Which PowerPoint version to use?

Question

I am running Microsoft Office 2007 on a Windows 7 system, and often have the following happen when creating PowerPoint shows for email distribution.

I 'time' the slides and also insert sounds {.MP3 or .wav files} on almost all the shows, and then send  them out on email.

Many of my recipients can view the shows, they're automatically seeing the slides move and the sounds, but the odd person cannot.

I know they're not all on the same version of Office and/or the same operating system, but one user can never seem to have sound. They're running XP on a laptop, and can see the slides move through, but have no sound no matter what they try!

Any ideas?

Answer 1

I'm pretty much inline with what Steve Rindsberg had to say about the OLE linking embedding comments. That'd be the first thing I'd check. There should be an Edit Links to Files dialog under Office Button > Prepare. At least I think it's repair. I'm running Office 2013.

Also, have you checked online for help articles for troubleshooting sound, either F1 or Bing, or even support.microsoft.com? They should have something if I recall from supporting it a few years back.

My answer to your question in the original post's subject line:

Which PowerPoint version to use?

Answer:

From my experience supporting PowerPoint at Microsoft for mostly enterprise and premier customers (some personal, consumers), Office 2007 ran best on Vista. Both fully patched: Office 2007 SP3 and Vista SP2. If you have Windows 7 then you should yourself be at Office 2010, and have all the latest patches applied. I'm not sure what the target users having the discrepancy are running. The file format used (ppt or pptx or pptm) and add-ins across versions is hit and miss sometimes in terms of a consistently reliable experience. It's just not going to happen. But there's the 2007 Compatibility Pack. I typically recommend the author (in this case you) creating it in PowerPoint 2007 saving as a pptx, then copying/sharing for access on the target computer with 2003/WinXP or whatever.

There's some issues I've seen with web server integration on Office 2007 and Windows 7. HTTP client/server integration in regards to the WebClient service and the old Rosebud and WebDAV stuff that doesn't work so well. There's unwanted or unexpected authentication prompts that are harder to mitigate if Office 2007 is on Windows 7 versus Vista.

Device compatibility can also be tricky depending on your hardware. Anything wired into your PC or on-board your portable device (tablet) gets initialized and hooked into PowerPoint when the application loads. So your printer, keyboard, mouse, monitor (graphics card), SSD or hard drive, proc, all could be at play.

The one thing I discourage is running multiple versions of desktop applications especially MS Office suites or apps. Even Publisher 2002/2003 or Visio 2002/2003 with Office 2007 is really a bad idea. There's ways with RemoteApp or Citrix to mitigate special needs such as these and virtual machines to avoid dual-boot scenarios. All much better in my opinion to having Office shared components continually have non-versioned components unregistered or re-registered every time you bounce between versions. File associations, etc... can and probably will be messed up if you use multiple versions of the applications on a regular basis and the only thing you can do is repair the one you need to use before you use it...

The optimal (Windows) operating system paths for reliability and stability for Microsoft Office suite/applications versions running on Windows are as follows:

Office 2003 SP3 on Windows XP SP3

Office 2007 SP3 on Vista SP2*

Office 2010 SP1* on Windows 7 SP1*

Office 2013 RTM** on Windows 8 RTM**

*SP stands for "service pack". Newer versions of Windows operating system may have a newer updated service pack or cumulative update recommended.

**RTM stands for "release to manufacturing". This is the "base" or "no service packs applied" version. It's the original version that's shipped on the media or download. But in this context it simply means either they haven't released SP1 yet or I haven't heard of anything for SP1 for 2013 yet.

In your situation: unless you want to throw down money to upgrade to 2010, which may be a little fruitless since 2013 is going to be a better deal, would be to simply run Microsoft Update (Windows Update + opt into Microsoft Update for Office updates automatically). If that doesn't work repair Office on the author computer and the target. If you're running multiple Office or PowerPoint versions side-by-side (installed on the same computer at the same time) then just repair PowerPoint in the control panel by repairing Microsoft Office <version> in Add or Remove Programs.

Other options would include the latest PowerPoint Viewer, but you'll run into file association conflicts with the last registered app (editor or viewer) will launch the application after the corresponding file type (pptx, ppt, pptm) is opened, depending on the current state of the Windows File Associations.

Do some searching online about PowerPoint not playing sounds on only certain computers for the environment and form factor you're running (OS/Office/hardware) and run the sound troubleshooter and any other multimedia troubleshooters.

One other tip, if it's a pptx or pptm (Office OpenXML) extension (not binary like ppt), rename the file extension from .pptx to .zip and check the \media folder, pull that out on the target computer and try to open, try playing with Windows Media Player and mplay32.exe (legacy tool only on Windows XP for troubleshooting audio).

Another trick I've seen is to save a pptx file as ppt on the creators (authors) 2007 box, close open the ppt and save back as pptx.

Repairing the 2007 compatibility pack on the older Windows XP, pre-2007 box (PowerPoint 2002 or 2003) box is a good idea, you do that the same way under Add or Remove Programs, running Microsoft Update should fully patch the 2007 compatibility pack.

Finally, Windows XP is at the "end of life", that is Microsoft will no longer support Windows XP as of April 14th, 2014.

Answer 2

It could be either or both.

If the sound is linked, his copy of PPT needs to be able to find the sound file in the first place (in other words, the link must be valid on his computer)

Once PPT has found the sound, it has to be able to get some of the built-in Windows components to play it.  If the sound is of a type that his PC won't play independently, then it won't play in PPT either.

Answer 3

Wow...impressive response...thanks/appreciated!

Answer 4

I see what you mean by a possible linking' problem, but some users can watch the slides go along automatically and hear the music just fine, while this one user {XP on a laptop} cannot! I suspect he's doing something unusual and it's at his end, rather than my presentation...?

Answer 5

Check my reply to your other question about sounds.  I'm guessing that you have a linking issue here.  If not, let us know what the other user sees when the link problem is out of the way.