Inserting objects in PowerPoint doesn't work.

[Guest]

One of our employees is using PowerPoint 2003 (on Windows XP). She is trying
to insert an Excel chart as an object into a slide. Everytime she tries to
insert the chart or double-clicks on the chart icon on the slide, she gets an
error 1309. "Error reading from file C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Art\P
files\Microsoft Office\convtext.exe. Verify that it exists and can be
accessed." It appears that no one else in the office is having the same
problem. Everything works great on my laptop.

I looked on my laptop and could not find the file they referred to. We
uninstalled her Office programs and reinstalled everything. She has the same
problem. Does anyone have an idea of what could be causing this? She would
like to have this problem fixed (NOW). I showed her how to paste the charts
into her slides using Paste Special. That technique works great; however,
she wants to be able to insert an object.

Thanks for you help.

Darlene Niebruegge

 

[Echo S]

This sure sounds like an add-in that's been deleted or improperly
uninstalled, because there's no "Art" folder in a "regular" install of
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\

Try the first hit at
http://www.google.com/search?source...&rls=ATSA,ATSA:2006-01,ATSA:en&q=convtext.exe
It explains that the ConvText utility is available on the installation CDs
for MS Office language versions that offer right-to-left support. So I'd
poke around on those CDs and reinstall the utility.

Running a Repair from Add-Remove Programs might also do the trick.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

One of our employees is using PowerPoint 2003 (on Windows XP). She is trying
to insert an Excel chart as an object into a slide. Everytime she tries to
insert the chart or double-clicks on the chart icon on the slide, she gets an
error 1309. "Error reading from file C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Art\P
files\Microsoft Office\convtext.exe. Verify that it exists and can be
accessed." It appears that no one else in the office is having the same
problem. Everything works great on my laptop.

Have they tried the same operation with the same Excel file as she's working
with, though? Does the same problem occur on her system with charts in Excel
that you create on your computer?

I ask because a quick google on "convtext.exe" suggests that Office is looking
for the convtext.exe program to do something with text that's in a right-to-left
language like Arabic or Hebrew.

If the charts in question were created in an Office or Windows version using one
of these languages, the error would make sense.