PowerPoint Problem

[topie]

Hello,

I am using MediaLab 2006 and PowerPoint 2007. Whenever the experiment gets to the PowerPoint slide, it hangs up and stops responding. I read older posts and made sure that PowerPoint is not open when I conduct the experiment but it's still not working. Will someone please help?

[jarvis24]

Can you run sample 1, condition 2 from samples folder? It should present a brief pp show followed by a que file.

[topie]

Hi there,

Thank you for your reply. I am new to the forum and I can't find the samples folder (embarrassing!). Will you please post the address?

Thank you,

Tina

[jarvis24]

Assuming you are using v2008 or prior, the samples will be located (usually) here:

c:\medialab\samples

or

c:\program files\medialab\samples

If all else fails, you can search your hard drive for "MediaLab" to find the MediaLab folder. Once you have found that, the samples folder should be located within.

[topie]

Thank you so much for your help. I can run Sample 1, Condition 2. I will try to open and save the PP show so that I can use it as a template for my own study (is this possible?). Hopefully, that will alleviate the challenges I'm having. I will also look into how I can prevent the participant from knowing that it's a PowerPoint show. Otherwise, I think they'll realize that it's false feedback. I know that I saw forum comments on that. Thank you again! This is VERY helpful!

Tina

[jarvis24]

Thanks for the update. Do you think think might be a version issue then? The PowerPoint show that comes with that sample was created with an older version of PowerPoint. Maybe, in PP v2007, you need to use the "save as" option to make it compatible with earlier versions of PowerPoint? If you try this, please let me know how it goes!

[topie]

Hello there,

The entire experiment ran smoothly when I:

1) Saved the PowerPoint file as a .pps NOT a .ppt
2) Did not put the .pps file directly into the experiment, instead I saved the .pps file into a questionnaire and put that into the experiment

I hope that that helps some poor soul avoid what I've experienced for the past three weeks! Thanks for your help all along!

Be blessed!

Tina

[jarvis24]

Ahh, the old PPS vs PPT issue. Yes, that makes sense because the PPS is a compiled version of the PPT file--such that it does not need to be opened by PowerPoint itself. Thanks for the update. I think we ought to add a user-friendly message to users in cases where a PPT file has been inserted. So as to avoid this kind of troubleshooting. It is odd though that the PPS does not run from the experiment file and only does so successfully from a que file. And finally--can you confirm that this is a Power Point 2007 PPS file that is working ok?

[topie]

Thank you so much for your help. Yes, I too think it would be a good idea to insert the message. Yes, this is a PP 2007 file that is working fine. Thanks again! I'm sure you'll be seeing me again on here! I'm learning a LOT but there's still so much! Thanks again!