hang and crash with old presentations

[Herlind Wurth]

Hi!

A colleague of mine is having troubles with some of his PP-presentations.

He created them on an OSX-system with PPvX and everything was working fine.
Then he took them home and worked on them in PP 2001 on his OS9 computer.
When he tried to open them again back on the original OSX-computer, PP hangs
or crashes.

Strangely that doesn't happen all the time. It seems, that it only happens
in the overview (thumbnails). He can open the presentation in slide view and
also go through the whole presentation.

We had this problem once before with a presentation, that was originally
made on an OS9-machine. By dividing the pres. into ever smaller parts I
could pin it down on one layer in one slide. But this time that is not
possible, because we can go through all the slides and PP only hangs in the
overview.

hang = spinning beach-ball forever, we have to force quit

(A second presentation doesn't hang, but crashes PP, also when trying to
open it in the overview.)

I tried it on my OSX-machine as well and I see the same symptoms. (Different
computer, different user - so it can't be a problem of prefs-files or
permission repair etc.)

The presentation opens without a problem under OS9 and on a Win-PC as well.


Has anyone encountered this problem?

Is it a known problem of incompatibility between OS9 and OSX?

Do you know of a solution? Or do you have any suggestions what I could try?


I'd appreciate your help, Herlind

 

[Herlind Wurth]

Sadly nobody seems to know an answer for this.

Or is this such a common question that you grew tired answering it?
Is there a FAQ where I could find some answers?

Or could you point me to a site or some documentation, that could help me?

Herlind

 

[Kimberly Dare]

I have run into it. What I'll frequently note is that if I look at the
"offending slide" on a PC (typically you can find which slide is bringing it
down) then you'll see odd symbols or text within that slide. Erasing the
line and re-entering it will "solve" the issue. It seems to be something
with the way that SR1 is handling symbole (or what it thinks are symbols).

Hope this helps!!

Kim

 

[Dr. Karl Vass]

I appear to have a similar problem. With PPT 11.1 files with a specific
picture (a jpg made from a Corel draw graph) completely crashes PPT 2004
with SR1. I reproduced this on 2 different Macs. This crash does not occur
with the PPt 2004 11.0. The original presentation was produced in PPT X.
Help is appreciated, Karl

 

[Dr. Karl Vass]

I appear to have a similar problem. With PPT 11.1 files with a specific
picture (a jpg made from a Corel draw graph) completely crashes PPT 2004
with SR1. I reproduced this on 2 different Macs. This crash does not occur
with the PPt 2004 11.0. The original presentation was produced in PPT X.
Help is appreciated, Karl

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Hello,

It's entirely possible that the jpeg image file is corrupt or is
defective in some way.

Have you tried opening the image file in an image editor and then
re-saving it with a new name?

Jim

 

[Dr. Karl Vass]

Sorry I gave you the wrong information. The responsible slides were not jpeg
but rather some vector drawings I did by what ever program years ago
(Cricket Graph?). I really cannot remember any more. But they definitively
worked on any version of PPT so far until 2004 11.1. I use these slides
quite frequently in my talks so they are included in almost any set of
slides I have. All of them will not open in 11.1. I post them at
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/karl.vass/TestSlide2.ppt and
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/karl.vass/TestSlide.ppt. Perhaps you can find
the reason for this bug. I just tested them they both crash PPT 11.1 but not
11.0. Kind regards, Karl

 

[Jim Gordon MVP]

Yup! I got the same result. I sent a report to Microsoft. There's only
1 workaround and that is to uninstall Office (use the uninstaller
supplied on the CD) then reinstall and don't do the update.

-Jim

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Sorry I gave you the wrong information. The responsible slides were not jpeg

but rather some vector drawings I did by what ever program years ago
(Cricket Graph?). I really cannot remember any more. But they definitively
worked on any version of PPT so far until 2004 11.1. I use these slides
quite frequently in my talks so they are included in almost any set of
slides I have. All of them will not open in 11.1. I post them at
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/karl.vass/TestSlide2.ppt and
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/karl.vass/TestSlide.ppt. Perhaps you can find
the reason for this bug. I just tested them they both crash PPT 11.1 but not
11.0. Kind regards, Karl

They open in X as well. Try selecting the drawing and ungrouping repeatedly
(leaving all selected shapes selected) until the ungroup item is grayed out.
Then group and save the slide.

Does it now work in 11.1?



================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Dr. Karl Vass]

That's what I did. But it is too bad because some features of Office 11.1
appeared to be more robust than in 10.0 Thank you Karl

 

[Dr. Karl Vass]

Tried it, but did not work. Karl

They open in X as well. Try selecting the drawing and ungrouping repeatedly
(leaving all selected shapes selected) until the ungroup item is grayed out.
Then group and save the slide.

Does it now work in 11.1?



================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Tried it, but did not work. Karl

What ends up happening? Still crashes PPT 11.1 after the drawing's been
completely ungrouped in an earlier version?

The only other thing I can think to try is roundtripping it out to HTML and back
in. That can clean up corruption in some cases (improbable as it may sound)

================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Dr. Karl Vass]

What I did was: I opened the files in 11.0 ungrouped and regrouped them as
you suggested. When reopening them in 11.1 they crashed the program.

The main problem I have with this apparent 11.1 bug is that I use these
slides a lot and they are included in most of my presentations. Since they
all will kill PPT 11.1 this update is unfortunately useless for me. I am
waiting for 11.2 hoping this will be more stable for my purposes. Karl

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thanks for the clarification. I understand why this is a show-stopper for you.
Nobody can move forward if they have to take three steps back to do it each time.

What I did was: I opened the files in 11.0 ungrouped and regrouped them as
you suggested. When reopening them in 11.1 they crashed the program.

The main problem I have with this apparent 11.1 bug is that I use these
slides a lot and they are included in most of my presentations. Since they
all will kill PPT 11.1 this update is unfortunately useless for me. I am
waiting for 11.2 hoping this will be more stable for my purposes. Karl

================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

 

[Dr. Karl Vass]

A couple of weeks Jim Gordon posted in this thread that he reported the
problem to Microsoft. Are there any news? Karl

 

[Kiwiinoz]

This ugly. I have a macophile as a wife .I normally work with PC's and
this drives me crazy.

She has not upgraded to powerpoint 11.1 at work and her old powerpoint
slides work fine but when she brings it home to new eMac with
powerpoint 11.1 them the presentation will unexpectantly crash on a
particular slide. I have found that the same copy of the presentation
is OK when viewed from a PC.

I then split the presentation at the problem slide and then copied back
to the eMac. Now the two split presentations open fine.

Does anyone know whether powerpoint 11.1 has problem with the size of a
powerpoint presentation?

Does anyone know whether there is a fix for this problem?

 

[Dr. Karl Vass]

With Office 11.1.1 the problem has been resolved. Karl

 

[Kiwiinoz]

11.1.1 did solve this problem but ....

Just yesterday I started to get the same problem with another
powerpoint presentation. This time uninstalling Office 11 and
reinstalling back to office 11.0 did not work. I think that in the
meantime I may have installed some security updates or OS updates for
MacOSX. The client I am on is completely up to date. I have 3 clients
that behaved the same way i.e. upgrading to office 11.1.1 solved the
initial problem of hanging on old presentations but subsequently the
problem has resurfaced and the worakround below no longer works.

I do not know whether to laugh or cry.

I will check another MacOSX client at work that has not had any of the
recent MacOSX updates applied later on today and post the results back
to this group.

 

[Mark Brimble]

I just checked on my MacOSX client that has not had any MacOSX upgrades
recently. It is office 11.1.1. The same problem powerpoint presntation opens
without failure. Thus it seems to me that recent upgrades of MacOSX have
caused this problem to reappear with a vengance. Can anyone confirm that they
get the same problem?
I can supply a copy of the powerpoint presentation if anyone whats to try it.

 

[Mark Brimble]

Problem has now gone away.
I copied a new version of the file from the mac on which it was working and
now it works OK on every other Mac I own. This is weird I still have the
original file that will crashes after a few sl;ides on every other mac but
opens on a Windows Xp PC no problems.