A quick note: Please don’t add a comment to this post if you have a technical support question about this topic. Instead, ask us at http://www.polleverywhere.com/community-support

Here are some tips for troubleshooting the way our polls load in PowerPoint.

First, some basics:

• Be sure that you’re in PowerPoint’s fullscreen presentation mode (shortcut key: F5). Polls do not display in PowerPoint’s slide editing view.
• The topics below only relate to PowerPoint for Windows. Mac users, learn about live polls in Keynote and PowerPoint Mac.

 

Adobe Flash General & Versioning Issues

Symptom: Polls appear as blank boxes when in Presentation Mode

For polls in Poll Everywhere to display correctly, we require a recent version of the Adobe Flash player to be installed. Additionally, what is frustrating about this is that versions of the player can be installed independently for Firefox and Internet Explorer (and PowerPoint uses the Internet Explorer version). This is because Firefox has its own plug-in formats and Internet Explorer uses ActiveX-based plug-ins. Therefore, if you have the latest version reported in Firefox and are still scratching your head as to why the polls don’t work in PowerPoint, it’s because the ActiveX control is likely not up-to-date in Internet Explorer. Since PowerPoint relies on the ActiveX version of the Adobe Flash Player, it too must be updated. If you want to see what version of the Adobe Flash plug-in you are currently using, go here:

http://www.mediacollege.com/adobe/flash/player/version/show.html * Note that the version shown is the version installed for the plug-in of the current web browser you are using. Switch over to Internet Explorer to see the version installed for ActiveX.

If you want to update to the latest player from Adobe, go here:

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

 

Symptom: Consistently getting a message such as “Some controls on this presentation cannot be activated. They may not be registered on this machine.”

Using Internet Expolorer, be sure to uninstall and then re-install Flash as per the above instructions. If after that approach you still get the error message, you may want to follow the instructions mentioned here: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officeprog/thread/6e987806-e6ad-46e4-a0ce-0cc3e1415e0f

In that article, they discuss the lack of the Office component, Visual Basic for Applications, being installed. Normally, this component is installed by default with PowerPoint but in some cases, it may not have been installed. Updating your Office installation to include it may solve the problem.

Symptom: Polls go from “Loading poll…” to “Fetching poll data…” and then to “Disconnected. Retrying…” and never loads the poll. Poll does load perfectly when opened from the website in the browser.

This may be the result of the ActiveX property for the Flash object in PowerPoint called, “Playing”. To check on this, right-click the poll object on the slide and select “Properties” from the pop-up menu. When the menu appears, check to make sure the “Playing” property is set to True. Change it to True if necessary.

Save and then close the PowerPoint file. Re-open it, enter slideshow mode, and see if the poll will now load.

 

Symptom: Polls get stuck on “Loading…” in any web browser or Flash version.

Check the Local Storage setting in the Flash Player settings. Here’s how:

1. When the Loading… indicator comes up, right-click the area around it.

2. In the pop-up menu that appears, choose Settings…

3. In the Adobe Flash Player Settings window that should appear, select the middle-tab, which is a folder icon. When you select it, the window should be labeled “Local Storage” and mention www.polleverywhere.com.

4. Be sure that at least 100KB or higher is selected on the slider or that Local Storage is enabled at all.

If this doesn’t work, try the above steps again but select “Global Settings…” from the right-click menu. Be sure that “Allow sites to save information on this computer” is selected from the available radio buttons.

 

 

64-bit Versions of Windows (and Office)

If you are running a 64-bit version of Windows (and the 64-bit version of Office 2010), you will need to install the latest 64-bit version of the Flash player from Adobe. Here is a link to that from Adobe: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html

 

PowerPoint Versions: PPT vs PPTX files

Symptom: Polls do not display and you see Security Warnings in PowerPoint when loading presentations or going into presentation mode.  

If you are running Office 2007 or 2010, regardless of which flavor of Windows, we highly recommend downloading that .PPTX version of the PowerPoint file that we offer rather than the PowerPoint 97-2003 version (.PPT).

 

PowerPoint 2010 issues

Symptom: Polls load in earlier versions of PowerPoint, but not in PowerPoint 2010

Symptom: You enable the developer toolbar, then go to insert the Shockwave Flash Object, and receive an immediate error: “This ActiveX control cannot be inserted”

If polls don’t load in PowerPoint 2010, make sure ActiveX is enabled. In PowerPoint 2010, click through these menus:

File | Options | Trust Center | Trust Center Settings | ActiveX Settings | Enable all controls

 

 

Conflicts with PowerPoint Add-Ins 

It’s very rare, but some users have reported that the following PowerPoint Add-ins conflict with the Adobe Flash PowerPoint ActiveX control that we use:

PDF Maker
Camtasia
PRS Com
Send to Bluetooth
SnagIt
Presentation Notes

So if you’ve tried everything else above, try temporarily disabling any add-ins. For a quick check to see if this will work, there’s a blanket “disable add-ins (may limit functionality)” checkbox in the PowerPoint Options / Trust Center of PPT.