Snow Leopard killed my PowerPoint

I was running a 2007 MacBook with Leopard and Microsoft Office for Mac 2004 (yes, they sold me 2004 when I bought the Mac in July of 2007). Yesterday I bought the Snow Leopard upgrade and installed. Everything was fine and working well until a friend send me a PowerPoint of photographs he had taken at a wedding. As soon as I double-clicked the .pps attachment, I got a weird icon bouncing in the dock and then "iWork 06" popped up, giving me the choice of either buying a serial number for it or trying it for 30 days. iWork 06?

I called AppleCare; after explaining my problem, the agent asked if I had iWork on my MacBook. I answered no, I've NEVER had iWork installed on it! He said he would have to research it and would call me back but it's now 7AM Saturday and I haven't heard from anyone. I initially called Friday afternoon.

Word and Excel work fine; it's only the PowerPoint component that no longer works.

Has anyone else experienced this and if so, were you able to fix it? Or do I have to now buy the Microsoft Office for Mac which is over $200? I've been out of work for over a year and don't really have the money for that right now. I'm hoping someone can help me, please. Thank you in advance.

The trial of iWork comes pre-installed on every new Mac.

If you have not deleted it, you have it sitting there in your Applications folder.

As we are now only about 24 hours into SL, there's probably not going to be an answer yet as to whether the '04 version of PP will work or it's just not going to.

In the meantime, you might try using Open Office or allowing the 30 day trial of iWork to open said file.

Thanks for your reply. Should I go into my Apps folder, delete iWorks and then try PowerPoint, or could that possibly screw up anything else?

Having iWorks installed would not be the cause of PP not opening.

Have you actually tried to open PP, or just tried opening this particular file?

You can also right click on the file - see if you have an 'Open With' option and then select PP.

I tried right-clicking the .pps file and selecting "Open With PowerPoint" and that worked. But do I have to do that from now on with every .pps I have?

When it said, "Open With," it showed two "Microsoft PowerPoint" listings. Should I have two of them on there?

Thanks for helping me get it to work but I hope I can find a way to go back to just double-clicking to play PowerPoint files.

The SL upgrade has changed the default app for opening that file type.

At least now we know PP works, so you don't have to worry about upgrading office yet.

To change the default app for opening those type of files - right click on that same file and select 'Get Info'.

In that box you'll find one section called 'Open with'. Go there, you may ned to click on the triangle to expand it.
Inside that dropdown box, select PP, hit the 'Change All...' button, and then close the window.
All your .pps files should now default to PP.

When I right-click on a .pps, it takes me to the box with "Open With..." There are TWO "Microsoft PowerPoint" listings. I tried the first... it works fine. Then I tried the second listing and it took me to the "Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive."

"Office 2004 for Mac Test Drive" is listed in my Apps folder. Should I delete it or will that screw up my Office 2004 components? Thanks again.

Forgot to add... when I got the box with PowerPoints, etc., there was no option for "Change All." Is that in another location?

See the pic below for what to do in the 'Get Info' box from your .pps file.



As to the 'Test Drive', that would have be a trial installed from the factory, same as the iWork trial. Looks like you bought and installed a separate Office 2004 disk rather than activating the trial that was already installed?

If this is the case, you should be able to delete the trial. I do not know the ramifications of doing it though, because I don't know how MS installs their stuff. I believe it should be ok to uninstall the trial, but I would do it with the uninstaller that resides within the 'Test Drive' folder. I also would not do it, until I have my original Office 2004 disk in hand so that I could reinstall that if needed.

Since this is the first time in 3 years you've even opened iWork, think it's safe to say you're not going to pay for iWork 06 and is safe to move that to the trash can and recover that hard drive space.

Thank you... all is well!

I dragged the iWork "Test Drive" file into the trash can and now my .pps files go right to PowerPoint as they did before the Snow Leopard install. Thanks for your help!

billwill said:

Has anyone else experienced this and if so, were you able to fix it? Or do I have to now buy the Microsoft Office for Mac which is over $200? I've been out of work for over a year and don't really have the money for that right now. I'm hoping someone can help me, please. Thank you in advance.

Click to expand...

Not sure if this will help...since you said Word & Excel work but PP doesn't.

I just checked the software compatibility list for Snow Leopard...and it says that Office 2004 is compatible with 10.6 but needs "Rosetta".

I know Rosetta was a "check box" that is/was not "auto-checked" when installing Snow Leopard.

If "Rosetta" was not included as part of your 10.6 install...that could help with your PP issue.

Hope this helps,

- Nick

Edit: Nevermind...just saw you posted that things are ok with PP.

Rosetta

The first time I went to Word to print a document, a box came up asking me to install Rosetta; I clicked "OK." The same box came up for Excel and I clicked "OK" again. However, it didn't come up for PowerPoint. Now that I've dragged my iWork 06 "Test Drive" to the trash can, my PowerPoint files work as they did before I installed SL. Weird.

billwill said:

The first time I went to Word to print a document, a box came up asking me to install Rosetta; I clicked "OK." The same box came up for Excel and I clicked "OK" again. However, it didn't come up for PowerPoint. Now that I've dragged my iWork 06 "Test Drive" to the trash can, my PowerPoint files work as they did before I installed SL. Weird.

Click to expand...

I'm curious...after you tried to launch Word or Excel, and you got a message that you needed to install Rosetta...how was this accomplished?

Did you have to insert the 10.6 DVD?

I installed Rosetta as part of my initial 10.6 install...so I was curious how this was handled as a "post" Snow Leopard install.

Thanks,

- Nick

I honestly don't remember... I vaguely remember it asking me during the install if I wanted to load Rosetta and I probably said No since I didn't have a clue what it was. It said I could load it later if I wanted, which I guess is when it came up under Word and Excel.

What IS Rosetta and what does it do? TIA.

billwill said:

What IS Rosetta and what does it do? TIA.

Click to expand...

Rosetta is an application that allows your Intel Mac to run PowerPC applications (those applications made for the G3, G4, G5 Macs). I didn't realise it wasn't installed on SL by default.

Interestingly, I just read that Rosetta is required to install Office 2008 as well as 2004, because the installer is still PPC. Seriously, Microsoft are useless sometimes.

The impact of installing Rosetta on Snow Leopard (Spoiler: none) | The Apple Core | ZDNet.com

Anyway, you will need to install it, as will probably most of the Mac community who uses anything Office related.

Zoolook said:

Anyway, you will need to install it, as will probably most of the Mac community who uses anything Office related.

Click to expand...

Yeah...I pretty much figured Rosetta needed to be a mandatory install for me (checked that option during initial 10.6 install)...I knew there had to be at least a couple applications I use regularly that would need it.

I'm assuming there is no downside to installing Rosetta...other than a little hard drive space.

- Nick

billwill said:

I tried right-clicking the .pps file and selecting "Open With PowerPoint" and that worked. But do I have to do that from now on with every .pps I have?

When it said, "Open With," it showed two "Microsoft PowerPoint" listings. Should I have two of them on there?

Thanks for helping me get it to work but I hope I can find a way to go back to just double-clicking to play PowerPoint files.

Click to expand...

You just need to "Get Info" on a PPT file, go down to the "Open With" section, and select Microsoft PowerPoint from the dropdown menu that comes up. There should be a little button that says, "Change All...". Click that, and now every *.pps file should open with PowerPoint.

Rosetta looks interesting, I'll download it.

PowerPoint freezes on launch

PowerPoint freezes upon launch following 10.6.x updates. Cannot even get "about PowerPoint" screen. All other apps of Office 2004 OK. Reinstalled MS Office 11.5.5 updater.

As you can see from attached (partial) error report, Rosetta is indeed installed:

Date/Time: 2009-10-06 16:10:14 -0500
OS Version: 10.6.1 (Build 10B504)
Architecture: x86_64
Report Version: 6

Command: Microsoft PowerPoint
Path: /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Microsoft PowerPoint
Rosetta: Yes
Version: ??? (???)
Parent: launchd [98]

PID: 6350
Event: hang
Duration: 5.32s (sampling started after 2 seconds)
Steps: 33 (100ms sampling interval)

Pageins: 0
Pageouts: 0


Process: Microsoft PowerPoint [6350]
Path: /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Microsoft PowerPoint
Rosetta: Yes
UID: 501


Process: AirPort Base Station Agent [118]
Path: /System/Library/CoreServices/AirPort Base Station Agent.app/Contents/MacOS/AirPort Base Station Agent
UID: 501

Thread 5fae3d4 DispatchQueue 1
User stack:
33 ??? (in AirPort Base Station Agent + 5344) [0x1000014e0]
33 ??? (in AirPort Base Station Agent + 70666) [0x10001140a]
33 CFRunLoopRun + 70 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff832b7dc6]
33 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 (in CoreFoundation) [0x7fff832b803f]