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I was editing a PowerPoint presentation for my boss that he presented the previous weekend. It had embedded Quicktime video, links to other PowerPoint presentations and a very stylish and sophisticated theme (not a template, a theme).
He originally created the PPTX in PowerPoint 2007 on a PC, and I used Mac Office 2011 PowerPoint to apply the theme and embed HD Quicktime videos.
The file size was significant, but the presentation worked flawlessly on the weekend, and my boss wanted to add a couple of extra slides before he did the same presentation interstate.
I got the PPTX file on a USB, dragged it to my Mac desktop, openned it and added the slides. Two images, one extra embedded video.
Command + S.
PowerPoint found an error it can't correct. You should save presentations, quit, and restart PowerPoint
I did all of the obvious stuff, but could get the PPTX file to Save.
- I removed the slides I had just added. Didn't save. Same error.
- Found older versions on boss' computer and on the computer that was used at the presentation on the previous weekend. I could move the file onto a USB drive or accross the network, but as soon as I opened it in PowerPoint 11 and tried to save, I got the error.
- I opened a blank PowerPoint file alongside the presentation and dragged all the slides over to a new PPTX file. Didn't save. Same error.
- I tried a different Mac with Office 2011. Didn't save. Same error.
- I removed the Theme so the slide backgrounds were blank. Didn't save. Same error.
- Opened and re-saved the PPTX file on a PC with Office 2007, then used a USB Drive to take it back over to my Mac. Soon as I opened the PPTX and then tried to save it, it wouldn't save. Same error.
- Removed all the slides with embedded video. Didn't save. Same error.
- Removed slides with hyperlinks on them. Didn't save. Samer error.
- Removed slides with hyperlinks OR embedded video. Didn't save. STILL SAME ERROR.
If you think I should have tried anything else, leave me a comment below.
So I started Googling the error.
PPTools had some ideas, none of which applied to my situation, being on a Mac. I found one article pointing the finger at an installed PDF maker and another thread talking about a Norton Anti-Virus Office add-on. None of the PCs or Macs have ever had Norton installed on them.
No matter how I searched, what string of words I used, nothing would solve my problem.
I went home and slept on it. My boss was presenting the following day, so I was hoping I could find the solution before he had to leave.
I spoke to my fiance about it. She is an executive assistant and has accredted training in PowerPoint. She asked if there were links in the PPTX file. I said yes. I had already tried to remove the slides with links on them, but I guessed that I may have missed one.
We also had the idea to open a blank PPTX and drag over 5 slides at a time, saving as we go, hopefully finding the slide which housed the error by process of elimination.
So I opened the PPTX presentation and another blank PPTX file.
I dragged across the first 5 slides and saved. The new file saved. I did the next 5 slides. Saved.
I continued down until about halfway through the presentation I finally got the error.
I dragged slides over one at a time. I then dragged over a slide and got the error.
I looked at the slide and there was nothing out of the ordinary on the stage. I was a standard layout with text.
What WAS out of the ordinary is that there was a hyperlink in the notes. PowerPoint wouldn't let me right click the link and look at the hyperlink properties to see what it was linking to, but it was the typical blue, underlined text. The text was the title of the video that was embedded on the following slide.
I looked at the same slide that I dragged over to the formerly blank PPTX file. The link was there in the notes as well. I deleted the slide and tried to save the PPTX. It gave me a warning that the presentation was a read-only file, and would I like to save it as a different file name.
So my hypothesis was that the slide with the link in it created the error, and once removed converted the file to a read-only file.
I closed and reopened the blank PPTX (I know it's not blank anymore, but from now I'm just going to refer to this file as the blank PPTX because there was no theme used).
Before I did anything else, I dragged the following slide (with the embedded video) over to the blank PPTX. I saved and it saved fine. Same with the following slide.
I decided that I needed to replicate the error before I blamed the link in the notes.
I looked through the remaining slides and found another slide with a link in the notes. Dragged it over and saved. The error popped up. I cycled through, found another and tried to save. I replicated the error again, confirming that hyperlinks in notes create the error.
When my boss first created the PPTX, he had created hyperlinks on the stage linking to the video files.
When I had received the PPTX file to pretty it up with a nice theme design, I removed the links and embedded videos in trailing slides.
My boss completed the PPTX on his PC by adding notes for himself to read from behind the lecturn during the presentation. He had copied text from slides from a previous version of the PPTX file, which included the links that I had previously removed, and pasted the text into the notes.
He was able to save the PPTX while he was on the PC.
The presentation was being played on a Mac, and we were using HD Quicktime files which don't play on a PC, even if you have Quicktime installed on the PC.
That's how we were able to save the presentation, get it onto the Mac and play the presentation in the first place. It was only after the presentation when we wanted to add more slides and another Quicktime video (using a Mac) that we tried to save the PPTX and found the error.
Got it?
If you're still with me, then I hope you realise that this was a pretty obscure configuration that led to this error. Hyperlinks copied into the notes create this error. Look through the notes of all of the slides and remove all of the text with hyperlinks. You can't remove the hypelink itself by highlighting and right-clicking, you need to remove the entire hyperlinked text. Save the file. If it says you are trying to save a read-only file, save it as a different filename OR, once you've removed all of the hyperlinks in the notes of all the slides, drag your slides over to a blank PPTX file, re-apply your theme or template and save.
I was very lucky to find it, and lucky that my fiance mentioned about the hyperlinks when we were talking about the error.
I'm going to tweet this to MSAU, because they did reply to my tweet. Hopefully this is an obscure error they can fix with a Mac Office 2011 update.
Leave me a comment below if you have found this error and if my solution fixed it for you.
