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>>> It must be nice to be the designer of the connection point feature
>>> to make the determination that nobody would ever want to add
>>> additional connection points to an autoshape.
>>Well, yes, but on the other hand, the presentation design and
>>word-processing tools in third party flow-chart software leave a lot
>>to be desired, too.
>Bingo. And quite properly so, I might add. John, you're complaining
>that PP lacks a feature that Visio has and you need. Your complaint
>is understandable, but consider where it leads if the PP designers
>listen to you... and to everyone else who has a similar complaint
>about some other Visio feature that PP lacks: PP ends up the size
>of the current PP and Visio combined and runs at half the speed
>(and stability, probably) of either.
>Aren't we always complaining about how bloated Word is because
>its designers have tried to make it all things to all people? :-)
Regardless of whether Visio has it or not, PowerPoint has implemented a
flowcharting capability. They've made the commitment. It's a major
category of Autoshapes...between Flowchart shapes and their counterpart,
Connectors, it's 25% of the whole Autoshapes library. Therefore, if you
are going to include that capability, do it right. If you aren't going
to do so, don't do it at all. Half-a**ed does nobody any good. Does
anyone believe that to do a flowchart element, it is only rare that you
need more than 4 connectors or more than one on a side?
In doing research, it appears that this capability (or lack of) comes up
often on the MS support forum for PowerPoint. MS has even placed a web
page with instructions specifically designed to overcome this
shortcoming.