Office 2008 PowerPoint not saving on Mac OS X Lion

Hi, I'm running Office 2008 on Mac OS X Lion. I have all of the latest software updates for both my Mac and for Office. However, PowerPoint will not save a slideshow. When I try to save, I'm told there is an "error accessing" where I want to save it. Other times, it says I "do not have permission to save or open" or that the "file has been moved" (even if I never saved it). Any idea why this is occurring? I e-mailed a slideshow to myself, and was able to open it on another PC (a Windows OS). I'm not sure if it's because of a recent update. Any help would be appreciated.

Just a quick note, I've looked over all of the posts about Office 2004. But it seems that Office 2008 wasn't affected by any recent or past updates. So, I'm stumped as to why this is happening, and I didn't find anything online about it. Has anyone else experienced this?

Thank you!

Try repairing permissions first. If that doesn't work, there may be some corruption in Office 2008 which might require a reinstall. It's a pain, but Office is scattered and so diversified throughout that it's sometimes hard to pinpoint the error. Let us know if repair permissions solves the problem. Post back and I'll give you the MS instruction Link for completely removing Office 2008 and reinstall. The Office uninstaller does not work well enough and requires more interaction to completely remove it.

Thanks so much for your reply! I repaired the disk permissions, but it's still giving me the same error ("the file has been moved or deleted" even though it hasn't).

Any other ideas?

Try reinstalling Office 2008. The reinstall will retain your documents and any email you might have stored with Entourage (if you're using it). Follow these instructions from Microsoft. As I stated before, the uninstaller is not effective in removing Office 2008. Here is the LINK.

So, as it turns out, it isn't just PP that's not saving, it's Excel as well. I'm just going to install the new version of Office, and see if it works...

Before you install Office 2011, completely remove 2008. Microsoft says you don't have to but believe me, it will be a whole lot easier and better if you do. The first time I installed 2011, I left 2008 in place and it created a mess with some options and file locations. I then completely removed 2008 and 2011 and installed 2011 clean. Worked perfectly ever since. Use the instructions that I linked to remove 2008.

Ok chscah, I have a lot of good news for you for others who have similar problems.

Here's what I did:

1. I uninstalled Office 2008 like you said using the instructions you posted.
2. I installed an official copy of 2011.
3. I installed all of the updates for it.

But then I still had a problem with the "global template." A few other sites online had important information on how to fix it.

The first are rather easy. 1. Repair the disk and repair the disk permissions. The other is listed here:

osx - Office 2011 Mac - Unable to save Word files, plus normal.dot alert errors - Super User

Indeed, I had renamed my HD to be the same as my home folder. Perhaps it was causing trouble, both with this and with my original problem.

Some other good information was found here:

Error when starting Word 2011: Word cannot open the existing - Microsoft Answers

And also, some good information from this site about the global template problem:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/running-windows-anything-else-your-mac/219666-word-2011-a.html

The best thing I can say is that everything working fine now. Perhaps I didn't even need to install 2011, had I just renamed my disk and restarted, it may have worked. But either way, there are plenty of things for people to try in the future if they have this problem.

I just want to say thank you so, so much for all of your help. I really appreciate it!

If anyone has trouble in the future, please post so that we can work it out, or I can give you my methodology for helping to fix the problem.