PPT Version issue: Some slides appearing blank

[mheydman]

Our art dept created slides using PPT 2004 for the Mac. The
presentation was tested on Office 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003sp1. All
appeared fine.

However when viewed on a machine with PPT 2003 pre-sp1, several of the
slides appeared blank- only the formatting from the master was visible,
other text & graphical elements did not display.

These slides are what I'd consider to be pretty basic- no
animations/transition effects; only text and drawn lines to form a
graph (e.g. there is no data directly driving this like MSChart)

When the presentation was saved in 2003Sp1, all the slides became
viewable in pre-sp1 versions of PPT.

So, my questions: With all the possible permutations of versions,
hotfixes, service packs, and updates, how should one go about testing a
presentation to ensure that it is viewable in *all* versions of PPT?

How do other folks deal with issue?

Thanks,

Matt

 

[Sonia]

Anyone who has PowerPoint 2003 should immediately install service pack 1 because
it fixes the problem you described, among others. If people haven't installed
SP1 there's nothing you can do about it other than to state that your
presentation requires PowerPoint with all available updates applied. That's not
asking too much.
--

Sonia Coleman
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun Software, Templates and Tutorials
http://www.soniacoleman.com