Re: Presentation causes program freeze on PowerPoint 2004 for Mac

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

Quoting from "Paying Office 2004 User" <>, in article
ee7eda7.4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, on [DATE:

Many PowerPoint presentations I've seen provided to my parents through their
friends, originating on PCs through email (humorous things and business) crash
Office 2004, even with the latest updates. They play fine on any reasonably
built PC. On the Mac, watching the same PPT presentation results in a beach
ball after a few frames, and then... well you know where this one is going.
Paying users are complaining. The product's basic functionality is broken -
regardless if its "not general usage" - for the people who pay for the
software (honest folks like us) it makes the software either an inconvenience
or just a waste of money. It's nice to see "updates" but fixes for
reproducable problems (especially for paying users) is appropriate, yes?

A music clip should not crash well-written application software. If no decoder
exists for the type of music, the software should continue to operate and
turn-off the sound -- presenting a dialog box indicating the incompatibility.
This is a Mac here, not a GameBoy. I've seen PowerPoint for Mac 2004 crash
(and even lock a Mac up solid, needing forced quit -- if you're lucky enough
to get back to the Finder after being in Fullscreen) ... while doing a simple
rotation animation - of simple fonts - in a presentation without ANY sound.
Nothing complicated. Other ones i've seen (majority in fact) are crashes when
no animation or sound are present. Keep in mind - these same files play fine
on any other PC i've tried. It's not a high expectation by any means, to
expect that the software will work at least as well as it's PC counterpart. It
costs a lost of cash to purchase this software.

Hi,

I've seen it happen, too, but not very often. A couple things to do:
1. Run Disk Utility (in Applications > Utilities) and use it to repair
permissions.

2. Use Alsoft's DiskWarrior product to ensure the file structure and
directory are OK.

Sound files haven't been a problem, but once in a while a Windows user
sticks an Active-X component into a presentation, and that seems to cause a
problem.

-Jim

--
Jim Gordon
Mac MVP

MVPs are not Microsoft Employees
MVP info http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/

.

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