2003 viewer won't play sounds

[Russ]

My presentation will play the wav files fine when run with Powerpoint
2000, but when I run it with the 2003 viewer, all I get is the speaker
symbol. These wav files are linked to the presentation.

Russ

 

[Sonia]

That's a bug in the PowerPoint 2003 Viewer. It won't automatically play audio
or video files if the presentation was created in PowerPoint 2000 or PowerPoint
97. It will play them if you click on them, but it will ignore any instructions
to continue play over multiple slides. So, download the PowerPoint 97 Viewer
and it will work just fine.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...27-43ab-4f24-90b7-a94784af71a4&DisplayLang=en
--

Sonia Coleman
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun Software, Templates and Tutorials
http://www.soniacoleman.com

 

[Russ]

Thanks Sonia

 

[Rick Shafer]

Sonia,

Yikes. So, what's the advantage of using the 2003 viewer, other than
supporting some of the newer effects, etc.? That seems like a pretty major
bug to me. I need to decide very soon which version (or both) I will be
installing on 100+ computers (XP Pro), none of which will have PowerPoint
(app) installed, but will need the ability to show a .ppt/.pps file.
Thanks.

Rick

 

[Sonia]

It may not that big a deal, depending on the source of the presentation. Read
what I said below. The problem only impacts presentations created in PowerPoint
2000 and 97. Those versions don't support the new animations and transitions.
The PowerPoint 97 Viewer was designed for presentations created in PowerPoint
2000 and 97.

You definitely want to use the PowerPoint 2003 Viewer if you are using
PowerPoint 2002 or 2003 to create your presentations.

If the user needs to view presentations created in *any* of the versions and
audio and video are always used, then they need both versions of the Viewer.
Yes, that may impact you, but it isn't a common scenario and for that reason I
doubt that the 2003 Viewer bug is high on Microsoft's priority list.

 

[Rick Shafer]

Sonia, thanks for the additional information. In our environment, we have
PowerPoint presentations coming in from a variety of authors, and thus
versions of PowerPoint. I'm developing a model for a training workstation
which will need to 'show' all of these presentations. The new delivery
stations will be XP Pro, as I've indicated, and my inclination is to use
(install) the 2003 viewer, as you've suggested. One other task on our
agenda is going to be to open each of the existing presentations in
PowerPoint 2003 (app), resave it in 2003 format, then review/tweak each file
as required, correcting any misbehaving iobjects, etc. In other words,
there will be a PowerPoint 'human filter' that will ensure that anything we
expect to deliver on the new workstations will launch/look Ok running via
the 2003 viewer. Make sense?

 

[Sonia]

If you open a presentation created in PowerPoint 2000, for example, and save it
in PowerPoint 2003, even without any change, the audio or video contained in the
presentation will play correctly in the PowerPoint 2003 Viewer. So, I think
your process will automatically resolve any issues.