Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications Powerpoint: anyway to have it not take over?

Sometimes I open a power point attachment/ via email from friends. It goes straight to full screen. Then I cannot even force quit. The preferences -- says default standard view. any ideas? thanks.

push the "escape" key to exit full screen.....

That did not work.
I had beach ball up and escape did not work.

that's why I was asking if there is a way for it not to take over the whole screen included the dock and it's icons.

The beach ball is another issue......of course escape won't work there,,,,do you have the latest version of PPT? That may have an impact.

What about a preference that does not hide the dock ever? that would be nice no?
I have 2004.

If you open a PowerPoint slide show (the filename ends in .pps or .ppsx), the file will always open full screen, no matter what the PowerPoint preferences are set to. I think there is a way to make normal PowerPoint files do this too, though I'm not 100% sure that's the case.

When PowerPoint launches, you'll see the spinning pinwheel while it optimizes font menu performance. (This step, "optimizing font menu perofrmance," is something that Microsoft Office programs always go through on a Mac. Nobody who works at Micorosft really understands how Mac fonts work, it seems.)

The length of time the pinwheel spins depends on the number of fonts you have loaded and on whether the program is a native Intel program or is running on an Intel computer in PowerPC mode. On my computer, running Office 2008 with about 3 fonts installed in addition to the normal Apple fonts, the pinwheel spins for about 4 minutes. If you have more fonts, it goes up dramatically. Office 2004 takes a lot longer than Office 2008.

You can wait for the pinwheel to stop, then hit Escape to get out of full screen mode. To bring other programs to the front and to see your dock again while it is trapped in full screen mode, hold down the Command key and hit the Tab key.

Do you really have only three non-Apple fonts installed, or is that a typo?

Tacit,
you mean the "BEACHBALL"
A friend emailed a good attachment, but the beachball never went away.

I think something is very wrong with your Office 2008 installation. On my computers, Powerpoint 2008 starts up in less than 5 seconds. I have dozens of fonts installed in addition to the default ones.

New discovery.
Just saved to desktop the PP presentation my friend emailed me. At first it's fine. Then I click and on second page, beachball comes up. Stays up.
But got trick. With my logitech mouse I was able to launch Safari, which brings up the dock, then I could do force quit.

I use Office 2004 and have OS 10.6.4

When I receive a PowerPoint file with the .pps ending, the process of opening always defaults to Keynote. To open in PowerPoint, which provides a better display, I need to drag the .pps file to the desktop and change it to .ppt

At that point I'm asked if I really want to do that. I confirm, and double-clicking the file opens it in PowerPoint.

I don't recall ever receiving a file ending in .ppsx so I don't know what would happen with one of those. I assume the Office software will convert it to an older format.



Mine opens reasonably quickly but I suppose it may be due to the plain-Jane nature of the PowerPoints I get, which are usually just slides and sometimes a bit of background music. A PowerPoint with 50 or 60 slides will open in about 10 seconds.

I always get a caution that a couple of fonts (whose names I don't recall) are not present but it never seems to affect anything.

ryck

Typo. I meant to say 36 fonts, not 3 fonts.

Wonder how could you get Office 2004 working under 10.6.4.
I could never make it work. PowerPoint hangs and then crashes on launch on several Intel computers. Reinstall helped for a little bit and then the crashes returned. It forced me to adopt Office 2008, which I hate, especially PowerPoint and its lack of cross-talk with Word.

Darned if I know. Maybe it's because it's just always worked from its first installation, at least three computers and a few operating systems ago. It was bought in 2004 and migrated since then. All I've ever done is keep it and operating systems updated.

ryck

Reinstall helped for a little bit and then the crashes returned.

It would not surprise me in the least if the problems were related to the "fake registry" that office installs to gimp office into running on the mac. That was a continuous source of headaches for me when I worked at the school until we figured out what was causing it. Just save a good copy of the "registration database" file (like right after first launch after reinstall) and overwrite it every time an office app starts going wonky or refuses to launch.

Normally when a prefs/db file on a mac is removed, it's rebuilt properly. But this is like the windows registry, you can imagine the insanity that follows erasing THAT. It usually goes from a 130k file to a 13k file or some such nonsense and then everything goes to pot.

Amazing how MS has managed to bring the joys of the Registry to even the mac.

I wonder if there's something wrong in your setup other than Office 2004. As I mentioned, I've never had problems and just continue updating. It has just occurred again.

I received an email with an Excel attachment and, when I tried to open it, got a dialogue box advising it was a newer version of Excel and asking if I wanted to convert it. I answered yes and a download began that said "XML File Format Converter for Mac 1.1.6"

During the install it stopped twice to ask for programs to be Quit. First Word and Excel, then the Microsoft Version checker. The install continued and afterward I opened the spreadsheet without incident.

ryck

Thanks! I will give it a try. For some reason, the most headache was with PowerPoint. Since it is font-conscious, I wonder if some font management software in SL would not talk to it. No problems whatsoever on Leopard on any of the four computers. But all three having SL refused to deal with Office 2004.

Actually, you did not update Office; the XML converter is a standalone app that makes the Office 2007/2008 documents openable by Office 2004.

Do you use Entourage? I ask as I just completed the 11.6 update and everything seems to be fine. However, I also did a a bit of checking and find that "everything" really means sans Entourage.

For some reason, I don't have Entourage installed although there are some Microsoft Office folders with temporary file and Script Menu items. My guess is that, as I have only ever used Apple's Mail program, I just didn't install Entourage. Alternatively it may be that, at some point, because I don't use it, I just removed it.

I also checked the original install disc and Entourage is definitely there. The install disc is supposed to be able to do a partial install, using the Install Assistant, but I found that the Install Assistant won't open.

....just wondering if Entourage could be a source of your difficulties.

ryck

Entourage was never used on those computers. A test once showed it was fine. I love this e-mailer but from home, I could only use the web-based e-mailer for my work account.
Enjoy Office 2004, because the 2008 seems to be worse in general.

I have Office 2004 but never installed it. I bought it because, at the time, a free upgrade to Office 2008 was promised when that newer version became available. I now use Office 2008. What are your complaints about 2008 compared to 2004?

I am a heavy user of PowerPoint and Word, having to write grants and papers, give lectures, etc. The biggest complaint is very poor integration of these two programs. Just to insert a picture from PPT to Word is a headache. One must only do it through "paste special" and then choose "as pdf". Otherwise, the picture in the text box in Word will be fuzzy with low res. Ungrouping objects for editing in PPT is another headache. They now chose to edit within the group contrary to 2004, which does not allow the same freedom; certain things cannot be changed at all. Th Excel error bars when importing a graph get all messed up and if you adjust them manually, they don't hold. The utmost stupidity in PPT is the word copy-drag glitch. Highlighting a word in a text, then pressing Option key and dragging it to a new location in that text normally copies the word. Now, you see the plus sign (for copy), but the word just get dragged to a new place. Horrible! And it is reproducible on all computers I tried. Put this on PPT discussion forum on MS site but nobody paid attention. I also don't like the insert symbol option in Word. In 2004, you would insert it from the available font menu choosing Symbol font. Now you have a palette which is preformatted with no possibility of font change through it. The keyboard shortcuts for this are still not working in PPT, although they work in Word. Entourage seems OK with no noticeable improvements or glitches. I use Excel rarely and it seems OK. In a nutshell, program integration within the suite sucks.