PowerPoint 2002 / XP crashes while running add-in

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There's a very obscure bug in PowerPoint XP that causes it to crash when several things all happen within the same PowerPoint session:

1. A new toolbar has been created in the current PowerPoint session
2. PowerPoint is in certain views or the view is changed by an add-in
3. An add-in attempts to change the starting page number for the presentation

Typically, add-ins that export a series of images must change the starting page number to ensure that the numbers in your footers are correct.

The same add-ins may force PowerPoint into Slide or Normal view.

That's two out of three.

Now, if you have any add-ins that re-create their toolbar(s) each time PowerPoint starts up, the third condition is met and PowerPoint XP may crash.

Adobe Acrobat's PDFMaker is one common add-in that creates toolbars each time PPT starts.

Note: this is a PowerPoint bug, and is not the fault of Acrobat or any other add-in. The same problem doesn't occur in earlier versions of PowerPoint. It's not corrected in Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Office XP.

Workaround: disable any add-ins that create their own toolbars at startup.

RnR PPTools create toolbars at startup only the first time they're started, or any time they're deleted-then re-added, so it's a good idea to re-start PowerPoint after adding or re-adding any PPTools.

Acrobat PDFMaker: Make sure PowerPoint's not running, then locate the file PDFMaker.ppa. If you have Acrobat 5, look in \Acrobat 5.0\PDFMaker on your Windows drive or simply do an Explorer search for all PDFMaker.PPA files. Rename any you find to PDFMaker.PPB. Restart PowerPoint and try PPT2HTML again.

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