powerpoint, Powerpoint 2008 still unbearably, unbelievably slow

microsoft.public.mac.office.powerpoint - Microsoft products for Macintosh


powerpoint >> Powerpoint 2008 still unbearably, unbelievably slow

by strells » Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:05:01 GMT

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Processor: Intel

At this point, I am so frustrated and fed up with Powerpoint performance, that I want to get rid of it. I would love to use Keynote, OpenOffice, anything, except I'm the only Mac in a Windows XP, Office 2003 environment, and the conversions of my somewhat complex Powerpoint files doesn't work well. <br><br>My issues (note I have all the latest patches and updates and I'm using the latest Snow Leopard; I've also tried all fixes I can find, including reinstalling, making sure I don't have multiple installs, and fixing fonts in Font Book): <br><br>1) Slow start: Powerpoint takes much longer than usual to even start sometimes. It's not too bad, but it's worse than the other Office apps. <br><br>2) Slow quit: OMG, like watching paint dry. I've seen it take over 5 minutes for Powerpoint to quit with only 3 or 4 presentations open, all of which were already saved. Why? <br><br>3) Slow "wake from sleep": This must have to do with virtual memory, but it even happens if no other apps are open. If I leave Powerpoint open for any length of time, leave it to do other stuff, and come back to it, say the next day, Powerpoint becomes *interminably* slow. Constant beachballs for pretty much any actions. Only quitting and starting the program again fixes it (but see 1 and 2 above for why this solution sucks). I don't think I have a ton of apps open that would cause the program to do everything from virtual memory, but no other apps I run behave like this! Why? <br><br>4) Slow saving: this may have to do with my saving things as .ppt instead of .pptx as mentioned in other posts here, but I have no choice. Office 2003 does not support pptx. I'll see how working with .pptx goes with a final "Save As" .ppt for my colleagues. <br><br>Will 2008 ever perform as well as Office 2003 on Windows? I'm hopeful, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe the question should be: when is the next version of Office for Mac coming?
Top

powerpoint >> Powerpoint 2008 still unbearably, unbelievably slow

by t_hughes » Fri, 26 Mar 2010 08:41:53 GMT


I share your pain. I just bought a new version of Office 2008 to reinstall and I have what are apparently font conflicts as Office, through its infinite wisdom, thinks it needs to scour my fonts to disable similar fonts so it can replace them with MS versions. I'm a graphic designer and have a lot of fonts that I manage with SUitcase Fusion 2. <br><br>It is so frustrating. My Powerpoint has taken 25 minutes to open and it's still not open. <br><br>MS, why can't you deal with fonts like any other app? <br><br>I hate Office and wish I didn't need to use because I work with so many PC Powerpoint users.
Top
Similar Threads

1. FM7-pro, Mac OSX: unbearably slow 

Hi,

I converted my database from FM6 to FM7. It is now unbearably slow,
especially when switching between layouts. I also created a FM7 database
from scratch and is is so slow. Is is possible that FM7 is seriously flawed
or is there a simple way how I could speed things up?

Thank you


Ken

2. Yet another bizarre and unbelievably inconvenient issue with Entourage 2008 performance - anyone have a work-around

3. PowerPoint 2008 Slow Slide Show 

I just upgraded to Office 2008 for Mac from Office X for the Mac. When I go to slide show presentation and click for the next slide, the next slide comes very slowly - perhaps a 2 second lapse. This was never a problem with Office X. Any ideas on what the problem is or how to speed things up? I am running OS X 10.5

4. Powerpoint 2008 slow startup after 10.5.2 and Graphics update

5. Powerpoint pathologically slow - considering abandoning Office 2008 

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel

Sorry for the longish post and a bit of a rant. My questions are numbered toward the end of this post.

I have always had Office installed on my Macs. Since the introduction of Office 2008, I have had the most difficulties ever interoperating with PC/Windows users.

What may turn out to be my final straw is that I am attempting to use Office 2008 12.1.5 on a MacBook Air under OS X 10.5.6. My problem appears to be that .ppt slides produced on a PC which include charts from Excel render Powerpoint on the Mac unusable. It takes over 40 minutes to load the five slides. PP uses 97+% of a single core for this entire period. When their is focus on PP, I simply have the spinning disk cursor. I've left it for hours and PP never seems to stabilize and allow one to manipulate the slides in question. Additionally, the chart axis labels and legends have problems. The fonts are rendered as much larger on the Mac as opposed to the PC. Even though I appear to have the same fonts on my Mac as the PC version says it is using.

I have had colleagues load it on their PC's and it looks just fine. It loads quickly in Keynote but the font problems with axis and legend labels seem worse. The best rendering on the Mac seems to be with NeoOffice. It's fast and the images have none of the clipping problems. If anything NeoOffice uses fonts which are too small. Note that NeoOffice does warn me about objects with transparency when I print. Perhaps that is the source of the problem.

I have to get this done by Monday and it includes people in Asia, Europe, and US. Thus for the moment I will probably use NeoOffice or potentially install Windows Office under Parallels.

This comes after a year of using Office 2008 which has been less than satisfactory. Most of my problems seem to be Excel integration differences between the PC and Mac worlds. Specifically, charts and table from Excel are always causing me formatting difficulties in Mac Powerpoint presentations.

I'm at the point where I believe I should really consider abandoning Office 2008. While I like Keynote, most of the time I am trying to incorporate information which others have produced in Excel and the source Worksheet is too complex to open with Numbers. While I may use NeoOffice for this project, it is graphically pretty ugly. For the moment, I'm thinking I should seriously consider running a Windows variant of office via some virtualization software on my Mac. This seems like it should not be necessary. However, I have lost days of time this past year screwing around with Mac and PC incompatibilities between both Excel and Powerpoint.

Now as to my questions:

(1) Is my experience with Excel charts and tables being the source of compatibility problems typical of Office 2008 or symptomatic of some issues with my configuration?

(2) Are there any guides which provide advice on how to avoid problems with importing charts and tables from Excel into Powerpoint? Specifically, that is charts which have originally been created in the Windows variant of Excel.

(3) Is the object transparency issue which NeoOffice flags a possible cause of the insufferably long screen rendering times for the slides in question?

Thanks.

6. Powerpoint 2008 a complete disaster - ultra slow, freezes

7. Compatibility of PowerPoint 2007 (PC) to PowerPoint 2008 (Mac) 

I have several PowerPoint Presentations created with PowerPoint 2007 and would like to view them using a Mac. Is PowerPoint 2007 for PC compatible with PowerPoint 2008 for Mac?

Also, will there be a PowerPoint 2008 for Mac Viewer available anytime soon if ever?

8. Installing PowerPoint 2004 on a computer with PowerPoint 2008