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I've been using PowerPoint for 20 years and I've always used Esc to stop slideshows before the end. This is especiallyA helpful in previewing slides during development. At this point I'm using Office 2013 on a Windows 7 computer and on Windows 8.1. Maybe one time in twenty Esc will end a PowerPoint slide show. Almost always I must right-click to end the show. This is especially inconvenient when working on my laptop with its clunky touchpad.
How can I get the Esc function reliably back?
A family of Microsoft presentation graphics products that offer tools for creating presentations and adding graphic effects like multimedia objects and special effects with text.
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Answer accepted by question author
Older versions of Photoshop do disable escape in PPT so it is worth checking.
Just a super long shot.
Do you use Photoshop and is it open?
Thanks for the suggestions, but this problem is universal across three computers (one of which I seldom use these days), all using the same installation file. I recently had two of the computers off for a month, constant use isn't the issue. I don't use add-ins on any of the machines. It's not just one keyboard, it's three, and they all do the same thing, and Esc works fine on each of them for any other purpose. It's not Windows -- the problem is cross-platform between 7 and 8.1.
Anymore ideas?
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Thanks for the extra details. Yep, you're right ... you've pretty much eliminated the things I was suggesting that you test for.
I'm really at a loss for further ideas, other than to ask if the three computers are all from the same maker/are the same model, or are they completely different.
Ah. And do you have a USB keyboard that you could plug into one of them to see if the same problem appears when using the extra keyboard?
First, power the computer down completely; leave it off for five or ten minutes, then start it again. See if that's cured the problem. If not ...
I'd check to see if there are any add-ins in PowerPoint or other Windows programs that use ESC for special purposes or trap and disable it deliberately.
If you have diagnostic software, it may include a keyboard test; try that to see if the ESC key is working consistently. If you don't have a program to test with, this might help:
http://www.passmark.com/products/keytest.htm
(I haven't tried it myself, but I'm pretty sure passmark is reputable)