Powerpoint can't save file

[MacSEK]

Environment:

Office 2004, Service Pack2 (error also occurs with Office 2004 SP1)
Client: Mac OSX 10.4.2
Server: Mac OSX Server 10.4.2
User Homedirectory on server (Open Directory)

Problem:
Afte a while working with a file (the user could save the file some
times), powerpoint won't save a file anymore. Powerpoint says it could
not save the file, because it is allready in use. The user should wait
untill the file is available again. A click on ok brings up another
error: The file is write-protected, the user is aked to save the file
with another name. Sometimes saving the file with another name does not
work. Neether on another location on the server, the homedirectory,
even on the local harddrive (/User/Every Uer/).

Does anyboda have the same problems or a fix for it?

Thanks!
MacSEK

 

[Andrew Chiang [MSFT]]

Hello MacSEK,

Are the machines running Norton Antivirus? If so, can you disable
Auto-Protect? Since you're running Tiger, can you try having Spotlight not
index the directories where you're saving PowerPoint files to? Go to System
Preferences->Spotlight->Privacy and drag/add those directories.

Let me know if this works for you.
Andrew

 

[MacSEK]

Hi,

well we are running Norton Antivierus. I will try to disable
autoprotect.

The files were stored on an afp sharepoint, so spotlight won't index
them.

I'll let you know about my findings with Norton ..

MacSEK

 

[rintaw]

There have been a couple of cases of this for over a year now (search
the newsgroup for "currently in use.") I'm running into it as well.
lsof indicates that it is mdimport that is accessing the file, which is
spotlight. Putting the particular directory in the Privacy list for
spotlight doesn't seem to fix it. Eventually, if you wait, it will
sometimes finally save the file. Toggling with fast save seems to work
for a while, but I suspect this is by chance.

Sometimes Powerpoint gives errors about writing it's temporary ppt
instead of the final ppt. In those cases as well, mdimport seems to be
the other party.

This seems to be a bug in Powerpoint, including the latest 11.2.1,
related to how powerpoint interacts with Spotlight. Killing mdimport or
mdimportserver doesn't seem to help much because they immediately
respawn during the save.

-RobN