<b>PowerPoint 98 memory errors

Tom Adamas and Michael Haworth both report that, when trying to convert a relatively large PowerPoint 98 document back to PowerPoint 4.0 format, PowerPoint would fail, giving some memory-related error message such as "Memory full. Try closing windows..." Giving PowerPoint more memory (as much as 125 Mb in one case) did not help. Jean-Marie Jolois had the opposite problem: she could not get PowerPoint 98 to open a PowerPoint 4.0 document. Ronald Guest did manage this conversion, although the resulting file had some glitches (e.g., text wrapping had changed). S.W. Achramowicz reports similar problems, including getting a "not enough RAM to draw all objects message." Kuba Tatarkiewicz also reported similar glitches.

Update: Thanks to the fine folks at Microsoft Mac Office 98 Support, we have a likely solution to these problems: "When saving a PowerPoint 98 file in either the PowerPoint 4.0 or 3.0 file format, PowerPoint calls another utility which does the actual conversion. This is why increasing the memory allocated to PowerPoint has no effect. Instead, you must increase the memory allocated to the 'PP Translator 8-4' application in the 'Microsoft Office 98:Office:Translators' folder."

Office 98 and PowerPort Juggler conflict can cause system crashes Three readers (Richard Marsh, Peter Gallay and Claudio Lizzola) all concur that PowerPort Juggler 4.7.x conflicts with Microsoft Office 98 on their Macs, leading to possible Type 1 or Type 2 system crashes. Peter provided the most details: "Any attempt to Save a file (or Save As...) in Word or Excel (PowerPoint wasn't tried) consistently caused a system crash (usually with 'bus error' message). Reinstalling Juggler v4.6 solved the problem."

Word 98 and PaperPort glitch involving Clip Art Gallery Several readers (including Howard Butler and Dawn MacLaughlin) report a conflict between Microsoft Office 98 and Visioneer PaperPort's ScanDirectMenuINIT (which provides PaperPort's dropdown menu). With this extension installed, the Clip Art Gallery application appears not to load. Dawn writes: "The Clip Art Gallery application launches, and a status window appears with the message 'Clip Art Gallery is starting,' but the application never progresses beyond this state. I end up having to force-quit the Clip Art Gallery." Word 98 appears to be the only Office application that has this glitch. The Gallery works in PowerPoint and Excel. I tried this myself and can confirm this for my Mac. Dan Nelson contacted Visioneer about this and related issues and was told that "Office 98 is not yet a supported application."

Note Because of the continuing interest in Office 98, I plan to gather all of the Office 98 Late-Breakers and combine them into a MacFixIt Report. Look for it next week.