I haven't figured out the common denominator yet, but randomly about once every 1-2 weeks when I close a file (it's never the same file) and quit PowerPoint, I will have a coworker ask me to get out of the file. The problem is, I am out of the file. I've discovered that even though PowerPoint is not open on my computer, when I am told I'm in a file if I open my Task Manager and go to the Process tab sure enough it shows POWERPNT.EXE running in the background. If I force it to quit, then it frees up the file.



Does anyone know why it does this? More importantly, does anyone know how to prevent it? It really annoying to never know if a file is going to be inaccessible to a coworker and I'm not about to start opening Task Manager every time I want to close a PowerPoint file.

I should also note that I am talking about .ppt files specifically. I haven't noticed it happen with any other type of PowerPoint files... yet.

Sometime a badly written AddIn can not let go. Do you have any installed?

Also always worth having a LOCAL default printer driver set as default with 2007. For some crazy reason it solves lots of strange behaviour.

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I don't have the option of a local printer, only networked. As for the add-in though I do have the Avery and Acrobat add-ins installed. I'll remove the Avery one since I rarely use it and hopefully that will fix it. Thanks for the suggestion!

Okay, so I'm apparently easily confused today. The Avery add-in was for Excel. All I had for PowerPoint was Adobe and WebEx. Since this symptom seems to happen to my coworkers as well, I'm removing the WebEx addin since that is the only one common to our machines. I'll let you know if it works...

Can you not install a local printer driver? You don't actually have to have a local printer.

http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00850_Power...h_problems.htm

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Actually no I cannot. My company has strict security policies and consequentially have much locked down. I do not have admin rights and when I go to add a printer, the option for "local" is greyed out. However I do have a "Microsoft Office Document Image Writer" printer installed that per the instructions on pptfaq.com would be considered a local printer. Does that count?

I'm surprized you aren't seeing other problems with text layout then. I understand the need for security but this is a well known problem - that's the printer not the IT Police ;-)

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