change background page assignment

[xbadbb]

I have just instaled debian lenny and when I try to open a Microsoft Power Point file I get this Message,CHANGE BACKGROUND PAGE ASSIGNMENT. THE LOADING OF MS POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS IS NOT SUPPORTED. How do I make this change? thank you very much. I am 80 years old so make it simple please. Rick

[Ahtiga Saraz]

I am not directly familiar with pp, but I'll give this a shot anyway.

Do you know the name of the application which you used to try to open your pp file? I guess it was not Impress.

Power Point is part of the Microsoft Office suite, which is about as far from Debian friendly as I can imagine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Point
But don't worry-- Debian (and other varieties of Linux) offer the Open Office suite:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Office
The Open Office suite includes applications which are (almost) equivalent to each component of the Microsoft Office suite. The equivalent of Power Point is called Impress
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Impress
I guess that Impress will know how to open and modify your pp files, so let's first try to find out whether Impress is already installed on your system.

You probably already have the Open Office suite installed on your new Debian system, since I think it is installed by default when you install Debian. Do you know if you are using KDE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org_Impress
or gnome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME
desktop environment?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment
If you see a "taskbar" at the bottom of your screen, you are probably using KDE like me. (The screenshots in the Wikipedia articles might help tell which one you are using!)

Assuming you are using KDE, if you click on the K icon at the left of the taskbar, you can probably navigate to a menu which will show you (if I guessed correctly) that some Open Office components, probably including Impress, are already installed.

If you don't yet have Impress and the rest of the Open Office suite installed, I can tell you how to download and install Open Office over the net using what we call a "graphical interface" to Debian's package manager, apt. (I'm talking about synaptic, kpackage, applications like those, if you've heard of either of these.)

Open Office applications might disconcert you initially because they "look and feel" a bit different from Microsoft Office applications. Some people who want/need to use Microsoft software may prefer to use special programs which can do this, but it's a bit tricky, and I think you might not need to pursue this option.

I tried to make that simple, but it turned out to be longer than I expected! But don't worry, other posters here can probably simplify further what I suggested.