Help! Objects are invisible in PowerPoint

[Dog Breath]

I've been using Office 2003 (Professional Edition) under WinXP SP1 for
a few weeks now with only occasional, minor problems. The one
critical Office 2003 patch was applied the day it was released, on
Nov. 4th. Then yesterday, in perusing a PowerPoint presentation I had
worked on a few days ago, I found that all Excel graphics and
spreadsheet objects are suddenly invisible in presentation mode. In
slide edit mode, the objects are essentially invisible, with merely a
dotted rectangular outline and a generic icon displayed in the upper
lefthand corner of the rectangle. Objects can be double-clicked to
activate Excel functionality, at which time the graphics and tables
look as they normally would and they can be edited. But as soon as I
click on the slide background, the objects revert to being invisible,
with only the outline and generic icon displayed again. The same
phenomenon applies to MathType objects and standard Microsoft Equation
objects.

All presentations seem to suffer from this behavior. This includes
backups of the same presentation and old presentations that I had not
even looked since upgrading from Office XP to Office 2003.

I have uninstalled and installed Office 2003 twice to no effect.
Office XP was removed, as well.

[The only remarkable (and seriously remarkable!) system incident in
the past few days is that I installed an update to XTNDConnect that
deleted all Outlook appointments and contacts during its first
synchronization. Fortunately they could be recovered from the Deleted
folder.]

Please advise!

Dog

 

[glenna]

Hey Dog,

I haven't installed 2003 yet, but I'll hazard a guess.

Try looking at the action settings or custom animation
setting/multimedia tab of the objects and see what they're
set to (don't play, open, edit, etc.)

Might be a place to start.

Glenna

 

[Dog Breath]

Hey Dog,

I haven't installed 2003 yet, but I'll hazard a guess.

Try looking at the action settings or custom animation
setting/multimedia tab of the objects and see what they're
set to (don't play, open, edit, etc.)

Might be a place to start.

Thanks. I had already looked there, multiple times in fact, but I
looked again since you asked and... nope.

I should perhaps have mentioned explicitly: JPEGs pasted into slides
and native PowerPoint-drawn objects and text appear and function just
fine in all modes.

Dog

 

[Kathryn Jacobs]

Just curious: Do things work as expected in the new viewer? Also, does
checking for (and installing) new video drivers make any difference? What
about turning down hardware acceleration?

--
Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft PPT MVP
If this helped you, please take the time to rate the value of this post:
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I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived

 

[Glen Millar]

Hi,

By that Kathy means:

First, you should try adjusting hardware acceleration:

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00129.htm

Second, update your video drivers. They are the interface between you
program and what you see:

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00029.htm

;-)


--
Regards,


Glen Millar
Microsoft PPT MVP
http://www.powerpointworkbench.com/
Please tell us your ppt version, and get back to us here
Remove spaces from signature

 

[Dog Breath]

Hi,

By that Kathy means:

First, you should try adjusting hardware acceleration:

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00129.htm

Second, update your video drivers. They are the interface between you
program and what you see:

http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00029.htm

Setting hardware accelaration to 0 has had no effect. The ATI video
drivers were updated on October 31, 2003, using drivers provided by
Microsoft through SoftwareUpdate. Everything worked fine (both before
and after the driver update) until sometime late in the past week.

Please note: when PP2003 is in slide edit mode, the images
corresponding to external objects aren't scrambled, they're blank with
a thin border around each object's image area and a tiny icon
containing a red X located in the upper lefthand corner of the each
object's image area. When an object is double-clicked, the object can
be edited normally (eg, in Excel or MathType). In presentation mode,
everything concerning the external objects is invisible.

I'm wondering if my system has some registry corruption that isn't
cleared by the usual uninstall of Office 2003. Does a tool exist for
the spotless removal of Office 2003?

Dog

 

[Glen Millar]

Hi,

I guess the good news is that I have seen this before, so I know exactly
what it looks like! But only once and under different circumstances. I
suspect that cleaning up your temp folders and defragging your hard drive
may help. It is interesting it is inserted objects and not images such as
jpegs.

In addition, one possibility is that you please send me a small example that
exhibits the problem. I have 2003 and XP SP1. If I can replicate it here
(that is, if I can get it to muck up here as well), it is more likely to be
something common to both systems. Did you do a clean upgrade of 2003 from
2002, or did you have the Beta version installed?

It would be good if you could send 2 slides. One with an Excel graph, and
another slide with a Mathstat one. I don't have Mathstat installed here, so
all I would see is an image metafile of it. But that may help as well. You
see, I wont have access to the ole application that it needs to run. If it
is video related, it may still show up without Mathstat installed on my
machine. I think.

I haven't heard of XTNDConnect but will have a look at what it does in the
meantime.

glen (at) powerpointworkbench (dot) com

--
Regards,

Glen Millar
Microsoft PPT MVP
http://www.powerpointworkbench.com/
Please tell us your ppt version, and get back to us here
Remove spaces from signature

 

[Dog Breath]

Another couple of clues:

(1) several images on the home page for http://www.winbeta.org appear
as outlines with red x icons, just as external objects appear in my
old PP presentations.

(2) newly inserted external objects (eg, Excel spreadsheet or MathType
eqn) do not appear at all. The objects can be inserted as usual, but
as soon as I click on the slide background, the objects disappear
completely -- no outline, no red x. This happens independently of the
presentation being new or old.

Dog

 

[Dog Breath]

BTW: Office 2003 beta was never installed on this system. Office 2003
Professional Edition (full version) was initially installed
side-by-side with a pre-existing copy of Office XP (academic). In an
attempt to resolve the problem with images, OXP was removed. Once
Office 2003 was installed, of the old Office XP applications I only
used Word once.

My system has 1 GB RAM and 2 GB free on disk. Symantec NAV, Internet
Security, and SystemWorks 2003 are all installed and have been
maintained fully updated.

Dog

 

[Dog Breath]

Another couple of clues:

(1) several images on the home page for http://www.winbeta.org appear
as outlines with red x icons, just as external objects appear in my
old PP presentations.

Sorry, false alarm on this particular observation. It turns out the
images on http://www.winbeta.org don't appear in IE6 because Symantec
Norton Internet Security 2003, which I have installed, doesn't like
them. Temporarily disabling NIS restores the icons and re-enabling
NIS removes the icons once again. woopy.

On a more positive note, I created a new account on the system (with
Administrative privileges, in case it matters). When logged into the
new account, I opened a problematic presentation from before. Since
this was the first time I had run Office 2003 under the new account,
it began by configuring itself. Then lo and behold, presentations
appeared normally that were displayed erroneously in my usual account
(which also has Administrative privileges, in case it matters). This
suggests corrupted registry entries exist for my usual account and
that there is no problem with system-wide registry entries for Office
2003. Yes/no?

Can anyone suggest what I need to clear from the registry in order to
make it appear that I've never EVER run Office 2003 from my usual
account? Simply uninstalling Office 2003 has not done the trick.

Thanks in advance.

Dog

 

[Glen Millar]

Hi,

Registry setting to tell PowerPoint it isn't there? I'm afraid I have no
idea. Unless it is a run once type of key.

But it is interesting how PowerPoint reconfigured itself and then started to
work. I've seen that reconfiguring occur when I have logged onto other
people's machines. I would never have guessed it may fix a problem.

--
Regards,

Glen Millar
Microsoft PPT MVP
http://www.powerpointworkbench.com/
Please tell us your ppt version, and get back to us here
Remove spaces from signature

 

[Dog Breath]

Hi,

Registry setting to tell PowerPoint it isn't there? I'm afraid I have no
idea. Unless it is a run once type of key.

I would suggest each user has new registry entries added by executing
Office applications. And the entries for my normal account have
become corrupted.

But it is interesting how PowerPoint reconfigured itself and then started to
work. I've seen that reconfiguring occur when I have logged onto other
people's machines. I would never have guessed it may fix a problem.

It seems more accurate to say the problem has been avoided rather than
fixed by using the software under a new/different account.

Does anyone know the user-specific registry entries that
Office/PowerPoint create?

As an alternative, I guess I could migrate all of my files to a new
account and remove the old, corrupted one. Ideally then I'd like to
rename the new account to the same name as the old one. This would at
least avoid the bigger hassle of re-installing Windows and all
applications. Are there any tricks or pitfalls to doing this?

Dog