PowerPoint 2013: Images in presentation disappear - and are replaced with 'The image part with relationship ID rId2 was not found in the file'

Hi Steve,

Thanks for the information.  I am still struggling to locate a proper temp file.  the ~$TEST.PPTX file is usually only around 1K, which seems much too small to hold anything.  Only the crash recovery can be found in the ~temp directory.

It is certainly locking the .pptx file (or more likely some of the files that it contains).  I experienced a recurrence of this problem today while editing a brand new single-slide file with only text!

I'm going to go through all processes and close all windows once again (though have done it fairly thorougly previously) to see if I can eradicate the problem) and might even try Safe Mode.

Kind regards

--

Ronnie

>> It appears to be an issue with images being locked by some program or other.  What I don't get is why you get the 'cannot open' error immediately before the 'cannot save' error. 

Does Powerpoint unzip the files while working on them to a different / hidden directory which is subject to further monitoring?

It does write either to the temp directory or (more normally, I think) to the same folder as the file you've just opened is in.  

For example, if you open TEST.PPTX, PPT creates a hidden ~$TEST.PPTX file in the same folder.  It holds both files open.  If some other program is monitoring changes to the folder, it might try to lock one or both files, which can cause PPT to flip out.

It might be worth looking through the process list to see if ANYTHING's there that might be monitoring file opens/saves/changes.  And another thought:  I wonder if Outlook's Journaling feature might be sticking its nose into things.  You might want to verify that journaling is off, at least for a test, and it'd be worth quitting Outlook as well.

And more basically, if you have Windows Explorer set to show a preview pane and a PPT file is being previewed, then the file's likely open, which can also trigger PPTSnits

I just started having this issue today. I also just installed picasa, wondering if it has somehow locked the file.

Reporting the same bug deleting all images. Still testing for a solution.

MS how can this bug have 1 year birthday, and no fix?

MS how can this bug have 1 year birthday, and no fix?

Simple, it has not yet affected a large enough customer to force MS to react ... <sigh>

Also, I believe that because the problem is partly out of MS's hands, backup utilities created by companies outside of MS, it also makes the solution harder.  Ultimately I think the fix is going to have to be made in a / the "file sharing" API (application programming interface) that is probably used Office wide (and maybe even farther).  The API is the way that programs allow other programs to "play nicely" with them. That sort of change is fundamental, affecting many programs which means it requires extensive (long running) testing as apposed to simply making changes in a single program like PowerPoint.

The key point to remember is that in spite of MS trumpeting "collaboration" being allowed inside of Office applications, ie via SharePoint and / or Skydrive, those are strictly internal MS applications so they have "handshake" processes that can be tested internally.  When external apps try to "share", in this case by backing up files, they do not yet know how to "play nicely" with MS Apps.  

Another point to remember is that every Office application is at it's very core a teeny-tiny (it used to be installed from a couple of 180KB(!) "floppy disks!) program written for "DOS" (ie "Single-computer" (NO NETWORKING!) ) back in the 1980's!  They didn't have to worry about sharing file access with other programs (at that time all we had was "sneaker-net").  File access control functionality was "bolted on" in the early 1990's when local networking (often via Novell Netware) was first introduced.  Then that "sharing" functionality was extended to include "SharePoint" starting in the mid to late 2000's (2005-2007).

Computer and software history and "archeology" can explain a lot of problems that exist today. But you need someone who is aware of the history to identify the root causes.