PowerPoint generating thousands of TMP files

  • Thread starter Thread starter elvis
  • Start date Start date
E

elvis

Hi,

This is a problem I've encountered on two separate (but
identically-configured) Dell 8100 laptops, and hope someone has
an idea why it happens. Here's the problem:

While working on a PPT presentation, I try to save the file, and
get an error message that the file can't be saved. (Sorry, I
don't have the exact wording or the message number.) Quite by
accident I found that when this happens, there are literally
thousands of TMP files in whatever folder I had previously saved
the file to. To be exact, there are 65,535 of them! I know why
there are always that many of them -- it's because of PPT's
numbering scheme for TMP files. I just don't know what causes
them. The creation times for all 65K of them are either identical
or within a second or two of each other. Deleting the files takes
forever, but after deleting the files I can once again save my
PPT file.

I can't duplicate the error at will, and I have no idea if a
particular sequence of steps always leads up to this problem.
I've searched the MS site and other newsgroups for help, but
didn't find any.

System: P-III, 500 MB RAM, Windows XP Pro, Office XP, NAV 2002.
All software fully updated with latest service packs and updates,
and both computers totally virus checked with current virus
definitions.

TIA,
Bob
 
If you disable the office add-in on your NAV, does the problem go away?


--
Bill Dilworth, Microsoft PPT MVP
===============
Please spend a few minutes checking vestprog2@
out www.pptfaq.com This link will yahoo.
answer most of our questions, before com
you think to ask them.

Change org to com to defuse anti-spam,
ant-virus, anti-nuisance misdirection.
..
..
 
If you disable the office add-in on your NAV, does the problem
go away?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I should have included that bit of info in the original
post. It's already disabled.

Bob
 
This is new to me, but one of the other MVP's may have heard of it.

The areas that I would look for solutions are:
Detect and repair (is office broken?)
Defrag hard drive (Is it dumping stuff it never gets back to delete?)
Check for loaded add-in's in PowerPoint (disable or unload them)
Check for Macro's in a presentation that may be caught in a save as loop.
Software/drive updates (everything current?)
DirectX update
Virus scan

PowerPoint does make temp files, but that many is just plain silly. I hope
someone else has experience with this, because I'm curious as well.


--
Bill Dilworth, Microsoft PPT MVP
===============
Please spend a few minutes checking vestprog2@
out www.pptfaq.com This link will yahoo.
answer most of our questions, before com
you think to ask them.

Change org to com to defuse anti-spam,
ant-virus, anti-nuisance misdirection.
..
..
 
PowerPoint does make temp files, but that many is just plain
silly. I hope someone else has experience with this, because
I'm curious as well.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I thought it was plain silly too, but I thought it was
interesting what the naming scheme was. Seems to me it was
something like "~pptxxxx.tmp", with "xxxx" being a 4-digit
hexadecimal code, sequentially numbered from 0000 through FFFF,
hence the limit of 65,535. Once PPT reached this limit, it
refused to save the document (until the files were deleted). Like
I said in my original post, all of this happened in less than a
second. Your thought about a macro in an infinite loop was a good
thought, but the fact that this occurred with two separate users
(of which I was one), working on two different types of
presentations doesn't mean that *wasn't* the cause, but it does
tend to make one wonder.

I heard privately from Shyam Pillai because I had written him
privately about another issue. Here's what he said:

"That is a known issue with PPT. PPT can mis-behave when loads of
tmp files are created. There has been no known resolution apart
from deleting the files."

So, evidently there's no remedy except for realizing the problem
exists, and to look for and delete the tmp files when PPT refuses
to save. It may very well be documented on the MS site, but I did
a KB search and nothing turned up. (I might just have missed it.)

One last note -- these files are created in the folder in which
the working document was originally saved. They're not saved in
the user's Temp folder (in C:\documents and
settings\<username>\local settings\temp).

Bob
 
Interesting.

Shayam is the best, so I do not doubt what he says for a moment. Take it as
golden.

I've been using PowerPoint rather heavily for several years and have not had
the misfortune to come across this bug. In fact, I have the last 3 year's
worth of PPT files stored on the computer (a little over 4000 files
including the version saves) and a search for ppt*.tmp turned up only one
file.

However, I found these under a cyber rock ...
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;813538
any chance you are using Hungarian keyboard layouts? :)

**PowerPoint hangs when I save a file
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00289.htm
Do you have any back-up programs running?

Oh well. Thank you for getting back to me, I hope this issue resolves soon.

Bill D.
 
However, I found these under a cyber rock ...
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;813538
any chance you are using Hungarian keyboard layouts? :)
Click to expand...

Nope; no Hungarian keyboards here, but perhaps someone else needs
that link
**PowerPoint hangs when I save a file
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00289.htm
Do you have any back-up programs running?
Click to expand...

I have in the past used the WinXP built-in back-up utility, but I
don't have a regularly-scheduled back-up running. I've never used
the DataKeeper back-up to which the linked article referred.

Thanks, Bill. Next time it happens, I'll try to remember the
steps that led up to it, but I'm pretty sure it's random.

Bob
 
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