You receive an error message when you open a PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2003, or PowerPoint 2002 presentation in PowerPoint 97

You use Microsoft PowerPoint 97 to open a Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, or Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 presentation that contains multiple masters. When you do this, you receive the following error message: You can open the presentation. However, when you try to start the Visual Basic Editor, you receive the following error message:

This issue can occur if the following conditions are true:

• The presentation was created with PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2003 or PowerPoint 2002.
• The presentation contains multiple slide masters.
• The second slide master contains a Microsoft ActiveX component that is named "SlideMasterCustomDesign."

This issue occurs because PowerPoint 97 does not support the naming convention that is used by PowerPoint 2007, by PowerPoint 2003, and by PowerPoint 2002 for the ActiveX component in the second slide master. PowerPoint 97 expects the first Visual Basic project for the slide master to be named "SlideMaster." However, the control on the second slide master is named "SlideMasterCustomDesign."

To work around this issue, open the presentation in PowerPoint 2007, PowerPoint 2003 or PowerPoint 2002.

A presentation that you create in PowerPoint 2007, in PowerPoint 2003, or in PowerPoint 2002 may contain features that are not compatible with earlier versions of PowerPoint.