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PPS files still don't work even after I created an association - what do I do?

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Summary: PPS files seem to cause many people problems. We'll look at how to go about configuring your system to view PPS files.

I followed your instructions to create a file association for PPS files, but I still get an error when I try to open PPS files attached to email. What am I doing wrong?

It's hard to say, but I will say that for some reason, PPS files cause a lot of people consternation.

Let's review what you should do, and what to do if that doesn't work.

First off let me remind you that you must have either PowerPoint or PowerPoint Viewer installed. PowerPoint comes with Microsoft Office, and the PowerPoint Viewer is a free download from Microsoft (here). The difference is, of course, that PowerPoint will let you create PowerPoint presentations, while the viewer will only allow you to view them.

Now, as I stated in my previous article This file does not have a program associated with it - what does this mean and what do I do?, the most common solution is to simply install the program that understand PPS files. If you don't have Microsoft Office, that means downloading and installing the free PowerPoint Viewer. Setting it up should create all the appropriate associations for you to be able to view PPS files.

If you have Microsoft Office, you can perform a repair install, making sure that PowerPoint is, in fact, installed.

Unfortunately for some folks all that doesn't appear to work. Very well, we'll do things the hard way ... meaning we'll do it by hand.

I'm going to assume you have successfully installed the free PowerPoint Viewer.

Fire up Windows Explorer (right click on My Computer and click on Explore is one quick way). Click on the Tools menu and then the Folder Options item. In the resulting dialog, click on the File Types tab, and you should see something like this:

Folder Options, File Types tab

Scroll down to the PPS entry, or where the PPS entry should be alphabetically. If you don't find a PPS entry, click the New button and enter PPS into the resulting dialog to create one.

Click on the entry for PPS, and then click on the Advanced button. The result will look something like this:

Edit File Type dialog

For the moment we'll ignore the entry that says "Print", and focus on the other - "Show". What seems to be unique about PowerPoint Viewer is that it doesn't use the word "Open", but rather "Show" as the action to perform. My theory is that that's the cause of much of the confusion.

If "Show" doesn't exist in the list, click on New..., enter:

&Show

into the Action box, and then:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\PowerPoint Viewer\pptview.exe" "%1"
"What seems to be unique about PowerPoint Viewer is that it doesn't use the word 'Open', but rather 'Show' as the action to perform."

Into the Application used to perform action: field. Go ahead and check DDE as well, entering "pptview" (without the quotes) into the Application field, and "System" into the Topic field.

Press OK.

If you did have a "Show" option, or you just created one, you can check it by clicking on "Show", and then clicking on Edit.... The result should look something like this:

Edit Action dialog

Note that even though it's not entirely displayed, if you click in the field Application used to perform action:, and scroll to the right, you'll see it contains the entire string:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\PowerPoint Viewer\pptview.exe" "%1"

Press OK, and you should be back at the "Edit File Type" dialog pictured earlier.

Important: click on the "Show" action, and then click on the Set Default button. The "Show" item should turn bold, as seen in the image above. This tells programs which action is the "default" thing to do with a PPS file under certain conditions.

OK and Close your way back out, and you should now have a proper association.

Note: as I said this assumes the free PowerPoint Viewer, which you'll have had to download and install, and it assumes you installed it to its default location. If you're using PowerPoint itself, you'll need to locate "powerpnt.exe" on your hard disk and enter its path instead of "pptview".

If you'd like to create the "Print" action, the steps are the same, except that the Application used to perform action: is:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\PowerPoint Viewer\pptview.exe" /p "%1"

Thanks to one of my readers for pointing out the potential role of "Show" in people's confusion on this issue.

Update: Ramesh's Site includes an article Unable to open .PPS attachments directly from Outlook Express? which includes not only instructions similar to the above, but a utility that you can run to install the fix for you.

Related:

Article C2785 - September 11, 2006

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Recent Comments
49 Comments

Sorry-- Let me update my problem.. Along with not being able to EDIT the s&how, the reason I even got to this point is that I can not read pps in my "mail"
I am using MS Outlook Express.
I can go to pptview.exe and run the program, but it asks what file to read and I don't have any files other than express mail and I don't know how or where to find them..

Posted by: Tony at January 14, 2009 1:28 PM

Please see my earlier message trying to view pps email attachment. I've installed PowerPoint Viewer 2007.I performed all tasks above but same message comes up, "This file does not have a program assiciated with it..."

Posted by: Lawn at January 14, 2009 3:27 PM

I have this problem on Vista. What is the process required on Vista please.

Posted by: Christine Wakeham at February 17, 2009 8:48 AM

I also cannot get this to work. When I pull up folder options via control panel PPS is listed in the file type. When I click on show I get S&how in the Action box and everything else is the same as your suggestion. Changed to &Show and no help.

Posted by: Ray at April 14, 2009 8:33 AM

Downloaded viewer. PPS file was listed, as was the whole sequence as you said it should be. Show was the default, everything was how you said it should look. But when I tried to click OK to close I got "The specified program could not be found. Make sure the file name and path are correct." Of course they are correct, they were already there!! Help!

Posted by: Cathy at April 22, 2009 5:57 PM

Downloaded pps viewer, opened .exe file to install.Then when I try to view a pps file I get a message asking for my name, organizatio, and product key..I don't have one because I don't have Office, so I can't start the pps.

Posted by: Bob Martin at August 4, 2009 4:44 PM

I fixed the .pps file extension and added open. I
now get powerpoint to open but get errors sayiing
it cannot fine the attached "Australia vissen koraal.pps" file. 1st I get power point viewer cannot find the file "documents", then I get
power point viewer cannot find the file "and",
then I get power point viewer cannot find the
file "local", then I get power point viewer cannot find the file "temporary", then I get
power point viewer cannot find the file "Internet", then I get power point viewer cannot find the file "Australia", then I get power point viewer cannot find the file "vissen", then I get power point viewer cannot find the file "koraal.pps", then after I click OK on the last one the power point viewer closes without opening anything. Can anyone help me???

Posted by: Don Rogers at August 20, 2009 12:48 PM

THAT WAS THE BEST ANSWER TO BE AVAILABLE TO OPEN
POWER POINT (PPS) FILES FROM THE WEB THANKS

Posted by: JUAN MANUEL at September 9, 2009 9:08 PM

I had some trouble with getting the instructions right i guess, but I went to Ramesh's site, downloaded and ran the utility for an instant fix.
Thanks.

Posted by: Albert at September 28, 2009 7:01 AM

I had the same problem and I also had the S&how entry as the default. To fix the error, I followed the instructions as published in this article to create a new entry but I used &Open in the Action field. Now it is working fine.

Posted by: Larry at November 2, 2009 6:12 AM

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