Symptoms
When trying to edit a slide created with the Timeline add-in, the buttons on the Timeline ribbon are grayed out – they cannot be selected or operated. Only New, Import, Templates and Themes are clickable.
Overview
Typically, this situation occurs when the Timeline metadata about the timeline has been lost. The metadata serves to provide context or additional information about a certain file’s or item’s content. When this information is missing, Timeline cannot properly “read” or work with a slide’s data.
Solution
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Please make sure to always save your timelines as .pptx, as Timeline does not support other file formats. If the file extension is changed to anything else, all Timeline metadata about the slide will be wiped out.
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When copy/pasting a PowerPoint timeline created with Timeline into another .pptx file, ensure you copy the whole slide and not just the elements on the page. This way, the Timeline metadata will be transferred to the new file along with the timeline. To copy a whole slide to another PowerPoint presentation, please avoid using Ctrl + A to select the content. Instead, go to the Slides pane on the left side of the screen, right-click on the desired slide, and choose “Copy” (as seen in the image on the right).
