PowerPoint 97 Save Problem on XP

[Bill Wilkinson]

I moved from Windows 98 to XP Home Edition (new machine) early this
year and reinstalled Office 97 Professional onto the XP box.
Everything has been working perfectly for months until the other day
(6 Aug 03) when PowerPoint would no longer save the complete file
name. Instead, it would save it using only the first letter and the
extension. That is, "test.ppt" would become "t.ppt" after being
saved.

In addition, the Files/Properties... dialog displays only the first
letter of the default entries in the Title, Author, and Company
fields.

I update and run Norton weekly and have it configured to check all
incoming files. No known viruses.

I've tried reinstalling Office 97 and SR2. Doesn't help.

Note that the other Office 97 products (Word, Excel, Binder, etc.)
continue to work as specified. Only PowerPoint appears to be broken.

I've searched the Web and Microsoft's database, but the nearest clue I
could find is that the registry might be damaged. Not being a
registry expert, I'd hate to hack at it and hope that things
automagically fix themselves.

Is it possible that I'd clicked something in PowerPoint that told it
to reconfigure itself to save files only by the first letter?

I'd appreciate any help anyone can give.

--Bill

 

[B]

Bill,

I'm not a PowerPoint 97 expert, but I can ask some questions that might have
been missed...

How long are the paths?
(for example c:/user profiles/bill wilkinson/settings/my
documents/slideshows/2003/summer/august/week 1/08-09-03/test.ppt) I do not
know this for a hard fact, but I'd guess there is an upper limit on the
file's path length.

Can you save them to the c: drive (no folders) and have there names stay
intact?

Are you saving to a network drive?

Does it still happen if you shut down everything else on 'the box' except
PowerPoint and barebones processes?

Does it still happen if you start PowerPoint in safe mode? Do you have any
macros installed?

Have you installed any software recently?


Post back to this thread so we can help find your cure. It may be possible
that all the string data fields in the header information area have been
reset to a length of 1. I've never heard of it, but I suppose it could
happen. But it would not explain why the saved file name is truncated on
the HD, since the save as dialog box is a shared utility.
B

 

[Echo S]

Thanks for that followup information, Bill. I *know* that will end up
helping someone in future.