This afternoon, I was asked for help with a web presentation generated by using the "Save as Webpage" command in Powerpoint. The presentation had a narration, and "continue" buttons at the bottom right of each page. The web presentation seemed to work fine on an older computer but the Continue buttons did not work and the sounds would not play on all slides on an XP machine.

It turns out that part of the textbox on many of the slides was overlapping the arrow buttons, and the arrow buttons were sitting on top of the little speaker icon for the sound in each slide. When objects with actions are overlapped by other objects, the actions don't run correctly. It wasn't possible to see this overlapping when she did the presentation because the default setting when a narration is generated is to shut off the icons for the speech so they can't be seen.

To turn them back on again (this is in PPT 2002) select from the menu: Slide Show: Custom Animation. This will bring up the custom animation palette on the right. Each custom action or transition will be listed. The sound will be listed as "Media 1, 2, 3" or whatever. Select the Media line, and click on the arrow to the right of the name to bring up the popup menu. Select Effect Options and deselect "Sound settings: Hide while not playing." Then you will be able to see the little speaker icon and move it out from under whatever is on top.