Powerpoint crashes when I "Save As"

[Megan]

I am getting baffling Powerpoint behavior. I'm on a Mac OS X 10.2.8
and powerpoint is repeatedly crashing when I try to save a certain file
or "save as" another filename. I created this show with powerpoint and
hadn't had any trouble with it until today.

I've updated my Office X but that didn't solve the problem (to the
10.1.5 level.)

Any hints?

 

[mickael]

I experienced the same behaviour with one file: could it be that your
presentation transited on a XP machine at some point and was saved
there? it's either that (and I don't have a solution for that except
working the file in ppt 2001) or you inserted a corrupt object at
some stage, try splitting the file and saving chuncks of 10 slides
usually 1 chunck will crash and the others won't, try to track down
the corrupt slide/object and replace that.

mickael

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

In addition to Mickael's suggestions, try this:

Start a new presentation
Use Insert, Slides, From File to bring slides into it from your problem
presentation; try it a few at a time and see if any of the slides cause a
problem.

If so, delete them from a copy of your problem presentation and see if it'll
then save.

Or try saving as web page then opening the resulting web page back into PPT.
I'm not sure if this is as true of Mac PPT as it is of the Win version, and I
realize it sounds improbable as all getout, but "round-tripping" to HTML and
back loses very little from the presentation and can sometimes solve odd
corruption problems.

 

[Megan Donahue]

I tried saving SINGLE slides from this file (by deleting all the others) and
still Powerpoint crashes when I "Save As" , change the name, then press
Save. I have copied slides from this presentation to another presentation
and that worked; I created this presentation from an original which may well
have been through a PC at one time or another, but I was able to
modify the original and save this one. Which now appears to be a file
bomb...

-M

 

[Megan Donahue]

The new presentation plus insert>slides>from file seemed to work. I didn't
find an offending slide (perhaps I got lucky and didn't need it.) I'll keep the
"round trip to html" in my backpocket if I get desperate. I had flash animations
etc. and it's a hassle to reinsert every one of those too (I'm sure I'd lose
those in the roundtrip.)

THANKS!!!

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

The new presentation plus insert>slides>from file seemed to work. I didn't
find an offending slide (perhaps I got lucky and didn't need it.)

Great!

PPT stores data at several levels - there are the individual slides, but also the template,
the overall presentation and who knows what all else. It sounds likely that it wasn't an
individual but rather something in the template, presentation or who_knows_what_all_else data
that'd gone south.