This problem has been posted many times already on various forums. Two of my computers with Office 2004 suffer from it too. Other Office 2004 apps are unaffected. One poster proposed to trash PPT toolbars file in the prefs but it did not work for me. Other people reported success with reinstalling Office and applying all updates. Since this is tedious (I have two disks with 6 keys and do not remember which was used on which machine), maybe someone could offer a different suggestion?

Office versions have always been rather "tender" and subject to sudden and unexpected failures to communicate properly with the OS. Uninstalling (completely removing) Office and then re-installing has generally been considered a sovereign fix when that happens. The other sovereign fix has been an archive and install of the OS itself.

Thanks! I guess, I have no choice... Looks like with SL A&I will not work because the glitch seems to be so widespread.

Update. After reinstalling Office and opening PowerPoint it worked but I got the standard message that the framework library could not be loaded. The 11.5.5 update cured that. Everything is back to normal.