Simple AppleScript crashing PowerPoint 2011

Question

I'm trying to get PowerPoint 2011 to run a slide show from AppleScript. My script is as follows:

tell application "Microsoft PowerPoint"
    set settings to slide show settings of active presentation
    run slide show settings
end tell

The slide show starts, but PowerPoint immediately crashes. I'm running my script from the AppleScript Editor, but have also tried running as a script inside PowerPoint from the scripts directory with the same results. I briefly tried running the script from a Cocoa application, but that complained that "settings" was a missing value.

I'm not familiar with debugging AppleScript failures though I suspect it might be a PowerPoint bug. Is there anything I can usefully try at this point?

I tried your code and it works for me with PP 2011 SP 1 and a blank presentation. Do you have some unusual slide show settings? — Paul B.
Interesting. I tried with both a blank presentation, then updated to the latest version (14.3.4) and tried again (with the blank)... still the same crash. It's frustrating as the crash report doesn't give any useful details. — kfb

adayzdone adayzdone · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-30T17:22:38

Try:

tell application "Microsoft PowerPoint"
    run slide show slide show settings of active presentation
    repeat until slide state of slide show view of slide show window of active presentation is not slide show state running
        delay 1
    end repeat
end tell

Simple AppleScript crashing PowerPoint 2011

1 Answers