Path length for PPT presentations

[Jean-Pierre Lafaille]

I have had much trouble with a kind of erratic behaviour of playing sound
files. Sometimes they played well, sometimes I got no sound at all.

It turned out that the reason for the problem was the lentgh of the path of
the file, including its own name, starting with "[DriveName]:\etc. "

I have not determined its value, but it definitely exists and no warning
message is issued !

Apparently, PPT does not care whether or not the file is in the same
directory as the presentation : it uses the full path, at least to make the
link. So the criteria would be the length of a string looking like what
follows, if the sound file was located in the "_DEFAULT__POWERPOINT" in the
"My Documents" directory (User's default directory in W2K) :

C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\_DEFAULT_POWERPOINT\Sound
File.mp3

Once the length of the string exceeds a certain value, PPT does not make the
link (without warning message of course, what do you expect from MS ?), and
obviously, the sound does not play.

When the link is successfully made and the directory moved to another
location (e. g. on another computer), it is not clear what PPT does. I have
had instances where it wanted to use the sound file on the original
location, even through a network connection. (Sound played well as long as
the two computers were on the network, but did not when the machines were
disconnected).

Even better !

When the length of the path of the presentation itself is too long, doubble
clicking on the presentation filename opens... a blank presentation ! I
tried it by adding "xxx...xxx" to the name of a higher directory to easily
lengtening or shortening the path. Moving the presentation directory to
another location also removed the problem !

Jean-Pierre

 

[Ute Simon]

It turned out that the reason for the problem was the lentgh of the path

of
the file, including its own name, starting with "[DriveName]:\etc. "

I have not determined its value, but it definitely exists and no warning
message is issued !

That's correct, Jean-Pierre,

Paths including file names should not be longer than 128 characters for
PowerPoint. For other reasons and more details see here:

Songs don't play
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00155.htm

Kind regards,
Ute

 

[Guest]

Hi Ute,

Do you know whether this path length limit is going to change, as it we have
reached teh limits of it in our developemt of a comprehansive trainging
programme for a global company.
It seems that giving files meaningful names that can be deciphered by
non-computer-savy people is incompatible with a compex file and folder
structure to store content because of this (at least in our case)

Many Thanks
--
Nik C
multimedia developer
JohnsonDiversey

It turned out that the reason for the problem was the lentgh of the path
of
the file, including its own name, starting with "[DriveName]:\etc. "

I have not determined its value, but it definitely exists and no warning
message is issued !

That's correct, Jean-Pierre,

Paths including file names should not be longer than 128 characters for
PowerPoint. For other reasons and more details see here:

Songs don't play
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00155.htm

Kind regards,
Ute

--
Ute Simon
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team und PowerPoint-User-Team
Tipps, Tricks und Kostenloser Newsletter: www.ppt-user.de
Infos zu den PowerPoint-Anwendertagen: www.powerpoint-anwendertage.de

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Do you know whether this path length limit is going to change,

It's always possible that future versions of PowerPoint will address this
problem, but until they're in public beta or unless MS announces changes,
there's no way to know.

That still wouldn't help with earlier versions of PPT. An update to the MCI
media player might deal with the problem across the board but again, unless and
until MS announces a fix, we've no way of knowing whether one's on the way.

as it we have