PowerPoint Problems

[tomdawson]

Hi there,

 

We have just installed a suite of 21 macs (including teacher's machine) in our media studies classroom.

 

Office 2004 for Mac successfully installed and run as localadmin, but when logged in as a "teacher user" (as defined by windows groups with ADmitMac stuff (commissioned by RM)) PowerPoint appears to load, but just disappears.

 

Word and Excel load perfectly, but with PPT the splash screen loads and it starts to load, but then just closes. Permissions are OK, as it does actually begin to load, but just disappears.

 

This is happening just on our teacher mac - it's fine on the other 'student' machines.

 

Any suggestions would be helpful.

 

Cheers,

Tom

[tech_guy]

Hi there,

 

We have just installed a suite of 21 macs (including teacher's machine) in our media studies classroom.

 

Office 2004 for Mac successfully installed and run as localadmin, but when logged in as a "teacher user" (as defined by windows groups with ADmitMac stuff (commissioned by RM)) PowerPoint appears to load, but just disappears.

 

Word and Excel load perfectly, but with PPT the splash screen loads and it starts to load, but then just closes. Permissions are OK, as it does actually begin to load, but just disappears.

 

This is happening just on our teacher mac - it's fine on the other 'student' machines.

 

Any suggestions would be helpful.

 

Cheers,

Tom

 

We had a similar problem:

 

After you install Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Service Pack 2 (SP2), you experience the following symptoms:

- When you start Microsoft Excel 2004 for Mac, Microsoft PowerPoint 2004 for Mac, or Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac, you receive the following error message:

An unexpected error occurred while trying to load the Microsoft Framework library.

CAUSE

This problem may occur if the old Microsoft Database Daemon is not shut down by the updater.

 

To resolve this problem, perform one of the following actions:

- Restart the computer.

- Download and install the updated Office 2004 for Mac SP2. To obtain the updated Office 2004 for Mac SP2, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx?pid=download&location=/mac/download/office2004/Office2004_11_2.xml

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the initial release of Office 2004 for Mac SP2. This bug was corrected in the updated release of Office 2004 for Mac SP2.

[tomdawson]

Sounds interesting. I will have to try this, cheers.

 

It just makes no logical sense though: it's fine for the localadmin, and for our network admin accounts, and even for *some* teacher users (such as our test teacher account).

 

I will let you know how I get on with what you suggested above, cheers.

[HodgeHi]

I've just recently moved from Office 2004 over to iWork 08 as you can now get an educational site license. There is one also available for iLife 08 too. and its not expensive either. We got our site license for £169 for iwork and £169 for ilife.

 

I found the office 2004 to be slow.

[tomdawson]

 

We had a similar problem:

 

...

 

 

Brilliant, thanks for that, solved our problem completely.

[tech_guy]

Hey, cool. And thanks for the feedback!

[tomdawson]

sweet mother of jesus...

 

i *swear* that i had it working.

 

I logged on as a teacher user - PPT would not load.

I installed the update as localadmin.

I logged on as a teacher user - PPT loaded perfectly.

 

I've just come back from the machine being back at square one. One of the Media Studies teachers was logged on, and they couldn't open PPT. Fine as localadmin, so I attempted to reinstall the update from microsoft, and attempted to run PPT as the teacher...no joy.

 

Any ideas people? This is becoming ridiculous now

[HodgeHi]

How did you install the app? Did you use the crappy MS installer or just copy the Office folder into the apps folder?

[gaz350]

try trashing prefs to do with ms office in the users folder.

[tomdawson]

Hi guys, sorry for the stupidly delayed reply.

 

How did you install the app? Did you use the crappy MS installer or just copy the Office folder into the apps folder?

 

I must admit that I used the crappy MS stuff. Should this make a difference though? Do we think it would work if I just copy the folder into applications?

 

This is stupid.

 

I have had to resort, at the moment, to creating a local restricted user and getting people to use that where possible.

 

Any more ideas guys?

 

Many thanks,

Tom.

[tomdawson]

*bump* (apologies, really desperate for help now)

 

Just to recap, MS Office '04 PowerPoint for Mac seems to work fine for local and network administrators. It also works OK for a locally set up "restricted" user account. However on networked student and teacher accounts when you try to launch a powerpoint, the splash screen appears but then it just vanishes.

 

Any ideas guys? Many thanks...in advance!

[HodgeHi]

I would first open the console.app in the utilities folder and keep an eye on it as you start powerpoint. Hopefully this should give you a bit more info on what is going on when it closes.

 

It may be a permissions thing that is keeping it from running.

 

Have you fully updated it also?