PowerPoint - An error occurred while PowerPoint was saving the file (Network Share)

Miller 1 Reputation point
2022-02-21T20:11:03.91+00:00

Hi All,

I tried Googling this, but I haven't been able to find a solid answer. We recently stood up an RDS cluster running Server 2019 and Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise, and we are having an issue with PowerPoint specifically. When saving to mapped network shares PowerPoint will (seemingly randomly) fail to save with "An error occurred while PowerPoint was saving the file". Googling shows that this is an issue that has cropped up a fair amount over the years, but so far I can't find a solid answer/fix.

In this post from March 2021 the user noted that when they added the shared drive as a "Network Location" instead of as a normal mapped drive, that the issue stopped happening. I can confirm the same thing in my testing with one of our users. This does not happen when she works out of a Network Location. As you can probably imagine though, training the entire staff to use a different spot for PowerPoint specifically is challenging.

Any information that could help lead to fix would be greatly appreciated. Some additional notes below.

-Issue is not happening with Word or Excel. Only PowerPoint files.
-Issue does not happen when saving locally.
-Issue does not happen every time. I have not been able to to find a pattern yet, but I have ruled out specific locations in the mapped drives.
-Permissions do not appear to be in play here.
-Addins do not appear to be in play here.

Office Management
Office Management
Office: A suite of Microsoft productivity software that supports common business tasks, including word processing, email, presentations, and data management and analysis.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
2,019 questions
PowerPoint Management
PowerPoint Management
PowerPoint: 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.Management: The act or process of organizing, handling, directing or controlling something.
222 questions
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4 answers

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  1. Emily Hua-MSFT 27,551 Reputation points
    2022-02-22T09:15:20.303+00:00

    Hi @Miller ,

    Welcome to Q&A forum ~

    What version of Office are you using now?
    Please make sure Office is updated to the latest one.

    Which type of file server do you use, could you please try to restart it if conditions permit?

    I also suggest you create a local administrator accounton a test machine, then please log into this new Windows account to check this issue. This action could help us check the user profile.


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  2. Miller 1 Reputation point
    2022-02-22T22:13:47.903+00:00

    Hi Emily,

    I am working on getting an outage window make sure its up to date and grab this other information. Will update when i can.


  3. Enki Bigoin-Olszewski 1 Reputation point
    2022-10-28T08:21:20.517+00:00

    Hi, I encounter the exact same problem at work. One of my coworker complained about it. He is the only one having this issue. For now he is saving his pptx locally and then copy it on mapped drive but it's pretty annoying to work this way. Has any solution been found ?

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  4. Guevara, Mindy 0 Reputation points
    2023-06-23T19:41:23.0766667+00:00

    Has there been an answer to this? I am having the same issue. It is random, and I am unable to save the ppt locally or on an external drive. I am unable to copy the slides to a new ppt, but I can copy all the text boxes over to a new ppt and save that, but then I have to redue the entire formatting. EXTREMLY time consuming and frustrating. Thanks for any help anyone can provide. My co-worker is also having the same issue.

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