Dealing with Error Messages and Prompts
Problems may arise with your PowerPoint presentation during the development, editing, printing, or saving process. The goal of this appendix is to give you some ideas of what to expect and how to handle these problems if and when they occur.
Many PowerPoint problems announce themselves in the form of an error message that appears when you attempt to issue a command or perform some task. Others are more subtle: The command you want to use is dimmed, or the graphic you want to rotate won't. Although it is frustrating when an error message occurs, it does give you more information about the nature and cause of the problem. Take advantage of this additional information, and react to it logically and cautiously. When an error message appears onscreen in PowerPoint or any application, read it carefully and make a written note of when it happened and what you were doing at the time.
Obviously, your first choice when dealing with any technical problem should be to consult this book's index to see if you can find a resolution. You should also consult PowerPoint's online help (press F1). If you can't find an answer, or the suggested solution doesn't work, here are some other ideas:
Try again As best as you can, attempt to perform the task again that resulted in the error message. If the process works with no problem, you might be out of the woods and can continue working. If the error appears again, you might want to find out what's going wrong before you continue to repeat the error-inducing procedure.
Get technical support If you work for a company or organization that provides a technical support staff, this is your best source of information after you've unsuccessfully tried to resolve the problem yourself. If you don't have access to an internal support staff, see what's available for online or phone support from Microsoft Product Support Services.
Research Microsoft's support site You'll find Microsoft Product Support Services at http://support.microsoft.com/directory/. This offers a knowledge base, FAQs, and other options for telephone and online support.
Note
If you need to show someone exactly what displays on your screen, use Print Screen. This key, located above your Insert key on a standard keyboard, might appear as PrtScn or Print Screen. Pressing this key takes a snapshot of your screen and places the image on your Clipboard. You can then paste the image into an e-mail message (to send to your company's technical staff) or WordPad document for printing. The image contains the exact message that appeared. Because what was going on in the background is clearly shown, the technical staff sees the error message in context.