Publish Failing - Tried (almost?) Everything

Jordyn,

Here are a few suggestions you might try:

1. Be sure you don't have any other PowerPoint/Presenter projects open prior to publishing. Make sure Quizmaker and Engage are closed as well.

2. When you exit PowerPoint, Presenter updates the ppta file if you've done anything with Presenter at all (such as preview a slide) even if you haven't made any changes to a slide. This saving process is occurring even after the PowerPoint application closes. The larger your project (meaning the more audio and other media in the ppta), the longer it takes for the ppta to be updated. Some projects can result in ppta file sizes exceeding 100-200 MB. That's going to take 5-30 seconds or more to save. If you happen to open the same or another PowerPoint/Presenter project while this ppta-save process is underway, I have found publishing of the project just opened will fail. What I have learned to do is to open Task Manager and monitor the process called "pptal.exe". If that's still running, I don't open another project until it finishes.

3. Don't copy/paste anything while publishing. As you indicated, just leave your computer alone until publishing finishes.

I don't know if any of the above are related to the problems you are experiencing. If not, try reinstalling Studio.

Oh, one more thing... When Presenter publishes, it appears to create a temporary slide at the end of the PowerPoint deck for copying/pasting during the publish process. This slide is automatically removed when publishing finishes successfully. If publishing crashes midway through, always look at the last slide in your PowerPoint to be sure this temporary slide isn't still there; if it is, delete it. You'll know it when you see it because it has random objects from some other slide on it. 

Good luck!

Steve Gannon
GanTek Multimedia

Thanks Steve. I do make sure I have almost everything else on my computer closed and of course never any other PPT files.  Right now I'm working with a series of smaller modules that have only a simple one song playlist and no other audio.  The .ppta files are not large - I have worked with MUCH larger.   I will try watching the task manager as I usually have it open (so I can force close powerpoint when it freezes). 

What would the extra slide at the end have to do with the problem?

Thank so much for your effort to help solve my issues!

Jordyn, I mentioned the extra slide at the end because you mentioned "odd shapes" appearing. Also, I wanted to be sure you looked to see if the extra slide was in your PowerPoint after a failed publish so you were sure to remove it. More than once I have sent a review version of a published project to a client and forgot to remove that bogus slide that resulted from a prior publish failure.

In short, the extra slide is not causing publishing problems, it's a result of publishing problems. You may or may not see it in every instance of a publish failure.

The only time that I've had the odd objects/images show up was when I used the copy/paste feature while a publish was going on.

Even clicking on or adding an attachment to an email may cause this issue in my experience.

I would also add that, in my opinion, you should always work on a file on your local hard drive and not a network drive. Always publish to your local drive and not a network drive. After your are finished working on and/or publishing the file, then you can copy it to the network drive.