Mac Support: PowerPoint Issues

Here are a few more resources that cover PowerPoint compatibility tips with regard to going between versions of PowerPoint and between platforms:

While most PowerPoint presentations created on a Mac will play back on a Windows computer (with a few exceptions such as timed animations), video can be a problem.

PowerPoint 2011 presentations uses Quicktime to play videos. The following formats are supported by Quicktime (generally):

• QuickTime Movie (.mov)

• MPEG-4 (.mp4, .m4v)

• MPEG-2 (OS X Lion or later)

• MPEG-1

• 3GPP

• 3GPP2

• AVCHD (OS X Mountain Lion only)

• AVI

• DV

PPT presentations on Windows machines can only embed and playback Windows Media Movies (.wmv) or compressed AVIs. 

When all else fails, if you have to show your presentation in the classroom on a Windows computer with video clips embedded into the presentation, check your presentation on a Windows computer before taking it to the classroom or you risk finding out too late that it won't play properly. You may need to convert your videos into a Windows-friendly format and reinsert them into PowerPoint.

Another option would be to ask if you can take your Mac laptop to the classroom and connect it to the projection equipment. If so, you can do everything on your laptop and then use it to play back your PPT presentation in class.

Open PowerPoint 2008 presentations in 2004
This free download of XML File Format Converter will allow you to open .pptx file formats in PowerPoint 2004 for Mac (Note: works for PowerPoint, Word and Excel and requires Mac OSX version 10.4.9 [Tiger] or later)