I used Pack and Go because the presentation contained
several movies. PowerPoint makes a very hard-wired path
connection for such embedded movies. If you simply copy
the presentation and related files to a CD-ROM, the paths
will be wrong unless one edits them on the CD - a real waste
of time and not always possible if one arrives at the presentation
hall just before one's presentation. The path should be editable
so it can be made more general like ..\subfolder\movie.avi.
When you select a movie file, the path is inserted automatically
and cannot be edited - only reattaching the file works once the
entire presentation has been copied from the CD-ROm onto the
presentation computer.
Using Pack&Go will automatically adjust the presentation paths
to work with the movies on the CD by copying them into an
appropriate folder on the CD-ROM and unpacking them to work
on the presentation computer. I did not load the viewer, just
embedded fonts. The presentation was unpacked onto the
laptop used in the hall and was run using PP2002 - the same
version used to make the presentation.
After returning to my hotel room, I played around with the Pack&Go
options on my own laptop which also gave me the same errors - I
discovered I could get the presentation to run OK by removing
the animation effects on the slides in question prior to Packing.
But this should not happen - the software should give uniform results,
especially when the Windows and PP versiions system are identical.
After all, that is what Pack&Go is supposed to be all about. And even
if the presentation had been made using the viewer, why does Pack&Go
still use the Win97 viewer - seems like a strange way to upgrade your
software.
I would like to point out that I was not alone with this problem - I noticed
several
other presenters having similar problems.
Microsoft should be ashamed at how brittle this software is.
