Troubleshooting the Add-In

What If the Add-In Doesn’t Open?

When opening PowerPoint, the Camtasia Studio Add-in should appear in your toolbar palette automatically. Emphasis on should. If it doesn’t, it could be for one of the reasons listed below. Fortunately, they can all be remedied, and I’ll explain how as we go. As these are listed in order from least to greatest effort required, you might want to try them in order.

• You or someone else inadvertently turned off its toolbar in PowerPoint. From the View menu inside PowerPoint, go to Toolbars, and then make sure there’s a check mark next to Camtasia Studio in the submenu that appears. If not, click this option.

• If you see that there’s a check next to Camtasia Studio in the Toolbars submenu, look around. The add-in could simply be docked in a weird place (check the sides and bottom of your application window), or it could be floating (not docked at all). Look at your second monitor if you have one; it could also be there.

• If Camtasia Studio isn’t listed in PowerPoint’s Toolbars submenu at all, you may have inadvertently disabled it in Camtasia Studio. From the Tools menu in Camtasia Studio, choose Options…. Make sure that Enable PowerPoint Add-in is checked, and then click OK. Likewise, should you ever wish to disable the add-in, this is the place to do it.

• You elected not to enable the add-in during Camtasia Studio’s installation process. Fortunately, even if you disable the add-in, Camtasia Studio still installs this capability, so no reinstallation is necessary. Again, simply go into Tools > Options and enable it.

• On very rare occasions, a third-party add-in designed for a Microsoft Office product can, through some unexpected turn of events, cause the application to crash. The next time the application is started, it will disable the add-in until you manually re-enable it. To see if this is the case, return to PowerPoint and choose About Microsoft Office PowerPoint from the Help menu. In the dialog that appears, click the Disabled Items… button. If the Camtasia Studio Add-in shows up in the list that appears, select it and then choose Enable. Click Close, and then OK.

My Recording Looks Weird. Why Are All Those Lines of Color There?

Microsoft PowerPoint offers a great many attractive templates to aid even novice users in creating an attractive presentation. Many of these templates contain color gradients, subtle shifts in color that can be rather pretty, provided your system supports the number of colors for which the template was designed. Some templates can support multiple color depths. However, certain templates are only designed for a high number of colors, and if your system isn’t correctly set, you force the template to use fewer colors than it was designed for, and instead of subtle shifts, you get solid blocks of color (called “banding”).

Fortunately, changing the color depth of your monitor is a quick and easy way to eliminate this problem:

1. Choose Start > Control Panel (in Windows 2000, it’s Start, then Settings, then Control Panel).

2. Double-click the Display icon. The Display Properties dialog opens.

3. Click the Settings tab.

4. Choose a color depth from the Color Quality (or Colors) drop-down list, at least 16-bit, and probably 32-bit if you want to play it safe.

5. To save your settings, click OK, then Yes (or OK in Windows 2000).

6. Close and then reopen your PowerPoint presentation.