That's strange. http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-7813-0.html?forumID=29&threadID=123134&messageID=1395849 is a post by someone who couldn't do it in office XP, but not in Office 2000. I'm afraid it wasn't solved in this forum.
2000, XP and 2002 by the way are different products, so your "whatever it was called" is unclear.
All I can suggest at the moment: switch to WMP to play the movie. But I agree it's very unsatisfactory.
Kees
My inserted AVI movies won't play in PowerPoint 2003 SP2 version. The movie will play in Windows Media Player and AVI files are associated with Windows Media Player. I don't think I had a problem with this presentation when I played it in PowerPoint XP or 2002 (whatever it was called).

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