Advice needed on PowerPoint latest version

littlerock

I used to be a whiz on Powerpoint but have not used it for a few years now. I was asked to give a talk at a conference this week and the organiser asked me to provide it on a memory stick when we arrived at the conference.

I have a newish PC which has a very recent version of PowerPoint but I got the hang of it quite quickly and having assembled my talk (mainly images) on my PC, I saved it to a memory stick. It had the extension. .pptm

I arrived early at the conference and handed the stick over to the techie running the electronics. He could not open it! Error message said it was a macro not an openable file. After some trial and error he managed to open it by opening it within PowerPoint. Afterwards I asked if he knew why and he said no but there was another presentation, also made with a recent version of Powerpoint, which had the same problem.

Is there some specific process to follow to get a stand-alone PP presentation onto a memory stick? For example do I have to Export it rather than save it or some other procedure.

Anyone familiar with later versions of PP and able to advise how to save a stand alone version of a presentation on a memory stick?

Neil_Jones

Office files that have a four figure extension (pptm for example) were made with a version of Office later than and including Office 2007. It's possible the conference PC had an older version, possibly 2003 which can't always work with these.

What you can do in this situation is make your presentation in your version and then save it both in your version and an older version and then at the venue if one won't open, the other should.
https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/Share-PowerPoint-2013-files-with-users-of-earlier-versions-b103296a-cd3d-4d4f-add4-bf581e39ec65

littlerock

Well my version is 2016 and the techie said his was too.....but there is an April 2017 version, maybe he had that? Even so most of the other presenters were of an age and type to be very unlikely to be running the April 2017 version.....more likely 2010

DoaM

.pptm just means it's a macro-enabled Powerpoint presentation.

You could probably have saved as .pptx or even .ppt.

Le_Kirk

Did you actually create Macros (or use vba) within your presentation? If not, I am surprised it gave you the option to save as .pptm. As stated above, more likely .pptx, like Excel later versions are .xlsx and Word are .docx.

littlerock

No no macros and I did not choose an option to save it as a.pptm that was what it defaulted to. I saw there was a 4 character extension called .pptm but assumed that was how PP worked nowadays.

I saved it to my stick and then reloaded it to check it was correct but of course I loaded it into PP again. It did not warn that it was a macro, and I did not select it to be one, it was the default setting. .

bob_a_builder

Yes - the option to save as "PowerPoint 97-2003 Presentation" is there on 2016

the default is .pptx on 2016 ( on my PC anyway)

Always best to save as lowest common denominator if you don't know what going to be available at remote site and you're not taking you own PC/laptop

PDF might also have been an option ?

littlerock

Had I been more familiar with latest version of PP, I might have smelt a rat. I should like to include a video clip in my presentation,, something I gather you can now do. Will that affect the format I need to save it in?

ThemeOne

I suggest using File / Export / Package Presentation to CD for loading a presentation onto media for use on a different computer. You can use the Copy to Folder option further into this process to save it on a USB stick.

Saving this way should ensure that any pictures / videos etc in your presentation are included in the presentation, rather than just being links to local files on the computer where you created it. Otherwise you run the risk of turning up at the presentation venue and none of your pictures / videos / music etc are available!

However even doing it this way *should* default to pptx which is the standard PowerPoint file format. It should only default to pptm if the default save format has been changed in PowerPoint options, or if there actually are macros in the presentation.

Another option is to take your own laptop, if the venue will allow it, then you can just save it normally.

The reason you had difficulties opening the pptm file at the conference venue is because Office defaults to a restriction on opening macro-enabled files, to prevent malicious macros from running, though the settings for this can be changed.

In PowerPoint check File / Options / Save to see what the default save format has been set to, and change it to pptx if necessary. The options relating to running macros are in File / Options / Trust Center / Trust Center Settings - might be useful to bear in mind if you're going to be in the habit of doing PowerPoint presentations as not all techs know everything!

littlerock

OK just opened up PP on my pc and went to save a file. If I type "save" as, it defaults to open on the first line of the "save as" tab, which is "PowerPower macro enabled presentation" with the extension .pptm. It does not show any other options, you need to pull down the tab to open it, and then the second option is PowerPoint presentation .pptx

So the first "save as" option given and the only one which appears on the screen until you pull down the tab, is the macro enabled version .pptm.

If my PP wasn't so rusty I might have spotted this. Still I am surprised the first option is not the main .pptx

Le_Kirk

I opened PowerPoint, did a dummy presentation and clicked save, it went for .pptx, then went save as and it still went .pptx. Maybe because the first time I used it - years ago, I saved as a .pptx and it becomes the default.