Slide Properties not saving and freezing Articulate?

Mar 29, 2011

Hello!

We're having issues saving the slide properties in Presenter. It will then freeze the entire Powerpoint and force our users to end by using Task Manager. We will then have to disable the add in and then re-add.

Now, it will let us save one slide property item at a time, but this is time consuming. Eek..any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

8 Replies
Katherine Herbert

I have been trying to publish a 45-slide presenter file (I know I am probably not using the correct terms here) - anyway, before publishing I was updating Slide Properties and adding very short playlists to particular slides, upon exiting Slide Properties powerpoint freezes and I have had to force shutdown. Then when I try to open powerpoint, I get an "Serious Exception with the Articulate Ribbon add-in" message. I have uninstalled and reinstalled (yesterday Justin gave me advise on how to re-activate my Articulate Studio '09 as my laptop kept telling me that I had already used my activation codes - this is no longer a problem, I got a local Articulate agent to assist me). Articulate Presenter works for awhile until I update Slide Properties ( I have had to uninstall and reinstall Articulate 4 times and each time it freezes none of my changes have been saved, so you can imagine my frustration).

I have never had this problem before - I haven't changed the way I create my presentations. I have now reinstalled Articulate for the 5th time and am too scared to update Slide Properties :(

I am on Windows 7, using MS office 2010.

Brian Batt

Hi Katherine,

The first thing I would do is make sure that your PowerPoint file and its corresponding PPTA file are located on your local C: drive in a folder whose directory path is less than 256 characters and contains no special characters like:

C:\Articulate

Open the PowerPoint for this location and work on the files there and see if you still have a problem.

If you still have problems, can you check your add-ons & disable all of them except for the Articulate add-on?  Then, restart PowerPoint and try to click on Slide Properties again.

If you continue to have problems, are you using an anti-virus program like Norton that uses a real-time scanning engine?  Can you try disabling it by right clicking the icon in the lower right hand corner & selecting Disable?  

If you still have problems after that, have you try performing a complete clean uninstall & reinstall by using the method described in the link below?

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=2425

Katherine Herbert

Yup - I pretty much followed all of that before posting my message here.... I will probably have to just do what Lisa suggests and update Slide Properties one slide at a time :(  The only other alternative I can see is to create the presentation from scratch (2 days work down the drain)! :( 

Thanks anyway,

Katherine

Katherine Herbert

Yes I have - since reinstalling last Friday (I haven't received any ribbon exception errors as yet), I have not tried using the Slide Properties function again as I am a bit anxious to lose my work - so in the process of finalizing my powerpoint presentation (I will save it without any articulate facilities utilised) - and then try and publish it today and add audio and annotations - if it gives me problems again, I will submit a support case.

Thank you,

Katherine

Dana Thomas

Potential work around.  This used to happen to me frequently.  Not sure if my method will sovle your particular issue, but worth a shot, I use this method on every course I do.

Basically, rather than updating all the slides at the same time, I only update one field for all slides at a time.  So for example:

Open Slide Properties manager and set the levels for the slides, then save and close.  If the course has more than 100 slides, you may want to set only the first 50 to 100 slide levels and then save and close the properties.  Then open it back up and finish the rest.

 

Then open it and only set the "advance" field, and save and close that.  I usually set the whole course at once for this field. Save and Close.

 

Then open it again and change the names of the slides in the Navigation Title field if necessary.  Once all the names are set or corrected, go save and close.  Again, you may want to just do 50-100 at a time.

 

Then go in and Hide all the slides you need to hide and then save and close.  Hopefully you get the idea. 

 

If you try to do it all at once it can freeze.  I'm not sure why it happens, but I think it takes up too much RAM or something, because it happens to me more on my laptop (4GB) than my desktop (18GB).

If try it in chunks you should be fine.  If you can do 1 at a time, try 5 the next time, and keep increasing the number until you find the sweet spot. 

Good luck!

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