Help: nothing but crashes ...

I am running Storyline (1.0.15) under the 30 day trial, pending the IT department purchasing the license.  The laptop runs on Windows 7.  Office is the 32 bit version.  Storyline installed OK but that is where the fun stopped.

I can create a new blank project, add text boxes, characters etc.  When I add a new slide or insert a new slide Storyline crashes and closes.  This is highly repeatable.  In fact, I have so far been unable to create a project longer than one slide.

So I tried another way around this, by importing a slide deck from Powerpoint. The following alert appears after selecting a file: " Exception during import Powerpoint: Object reference not set to an instance of an object etc. "

On closing this Storyline appears to attempt the import, but never progresses beyond that point.  This is again highly repeatable, with files saved even to earlier versions, and located on the desktop rather than network.

I have no doubt that there could be settings enabled/disabled by our IT group to keep us safe, but if you could advise where to start looking fo a solution to this I may be able to get some assistance with sorting it out and finally started with the projects - Storyline is unusable as it is.  Is the problem that this is a trial version?

I have Captivate and am not afraid to use it ...

Thanks,

David