PowerPoint 2000
 Movie Troubleshooter


You can play your movie in PowerPoint, but the movie does not play when moved to another computer.

If the path is correct, and your movie is on the computer, there may be a CODEC (compressor/decompressor) problem. To verify whether there is a CODEC problem, try to play your movie in Media Player. (NOTE: Media Player, also known as Mplayer or Mplayer32, is a different program than Windows Media Player.) To play your movie in Media Player, follow these steps:

  1. In Microsoft Windows 98, click Run on the Start menu. Type mplayer and then click OK

    In Microsoft Windows NT or Microsoft Windows 2000, Media Player is named Mplay32. Click Run on the Start menu. Type %windir%\system32\mplay32.exe and then click OK. (%windir% is an environment variable that represents the path where Windows is installed; in most cases this is C:\WINNT.)

  2. On the File menu, click Open.

  3. Navigate to your movie file, click to select it, and then click Open.

  4. Play the movie in Media Player.

If Media Player plays your movie, but you cannot insert it in PowerPoint, you can use the following alternative method to insert your movie in PowerPoint as a Media Clip object:

  1. In PowerPoint, click Insert on the Object menu.

  2. In the Object type list, click Media Clip, and then click OK.

  3. Click Insert Clip, and then click Active Movie.

  4. Navigate to your movie file, click to select it, and then click Open.

  5. On the Edit menu, click Options.

  6. Click to clear the Control Bar on Playback, and Border around Object check boxes.

If the movie does not play in Media Player, either you do not have the proper CODEC installed on your computer, or your CODEC is not Media Control Interface (MCI) compliant. For a more detailed explanation of these terms, please see the General Information portion of this troubleshooter.

For more information about CODEC problems with movies from the Macintosh, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q266983: PPT2000: QuickTime Movies Play on Some Computers, Not Others

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Last Reviewed: Tuesday, February 13, 2001