Powerpoint 2004 crashes when selecting a new design

[Guest]

First off: all credit goes to James Gordon who wrote this to me earlier
today:

-------------------
Hi Herbert,

I would do the following things in this order, and test after each one to
see
if the problem is fixed:

1. Use disk utility to repair permissions
2. With all Office applications not running throw away the powerpoint
plist
file in preferences and the "Microsoft" folder in preferences. Empty
trash.
Start Powerpoint.
3. Run DiskWarrior and replace the OS directory
4. Search for bad or corrupt font(s) and get them off the system.
5. If any of the above work, be a really nice person and post a reply to
anyone in the newsgroup who experienced the same problem and tell them
what fixed it.

-Jim

------------
I went through the list just up to item # 2 (deleting plist files) and the
crashes were gone! I did not delete all of what James suggested, as I did
not want to risk loosing all Office customization right away - but was
prepared to do so by gradually deleting more files if necessary.

Here is what I trashed: com.microsoft.PowerPoint.prefs.plist, Office Font
Cache (11), PowerPoint Toolbars (10), PowerPoint Toolbars (11) and Word
Font Substitutes.

Needless to say, I have no clue which one of the files, or all, did the
trick - but nonetheless all is well here!!!

Thanks again, James!!!

 

[John Laudun]

First, let me say that this particular crash is very annoying. I suspect it
might, in my case, be in part due to some font pruning I did. That would
move it up a notch on the annoying scale.

Anyway, I followed steps 1 and 2 and still got a crash. So I re-deleted the
PP plist and then did a RESTART. That seems to have solved the immediate
problem -- I'll know more and report back if and when I see a crash later
on.

I REFUSE to have to run a third party application which I have to purchase
separately, like DiskWarrior, to fix a PowerPoint problem.

I should also note that Office's Setup Assistant decided to re-install some
fonts without asking my permission.

This is definitely bad manners, bad design, and bad programming.

John

On 2004-7-31 2:59 PM, in article