PPT98: Error Message: "Memory Is Too Full to Draw Everything" When You Work with Large Presentation

When you open or work on a large Microsoft PowerPoint 98 presentation, you may receive one of the following error messages: -or- You may also experience either of these symptoms:

• Some graphics are not displayed.
• Some graphics appear as a red X in a white box.

PowerPoint does not have enough memory assigned to it to display or open the large presentation file.

To work around this problem, assign more memory to PowerPoint. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Close PowerPoint.
2. Find the folder in which you installed Microsoft Office 98 or Microsoft PowerPoint 98.
3. Click the Microsoft PowerPoint program icon.
4. On the File menu, click Get Info.
5. Increase the Preferred Size setting by 1000k (kilobytes). Close the Get Info dialog box.
6. Restart PowerPoint.
   
   If you still cannot open the large presentation file, repeat steps 1 through 6 until you can work with the presentation without memory errors.

The amount of memory that you can add to the Preferred Size setting is directly related to the size of your largest unused block. Follow these steps to check the value of the largest unused block:

1. If PowerPoint is running, close it.
2. On the Application menu, click Finder. The Application menu is located in the upper right corner of the screen.
3. On the Apple menu, click About This Computer or About this Macintosh.
4. Note the value of Largest Unused Block. This is the amount of available memory that can be used as RAM (random access memory).

The largest unused block is calculated by the following formula: The largest amount of memory that you can assign to PowerPoint is the size of the largest unused block. However, you should not assign all of this memory to any one program, because there will not be enough memory available for your operating system software when it needs more memory. If the Largest Unused Block setting is not large enough and you need additional memory, turn on virtual memory. Virtual memory can emulate RAM.

Follow these steps to turn on virtual memory:

1. On the Apple menu, click Control Panels, and then click Memory.
2. Click the ON button under Virtual Memory. The amount defaults to the minimum of 1 megabyte (MB) over installed RAM.
3. Close the Memory control panel, and restart your computer.

NOTE: Virtual memory uses the unused space on your hard disk to simulate additional RAM. On PowerPC RISC processors, you also get the added benefit of PowerPC native programs being able to use Discardable Code Elements. When virtual memory is turned off, the entire program must be loaded into memory. When virtual memory is turned on, Microsoft Word and other PowerPC native programs can "discard" parts of the program that are not currently in use, and thereby run memory more efficiently.