Sounds do not play automatically when you use the PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to show a presentation

When you use the Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer to present a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation that includes a narration or other sound files that are set to play automatically during the show, the sound files do not play automatically.

This problem occurs if the presentation was created by using Microsoft PowerPoint 97 or Microsoft PowerPoint 2000. These earlier versions of PowerPoint use different methods to automatically play sound files than the PowerPoint Viewer 2003 does.

To work around this problem, you can modify the problem presentations. To do this, open the files in either Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 or Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, and then save the files under a different name by following these steps:

1. Start PowerPoint.
2. Open the presentation that you want to modify.
3. In the Notes pane, add a blank space to the end of a line of text. Or, just enter a blank space if there is not Notes text.
   
   This action "dirties" the presentation. This means that it forces PowerPoint to rewrite the file when you save it.
4. On the File menu, click Save As.
5. Change the name of the presentation.
6. Select a folder to save the presentation to.
   
   Note If the original presentation also has separate sound files associated with it, you must save the modified presentation in the same folder as the original.
7. Click Save.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section of this article.