Powerpoint 2013 unstable

Amazing observation! PowerPoint 2013 regularly crashes on my system when trying to undo ink input. Just a few minutes ago I lost 1 hour of work due to such a crash.

On other occasions PowerPoint 2013 will display the aforementioned "unstable" message or a "cannot be saved" message. I will look for those ink dots from now on.

I want to add a quick note, though I'd still like to hear what people have to say:

I tried running in safe mode, disabling all Add-Ons, and saving in Dropbox, Google Drive and SkyDrive... however, none of those was related. It was really the Ink Tools. Here's why:

I found that when using Ink Tools, sometimes there are little tiny ink dots left behind... you can only see them if you drag-select all of your ink annotations. I don't know if this happens when the file crashes when you Undo too fast while inking.

If you move these little ink dots, and then try to save, you get the unstable error message.

If you delete them, you won't get the unstable error message.

I also found that if you GROUP them with another valid ink line, they don't cause a problem.

However, I have yet to find a way to detect them other than going through, slide by slide, selecting all ink and moving it slightly to the left or right, then saving. I went through all 250 (!) slides of my presentation to do this. It was painful.

Please, if someone finds out what causes these little corrupt ink dots, I'd be eternally grateful! I can provide an example powerpoint file that has the problem if you want to check it out.

Hi Karmor42,

I'm having the exact same issue: Poweproint 2013, sync'ing to Dropbox, doing ink in the presentation... same error message, hours of lost work.

Did you find a solution?

(I tried switching to SkyDrive, but that just doesn't sync anywhere near as well as Dropbox, so I want to go back to Dropbox, if I can...)

I have this same error when I try to save after doing a lot of inking in PowerPoint 2013. The file was stored in Dropbox, then I copied it to my local drive. I was editing the local copy (no one else was using it), and was able to save several times. Later, after a lot more inking, I try to save, and I get the error about it being unstable, and that I should save and restart Powerpoint. But if I try to save, I get the error again. I tried "save as" to save it to a new filename (again on my local drive), but I get the same error.

I can save as a .ppt instead of .pptx, but then some formatting, etc., is lost.

This is not just a minor inconvenience -- it represents a lot of work that is lost. I have found PowerPoint 2013 to be generally unstable, sometimes crashing every 15-20 minutes while creating a presentation. It has not crashed while showing a presentation.

I am using a Surface Pro.

Hello Laura,

Where is the  PowerPoint file saved? Is it on local drive or on shared location?

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeitproprevious/thread/ef1f09a2-c406-45e5-8cc7-ac241a313143/Refer to the following thread which discusses about similar issue and see if it helps:http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeitproprevious/thread/ef1f09a2-c406-45e5-8cc7-ac241a313143/

Reply with the result for further assistance.

Thank You.http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeitproprevious/thread/ef1f09a2-c406-45e5-8cc7-ac241a313143/