Cannot see designs

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Guest

On a machine created from an image like all others in the organization, we
cannot see anything but grey in the slide portion in normal view. However, in
the slide tab on the left the designs show, as well as in slide sorter view
Nothing we do can get any design or layout to change in the slide portion of
that window. It's always grey.

Any suggestions?

Office XP, Win2k
 
It is set to 'color.' Maybe I should have said that the entire slide area is
grey, just like the surrounding area. You can see a line that indicates that
the slide is there, but instead of the slide starting out as white, it starts
out as grey, just like the surrounding grey color. In fact, some fields don't
display their text, either. They show the text in the slide sorter view, but
not there in the main slide window.

We've gone through the Detect and Repair sequence, checked options settings,
and have found nothing to indicate the cause for the trouble. It doesn't halp
to change the slide layout, either. All panes work fine, except for the slide
pane itself.
 
Okay. Can you tell us what version of PowerPoint and Windows the system is
running? Does this system have a different video card and driver than the
others? Has the driver been updated from the manufacturer's website?
 
All our machines are running fully updated Win2k and Office XP. This machine
is the same as dozens that we bought at the same time, so all drivers and
cards are alike
 
Like all the others there, it's running a fully updated Win2K and Office XP.
This machine was purchased with a lot of about 49 others which don't have
this problem, if that helps at all.
 
The only thing that I can think of is that possibly the default template has
been modified and given a gray background, etc. If you go to View > Master >
Slide Master, do you see a white slide or a gray slide?
 
Ugh, I seem to have lost concentration. Ignore that question because you've
already said that the slide view doesn't match the thumbnail. I would just
double check that the most recent driver has been downloaded and installed from
the video card manufacturer's website. I would also recommend trying to see
whether turning hardware acceleration all the way down makes a difference. See:

How to set graphics hardware acceleration back
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00129.htm
 
Interesting... Here's what happened. I went to the Device Manager and clicked
on update driver for each of the monitor entries. I had it search MS for the
latest driver and it said that the latest driver was already installed, so I
just clicked next and Finish for each one. When I closed the dialog box the
design was showing just as nice as can be - just like it was supposed to. I
left feeling good.

However, she closed the application shortly afterwards and the next time she
came back to it there was that old grey screen again. :-/

So, it appears that your notion of the video driver may have been on the
right track, but I guess I need to do something else to HOLD it. Any
suggestions before I uninstall and reinstall?
 
The video drivers shipped with Windows are OLD! Go to the video card
manufacturer's website and look for an updated driver for the card that she has.
In my case I have an ATI Radeo 9600 Pro. I go to the ATI website
http://www.ati.com/, click on Drivers and Software, click on my version of
Windows, click on Graphic Driver, and select Radeon Family. Then I carefully
read the instructions that usually tell me to uninstall the current driver and
then how to download and install the new driver.
 
This case may (keyword) be solved. This time when I went to get the latest
drivers (which I still wasn't totally convinced was the problem because of
all the other similar machines running with that same driver) I went into the
Settings on the monitor and found that the Refresh rate was only at 60mhz. I
bumped it up to 75 and now PowerPoint seems to open correctly every time.
<sigh>

That's the frustrating part of this business, isn't it? If it's not one
darned thing it's another %$#%@ thing. :-)

Thank you for your time and advice on this issue. It is certainly
appreciated. Now we can be living proof of the saying, ""Debugging is
anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged about
forever."

Thanks again, Sonia.
 
Here's what's happening: When *I* work on her station I enter ppt via the
Office toolbar, then choose Open... to get the file to work on, or use the
Recent list. When *she* works there she goes through Windows Explorer to
navigate to a network drive where she tries to open the file.

In 100% of the cases, if she tries to open a ppt file directly from the
network drive, beit from her folder or any public folder, it opens grey. If
she goes through the app it opens just fine.

How's THAT for a new wrinkle? I *wondered* why it worked for me and not for
her. THis is why. Any suggestions, now? It's a Novell network. It doesn't
behave that way for anybody else, either, by the way.
 
Well, don't post that "fix" just yet. (See above post) It seems that we've
narrowed the issue down to a network issue, as we can open this file when
going through Powerpoint, but we cannot get it to open correctly when going
through the Windows network directly. 100% of the time.

We've confirmed both port speeds and NIC speeds, and I even went into the
file types and reset the ppt filetype to be opened with Powerpoint. No good.

At least we've now narrowed the issue, I guess. Any other suggestions?
 
At least we've now narrowed the issue, I guess. Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...

Novell networks and PPT are notorious for not playing nice together.

Whenever there's any sort of PPT problem, always copy the file to the local HDD and
try it again from there in order to eliminate the net as a source of problems.
 
Yes, that does work. But, isn't it interesting that if I double click the
file itself it doesn't work correctly, but if I go through PowerPoint and
Open... that it works just fine. Oh, and this network is a Windows network,
not our Novell network
 
Yes, that does work. But, isn't it interesting that if I double click the
file itself it doesn't work correctly, but if I go through PowerPoint and
Open... that it works just fine. Oh, and this network is a Windows network,
not our Novell network
Click to expand...

OK, we'll let Novell off the hook for now. ;-)

Have a look at the file associations for the .PPT file type. That's the likeliest
place to look for anything that affects the diff between doubleclicking a file and
using File, Open.

You might also want to run Help, Detect and Repair if you haven't already.
Steve Rindsberg said:
At least we've now narrowed the issue, I guess. Any other suggestions?
Click to expand...

Novell networks and PPT are notorious for not playing nice together.

Whenever there's any sort of PPT problem, always copy the file to the local HDD and
try it again from there in order to eliminate the net as a source of problems.
:

Hey, thanks for posting back with the fix.

I've added it to the suggestions here:

General troubleshooting procedures
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00035.htm
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Actually, I tried both of those ideas. I tried the detect and Repair first.
Then, after we found out that the problem arises when double clicking it
directly I went into the File association area, set it to open with something
else, then set it back to open in PowerPoint. (I'd like to think GMTA but I
don't want to insult you. :-) )

Steve Rindsberg said:
Yes, that does work. But, isn't it interesting that if I double click the
file itself it doesn't work correctly, but if I go through PowerPoint and
Open... that it works just fine. Oh, and this network is a Windows network,
not our Novell network
Click to expand...

OK, we'll let Novell off the hook for now. ;-)

Have a look at the file associations for the .PPT file type. That's the likeliest
place to look for anything that affects the diff between doubleclicking a file and
using File, Open.

You might also want to run Help, Detect and Repair if you haven't already.
Click to expand...
 
Unkljim said:
Actually, I tried both of those ideas. I tried the detect and Repair first.
Then, after we found out that the problem arises when double clicking it
directly I went into the File association area, set it to open with something
else, then set it back to open in PowerPoint. (I'd like to think GMTA but I
don't want to insult you. :-) )
Click to expand...

<G> It's never insulting to be lumped in with folks who've thought of stuff
ahead of ya.

I'm at a loss, I have to admit. Let's see what the other GM's T up.
 

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