Slideshow works fine from PP but NOT from viewer?

[KeyWestBoy]

I just created a PPT presentation in PP2003 is is about 40 slides long with
transitions and a background WAV file.

When I play the slideshow from within PowerPoint it works fine. However when
I play it using the PowerPoint Viewer it hangs up / " stalls " on the next to
the last slide. Even hitting the space bar / mouse-click will not advance the
show to the last slide. Using the space bar to advance the slides DOES work
up until the next-to-last slide

I "discovered" this when I did the " package for CD ". I packaged the
presentation to a folder then burned it to CD with Nero.

I get the same stalled / hung behavior when I run the presentation from the
hard drive using the viewer. I run it with the viewer by opening a command
prompt in the package folder then running the play.bat file that is put in
the folder when the package is created.

WHAT the heck is going on here... any help / suggestions appreciated....

Thanks,
Jim

 

[Echo S]

What's on the last slide? And on the next-to-last slide?

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html
PPTLive! Oct 28-31, New Orleans http://www.pptlive.com

 

[KeyWestBoy]

Thanks Echo!
The next-to-last slide is just a jpg image file with some PP text overlayed
on top.
The last slide is text only with "Fly-In" animation of 3 blocks of text.

Nothing too fancy....

Jim

What's on the last slide? And on the next-to-last slide?

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html
PPTLive! Oct 28-31, New Orleans http://www.pptlive.com

I just created a PPT presentation in PP2003 is is about 40 slides long with
transitions and a background WAV file.

When I play the slideshow from within PowerPoint it works fine. However
when
I play it using the PowerPoint Viewer it hangs up / " stalls " on the next
to
the last slide. Even hitting the space bar / mouse-click will not advance
the
show to the last slide. Using the space bar to advance the slides DOES
work
up until the next-to-last slide

I "discovered" this when I did the " package for CD ". I packaged the
presentation to a folder then burned it to CD with Nero.

I get the same stalled / hung behavior when I run the presentation from
the
hard drive using the viewer. I run it with the viewer by opening a command
prompt in the package folder then running the play.bat file that is put in
the folder when the package is created.

WHAT the heck is going on here... any help / suggestions appreciated....

Thanks,
Jim

 

[KeyWestBoy]

For grins, I just deleted the last 3 slides from the presentation and then
build 3 new
slides and copied and pasted the "elements" from the last 3 slides back into
3 new blank template pages....

Now the very last slide shows up but just as a blank slide with no text ...
where as in preview (non-slideshow) mode it has 3 text boxes in it....
very weird....

If nothing better comes up I'll just delete that last slide, type in all the
text from scratch into a new template page and move on... but I would like to
understand what the heck is going on here....

Thanks,
Jim

What's on the last slide? And on the next-to-last slide?

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html
PPTLive! Oct 28-31, New Orleans http://www.pptlive.com

I just created a PPT presentation in PP2003 is is about 40 slides long with
transitions and a background WAV file.

When I play the slideshow from within PowerPoint it works fine. However
when
I play it using the PowerPoint Viewer it hangs up / " stalls " on the next
to
the last slide. Even hitting the space bar / mouse-click will not advance
the
show to the last slide. Using the space bar to advance the slides DOES
work
up until the next-to-last slide

I "discovered" this when I did the " package for CD ". I packaged the
presentation to a folder then burned it to CD with Nero.

I get the same stalled / hung behavior when I run the presentation from
the
hard drive using the viewer. I run it with the viewer by opening a command
prompt in the package folder then running the play.bat file that is put in
the folder when the package is created.

WHAT the heck is going on here... any help / suggestions appreciated....

Thanks,
Jim

 

[Echo S]

Nice detective work, Jim. I can't think of anything with the Viewer that
should cause this problem, especially with an animation as simple as Fly In.

If you are on that slide in PPT (in editing view) and hit Shift+F5 to play
that slide in slide show view, does everything animate properly? You might
also check Slide Show | Set up Show just to make sure you've specified that
the show play All slides, and not just a range of them.

I suppose it could be a hardware acceleration or video driver issue, but it
sounds almost like a resources issue or something when running the
presentation from the Viewer on the CD. Do you have another system you can
try it on to see if it happens there, too?

By the way, how big is that JPG? (Talking file size -- is it lots of MBs
big?)

Is the presentation set to loop? What's on the first slide?

Oh, here's something to try. What if you delete the WAV (on a copy of the
file, of course)? Does the file play properly then?

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html
PPTLive! Oct 28-31, New Orleans http://www.pptlive.com

For grins, I just deleted the last 3 slides from the presentation and then
build 3 new
slides and copied and pasted the "elements" from the last 3 slides back
into
3 new blank template pages....

Now the very last slide shows up but just as a blank slide with no text
...
where as in preview (non-slideshow) mode it has 3 text boxes in it....
very weird....

If nothing better comes up I'll just delete that last slide, type in all
the
text from scratch into a new template page and move on... but I would like
to
understand what the heck is going on here....

Thanks,
Jim

What's on the last slide? And on the next-to-last slide?

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit
http://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html
PPTLive! Oct 28-31, New Orleans http://www.pptlive.com

I just created a PPT presentation in PP2003 is is about 40 slides long
with
transitions and a background WAV file.

When I play the slideshow from within PowerPoint it works fine. However
when
I play it using the PowerPoint Viewer it hangs up / " stalls " on the
next
to
the last slide. Even hitting the space bar / mouse-click will not
advance
the
show to the last slide. Using the space bar to advance the slides DOES
work
up until the next-to-last slide

I "discovered" this when I did the " package for CD ". I packaged the
presentation to a folder then burned it to CD with Nero.

I get the same stalled / hung behavior when I run the presentation from
the
hard drive using the viewer. I run it with the viewer by opening a
command
prompt in the package folder then running the play.bat file that is put
in
the folder when the package is created.

WHAT the heck is going on here... any help / suggestions
appreciated....

Thanks,
Jim

 

[KeyWestBoy]

Echo:

Thanks for the help!

Nice detective work, Jim. I can't think of anything with the Viewer that
should cause this problem, especially with an animation as simple as Fly In.

If you are on that slide in PPT (in editing view) and hit Shift+F5 to play
that slide in slide show view, does everything animate properly? You might
also check Slide Show | Set up Show just to make sure you've specified that
the show play All slides, and not just a range of them.

Yes, the Shift-F5 works fine, and all the slides are UN-hidden.

I suppose it could be a hardware acceleration or video driver issue, but it
sounds almost like a resources issue or something when running the
presentation from the Viewer on the CD. Do you have another system you can
try it on to see if it happens there, too?

I just tried it on a 2nd machine with a very different hardware config to
see and -- same problem -- hangs up in VIEWER, runs fine in slideshow mode of
the PP program...

By the way, how big is that JPG? (Talking file size -- is it lots of MBs
big?)

The entire presentation of about 42 slides is only about 30 Mb total... some
have bigger images than others, but I had PPT get rid of the portions of the
images were cropped out and redid the images for "web/screen" quality (which
cut presentation size from 90Mb down to 30Mb) but still no go....

Is the presentation set to loop? What's on the first slide?

No looping
The WAV file is on the first slide (not embedded)
I tried having the wave file stop on say the 20th slide so that it would not
be "tangled up" with the last slide... still no go ...

I was not the original author of the presentation and one of the the pieces
of "text" on the last slide is actually an "image-of-text" when I re-did the
last 3 slides I made it into "real" text ... there may have been something
funky going on with that ... I'm not sure how it was generated but still...
which when I re-did the slides I made it "real" text again ...

I just kinda hurts my head.... ;-)

Thanks,
Jim

Oh, here's something to try. What if you delete the WAV (on a copy of the
file, of course)? Does the file play properly then?

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html
PPTLive! Oct 28-31, New Orleans http://www.pptlive.com

 

[KeyWestBoy]

Oh for crying out loud...

I had it all working (with no effects on last slide) then put the Fly-in
effects back and it broke again. I took the effects back out and it was still
broken.

I got to thinking maybe it is a font issue -- since I did not initially
create this thing maybe somebody dropped a True Type font in this and didn't
save it????

I went to Options --> Save and turned on "embedd True Type fonts" then when
I tried to save the presetation to disk it came back and listed two fonts
that can not be saved as they are not installed....

Is there an easy way to find out where they are used and then change them
out to something more standard?

Man this is killing my time budget for this project.............

Jim

 

[KeyWestBoy]

Just to close this out ..... Unless someone has a blinding flash of
inspiration ...

I gave up...

I had deleted and recreated pretty much from scratch the last 3 slides,
still broken.
Then in a fit of despiration to get done with this job I took a "screen
shot" of the last page of the presentation and then REPLACED the text on the
last slide with the screen-shot bitmap image.

Now everything works fine....
Go figure...

The last page was just 3 text boxes and had no special effects....

But before my duct-tape fix the last slide would just show up with blank
background and no text.......

Computers ... I love 'em ... really I do....

 

[aneasiertomorrow]

Hi Jim

Not sure if the missing fonts would be causing the problem, but you can
easily replace them through format -> replace fonts. If powerpoint doesn't
have the font it replaces the name with ???? in the top drop down - swap them
for arial or something and see how you get on.

Lucy
--
MOS Master Instructor
www.aneasiertomorrow.com.au

PowerPoint Live 2007 28-31 October in New Orleans www.pptlive.com
See you there

 

[KeyWestBoy]

Thanks Lucy!

Sorry, that got left out of my append ....
There were two missing fonts but replacing them did not fix it either....

Sigh.............
Jim

 

[aneasiertomorrow]

There aren't any macros or anything in the ppt are there? Do you want to send
me a copy of the 'broken' ppt and I'll see if I can find anything/recreate
the problem here. My e-mail is lucy at aneasiertomorrow dot com dot au - make
the obvious changes

Lucy
--
MOS Master Instructor
www.aneasiertomorrow.com.au

PowerPoint Live 2007 28-31 October in New Orleans www.pptlive.com
See you there

 

[KeyWestBoy]

Lucy:

Thanks so much, I'll email you a copy today!
I was not ignoring you ... well didn't mean to anyway...
I didn't get (see ;-) the notification that the thread had been appended to!

It is just so very ODD to me that it works fine in PowerPoint but that the
viewer gets "confused" ...

THANKS!
Jim

 

[aneasiertomorrow]

FYI
Jim sent me the file and round-tripping to HTML and back did the job
(http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00526.htm). Interestingly enough it worked just
fine with the 2007 viewer which I thought was just the 2003 viewer + 2007
compatibility pack.

Lucy
--
MOS Master Instructor
www.aneasiertomorrow.com.au

PowerPoint Live 2007 28-31 October in New Orleans www.pptlive.com
See you there

 

[Echo S]

You know, I totally forgot about that. Round tripping does indeed fix some
oddball issues that keep files from showing properly in the PPT 2007 Viewer.

Good call, Lucy.

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html
PPTLive! Oct 28-31, New Orleans http://www.pptlive.com

 

[aneasiertomorrow]

Thanks Echo

And do you know what? When I was on the pptfaq looking for the roundtripping
page the top result was 'Text disappears in the Viewer'
(http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00877.htm). D'oh! Should have thought to look there
first....

Lucy

PS Looking forward to meeting you - when do you get into town?
--
MOS Master Instructor
www.aneasiertomorrow.com.au

PowerPoint Live 2007 28-31 October in New Orleans www.pptlive.com
See you there

You know, I totally forgot about that. Round tripping does indeed fix some
oddball issues that keep files from showing properly in the PPT 2007 Viewer.

Good call, Lucy.

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PowerPoint 2007? http://www.echosvoice.com/2007.htm
(New!) The PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/2qzlpl
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/powerpointannoy/index.html
PPTLive! Oct 28-31, New Orleans http://www.pptlive.com

FYI
Jim sent me the file and round-tripping to HTML and back did the job
(http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00526.htm). Interestingly enough it worked just
fine with the 2007 viewer which I thought was just the 2003 viewer + 2007
compatibility pack.

Lucy
--
MOS Master Instructor
www.aneasiertomorrow.com.au

PowerPoint Live 2007 28-31 October in New Orleans www.pptlive.com
See you there

 

[KeyWestBoy]

Thanks Lucy & Echo!!!