Powerpoint 2008 can't open .ppt files?

[plaidhippo]

Hi all,
My wife is in school and receives her lectures via powerpoint slides (.ppt). I think they are generated with a pre-2007 PC version of powerpoint. She cannot open this .ppt file with Office 2008 on leopard. Powerpoint there just says that the file was created with an older version of powerpoint and is no longer supported. Is it possible that Powerpoint no longer supports its own format?! Does anyone else have this problem? Are there ways around this? Does it seem ridiculous that we can't even open an older version of the file in a new program? I know there are programs to convert new files for older software versions, but not converting old files for newer software versions!

I tried openoffice.org and though it does function, it is horribly slow and really not worth using. Also, I was able to open it via Office 2004 on my tiger mbp, so I know the file is ok, but I'm soon upgrading the machine to leopard and office 2008 so I probably won't be able to help her for long!

Any suggestions are welcome!!
Thanks,
Ashish

 

[jonbravo77]

Hi all,
My wife is in school and receives her lectures via powerpoint slides (.ppt). I think they are generated with a pre-2007 PC version of powerpoint. She cannot open this .ppt file with Office 2008 on leopard. Powerpoint there just says that the file was created with an older version of powerpoint and is no longer supported. Is it possible that Powerpoint no longer supports its own format?! Does anyone else have this problem? Are there ways around this? Does it seem ridiculous that we can't even open an older version of the file in a new program? I know there are programs to convert new files for older software versions, but not converting old files for newer software versions!

I tried openoffice.org and though it does function, it is horribly slow and really not worth using. Also, I was able to open it via Office 2004 on my tiger mbp, so I know the file is ok, but I'm soon upgrading the machine to leopard and office 2008 so I probably won't be able to help her for long!

Any suggestions are welcome!!
Thanks,
Ashish

Open the file on your Office 2004 machine and re-save it as a version 2. See if that works.

 

[plaidhippo]

Hello Jon,
Thank you for the advice, I have tried that and it did create a functional file that is readable on office 2008. My problem with this process is that it necessitates having office 2004 and I planned to update the machine with that software to leopard and 2008 soon (for ilife 09). Do you know if openoffice can resave in this version? Are there any converter applications to go in this direction?

Thanks for the quick response!
ashish

PS - btw, i'm also in phoenix!

 

[jonbravo77]

Hello Jon,
Thank you for the advice, I have tried that and it did create a functional file that is readable on office 2008. My problem with this process is that it necessitates having office 2004 and I planned to update the machine with that software to leopard and 2008 soon (for ilife 09). Do you know if openoffice can resave in this version? Are there any converter applications to go in this direction?

Thanks for the quick response!
ashish

PS - btw, i'm also in phoenix!

Cool, hello to a fellow Phoenician. I do not know much about openoffice. I deal mainly in Office '08 and do find that if someone created the file in Office XP then there can be some issues. This also could be a isolated incident. My job requires me to deal with a lot of ppt files and find that I don't run into many problems, usually it's just some formating issues between Office 2007 and Mac Office '08.

I would say relax a bit. You probably won't run into this issue again (unless this has happened more than this occasion). I do not know of any converter programs for Mac. Sorry I can't be much more help, maybe someone else will chime in..

 

[nadyne]

PowerPoint 2008 will open files that are no more than two releases old. If the file was created in PowerPoint 2001 or PowerPoint 2004 (or whatever the corresponding Windows versions are), then it's fine. If not, there's been too many changes in the .ppt file format in the intervening 8 years for PowerPoint 2008 to be able to guarantee that it can open the file. The easiest thing to do is to open the files in PowerPoint 2004 and save them again.

Regards,
Nadyne.

 

[plaidhippo]

PowerPoint 2008 will open files that are no more than two releases old. If the file was created in PowerPoint 2001 or PowerPoint 2004 (or whatever the corresponding Windows versions are), then it's fine. If not, there's been too many changes in the .ppt file format in the intervening 8 years for PowerPoint 2008 to be able to guarantee that it can open the file. The easiest thing to do is to open the files in PowerPoint 2004 and save them again.

Regards,
Nadyne.

Thank you Jon and Nadyne for the quick responses! I'm disappointed that this format is no longer supported. My biggest issue comes from the fact that I may lose access to PPT 2004 when upgrading to leopard, and thus be unable to make the conversion. Is there any other known work-around? If not, i'll just wait on the leopard update and quit beating a dead horse!

Thanks again,
Ashish

 

[partymeters]

ok so what I have done to avoid this problem is open the file in openoffice.org then click save as change the name (just a little so you can differenciate) and change the file type to: Microsoft Powerpoint 97/2000/XP (.ppt) then click save. it will ask you to keep current format or change to ODF. click keep current format and once you save it try opening that new file in powerpoint, that worked for me without a problem

 

[GoVikes]

Thanks for finding solution

Thank you partymeters for a solution to this problem. Like plaidhippo I also get .ppt files for school lectures and could not open one of them.

I followed the suggestion for openoffice.org and it worked.

Thanks again for the help!

 

[TurboTalon]

I know this thread is pretty old but I came across it while googling. I am working on a research paper and while fooling around online looking at sources I came across a powerpoint, one I couldn't open. I realize it's ~7 years old but come on that really shouldn't matter! I checked the info on it and realized I could read it in the preview box (Preview can't open it). It just seems really strange.

Just wanted to add that I had Google display the file as HTML and then saved it as a PDF. A search engine can handle the file but Microsoft's own program can't.