Some controls can't be activated

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lem
  • Start date Start date
L

Lem

I have a Powerpoint presentation that I received from a 3rd party (*.ppt
files). The presentation includes several animations that I *think* are
Shockwave objects. When the file is first loaded, there is this popup
error message: "Some controls on this presentation can't be activated.
They might not be registered on this computer." When I click on the
object to run the animation, PP merely advances to the next slide,
instead of running the Shockwave (or Flash, or whatever else it might
be) animation.

This behavior happens with this particular presentation on at least the
following systems: Windows XP sp3 running Powerpoint 2003 sp3; Vista
sp2 running Powerpoint 2003 sp3; and Windows 7 running Powerpoint 2007.
The Vista and Windows 7 also pop up a warning about security level,
but I don't have those either of those computers at the moment, so I
can't give the exact error.

On the XP box, the Adobe test page shows that Shockwave 11.5.6r606 is
properly installed. Likewise, Flash 10,0,45,2 is properly installed.

How do I determine what controls PP is complaining about and go about
"registering" them? Or is this something that the author of the
presentation needs to do? In the latter case, what do I need to tell
him to do?
 
Good thought, but NOT the solution.

I downloaded and ran the Flash Player uninstaller from Adobe and then
rebooted. I checked the folder where the the Flash Player files had been
located (%windir%\system32\Macromed\Flash) and nothing was left.
Moreover, Secunia PSI, which had picked up the presence of old versions
of both Flash Player and Shockwave hanging around even though Firefox
and IE reported the latest versions, no longer showed the old versions.

I then downloaded and installed the latest Flash Player. I checked in
both Firefox and IE and confirmed that the latest version was installed.

I opened the ppt file and got the same error message. The symptoms I
described earlier are still present.

For good measure, I also uninstalled Shockwave Player. I made the same
checks, and it indeed was completely gone. I downloaded and installed
the latest Shockwave Player. The ppt error is still there.

Any other suggestions?
 
I'd appreciate any help in tracking this down, especially because,
apparently, this problem is not unique to me. I could upload the ppt to
Skydrive, but it's pretty big (11.4 MB).

The organization that supplied the CD with the Powerpoint presentation
including the following on its website. I tried the suggestion and it
didn't help, but the version numbers below suggest that you may be on to
something. The ppt file was created on 12/15/08 so it almost certainly
uses an old version of flash/shockwave/whatever. The current version of
the Flash activeX plugin is Flash10e.ocx
PowerPoint/Flash Problems

If you have been trying to use PowerPoint for one of our courses or seminars and receive the error message "Some controls on this presentation can't be activated. They may not be registered on your computer.", try the following few steps from Microsoft Tech Services that should help resolve the problem:

The error message you are seeing is usually related to a flash OCX file not being properly registered on your computer. You could try the following to resolve your issue:

1.
Quit PowerPoint.
2.
Run the following command (using Start -> in the start search box, type in the following command):
regsvr32.exe "C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\Flash.ocx"

Note that the exact path may vary and the command should be applied to any of the following files that exist in the noted directory:

* flash.ocx
* flash8.ocx
* flash9.ocx
Click to expand...
</quote>
 
Something happened ... but it's not what we expected. This is the
complete output that appeared in the IMMEDIATE window:

26 Photoshop.Image.8
27 Photoshop.Image.8
27 Photoshop.Image.8

There are 42 slides in the problem presentation. I *think* that slides
26 and 27 are supposed to have some kind of "effect" that doesn't seem
to be working quite properly, but it's not the type of animation that I
originally was concerned with. Slide 9 is the first slide in the
presentation that has that type of "problem animation."

I modified your code a little to get some more info. For each shape in
Slide 9, I printed oSh.Name and oSh.Type. Here's the output, but I don't
know what to make of it:

Slide Index is 9
Shape Name is Slide Number Placeholder 5
Shape Type is 17
Shape Name is Object 10
Shape Type is 13
Shape Name is Rectangle 2
Shape Type is 14
Shape Name is Text Box 8
Shape Type is 17
Shape Name is Line 9
Shape Type is 9
Shape Name is ShockwaveFlash1
Shape Type is 12
 
Here's some more information.

First, if I View > Toolbars > Control Toolbox and then click on the
"More Controls" button, both "Shockwave Active X Control" and "Shockwave
Flash Object" are listed.

Second, when I right click on the area of the slide that has what is
supposed to be the animation and select "Properties," the properties
window that pops up is entirely empty. There also is an entry in that
context menu named "Shockwave Flash Object Object". That leads to a
submenu with two entries, "Edit" (which is active) and "Convert" (which
is greyed out). Clicking on "Edit" results in the error message "An
error occurred during creation of an ActiveX control."

It seems as if the author of this presentation has been a bit too
tricky. A person connected with the author told me that there should
have been a *.mwv file or files (which he said was "wave files")
associated with the presentation. He said that "the PPT goes out and
looks for the mwv file so if they are in different locations (files)
they can not connect." There was no such mwv file on the CD that I was
given; I'm looking for it. Is it possible that the Flash movie is not
embedded in the presentation but somehow linked to an external file?
Shouldn't I at least be able to see the reference to such a file?
 
Very interesting. When I ran your revised code on the problem
presentation, it threw a runtime error: Method 'Object' of object
'OLEFormat' failed. Run-time error '-2147467259 (80004005)'

But it's not your code that's the problem. When I inserted a Shockwave
object into a new ppt file and made that the active presentation, the
code worked exactly as expected.

The run-time error no doubt is related to the fact that, as I noted in
an earlier post, the mystery object that calls itself ShockwaveFlash has
no properties.

It's time to go back to the author of the presentation.
 
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