Red X on slide thumbnails in Master View

Anonymous
2013-06-19T15:47:32+00:00

In PowerPoint 2013, in the presentation I'm creating, the thumbnails view doesn't show the thumbnails, but instead displays a large red X on every slide. The slides look fine in the slide view itself.

Diagnosis and recommendations welcome.

Mini screen shot here

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-10-28T22:49:31+00:00

    Well, we are more then one year later and this Problem still exists. I have an Installation of MS Office 2013 and MS Office 2010. Both are up to date with all updates.

    I have a lot of PPTX that show a red x on every slide in PPT 2013. If I open them in PPT 2010 - no Problem. I deinstalled Office 2013 and continue to work with 2010.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-09-05T00:19:16+00:00

    So, I had this same problem. I discovered what seems to be a workaround.

    I am not sure if this will help anyone, or if someone has already found this solution. It all seemed to stem from using my company's custom theme. 

    To fix the problem, I changed the theme for all slides to a stock Microsoft PowerPoint theme. After all the slides reset, I then clicked back to my company's theme. I am not sure if this has permanently solved my problem, but I hope it might work for someone else with this problem.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-07-22T10:52:13+00:00

    I looked at my version of PowerPoint and it is 15.0.4615.1000. But when I download the update for the KB you reference I receive the message that the update is already installed.  So it looks like there might be a problem with MS version numbers or something else is going on.

    It is perfectly normal, as according to TechNet http://blogs.technet.com/b/office\_sustained\_engineering/archive/2014/05/13/may-2014-office-update-release.aspx KB2878315 patch was included in May update, so if you have C2R installation it is included in 15.0.4615.1001 update. This means that 15.0.4615.1000 build of PowerPoint has this fix included.

    But sadly it seems that it does't help in many cases. Does anyone can tell if June (15.0.4623.1003) or July (15.0.4631.1002) updates changed anything?

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-06-25T16:17:57+00:00

    What version of Office should not matter.  It is Microsoft Office plain and simple and there is a major problem with PowerPoint which has been going on a LONG time.  I too have had issues similar to DGSmith51 and lost hours of productivity.  Because of this issue I have had to change the way I work causing me to become less productive.

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  5. Anonymous
    2014-06-25T14:32:04+00:00

    It's actually part of Office 365, so is always up-to-date.

    Not sure what else I can do and it's causing me huge problems.

    I went into a client presentation the other day, having spent weeks pulling together the content. Ended up looking like a fool, as all of my most recent changes had red crossesd across the slides.

    I had to run with an older version that was incomplete; made me look unprofessional and disorganised.

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