21st August 2002
This tip is for all the Gnomies out there who chose to upgrade to Windows XP, but are still using PowerPoint 2000. Have you ever gotten an error when closing PowerPoint 2000 on your Windows XP machine that says, "PowerPoint found an error that it can't correct. You should save presentations, quit, and then restart PowerPoint."? Not to fear! Gnomie Malcolm Lim has come bearing the fix. According to Malcolm, it is just a simple matter of running PowerPoint in Windows 2000 compatibility mode on your Windows XP computer. In most cases, all you need to do is (1) right-click the program icon, (2) choose Properties, (3) click the Compatibility tab, (4) check the 'Run this program in compatibility mode for' checkbox, and then (5) select 'Windows 2000' from the list. Now, I haven't been able to test this for certain, so take that into consideration before reading any further. Malcolm also says that before you do the above steps you need to delete and recreate your PowerPoint shortcuts. To delete the PowerPoint shortcut in the Start menu, just right-click the Start button and choose Explore. >From there, navigate to Programs and delete the shortcut; however, you may want to check the properties of the shortcut first to see where PowerPoint resides on your system. There are several ways to create a shortcut, but one way is to go to File | New | Shortcut and then walk through the wizard. Once the shortcut is created, you still need to go through the above-mentioned steps to set the program compatibility. Hopefully this will end some of your PowerPoint frustrations.