Slide sorter displays slides from right to left

Problem

• In Slide Sorter view, slide thumbnails are displayed from right to left rather than from left to right as you might expect.
  
• In Normal view, the slide thumbnails are on the right side of the screen and the text is right justified in Outline view.
  
• When you print handouts, the slides are ordered from right to left instead of left to right

Cause

The presentation is set for Right-to-Left layout direction rather than Left-to-Right. This can happen when the presentation was created on a computer or PPT version set to use Hebrew, Arabic or some other Right-to-Left language. Thanks to PPT MVP John Wilson for helping to track this one down and providing test files to work with.

Solution

The quick fix:

• Press Alt+F11 to open the VBA editor
• Press Ctrl+G to open the Immediate window
• In the Immediate window, type
  

  ActivePresentation.LayoutDirection=ppDirectionRightToLeft

• Press Enter
• Click the red X in the upper right of the VBA editor window to close it
• Breathe a sigh of relief. Your presentation is fixed.

If you prefer a macro that you can re-use, this code will switch the layout direction each time you run it. If the presentation is Left-to-Right, it makes it Right-to-Left and vice versa.

Sub ToggleDirection()

    If ActivePresentation.LayoutDirection = ppDirectionMixed Then
        MsgBox "Presentation has mixed layout direction; cannot change"
        Exit Sub
    End If

    If ActivePresentation.LayoutDirection = ppDirectionRightToLeft Then
        MsgBox "Presentation was Right to Left" & vbCrLf _
& "Converting it to Left to Right"
        ActivePresentation.LayoutDirection = ppDirectionLeftToRight
    Else
        MsgBox "Presentation was Left to Right" & vbCrLf _
& "Converting it to Right to Left"
        ActivePresentation.LayoutDirection = ppDirectionRightToLeft
    End If

End Sub

See How do I use VBA code in PowerPoint? to learn how to use this example code.

---