Last night I was working on a client-provided file. I saved it from Outlook to my hard drive (not SkyDrive/OneDrive, not Dropbox, not a server drive — this was actually on my computer). Then I opened it, deleted most of the slides, and did a Save As to rename the file. Made changes, saved periodically (not Save As, just save — it was a quick project), and finally closed the file and sent it to the client.
Then I needed to make a couple of changes, so I double-clicked to re-open the file, made the changes, and tried to save. But the file was read-only so I had to Save As with a different name. Whaaaaat? Why? It’s so annoying when this happens. File naming is a thing for most of us, and it’s frustrating when PowerPoint won’t let you name a file because it’s randomly decided the thing is read-only.
If you’re using PowerPoint 2010 and this has happened to you — and even if it hasn’t yet, it probably will now since you’ve read about it — then you want to install this hotfix (2849970).
My friend and colleague Nolan Haims posted about this hotfix in relation to the video playback issues it resolves in PowerPoint 2010. Those are literal show-stopper problems, so you definitely want the hotfix if you’re experiencing them. But in the excitement of the video playback problems being resolved, I completely forgot about the read-only problems it also fixes. And those are workflow-stopper issues, which can be almost as debilitating as show-stoppers (if not quite as public).
Get hotfix 2849970, folks! Save yourselves some hassle!
