You receive a "Some controls on this presentation cannot be activated" error message when you use PowerPoint 97 to open a presentation from PowerPoint 2003 (813720)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003
  • Microsoft PowerPoint 97 for Windows

SYMPTOMS

When you use PowerPoint 97 to open an Office PowerPoint 2003 presentation that contains multiple slide masters, you may receive the following error message:
Some controls on this presentation cannot be activated. They may not be registered on this machine.
Although you can open the presentation, you may receive the following error message when you try to start the Microsoft Visual Basic Editor:
PowerPoint found an error that it can't correct. You should save presentations, exit, and then restart PowerPoint.
This symptom may occur if all the following conditions exist:
  • The presentation was created with PowerPoint 2003.
  • The presentation contains multiple slide masters.
  • The second slide master contains a Microsoft ActiveX "SlideMasterCustomDesign" component.

CAUSE

This issue occurs because PowerPoint 97 does not support the naming convention that is used by PowerPoint 2003 for the ActiveX components in multiple slide masters. PowerPoint 97 expects the first Visual Basic project for the slide master to be named "SlideMaster". However, the control on the secondary slide master is named "SlideMasterCustomDesign".

WORKAROUND

To work around this issue, open the presentation in PowerPoint 2002 or PowerPoint 2003.

MORE INFORMATION

A presentation that you create in PowerPoint 2002 may contain features that are not compatible with earlier versions of PowerPoint. For more information about features that are affected by working with a presentation from an earlier PowerPoint version, click Microsoft PowerPoint Help on the Help menu, type features affected by working with a PowerPoint presentation in an earlier version in the Search box, and then click Search.
Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:1/12/2006
Keywords:kbstartprogram kbopenfile kberrmsg kbprb KB813720 kbAudEndUser
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