White Boxes with X's in place of thumbnail

Aug 09, 2011

I have swf movies in previous files - they all work, but in the development section of powerpoint all you see is a big white box with X across the slide.  What happen to the thumnails we use to see.  I have 67 slides and the only thing I can see is the quizes.  Even when I publish it, I don't see it.  Also mpg just shows a black screen.  Really a big pain

5 Replies
Robert Kennedy

Are you importing the movie files from a network drive or from a thumb drive etc?  Make sure that your files are all on the same drive, put them all in the same folder on your loval drive if you can help it.  (Clarification, don't just move them around and randomly put them in a folder.  You should probably create them that way from the beginning or simply create an Articulate Package and work from the package folder after that).

mpg is not an accepted movie format.  Only flv, mp4 and swf.

J Parker

Sorry re mpg (mp4) is black with no thumbnail.

With regards to Flash Movies.  The file is located on the same harddrive,  (i.e - wG310-03/location of powerpoint and ppta/Flash (all are in independent folders) all are in the same location.

What happened to the thumbnails?  We use to see them after it was published - Also, we were able to see them by right clicking on the box and edit - now that seems to be gone now.

Brian Batt

Hi J Parker,

It looks like PowerPoint is handling how the Flash object is accessed and handled after importing:

1. PPT 2007 will lock and drop the swf thumbnail after closing PPT

2. PPT 2003 will drop the thumbnail, but you can still acess the Movie properites after closing and reopening

3. PPT 2010 will keep the swf thumbnail and you can still select the thumbnail (not locked) - but there are no swf properties

J Parker

Currently I use 2010.  When I save I use  Macro-Enabled Presentation.  Now, when I open I see Slide Thumbnails - but Security Warning comes up, and options - no matter what I do, (enable) or nothing -  the only thing is different, the X's are gone.  Is this a Microsoft problem?

It's sure hard to do anything when you can't see nothing.  I work in Windows 7 and 2010 Office.

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