Powerpoint memory issue

Historically, PPT whining about not enough memory might have meant two things:

It ran out of memory, or

It ran out of other reasonable excuses and whining about memory was the last one on the list.

It seems unlikely in this case that lack of memory is the problem.  On the other hand, there are other resources (file handles, stuff like that) that it might consider to be memory related.  

What happens if you set the links not to update automatically, at least as a test?  On a copy of your "real" presentation, of course.

What sort of objects are these galleries?

If possible, download the demo of my FixLinks add-in from http://www.pptools.com and run a FixLinks report, post the results here.  It'll give you some idea how much space the links are taking up.  PPT can get squirrely when the link space used exceeds the link space alotted.

(Echo Swinford: edited to activate link)

Just an update to this issue.

I have seen this symptom a couple of more times on  subsequent slides when I try to add the OLE Object. It doesn't happen on PPTX objects that is nothing but images.  It only happens if there is some animation on a slide within the PPTX.

My work around works so I'm not spending a lot of time worrying about the issue. I'm just moving forward with the build using the work around.

Mickey

True, the gallery files are just other PPTX files. 

The original deck was 1500 slides and well over half of those were images of various sizes.  At over 200 meg I was concerned about future file integrity and navigation. It felt like a better way to manage it was to pull the images out of the navigation deck, break down the images into groups and call those as needed.  Once the core deck is built it should require little edit moving forward.

I added a navigation menu to the core presentation to move to the different sections of the deck. That part of it works great.

The linked gallery files can be edited at will.

Mickey

I am using Office 365.

I tried to add a different link and it took that one so I decided it had something to do with that gallery file.

The gallery is nothing more than one or more jpgs on a slide.

What I did on the gallery it would not take is take all the slides out of it (after saving to an alternate filename) and saved it with no content.  

Then I successfully added the link into the main presentation.  After that I edited the original file (now with no content) and pasted the original content back into it and saved the file.

So now when I run the presentation and call that gallery with the link it works just like I would expect.

I hope I don't start running into that a lot. I have a long way to go.

The original file I was working with (Came from a client) had nearly 1500 slides and was over 200 meg in size.  I recommended breaking it up into chunks and calling by links.

Mickey

Setting the links not to update automatically should be a good test.

That said, I've been running into a lot of "not enough memory" errors with PPT lately, too. They happen when I'm doing simple things like inserting pictures, and they happen even on PPT 2010, and they're a new thing -- not something I have typically seen. Usually if I say OK, then PPT goes ahead and does the thing that it interrupted me to tell me I couldn't do. (I will try to document and report next time.)

Which version of PPT are you using, MickeyMills?

Additionally, I wonder if it's possible that you are running into the link limit? I know that this is supposed to no longer exist in the XML file format, but ... I still don't trust it. Then again, I don't usually create presentations with that many links, so I don't have a recent frame of reference, either.