Powerpoint for Mac crashes with PC file

[Guest]

Tried to open a ppt file created on a PC. The file contained a slide with two
large scanned images. When clicking through the slides Powerpoint crashed
when it attempted to open this slide. When trying to open slide sorter view,
Powerpoint crashed.
Imported the file into Keynote and it opened OK. Reduced the size of the
scanned images and put them back into the Keynote file, exported the file as
a ppt file and then it opened OK in Powerpoint and didn't crash.
How do I avoid having to do this every time? Just use Keynote instead?

iMac G5, 1GB RAM, OS 10.4.6; Powerpoint 11.2.4 (060501)

Thanks.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Tried to open a ppt file created on a PC. The file contained a slide with two
large scanned images. When clicking through the slides Powerpoint crashed
when it attempted to open this slide. When trying to open slide sorter view,
Powerpoint crashed.

Historically, PPT/Mac has always had problems dealing with extremely large
images. I thought it was fixed or at least improved a few versions back, but
perhaps only for smaller big files? ;-)

Imported the file into Keynote and it opened OK. Reduced the size of the
scanned images and put them back into the Keynote file, exported the file as
a ppt file and then it opened OK in Powerpoint and didn't crash.
How do I avoid having to do this every time? Just use Keynote instead?

If Keynote does all you need and you don't need compatibility with the
considerably wider audience of PPT users, that's a reasonable approach,
especially if you have no control over the way the files are produced in the
first place.

It'd be better all 'round, IF it's possible, to use smaller image files in the
first place.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the suggestion. I work in education, and I don't have control over
what vintage version of Powerpoint for PCs is used by students or the size of
the image files they use. Obviously the best way to solve the problem is to
deal with it at source; unfortunately I can't do that. I just assumed that
the cross-platform capabilities of Powepoint that have been loudly advertised
for many years meant that problems like this shouldn't exist.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Thanks for the suggestion. I work in education, and I don't have control over
what vintage version of Powerpoint for PCs is used by students or the size of
the image files they use. Obviously the best way to solve the problem is to
deal with it at source; unfortunately I can't do that. I just assumed that
the cross-platform capabilities of Powepoint that have been loudly advertised
for many years meant that problems like this shouldn't exist.

It's quite good, all things considered, but not perfect. Little is, really.