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kennedy · Apr 29, 2007, 08:35 AM

Has anyone had trouble where they save a PowerPoint file on the Mac, send it to a PeeCee user, and they can't open it? In particular, with the latest version of Windows PowerPoint?

I've been using PowerPoint v.X since it came out... in all those years, I had never had a PC user tell me they couldn't open a PPT I had sent them. Thousands of cases.

Last week, I ran into one such user/PC. Any file saved by Mac PowerPoint and mailed to him, he will be unable to open. And that is true also of any PowerPoint saved on the one other Mac user in our company. But I can mail it to any other PC user in our company... they can open it with Windows PowerPoint, save it, and then resend it to him... and then he can open it. Similarly, I can jump into Parallels, open the file, save it out, and then use Apple Mail to send that file saved by Windows PowerPoint, and then he'll be able to open it no problem.

I was prepared to just write it off as a bad install on that PC... but then we encountered the same problem with a customer. He felt it was just his computer because:
(1) he had a brand new install of PowerPoint
(2) he forwarded our PowerPoint to others in his company who opened it no problem
He's having his PowerPoint re-installed.

But it makes me worry that the latest version of Windows PowerPoint (latest service packs or updates) has caused it to be unable to read files saved by Mac PowerPoint. (The user in our company that was having problems has the newest PC in our company... the most recent install of MS Office.)

Any others seeing this??

chabig · Apr 29, 2007, 09:18 AM

It's something peculiar to his PC. I have the latest version of PowerPoint 2007 and it opens presentations created in Mac PowerPoint just fine.

Perhaps the problem with his handling of email attachments.

Chris

Wiskedjak · Apr 29, 2007, 09:21 AM

This used to be an issue in earlier versions of PowerPoint, but I haven't encountered it in recent times. Though, to be honest, I'm more inclined to use OpenOffice or Keynote for inter-platform .ppt work than I am to use the Mac version of PowerPoint.

Are you saving the files as a PowerPoint Presentation or as a PowerPoint Package?

kennedy · May 6, 2007, 09:34 AM

We save files as PowerPoint Presentations... or more precisely, in Mac PowerPoint, we are saving as a "Microsoft PowerPoint document".

ghporter · May 6, 2007, 10:30 AM

Is your Mac appending an extension to the presentation? Windows is stupid about opening files; it NEEDS that extension to be able to open it. Of course a user can simply rename the file with the appropriate extension and all is well, but it takes a user that's not afraid of his computer to be able to do that. I had this problem with a Word document last week.

My real problem with PowerPoint is that on the Mac, any images I insert (no matter whether they're JPEGs, PNGs, or whatever, are saved as QuickTime objects-NOT what you want to find out when you're about to use a presentation you authored on a Mac but must show from a PC. There's gotta be a setting that controls this, but I haven't taken the time to look for it.

Wiskedjak · May 6, 2007, 10:55 AM

Originally Posted by ghporter

Is your Mac appending an extension to the presentation? Windows is stupid about opening files; it NEEDS that extension to be able to open it. Of course a user can simply rename the file with the appropriate extension and all is well, but it takes a user that's not afraid of his computer to be able to do that. I had this problem with a Word document last week.

Good call. I always forget about this since I always set up my Macs to show extensions.