PowerPoint 2007 slides are only partially converted to PDF since SP3
- by Tim Pietzcker
EDIT:
Microsoft support has confirmed that it's a bug with PowerPoint 2007 SP3.
I have recently encountered a problem with the "Save as PDF/XPS" add-in for PowerPoint 2007. When I use "Save as PDF/XPS" to create a PDF version of my presentation, some slides are only partially included in the resulting PDF file. For example, this:
(download the PPTX file here)
is reduced to this (in Adobe Reader X or Acrobat Pro X (both 10.1.1)):
(download the PDF file here)
So far, I have only encountered this with slides that contain animation elements, but which part of the elements remain in the PDF version appears not to have anything to do with the order in which the animated elements appear, so that might just be a coincidence.
Update: The problem persists even if I "un-animate" the slides (removing the animation but leaving the previously animated elements intact).
When viewing the affected slides in Acrobat Reader, it sometimes complains about the file containing invalid elements, and that I should complain to whoever generated the PDF file...
Update 2:
I have just installed Office 2007 on a new Windows 7 x64 PC. With the original Office version (12.0.4518.1014 MSO 12.0.6562.5003), a correct PDF file is generated. After installation of SP3 (12.0.6606.1000 SP3 MSO 12.0.6607.1000) a corrupt PDF file is generated. Today's Microsoft Updates (to PowerPoint version 12.0.6654.5000) haven't changed anything, by the way.
Update 3:
I have opened a tech support incident with Microsoft. They have confirmed the "limitation", as they called it, and it is indeed limited to 2007 SP 3 only. They are going to pass it on to the developers but they can't say when or even if a fix would be forthcoming, so I guess I'll upgrade to 2010...