PowerPoint will not open presentations

[Guest]

I recently installed office 2003 on my home computer. My OS is windows 2000.
The problem I am having is that PowerPoint will not open slide presentations
when you click on them. I’m not talking about shortcuts, I mean the actual
presentation. When I click on a presentation, PowerPoint opens with a blank
slide show as if I had wanted to create a new show. I can open the
presentation only by opening PowerPoint, clicking on file, clicking on open
and then selecting the presentation I want to view. Somewhat cumbersome,
don’t you think? I’ve even created new presentations thinking maybe there
was a conflict with the old version of PowerPoint, but the same thing
happens. I am leery of reinstalling office or PowerPoint since I’ve already
registered this one online. I used it until I installed Office 2003. I have
gone into the control panel and changed the folder options in order for .ppt
files to be opened by PowerPoint. All other components of office work great.
Please help.

Bernie

 

[Echo S]

Go to Help/Check for Updates and install SP-1 for Office 2003.

 

[Guest]

Go to Help/Check for Updates and install SP-1 for Office 2003.

Been there, done that. Still no go. The PowerPoint presentations open
pretty easily with "Open Office", but not with PowerPoint. And these are
PowerPoint prsentations, not Open Office. I wanted, and bought, Office 2003
since that is what we use at work, it has more fetures and it's what I'm more
comfortable with. Strangely, this is the only part of Office 2003 that does
not function properly. I'll receive an email Word document, or bring
something (Word) from work to edit and everything is great. Same with Excel.
Not so with PowerPoint.
Thanks for any help.
Bernie

 

[Sonia]

Just a hunch. Open Windows Explorer and go to Tools > Folder Options and click
on the File Types tab. Locate and highlight PPT. Click on Advanced. In the
Actions list is "New" in bold? If so highlight "Open" and click on Set Default.
OK your way out and then test by clicking on a PPT file.

 

[Guest]

Just a hunch. Open Windows Explorer and go to Tools > Folder Options and click
on the File Types tab. Locate and highlight PPT. Click on Advanced. In the
Actions list is "New" in bold? If so highlight "Open" and click on Set Default.
OK your way out and then test by clicking on a PPT file.
--

Sonia Coleman
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun Software, Templates and Tutorials

Well, on that folder option, as well as Excel (which seems to function
properly) I don't get a choice of "advanced", only "restore". If you click
restore it goes back to the open office program. But I think I have it
figured out. I held my breath and deleted the PPT folder. I then created a
new folder called PPT. I checked the "application used to preform this
action" on another machine and basically just retyped that same information
into my system after recreating the new, open, print, print to and show
actions. The main office folder was in a little different place, so that had
to change however I did copy the "/n" and "/s" and the various % values
associated with each. Everything seem fine now. Do you forsee any issus
ahead with this crude repair?
Thanks,

Bernie

 

[Sonia]

That should work fine. Just make sure that you have set Open as the default
action.

You may want to repeat the process for PPS. The Actions are (your path will be
different):

&New "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 2003\OFFICE11\POWERPNT.EXE" /n "%1"
&Print "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 2003\OFFICE11\POWERPNT.EXE" /p "%1"
&Show. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 2003\OFFICE11\POWERPNT.EXE" /s "%1"

Set Show as the default. Then a PPS file will open in Slide Show mode in
PowerPoint if you have it set as default. This is the behavior you want.

Most "polite" software allows you to do a custom install and make decisions on
what files should be associated with the program. You might have installed
something (Open Office?) that didn't give you that option. That's why I always
do a custom install if possible. Then if file associations get changed without
my OK I can write to the vendor and express my displeasure. <G>

 

[Echo S]

associated with each. Everything seem fine now.

Sweet! Good call, Sonia!

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

As a rule, Help, Detect and Repair should sort out this kind of problem w/o your
having to do all the manual labor.