PPT97: Pack and Go Creates 0 KB File on Windows NT With NTFS

If you try to use the Pack and Go Wizard in PowerPoint 97 on a computer running Windows NT 3.5.1 (Service Pack 5) or 4.0, the Wizard may appear to complete successfully, but the compressed PowerPoint animation(.ppz) file is very small (about 40 bytes.)

When you try to unpack this presentation, the Pack and Go Setup program (Pngsetup.exe) acts like it completes successfully. The presentation file, however, is not actually copied to the destination drive.

This problem occurs if the hard disk from which you run PowerPoint 97 is formatted using NTFS (New Technology File System) and compressed using NTFS compression.

To workaround this problem uncompress the defined temporary folder. Use the following steps to uncompress your temporary folder:

1. Determine the name of your temporary folder.
   1. Click the Start button, point to Settings, and click Control Panel.
   2. Double-click on the System control panel.
   3. Click the environment tab.
   4. In the User Variables section look for the definitions of the following variables:

               TEMP
               TMP
      								

      NOTE: Normally these variables point to the same folder, for example: C:\TEMP.
2. Navigate to the location of your temporary folder.
3. Decompress the folder, to do this:
   1. Right click on the temporary folder and click Properties.
   2. Click the General tab.
   3. Remove the check from Compress in the Attributes section. This should bring up the following dialog:
      Uncompress all files in C:\TEMP.
      
      This action uncompresses all files but does not uncompress
      subfolders.
   4. Click the Also uncompress subfolders checkbox and click OK.
   Run Pngsetup.exe again; now you should be able to unpack your presentation.

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft PowerPoint 97 for Windows. This problem was corrected in Microsoft PowerPoint 97 for Windows, Service Release 1.