For several years Excel 2003 and PP 2007 and some vba worked perfectly to provide a rolling leaderboard. Essentially a single PP slide looping until escape and updating/repositioning on each loop. The system this was on has recently been upgraded to Office 2013 and despite many hours of frustration I cannot get it to run as it should. I'm convinced that it something simple and that when it's spotted I will no doubt kick myself.

I don't think that the vba is the issue.
I can provide more detail of the setup etc if required but basically.......
The PP presentation is launched by an Excel file.
A single slide is set to loop continuously until esc. Slide transition set to timings.
On each loop the slide is updated and elements are repositioned. This all happens but for I now need to hit the spacebar to advance the slide. It is no longer automatic!!? I did duplicate the slide to create a two slide presentation and set that to loop. The transition between slide 1 and slide 2 requires a key press but the transition between 2 and 1 is automatic and all the updates etc take place as they should. The transition settings are identical!!

Why does the first slide not loop automatically??

Any thoughts would be appreciated.