Office 2004 for Mac Gets Updated

I'm confronting a problem with my PowerPoint 2004 for Mac. The problem is in viewing presentations made most likely with PowerPoint for Windows where there is a music background. The problem is that PowerPoint freezes and I have to do a forced quit with [Cmd][Alt][Esc]. Fortunately, I also have Keynote. In these intances I load the presentation into Keynote to see the presentation. I don't know if that happens because I'm using a Student and Teacher version of PowerPoint. Anyone else has the same problem? Has you been able to solve the problem? I have two Macs at home, a PowerMac G5 and a MacBook Pro. Powerpoint was installed from the same disk to both Mac's. The problem persist in both.
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Eliezer, does this happen with one particular presentation, or any presentation that contains a music background?
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This happens with any presentation. Ocasionally, I check them with my work PC and they work without problem. I think that PowerPoint for PC might have some plug-in that the Mac version doesn't have or that received a defective CD with my Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac.
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I'll love to try and see what happens when I play this presentation on both my Mac and Windows machines here -- can you upload the file through YouSendIt, or similar -- and then send me the link through my feedback form...
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I am experiencing problems with PowerPoint 2004 for Mac. The exact software version is 11.3.5. My platform is a MacBook Pro.

First, when working with large ppt files (i.e. 15 to 20 Mb or more), these take ages to open up (the small multicolour circle gets turning for quite a while until the presentation is displayed ...). The same happens when you try to browse the contents of a file when using the "insert slide from file" facility.

Second, and most annoyingly, PowerPoint often quits unexpectedly while working on a presentation, meaning that I loose the unsaved information.

Both reported problems never occurred in the PowerPoint for Mac version 2001 (used on a Power Book G4); it worked perfectly with all my presentations whatever their size.

Anyone experiencing these problems with PowerPoint 2004 for Mac and/or knowing why they happen and how to fix them?

Thanks in advance.

P.S. I experienced the second problem (frequent spontaneous application closure) with Word for Mac 2001 but this seems to have been resolved in the 2004 Word for Mac version.
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I asked my friend and fellow MVP Jim Gordon for some advice -- and here's what he says (thanks Jim!)

Questions to ask Eliezer
Did you update to PowerPoint 10.3.7?
How much RAM is on the computer?
Did you run DiskWarrior version 4 (made by Alsoft) or TechTools Pro to make sure the hard drive is OK?

I suspect Eliezer's problems are memory related. Apple provides a utility called Activity Monitor. I would ask Elizer to run Activity Monitor, click on the System Memory tab and see if the free memory is being used up, which would indicate that Eliezer needs more RAM. I'm betting Eliezer's running out of RAM.

Joe is using large picture files. That, unfortunately, slows PPT 2004 down to a crawl. The cure is to make the picture files smaller using a graphic editing program before putting them into the presentation. Putting several large pics in a presentation would cause a RAM problem for Joe, too, but I think PPT is just slow about large pictures regardless of how much RAM there is.
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Sorry for getting into the forum before. I'm not familiar with the way of sending files using YouSendIt, or similar. But I can send it to your e-mail address as an attachment.

Your second set of questions:

Did you update to PowerPoint 10.3.7?

Yes

How much RAM is on the computer?

2.25 GB

Did you run DiskWarrior version 4 (made by Alsoft) or TechTools Pro to make sure the hard drive is OK?

I've used TechTools Pro, no problems detected.

I contacted again Microsoft on this subject. They understand that some presentations created with Windows may not be compatible with PPT for Mac OS. He mentioned the way Windows encodes sounds is different to the way OS X encodes it.
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Eliezer, my good friend Jim Gordon kindly sent the response that I am posting:

Eliezer, then it's time to investigate the source of the problem on the PC side instead of the Mac side. What version of PowerPoint is being used on the PC? Have all of the Office and OS updates been installed on the PC?

There are known bugs in PC PowerPoint that have been removed in software updates. I am not aware of any built-in sound handling protocol on the PC side that can cause a crash of Mac PowerPoint. What steps were used to insert the suspected audio files?

Thank you, Jim.
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Thank you to both Jim and geetesh for all the time you've spent trying to help me. Let me clarify something that I didn't said correctly. The problem does not happen with all PowerPoint files created with a PC, it only happens with about 25% of them, most of them (about 80% or more) containing sound. I can't tell neither the way the sound files were inserted in the file nor the PowerPoint version, because I didn't create these files. These are files that have been forwarded from person to person and are difficult to track their source.

I'm willing to forward you one of these files for check. The only problem is that I not familiar with Sendit.

Eliezer
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Just go to YouSendIt.com and register -- then send an attachment to your own mail address. When you receive an email with the attachment URL, just post that on this blog.

That's all you need to do.
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Help! My parnter has spent days creating a powerpoint presentation in Power Point 2004 on his mac, the problem is his client has a new pc with Vista & Office 2007 and they cant open the Power Point Doc. I am wondering if there is any easy fix for this. Any leads at all much appreciated. thanks
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@Energy -- I have no idea what may be causing the problem -- does PowerPoint 2007 provide an exact error message that you can share? Also has your friend applied the Service Pack 1 patch for Office 2007?
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