eliminating any custom animation applied to objects and elements on your slide(s).  As for deleting audio, that's slightly tricker, because you have to use the Edit Audio dialog box....and from there you can cut audio or replace an audio segment with silence.  In a worst-case scenario, you might find yourself having to delete the slide that contains audio you want to eliminate...only to recreate that same slide, so that you end up with a slide that doesn't contain any audio at all.
Hope that helps!
Rob
http://www.robrode.com/yabb/