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Read-Only Error

Anonymous
2018-11-07T13:40:46+00:00

When opening some of my PPTX files on my iPhone X or iPad Pro with PowerPoint for iOS, I get the error message "Read Only - You can't edit this file because it has content that this version of Office can't display."

Is that a bug (as it works using www.office.com PowerPoint), or how can I find out which content is causing the problem? Thanks for any hints.

Microsoft 365 and Office | PowerPoint | For home | Windows

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-12-13T21:47:01+00:00

    Powerpoint on iOS should really give more helpful error output, pointing at the specific elements and why they are causing problems.

    I'm having the same issue where it works fine on Windows and on the Web, but the iOS version can't edit the document. Annoying.

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  2. John Korchok 232.8K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2018-11-07T17:02:58+00:00

    It's not a bug, it's an informational notice that content in the presentation can't be displayed by your version.

    Since there is nothing specific in the message, to find out what content is causing it, you'll have to take an iterative approach:

    1. In PowerPoint Online, break the presentation into 2 halves, then open each in PowerPoint for iOS to see which gives a message.
    2. For the part that raises an message, break that in half again and test each half.
    3. Keep going until you have 1 slide that creates the message.
    4. Delete elements one at a time, opening the slide each time in PowerPoint for iOS.
    5. When the message stops appearing, the last element you deleted was the one that couldn't be displayed.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-11-07T22:12:02+00:00

    Thanks John. I tried your approach, but it looks like the issue was present on each and every slide. It looks like it is related to a font which cannot be embedded (Helvetica Neue for some strange reason), so I will rebuild the entire presentation based on a clean template.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-12-08T23:41:46+00:00

    I have the same question, however i only have a single slide with apart from a few logos its just text, i just want to be able to edit the text on the go by using my iPad? I've tried changing fonts on my mac but it still won't allow me to edit on my iPad.

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  5. John Korchok 232.8K Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2018-11-08T02:24:02+00:00

    If that font was in the Font Theme for the presentation, you can probably just apply a new font theme to cure the problem.

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