Can't run slideshow / screen show won't start; Icon appears on task bar

PPTools
Shape Styles brings the power of styles to PowerPoint. Apply complex formatting with a single click
Merge Excel, CSV or tab-delimited data into PowerPoint presentations to create certificates, awards presentations, personalized presentations and more
FixLinks prevents broken links when you distribute PowerPoint presentations
Optimizer saves disk space and bandwidth, shrinks your PowerPoint presentations to the right size for email, screenshow or printing
PPT2HTML gives you full control of PowerPoint HTML output, helps meet Section 508 accessibility requirements
Prep4PDF preserves interactivity in PowerPoint presentations when you convert to PDF
Image Export converts PowerPoint slides to JPG, PNG, GIF, WMF and more

Problem

You doubleclick a PPS file or open a PowerPoint presentation and start a slide show but nothing happens. An icon for the presentation appears on the task bar, but clicking it doesn't switch to the slide show view of your presentation.

Solution

Thanks to PowerPoint newsgroup members Al Brassell and Tao Schencks for this:

The presentation may be set up to use the "Secondary monitor" for slide shows.

If there's only one monitor attached to the computer, it'll be the Primary monitor. The slide show will be shown on the secondary monitor that isn't there, also known as the "air monitor" or "nowhere". You see an icon on the task bar and that's it.

To fix the problem:

If you're running PowerPoint 2002 (XP) or PowerPoint 2003

• Choose Slide Show, Set Up Show... from the main menu bar
• In the Set Up Show dialog box, look for the "Multiple Monitors" section and under "Display slide show on" choose "Primary Monitor"
• Click OK and try viewing your show again

If you're running PowerPoint 2000

• Choose Slide Show, Set Up Show... from the main menu bar
• In the Set Up Show dialog box, look for "Show on" and in the dropdown list, change "Primary Monitor" to "Monitor 1"
• Click OK and try viewing your show again

If that doesn't fix it ...
If your laptop is connected to a port replicator, check its video configuration. One user on the PowerPoint Newsgroup reports:

"The presentation was using the primary monitor. But my notebook is connected to a port replicator with a video out that I never use. The port replicator was configured so that the unused video out was the primary and the notebook itself was the secondary. A quick change to turn off the unused video out and the presentation worked like a charm."

Contents © 1995-2008 Stephen Rindsberg, Rindsberg Photography, Inc. and members of the MS PowerPoint MVP team. You may link to this page but any form of unauthorized reproduction of this page's contents is expressly forbidden.

content authoring & site maintenance by

Friday - The Automatic FAQ Maker