PPT7: Pack And Go Wizard Is Not Supported on Windows 3.1 (140983)

SYMPTOMS

If you run the Pack and Go Wizard to pack a PowerPoint presentation and include the Viewer, the Wizard gives you this warning:

This viewer only works on Windows NT or Windows 95 (or later) operating systems. You must use the Viewer disk included with PowerPoint to view this presentation on the Windows 3.x operating system.

If you then unpack the presentation and Viewer on a computer running Windows 3.1, the Viewer may not run. Instead, you may get one or more of the following error messages:

Share.exe must be run before running the PowerPoint Viewer.

Cannot find COMPOBJ.DLL.

Cannot find OLE2.DLL.

Cannot find OLE2DISP.DLL.

Sorry, PowerPoint cannot locate one of its components.

CAUSE

IMPORTANT NOTE: The information in this article applies to the version 4.0 16-bit Viewer that originally shipped with PowerPoint for Windows 95. The new 32-bit PowerPoint Viewer for Windows 95 cannot run on Windows 3.1. If you do have the new 32-bit Viewer for Windows 95, you should not pack it. You should take the packed file disk(s) and the 4.0 16-bit Viewer and run Vsetup.exe from it on the Windows 3.1x computer.

The first message ("This viewer only works on Windows NT or Windows 95...") is not necessarily true. The 16-bit PowerPoint Viewer originally included with PowerPoint for Windows 95 in the Pack and Go Wizard (that is, 16-bit Viewer 4.0) will work on Windows 3.1 but requires several dynamic link library (.dll) files that it does not install. These files are listed below in the "Resolution" section. Windows 95 installs these files, but Windows 3.1 does not. If the Windows 3.1 computer does not have a program on it that installs these .dll files (Office, for example), the 4.0 16-bit Viewer will not run.

If you try to run the 4.0 16-bit Viewer without the correct .dll files, you may receive one of the error messages listed in the second paragraph of the "Symptoms" section above.

RESOLUTION

The message you get when you pack the presentation and Viewer ("This viewer only works on Windows NT or Windows 95...") is not necessarily true. If the following files are present on the computer where you will unpack, the 4.0 16-bit Viewer will run correctly under Windows 3.1:

Compobj.dll
Ole2.dll
Ole2conv.dll
Ole2disp.dll
Ole2nls.dll
Ole2prox.dll
Storage.dll
Typelib.dll
Stdole.tlb

These files can be found in the Windows\System folder. They are installed by many programs, including Microsoft Office for Windows.

If the files are not present, you must run the Viewer Setup Program, Vsetup.exe, from a PowerPoint Viewer disk.

If you have the PowerPoint for Windows 95 or Office for Windows 95 disk set, the Viewer disk is the last disk. There is also a folder called Pptview on the PowerPoint for Windows 95 or Microsoft Office for Windows 95 CD-ROM. You can copy the files from this folder to a blank disk to make a Viewer disk. The viewer setup program, Vsetup.exe and other viewer files can also be found in the \PPVIEW\VIEWDISK folder of the Office95 Pro compact_disc.

The Viewer disk contents can also be downloaded from the Microsoft Download Library at (425) 936-6735.