I regularly receive Xcelsius dashboards and visualizations that are exported to Powerpoint presentations. These files are easily viewed Powerpoint with full interactivity. Recently, I upgraded my Flash Player to version 9. That's when my troubles began. Xcelsius works the way it always has, but when I export the Xcelsius file to Powerpoint and open the file in Powerpoint get a message that says:

"Some controls on this presentation can't be activated. They might not be registered on this computer."

Now what the *#!BLEEP!! is that! To find out how to handle this situation, read on. 

Everything works perfectly until it hits a hitch

As a avid Xcelsius user I regularly prepare dashboards and visualizations and export them to PowerPoint. This works wonderfully. Some of my colleagues pass on to me their Xcelsius visualizations as PowerPoint slides. I quickly found a cryptic message when I try to run the slide show (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: PowerPoint Error Message

A message like the one shown in Figure 1 is definitely not fun, especially when the files you create may work well on your computer but not necessarily on somebody else's.

A cryptic message followed by an infuriating problem

The problem as it turns out, is due to the fact that when I upgraded Flash on my computer, the install didn't work uniformly. Crystal Xcelsius was happily chugging away with the new and spiffy Flash version 9, but somehow PowerPoint was still pegged on version 7 of Flash. It turns out that behind the scenes PowerPoint derives its Flash capabilities by harnessing the Flash player engine that's neatly tucked away inside of Internet Explorer.

Basically, Flash could end up getting installed in two places in your computer; one of these is used by Internet Explorer, and the other for pretty much everywhere else. This is why when I upgraded Flash, Crystal Xcelsius and my Firefox Browser were automatically updated, but Internet Explorer and consequently, PowerPoint were'nt.

Apparently, it is not enough to apply a straight upgrade to Flash. You actually have to uninstall Flash in it's entirety, and then do a fresh Flash install. There's a specific program for this which can be downloaded from Adobe (the makers of Flash) at:

Windows Uninstall File:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/current/uninstall_flash_player.exe

Mac OS X Uninstall File:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/installers/8/uninstall_flash_player_osx.dmg
 

To understand more about how to unistall your Flash Player and plugins read the following article:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14157

To check your version of Flash and get the latest and greatest Flash players, go to:

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/

As shown in Figure 2, move your mouse over the About label to view which version of Flash you are running. Check your version by visiting this site with both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Figure 2: Checking which version of Flash you are running.

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