Read-only files on CD

[Guest]

There is a mystery in my office. A colleague revised a power point
presentation on his home computer and saved the changes on the CD which
contained the original file. Now, when the CD is inserted into his work
computer, the file opens as a 'read-only' file WITHOUT any of the revisions.
However, when the file is opened (from the same CD) on other computers in the
office, the presentation opens as a regular file with all of the revisions.
Can anyone tell me what is going on here?

 

[Bill Dilworth]

Does he use Roxio CD burning, native Windows CD burning or perhaps another
third party CD tool?

This does not sound like a PowerPoint problem so much as a CD over-write
problem.

Normal behavior is for all files on a CD to be changed to Read-only. This
is because files on a CD-R can not be changed once they are burnt. Some CD
burning tools get around this by writing a new version of the old file on a
new place and re-writing the directory of the CD. When this all works, the
end users doesn't notice it. When it doesn't, weird things begin to happen.
The good news is that if you can read the newer version and you copy them
to a Hard Drive, you can easily change their status back to normal.

--
Bill Dilworth
A proud member of the Microsoft PPT MVP Team
Users helping fellow users.
http://billdilworth.mvps.org
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
vestprog2@ Please read the PowerPoint FAQ pages.
yahoo. They answer most of our questions.
com www.pptfaq.com
..

 

[Michael Koerner]

Does he by chance have a copy of the un revised presentation on his work
computer? Also, when he opens the presentation on his work computer is he
doling it from the Recent Documents dialogue box?

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

There is a mystery in my office. A colleague revised a power point
presentation on his home computer and saved the changes on the CD which
contained the original file. Now, when the CD is inserted into his work
computer, the file opens as a 'read-only' file WITHOUT any of the revisions.
However, when the file is opened (from the same CD) on other computers in the
office, the presentation opens as a regular file with all of the revisions.
Can anyone tell me what is going on here?

CDs that you've added extra files to (as your colleage has done) tend to work
only on PCs that have the same cd-burning software installed. Otherwise, the PC
may not recognize the second and subsequent "sessions" of these multi-session
CDs ... result: they see only the first version of any file that's been
changed, and I'm betting that's what's happened here.

Read the file off the CD on a computer that allows you to see the most recent
version, then write it to a new cd (and do NOT enable the cd to allow additional
files to be written to it later -- "close" the cd, after the first write, in
other words.)

Or use a thumb drive or transfer the file over the network or email it or ...
well, anything but multi-writes to a single CD ;-)

There's more info on this here:

Problems with unreadable CDs/DVDs
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00852.htm