PowerPoint closes unexpectedly - no error messages!

[IanW]

On several occasions I have had PowerPoint close without a trace while I was
typing text into a text box in PowerPoint 2002 (10.6501.6735) SP3. There is
no error message, no opportunity to send an error report -- the app just
vanishes.

When the error is occurring frequently, I re-boot Windows and it is fine
immediately after that.

One possibility is that another app I sometimes use (that puts bitmap images
into PPt via ActiveX) puts Powerpoint into a state that makes it vulnerable
to this problem. However the problem typically occur much later when no other
apps are open, and I'm unsure how recently I ran the "other" app.

Any ideas on how to trouble-shoot this?

 

[Anne J. Leek]

It could be many things...Powerpoint might not approve of something running
in the background that you are not even aware of.

The best thing to do when Powerpoint disappears is to reopen it and try from
memory to reconstruct exactly what you were doing to see if you can
force-crash it, which will help lead you to the exact activity at the time of
crash. One thing it could be is a "bad" font...try re-installing whichever
fonts you use frequently.

 

[IanW]

Thanks for the ideas, Anne. I'll try re-crashing it as you suggest to be more
specific about the particular circumstances. The weird thing is that it seems
to crash while I'm entering plain Arial text in a text box - between
keystrokes! Given that, fonts seem like an unlikely cause.

-Ian

 

[IanW]

Steve and Anne,
Thanks for the helpful replies. The plot thickens: I have seen one other app
just disappear, so it would seem it is bigger than just a PowerPoint issue.
I'll post back if I make any great discoveries.

--Ian