For some users, Form Controls (FM20.dll) are no longer working as expected after installing MS14-082 Microsoft Office Security Updates for December 2014. Issues are experienced at times such as when they open files with existing VBA projects using forms controls, try to insert a forms control in to a new worksheet or run third party software that may use these components.

You may received errors such as:

"Cannot insert object"

"Object library invalid or contains references to object definitions that could not be found"

"The program used to create this object is Forms. That program is either not installed on your computer or it is not responding. To edit this object, install Forms or ensure that any dialog boxes in Forms are closed."          
      * Note In this last error message, the Forms text may also be replaced by the GUID of the control.

Additionally, you may be unable to use or change properties of an ActiveX control on a worksheet or receive an error when trying to refer to an ActiveX control as a member of a worksheet via code. 

Find the latest information about this issue click here.

Updates for both PowerPoint 2010 and PowerPoint 2013, were released on Tuesday (4/8) that reintroduces support for YouTube videos into PowerPoint. The feature goes live on April 15. You need to install the updates listed for your PowerPoint version to be ready.

 

• Office 2010

  • KB2837579

• Office 2013

  • KB2837627

  • KB2817636

 

History

PowerPoint 2010 and 2013 for Windows originally included support for embedding YouTube videos that were in an old format that YouTube no longer supports.  As this old format started disappearing from the YouTube service, the support for YouTube videos in PowerPoint started faltering. These changes led us to disable support for inserting online videos from the product because we could not reliably support playing back YouTube videos.

 

What the update brings

Since the time playback of online videos was disabled in PowerPoint, the PowerPoint team has been hard at work to re-enable support for YouTube in a way that is resilient to changes and more robust. For PowerPoint 2013 we now use a browser to host these videos, which provides us the resiliency. This not only means that we can support HTML5 videos but also that we will be able to playback YouTube videos as long as they can playback in any browser. Both PowerPoint 2010 and 2013 for Windows are updated to include support for YouTube videos in the newer HTML5 and Shockwave Flash ActionScript 3.0 formats.

 Note: The insert online video option is limited to YouTube support for both PowerPoint 2010 and 2013.

Online Help Topics (available by 4/15)

• PPT 2013
  Insert or link to a video on YouTube
  http://office.com/redir/HA104192855.aspx

 

• PPT 2010
  Link to a video on YouTube from PowerPoint 2010
  http://office.com/redir/HA102636549.aspx

 

• Technical requirements
  http://office.com/redir/HA104242567.aspx

Guest Blogger: Harold Kless

If you try to edit an Office file (Word, PowerPoint or Excel) from a SharePoint 2010 Document Library while using an iPad with MS Office applications installed, the file will not open and there is an error “there is no SharePoint Foundation application available to open
the app.”

SharePoint 2010 requires a plugin or active X to launch client applications, and neither of those are allowed on the iOS platform. SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online support protocol handlers that work with iPad.

To work around this behavior:

Option 1 – Add a Place within the application that will connect to the SharePoint Document Library.

1. To do this open any of the installed Microsoft Office applications
   (Word, Excel or PowerPoint).
2. On the opening window choose Add a Place.
3. In the Add a Place window click on SharePoint Site URL
4. In the SharePoint URL window enter the url or internet address of the SharePoint Document Library.
5. Click Next - when prompted enter the username and password.

Option 2 – download a copy of the file

1. When in the Document Library click on Download a copy.
2. The document will be displayed in the browser window with the option to choose how to open in the appropriate application.
3. When the file opens it will be read only with the option to edit and save.

 

 UPDATE:

We have identified the malware as a new family of ransomware Infection: Trojan:Win32/Bumat!rts AVSubmit  Detectable with AM definitions version:  1.157.1559.0 or later http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/threat/encyclopedia/entry.aspx?Name=Trojan%3aWin32%2fBumat%21rts&ThreatID=-2147341227   Infection: Trojan:Win32/Crilock.A.  Detectable with AM definitions version:  1.157.1542.0 or later http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/threat/encyclopedia/Entry.aspx?Name=Trojan%3aWin32%2fCrilock.A   Definition Information:     Latest public Endpoint AM defs:  1.157.1542.0 (Expect several hours later for 1.157.1559.0 or higher)       http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/definitions/whatsnew.aspx     Latest Prerelease AM defs: 1.157.1542.0 (Expect several hours later for 1.157.1559.0 or higher)       http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/shared/prereleasesignatures.aspx The signatures are now updated. You should be able to use Safety Scanner to detect and clean it. It does NOT clean your documents, so you will want to restore from a backup after cleaning the malware from your system. Microsoft Safety Scanner http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx

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Upon further analysis of the files that have been submitted to us for investigation, the analysts have determined that the files are encrypted with a private and public key. Unless the private key is available, the files will not be able to be recovered. The private key is more than likely held by the attacker.The premise of ransom ware such as this is that if a person pays the ransom, a key is provided to unlock the files. The best course of action is to clean up the malware and then restore files from a backup.

 

More Information:

 

We are currently investigating an ongoing situation where users may encounter an error when trying to open Office documents.

The error can happen opening any Office file type, not just Excel files as shown in the image below. The error says:

"Cannot open the file ... because the file format or extension is not valid. Verify, that the file has not been corrupted and that the file extension matches the format of the file."

 

With PowerPoint binary files (.PPT) , you will see a dialog similar to the following screenshot. We don't have OOXML samples yet but will post images once we have these.

 

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Other Support Blog links

• Excel
  http://blogs.technet.com/b/the_microsoft_excel_support_team_blog/archive/2013/09/07/quot-cannot-open-the-file-because-the-file-format-or-extension-is-invalid-quot-opening-office-files.aspx

 

• Word
  http://blogs.technet.com/b/wordonenotesupport/archive/2013/09/09/quot-cannot-open-the-file-because-the-file-format-or-extension-is-invalid-quot-opening-office-files.aspx

 

_____________________________________________________________________________

 Microsoft Security Essentials  http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/mse.aspx

 

We are seeing a few cases where the VBA component of the Office 2013 apps stop functioning.  The applications are working properly when installed.  Then a few days later VBA buttons no longer work.  Here are the scenarios that we
have seen:

PowerPoint

• The Visual Basic, and Macros options are disabled/greyed on the ribbon.
• When opening presentations with VBA code, the user receives the following message:
  "The document contains macros. Macro language support for this application is disabled. Features requiring VBA are not available. Would you like to open this document read-only?"

Word

• The Macro button is not greyed out but when trying to run or record a macro they receive the following
  message, “The function you are attempting to run contains macros or content that requires macro language support"

Access:

• When running wizards the receive the following error,  “This feature isn't installed, or has been disabled"
• When opening VBA editor the user receives “"Microsoft Access is unable to load the Visual Basic for
  Applications dynamic-link library (dll) Vbe7" when opening the Visual Basic Editor (VBE)”

Excel

• The Visual Basic, Macros and Record Macro options are disabled/greyed on the ribbon.
• When opening workbooks with VBA code, the user receive the following message, “The Visual Basic for
  Applications (VBA) macros in this workbook are corrupted and have been deleted."

 

In most cases repairing MS Office fixes the issue. 

What we believe is happening is there is a registry cleaner or system maintenance type application removing some our registry keys that we
need for VBA to run successfully.  In the above scenarios when the MS Office application was installed the VBA worked properly.

After you install PowerPoint 2013 or Office 2013 click-to-run and launch PowerPoint 2013 it may crash, giving you the following error: "Microsoft PowerPoint has stopped working".

 

This problem can happen when the DisplayLinkManager driver is installed on the system. This problem is known to happen with DisplayLinkDriver versions 5.5.29055.0 or 5.6.30272.0.

 

To resolve this problem, update the DisplayLink driver. To do this, connect to http://www.displaylink.com/support/downloads.php and install any version of the DisplayLinkDriver later than 5.6.30272.0.

 

Note: The other Office Applications (Access, Word, Excel, Outlook) will also crash if using the old DisplayLink Driver.

 

 

We have seen reports of PowerPoint presentations hanging whenever trying to open a presentation that uses Information Rights Management (IRM) after you apply MS12-057. Additionally, the reports go on to say that a new file may hang when you try to apply IRM protection after installing this security update.

If you suspect you are running into this error, you should be able to resolve the problem by deleting all files in the following path:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\DRM

also, make sure to rename or delete the following registry key (if you choose to delete the key, be sure to back it up first)::

MS12-060 is a security update that was released Tuesday, August 14, 2012. This update replaced MS12-027. Some may be seeing "Unspecified Automation Error" when running your Microsoft Office VBA code after installing MS12-060.

Update: We have redeployed the MS12-060 update that contains the fix for this issue automatically built in.  The update is now available from the Microsoft download center.

These KB articles have been updated with mention of the workarounds, a fix it package and a link to download the new update.  You do not need to install the original update in order to install the new update:

2007
http://support.microsoft.com/KB/2687441

2010
http://support.microsoft.com/KB/2597986

Office Sustained Engineering Blog has been updated with a resolution.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2012/08/24/ms12-060-not-initiating-with-certain-controls.aspx

For more information on MS12-060, review the complete security bulletin:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS12-060 - Critical
Vulnerability in Windows Common Controls Could Allow Remote Code Execution (2720573)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/MS12-060

Hotfix for Security Update MS11-022 released publicly as MS11-036

 

MS11-036: Description of the security update for PowerPoint 2002: May 10, 2011

Security Update for Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 (KB2535802) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2535802

MS11-036: Description of the security update for PowerPoint 2003: May 10, 2011

Security Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 (KB2535812) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2535812

 

MS11-036: Description of the security update for PowerPoint 2007: May 10, 2011

Security Update for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 (KB2535818) - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2535818

 

Please review the ‘Known issues with this security update’ section of any of the KBs.



 ====================================================================================================



Hot Fix for Security Update MS11-022 Now Available

 

 

The hot fix is now available for the PowerPoint 2003 Security Update MS11-022. If you had previously removed the security update MS11-022, you do not need to reinstall it. Since the hot fix is cumulative, just install the hot fix and you should be secure.

 

• The Office Sustained Engineering Blog is updated with information about this release. :
  http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2011/04/23/issues-after-installing-powerpoint-2003-update-kb2464588.aspx

• Article: KB2543241: Description of the PowerPoint 2003 hotfix package
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2543241

• Download the hotfix

The hotfix for PowerPoint 2002 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2543242

 

For deployment, the security team that produced the hotfix suggests:

“Once the PowerPoint hotfix becomes available, we suggest applying the hotfix via normal means of hotfix deployment. This would include installing it manually or by using tools such as SCCM/SMS or other 3^rd party tools.”

 

The following blog entry offers some resources on how to publish MSP’s to internal WSUS deployments:

·         Adding Cumulative Updates to display in Windows Server Update Services Console:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2011/01/20/adding-cumulative-updates-to-display-in-windows-server-update-services-console.aspx

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

For the latest on this issue see Office Sustained Engineering blog post http://blogs.technet.com/b/office_sustained_engineering/archive/2011/04/12/april-2011-office-security-update-release.aspx

After applying MS11-022 you may receive the following error when attempting to open a PowerPoint presentation in PowerPoint 2003:

“PowerPoint was unable to display some of the text, images, or objects on slides in the file, "filename", because they  have become corrupted. Affected slides have been replaced by blank slides in the presentation and it not possible to recover the lost information. To ensure that the file can be opened in previous versions of PowerPoint, use the Save As command (File menu) and save the file with either the same or a new name.”

For more information, please see KB2464588 MS11-022: Description of the security update for PowerPoint 2003: April 12, 2011
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2464588

Workarounds:

• Save a copy of the file, edit, and save.
  • Open presentation in PowerPoint 2003, after receiving the prompt click OK. File/Save As to save a copy of the file, make a minor modification (delete one character, insert it back), save the file.

• Remove backgrounds and delete images from slide master.
• Open file in 2007, make small change, and save.

• Open file in 2007 and remove backgrounds and images in slide master.
• Open file in 2010 and save as PPTX.

• Open file in 2007 and save as Web Page (*.htm; *.html), then save back as ppt.

Office 2010 Web Application Workshops and experts coming soon to a city near you…

Thinking about setting up Microsoft Office 2010 Web Applications in your environment? Curious about Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint and Word web applications?

If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, you should consider attending one of the Office 2010 Web Application workshops that will be delivered in cities around the country in the coming months.

The Office 2010 Web Applications workshop is designed to provide you with information regarding best practices on installation, manage, and usage of the Office web applications of PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and OneNote 2010.

Key Focus Areas:

·         Setup of Office web applications

·         Server Architecture

·         The Companions

·         Introduction to Excel Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote  web applications

IT Professionals responsible for the deployment, maintenance, and troubleshooting of Office installations. Application-specific and/or help desk-type issues are not included in the scope of this offering.

Delivery Dates and Locations:
April 5-6, 2011 – Irving, TX
April 19-20, 2011 – Irvine, CA
May 3-4, 2011 – Downers Grove, IL
May 17-18, 2011 – New York, NY
June 1-2, 2011 – Tampa, FL
New dates and locations will be announced here as they become available.

Pricing:
$1000 USD per person

To register or for more information:

•    To register online, visit http://www.microsoft.com/events, click the Find Events and Webcasts link, and perform an advanced search using the following EventIDs or keywords "Office 2010 Deployment":

o    Las Colinas:  1032479205
o    Irvine, CA: :  1032479318
o    Downers Grove, IL:  1032479319
o    New York, NY:  1032479324
o    Tampa, FL:  1032479329

•    To register via email, send mail to ProfessionalServices@Microsoft.com and include the following information:

o    Company Name
o    Attendee Name
o    Physical Address
o    Phone Number
o    Number of Attendees
o    Desired Event Location/Date

•    To register via phone, call 1-888-875-9071

•    Email inquiries to ProfessionalServices@Microsoft.com

This may also occur with Office 2010 also. Check to see if you have any document management software installed that adds shell extensions. The last case with this issue I saw was using something called Lotus Document Manager 6.5.1. We uninstalled that from Add or Remove Programs (Windows XP SP3) and the issue went away.

You would click on the Save or Open commands under the File tab in Visio 2010. As soon as you clicked on Save or Open the application just exited without warning. No crash, events in Event Viewer, nothing.

How we discovered this was caused by Lotus Document Manager…I was extracting Process Monitor to see what’s happening with the file system and registry during the time you click on Save/Open, it opened the ZIP file with WinZip. When I clicked Extract I was prompted with a Document Neighborhood window that I’ve never seen before. I was pretty sure it wasn’t native to Windows OS or Visio. So I checked with the user and they mentioned they had this for Domino documents. The only 2010 application on the machine was Visio 2010, Office was 2007 and it didn’t happen with any apps that came with Office 2007.

Microsoft Photo Editor

Error Reading File

With Security Update MS10-105 (KB2289162) installed.

We found it happens if the image has a width of 2,731 or greater. If you open the image in Paint and go to Image menu, Attributes… (CTRL+E), change the Width to 2,730 or less, then save. The file should now open.

This is currently under investigation. I’ll post back if we have more information to provide. If you need more information in the meantime please contact Customer Service and Support at 800-MICROSOFT or http://support.microsoft.com/oas.

Here’s an issue I saw recently that was a head scratcher but found a fix so wanted to share. You have a chart in a PowerPoint 2007 presentation, you want to edit the data in the chart so you right-click the chart, click Edit Data but nothing happens, Excel should launch.

You also get Edit Data in the ribbon when a chart is selected, it’s found under Chart Tools context tab, Design tab, Edit Data

This only happens with existing files. So if you create a new PowerPoint presentation and insert a chart using the Chart command under Insert tab, Edit Data opens Excel. If you send the existing files with the issue to another machine then Edit Data opens Excel. Even repairing and re-installing Office don’t help. Only Office Standard 2007 is installed on the machine. This would apply to any Office suite with PowerPoint and Excel.

Close PowerPoint and Excel, run this command as a user with local administrator privileges. You can use the Run window in the Start menu. This would be the preferred way to do it on Windows XP.

REGSVR32 ole32.dll

Should get a prompt saying “DllRegisterServer in ole32.dll succeeded”.

If you’re running Windows Vista or Windows 7 and User Account Control is enabled you need to run from an elevated command prompt.

Start/All Programs/Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, click Run as administrator

How did this happen? Not sure, but my guess is that it has something to do with the COM registration on the system. It’s possible something was changed, either with file associations, very likely the compatibility pack for 2007 is installed. I’ve seen this on systems where the company deploys 2007 Compatibility Pack onto all their systems either through a script or bakes it into the hard disk image. Keep in mind, that the 2007 Compatibility Pack is only needed if you have a version of Office before 2007.

Also, keep in mind this issue will also occur if Excel 2007 is not installed on the system!!!!!

If you don’t see any shapes window on the left of a new drawing after you upgrade to Visio 2010 go to the View tab, click on Task Panes, and click on Shapes

Shapes window missing above

You should now have the shapes pane. This is a toggle, on/off setting. If you click on the Shapes option again it turns the shapes pane off.

I’ve seen this with several customers upgrading from a previous version, like 2007, to 2010. I haven’t been able to recreate the issue on any of my systems with an upgrade from 2007 to 2010.

When you open a publication (*.pub) in Publisher you may get the following message: “Publisher had detected a problem in the file you are trying to open. If you are certain that this file came from a trusted source and does not contain harmful information, click OK. If you received this file from another person or machine and are not sure that the contents are safe, click Cancel.” CTRL+SHIFT+I turns on the alert ID (1100818)

If you click the OK button on the message you get the error: “Publisher cannot open the file.”

What this tells me is that the file is probably corrupt or not a supported Publisher file (either super-old version of Publisher no longer supported or just not a real publisher file, like someone renamed a file extension to pub from something else somehow).

The bad news is the file may destroyed beyond recognition. The good news is you may be able to salvage some of the content from it. To do this, try to insert the file into a new publication using the Insert/Text File command (in Publisher 2010 it’s now called Insert File under the Insert tab.

Create a new publication and go Insert/Text File…, then browse to the corrupt publication (*.pub) file, select it and click OK.

2007	2010

Reference

How to troubleshoot a damaged publication in Publisher

We’ve had a couple reports of users saving as PDF from Visio using the Microsoft Save As PDF/XPS add-in that now ships with Office 2007 SP2. What happens is when you try to save a Visio drawing as PDF you receive an error message:

"This file is open in another instance of Visio or in another program" 1400035

It only seems to happen when saving the PDF to a directory different than the directory the Visio drawing is stored in.

We’ve only seen this with Kaspersky anti-virus. The only workaround I’ve heard works is to add an exception in Kaspersky for the Visio application (VISIO.EXE).

This most recent report was with Visio 2007 on Windows XP.

We recently released knowledge base article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982954 addressing an issue with certain MPEG-2 files inserting into PowerPoint. There were a few workarounds we suggest. One of which is installing an MPEG-2 codec.

PowerPoint cannot insert a video from the selected file. Verify that the necessary codec for this media format is installed, and then try again.
(400737)

However, there's actually a neat little trick you can do to get these MPEG-2 videos to insert, then play in PowerPoint 2010. Basically, you just need to downgrade the video to a 2007 video object. There's not a downgrade button or anything like that but you just need to insert the video into a legacy presentation (*.ppt) that will be in [Compatibility Mode], insert the video there. If you have an existing file that is already a native (*.pptx; *.pptm) presentation and you want to insert the video there, just copy and paste the video from the legacy presentation (*.ppt) then insert into your native presentation (*.pptx).

Steps to successfully insert the video into PowerPoint 2010.

1. Start a new session of PowerPoint 2010.

2. Click on the Save button on the Quick Access Toolbar in the upper left above the File tab.

3. Change the 'Save as type' drop-down box toPowerPoint 97-2003 Presentation (*.ppt).

This will put you in Compatibility Mode

4. Choose a location to save the file and click the Save button

5. Click on the Insert tab and click the Video icon.

6. Select the MPEG-2 video you received the error on before and click the Insert button.

7. Right-click on the video and choose Copy. You could also press CTRL+C; or under the Home tab, click on Copy on the left side of the Ribbon.

8. Open the presentation (*.pptx) file you received the error on earlier, then right-click inside the slide you want the video inserted, and under the Paste Options choose the icon on the left (Use Destination Theme). You could also press CTRL+V; or under the Home tab, click the Paste icon on the left side of the Ribbon.

9. See if you can now play the video.

10. If the video plays, right-click the video and click Upgrade Media Object.

11. In the Media Object Upgrade dialog box click on the Upgrade button.

PowerPoint 2007

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2276463

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2386377

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2276482

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2276471

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2345310

PowerPoint 2010

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2345341

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2345342

 

See KB 953878 for more information on Office hotfixes sent out in the Cumulative Updates schedule (every two months). KB 953878 will have the master rollup articles for the current bi-monthly set of hotfixes.

If you have a PowerPoint file from a previous version and haven't upgraded the video object yet, you can still use the Play Across Slides under the Video Tools/Playback tab.

The term "upgraded the video object" in 2010 refers to either 1) File tab, then clicking 'Convert'; 2) Saving as PPTX; or 3) right-clicking on the media object and clicking 'Upgrade Media Object'

However, if you're working in a new PowerPoint file, or it has been fully converted, or a media object has been upgraded you need to change the setting in the Animations tab in Effect Options.

 

1. Launch PowerPoint and insert a video into the new presentation using the Insert tab, and select the Video icon, select the video and click Insert.

2. Select the video

3. Click on the Animations tab, in the Animation gallery change Pause button to Play button

4. Under the Animations tab, to the lower right of the Effect Options button click on the little arrow pointing down to the right (Show Additional Effect Options).

5. In the Play Video window, under the Effect tab in the Stop playing section, select After,

6. Change the number of slides to how ever many slides you want the selected video to play accross. In my example I changed the setting to 5 slides.

6. Click OK.

You'll obviously need more slides if you're using the exact steps from scratch in this example, where I created a blank presentation and inserted the video onto the only slide in it. So if you want to demo these steps exactly, please make sure to insert at lest give slides using the New Slide command under the Home tab.

There have been several issues that occur when editing charts in PowerPoint 2007 after Service Pack 2 is installed, or hotfix KB966311 is installed. The main symptom is PowerPoint will stop responding (hang) when you are working on a chart. You'll see (Not Responding) in the Title bar and will have to go into Task Manager to End Task.

We have come out with several hotfixes for these issues:

 

These occur if you have hotfix KB 966311 or Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 installed:

KB 975021 -  When you move, resize, or adjust graphs, Microsoft Office PowerPoint crashes.

KB 976479 - Take certain actions in PowerPoint, it becomes unresponsive. For example, this problem occurs if you select a chart in a presentation, and then you press and hold the DOWN ARROW key.

KB 981047 - If multiple presentations that contain charts are used at the same time, PowerPoint may crash.

KB 2028572 - No new updates, just the latest OART.DLL with the fix.

So which update should I install? I'd recommend the latest KB 2028572. The updates are cumulative so each one should contain updates from the previous updates.

How do I get the hotfix? There's a link at the top of the articles to view and request hotfixes. Fill out the form and you'll get an email with a link and password to the hotfix. If there's no link in the article call Customer Service at 800-MICROSOFT, reference the KB article # and request that hotfix described in the article.

What if my company/administrator won't let me install the hotfix? There's a workaround but you need to do it every time you run PowerPoint on each instance of PowerPoint. It's setting the processor affinity on the POWERPNT.EXE process.

 

Steps

1. With PowerPoint running, open Task Manager, by right-clicking on the Task Bar, choosing Task Manager, or by doing CTRL+ALT+DELETE and choosing Task Manager.

2. Select the Processes tab, right-click POWERPNT.EXE, click Set Affinity...

3. Uncheck all CPUs except one, click OK, and close Task Manager.

Shot from Windows 7 64-bit computer with Intel Core 2 vPro processor

In theory, there's another workaround that involves disabling multiple CPUs or CPU cores in the BIOS. I don't like recommending that though unless the chart hang issue is a real showstopper and you can't install the hotfixes. You should be familiar with modifying the BIOS and understand that you can mess up your computer, even stop it from starting if you're not careful. If you're not comfortable with modifying the BIOS or have never done so before, I would contact the computer manufacturer, or consult a professional computer support technician.

There is an issue affecting Visio 2003 and 2007 users when they use the Search for Shapes feature.  This is caused by a combination of the permanent retirement of the Shape Search servers and a temporary server redirection problem. 

Normally Visio 2003 and 2007 would silently fail to search the (now retired) online servers, and continue to return search results from the local stencil files.  Unfortunately, the lack of proper redirecting causes the failure dialog which interrupts the search process.

When users try to search, they receive the error shown below instead of getting shape results.

 

Work Around
The work around is to disable the internet location for shape searching, which is no longer needed:

1. Select the Tools menu, then choose Options, then select the Shape Search tab
2. Expand the Search Locations
3. Uncheck the box for "The Internet" location
4. Click OK to save the options

More Information
The Visio "Search for Shapes" feature in 2003 and 2007 was designed to allow users to search both local stencil files and online shape servers.  In Visio 2010, the search feature is only searching the local stencil files for Visio shapes, and does not attempt to query a web server.

The Visio Shape Search servers were retired earlier this year, as documented in KB article 2019049:
Search for Shapes feature in Visio to search on the Internet is discontinued

The shapes that were previously found using the Internet search are now packaged for download from the Office Download site.  You can use this link to see the download options: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/visio-help/find-more-shapes-and-stencils-HA010369716.aspx

You select a link to download an Office 2010 Trial (Office suite, Visio, Project).

After selecting a ‘Try This’ link, and providing a Windows Live ID, you receive a confirmation page with an Install Now link:

However, clicking this link automatically installs the 32-bit version of Visio (or Office/Project/etc.). 

You don’t see an option for 64-bit.

RESOLUTION

There IS a way to get the 64-bit download.

1. Open the Order Confirmation email from Microsoft.

2. Near the bottom of the email there are steps describing hot to access the order details.  Click the link to the “Account Management Console”.

a. You will need to log in with the same Windows Live ID that was used originally.

3. The “My Account” screen opens, and any Trials that have been set up are listed.

4. Click the “Download” link for the desired Trial.

5. Ignore the large “Download Now” button, and click on the “Advanced Options” link instead.

6. This will present a pop-up screen describing the 64-bit requirements, and containing two links, one for 32 bit and one for 64 bit.

a. Click the 64 bit link to start the download

I recently had a user who was getting a blank pop-up when starting PowerPoint 2010. It was working in 2007. The first thing I though was ADD-IN!!! We tried starting PowerPoint in Office safe mode (hold down CTRL key while starting PowerPoint and click Yes) but we got the same pop-up. The first place we looked was in the user interface under File/Options/Add-Ins, select COM Add-ins on the Manage drop down at the bottom of the screen and clicked Go button.

Unchecked anything in that COM Add-ins window and exited PowerPoint. Same problem. Then I went back to File/Options/Add-Ins/Manage: PowerPoint Add-ins/Go button. Nothing there. By this time I was ready to hit the registry. So we went to Start/Run/regedit/OK. First I checked under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\PowerPoint for anything called PowerPoint Add-ins. Didn’t see anything. Next I tried under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\14.0\PowerPoint, and found a subkey called DLL Add ins but nothing in that. Then I see under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\PowerPoint there’s a subkey called Addins. Nothing there either. So by this time I was a little stumped.

The user told me what add-in they thought it was and we looked under Program Files and found a ppa file. When we renamed that we got an error that PowerPoint could not find the add-in <filename.ppa>. I checked the registry again and still couldn’t find where the add-in was setup.

I finally decided to use a tool called Process Monitor to see what PowerPoint is querying in the registry. So I downloaded, extracted and ran Procmon.exe, then started PowerPoint and stopped capture. I did a CTRL+F to search for that ppa file and found it in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\11.0\PowerPoint. Under the name of the add-in there was an LoadBehavior setting (DWORD) that was set to 1. I changed the setting to 2 but same issue starting PowerPoint. So I changed LoadBehavior to 0 and now the pop-up was gone.

Troubleshooting Startup

Things you can try to isolate the problem. This is mainly if you suspect an add-in issue. One scenario is if you upgraded from a previous version of Office and are now seeing odd behaviors at startup

• Office Safe Mode
  • Hold down CTRL key while starting PowerPoint or go to Run window (Start/Run) and type powerpnt.exe /safe
• Check the Templates folder for a default template. No default template exists by default.

• Look for blank.potx or blank.pot or default.potx or default.pot

• Vista and Windows 7:

• C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Templates (you need show hidden files and folders turned on in Folder Options)

• Tip1: You can go to the Run window, Start/Run or Windows key + R, then type %AppData% and press Enter to open the AppData directory.
• Tip2: In PowerPoint you can just go to Save As, and change the ‘Save as type’ to PowerPoint Template (*.potx), or the older version of PowerPoint Template (*.pot) and it’ll take you right to that directory.

• Windows XP

• C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates

• Check the add-ins console and disable any add-ins

• File/Options/Add-Ins/Manage

• COM Add-ins
• PowerPoint Add-in

• Check the following subkeys in the registry for any folders with add-ins in the name and look under them:
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\PowerPoint
    • Also check under any other versions under PowerPoint (8.0, 9.0, 10.0, 11.0, 12.0, etc) especially if you upgraded Office
  • HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\PowerPoint
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\14.0\PowerPoint\DLL Addins
  • Also check under any other versions under PowerPoint (8.0, 9.0, 10.0, 11.0, 12.0, etc) especially if you upgraded Office
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\PowerPoint\Addins
• If you’re running Office on Windows 64-bit (and you don’t have Office 2010 64-bit installed) check under these keys instead:
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\14.0\PowerPoint
  • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\PowerPoint\Addins

*Expand the add-ins folder on the left and look for a folder for the name of the add-in you are looking for underneath the add-ins folder. Once you find the folder select it on the left and on the right double-click on LoadBehavior, change the value to 0. In the screenshot below I have the Search Commands add-in currently set to 3. I double-clicked LoadBehavior, changed the value to 0, left Base set to Hexadecimal and clicked OK. Now the add-in no longer loads.

If you determine an add-in is causing a problem. Check Add/Remove Programs or Programs and Features. If the add-in is listed there and you have no use for it you could install it but a word of caution before doing that. Sometimes you use add-ins and don’t even know it. If you uninstall it you may have a tough time finding it again if you really need it.

• Change the default printer in the printers folder

• Close PowerPoint, then right-click printer in the Printers folder and choose Set as default

• In Windows XP it’s under Printers and Faxes
• In Vista just click the Start button and type Printers and hit Enter key
• In Windows 7 click Start button and click Devices and Printers

Data Collecting

If you receive a crash or hang when starting PowerPoint you may want to check the Event Viewer, in the Application log for a Source=Application Error event with Event ID=1000. The details may give insight on what’s causing the problem. Mainly the Faulting Application Name and Faulting Module Name. Then look for an event with Source=Windows Error Reporting event with Event ID=1001. This event will be present after the Application Error event if Windows Error Reporting (formerly Dr. Watson) was sent and the report was successfully sent to our Online Crash Analysis servers. This event has a summary of what was sent to our servers. The most important piece here, as far as I’m concerned is the Fault Bucket or Bucket ID. This helps us map the crash to our backend and can help us analyze the crash.

If the problem only occurs with a particular add-in and disabling just that add-in resolves the problem then contacting the maker of that add-in would probably be a good idea and provide them the version of the add-in. You could obtain more information about the version of the add-in by checking the DLL which you may be able to find by looking in the registry paths I provided above or simply checking the Program Files directory I provided above or in Add/Remove Programs, Programs and Features.