Powerpoint help - pleeeeeeeeze

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

pammy

MB Enthusiast
Joined
Dec 2, 2003
Messages
7,468
Location
North Yorkshire
Car
hers - slk 320, his - dull diesel BMW fleet :/, Xtrail, Honda CBR 1100xx, Yamaha YZF600, Ribble Road
Aaaaaaaargh - wouldn't you just know it - supposed to be on leave this week - hence sat at home with briefcase etc all sitting next to me with a pile of work :mad: :mad:

But I'm writing up the events and outcomes of a full day's mtg last Thursday to then turn them into an action plan and want to embed all the presentations that were given into the word doc. Fairly easy or so you would have thought except I can't get my my PC to read the powerpoint files. It reads the Word files with no prob's but for PP, tells me it can't read the file and tells me it's not a PP file - oh yes it bloody well is!! I know coz I saved the flaming things and they're all .ppt. There's about 12 in total and all are the same in terms of can't be read.

My desk top PP (office suite 2003) is a later version of the saved files (also Office suite 2000) so I know it shouldn't be a compatibility issue - or is it? It's never been a problem before.

Please tell me I'm just being dense and/or there's an instant fix or am I going to have to try and do all this on my lap top which I'd rather not do if I can avoid it.

Thanks peeps:D
 
I had a similar problem to this when I changed my system last year.
I downloaded OpenOffice and it worked.
It's now free too:bannana: :bannana:
HTH
 
I'll give that a go - thanks G ;)

gonna take 25 mins to DL:crazy: - my 8meg connection is running so sloooooooooooooooooooooooow. At least I can still be working with what I've got for now.

I'm reluctant to set the lap top up as I don't want to connect to the work network, I don't want to see emails and I don't want people to know I'm working:D :devil:
 
Hi Pammy, I would strongly recommend against OpenOffice myself. It will alter your machine setup and the default application for file opening and loads of other irritating things. I hate it.

Did the error message come up in PowerPoint 2003 when trying to open Powerpoint 2000 files? Can you open these files in PP?

Philip
 
Hi Pammy, Tracy is really good with Powerpoint she is on a half day today I will get her to have a look at your post when she's home, if your still having probs then, hope you get it sorted...:)
 
Did the error message come up in PowerPoint 2003 when trying to open Powerpoint 2000 files? Can you open these files in PP?

Philip

Yes - trying to open PP 2000 into 2003. They worked fine last Thursday in PP2000
 
Hi Pammy, I would strongly recommend against OpenOffice myself. It will alter your machine setup and the default application for file opening and loads of other irritating things. I hate it.

Did the error message come up in PowerPoint 2003 when trying to open Powerpoint 2000 files? Can you open these files in PP?

Philip

Agreed it makes itself the default for opening files, but I have found it a lot better than trying to find ways of opening files by searching for something to open them with.
It does however open every type of file and I've found it quite a useful tool.
What other irritating things does it do:confused:
 
Are you using "Offline Files" or are these files on your local hard drive? If so, do you have plenty of free disk space and do you have a lot of offline files?

Does the file size and date look about right? (reasonable size, recent date).

There is no reason for a PP2000 file not to open in PP2003.
 
I've not installed the OpenOffice yet as it's only this occasion where I've had a problem. If it might cause me other prob's I'd rather try and find an alternative solution - including opening up the lappy :D Can't risk having bigger problems than this one.
 
Are you using "Offline Files" or are these files on your local hard drive? If so, do you have plenty of free disk space and do you have a lot of offline files?

Does the file size and date look about right? (reasonable size, recent date).

There is no reason for a PP2000 file not to open in PP2003.

It's all offline - being taken from a memory stick and all file names, dates, sizes etc look spot on. I don't understand why it's doing this at all. Never been a prob before. I do have copies saved on the server at work so I could get one of my bods to email them over to me and see if that makes any difference - but it would take time for them to find them. I do have another cunning plan which would make a bit more work for me but ease their pressures as we're thin on the ground this week.
 
Agreed it makes itself the default for opening files, but I have found it a lot better than trying to find ways of opening files by searching for something to open them with.
It does however open every type of file and I've found it quite a useful tool.
What other irritating things does it do:confused:

Hi Grav,

We run a translation business and deal with hundreds of MS Office files per month. Some of our customers use Open Office. The files are by no means as interchangeable as Open Office would have you believe, there are compatibility probs between different versions of MS Office and the program is a pain to uninstall - we usually have to re-install MS Office to get everything working properly again.

Just not a product I like. I think it's great if you are an individual looking for Office-like tools at no cost but it doesn't work well for us in a business environment. It also (as I mentioned above) seems to hash the machines up a bit, which IT departments don't like.

Just my 2p.

Philip
 
Hi Grav,

We run a translation business and deal with hundreds of MS Office files per month. Some of our customers use Open Office. The files are by no means as interchangeable as Open Office would have you believe, there are compatibility probs between different versions of MS Office and the program is a pain to uninstall - we usually have to re-install MS Office to get everything working properly again.

Just not a product I like. I think it's great if you are an individual looking for Office-like tools at no cost but it doesn't work well for us in a business environment. It also (as I mentioned above) seems to hash the machines up a bit, which IT departments don't like.

Just my 2p.

Philip

All info greatly received;)
I had a load of documents sent to me from various companies I was looking to contract the lorries to.
I couldn't open half of them as I didn't have the correct application installed, hence why I was recommended open office.
I guess being a small company, it is ok for me (and has worked well), but I can understand your concerns if used on a bigger scale.
In my company, there are:
Director - me
Accountant - me
Drivers - me + 2 others
IT Dept - me
Telesales - me
Tea maker - you guessed it - me:crazy:
 
Wanna job P? :p :p

If it pays me what I get now and would work remotely then yeah - gimme :D :D

Can't see tea travelling 230 miles that easily though but - I could make lots of flasks and drop them off at Ferrybridge etc - lol
 
Gets more and more mysterious. Just had the originals emailed over and that won't work either. Starting to get hacked off now :mad: :mad:
 
If all else fails, download Powerpoint Viewer 2003 from Microsoft, its free surprisingly. Might help in the short term, it will read Powerpoint from 1997 onwards, found it on google when looking for this for a buddy
 
If all else fails, download Powerpoint Viewer 2003 from Microsoft, its free surprisingly. Might help in the short term, it will read Powerpoint from 1997 onwards, found it on google when looking for this for a buddy

Thanks Geoff - but I need to be able to do more than view them though - I need to be able to manipulate and embed them and ensure that what I've embedded works.:crazy:
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom