MacOS 26.2 Powerpoint Video Looping Artifacts Continue

Steven_Murawski_13 wrote:

I downgraded all the way back to MacOS 15.3.2 (24D81) with PowerPoint Version 16.104 (25121423) and now the video looping seems to work. Hopefully Apple/Microsoft will work to make powerpoint video looping work for newer versions soon.....

I suggest you take another approach. The issues you report are not universally seen, which means that it COULD be due to something in the configurations of the affected users (or something they have installed). We have several thousand Macs in our company and I frequently Chair design and delivery reviews where powerpoint is almost always used for the presentations and there are quite often such looping videos embedded. They are often left on screen to loop through dozens of times especially during Q&A periods, which can last a long time. I have never seen issues with those videos. I don't think rolling back to an earlier version of the MacOS is the best long term answer. Perhaps some real troubleshooting would be a better approach to find the root cause.

Steven_Murawski_13 wrote:

Hey Steve,

Thanks for your reply! Very insightful and promising to know other users are not experiencing this issue on the newest MacOS updates! I have been having this issue on my own personal laptop and I am not an IT professional. Would you have any suggested troubleshooting steps or debugging steps I could try to figure out what the root cause may be?

-Best!

Well, at least you have a "workaround" for now.

I think the best approach here, where you have a very large community of experienced users (most more experienced than me) reading, is to download Etrecheck and post its report here using the Additional Text button below. Instructions are provided here:

How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

The elegant thing about Etrecheck is that it is only a diagnostic tool, it won't change or "fix" anything. Also, while it provides a lot of insightful information about what is installed and how the Mac is configured, it does so in an anonymous way so no personal information is revealed. You can check that for yourself in the report, before posting it. Etrecheck is also open source so one can even inspect the code. It basically extracts system information (without serial numbers, IP addresses, etc., those are not included in the report) that anyone can get themselves using Terminal or other provided Mac tools, but the report is easy to read and to experts reading it, candidates for the cause of the issue often pop out. Basically you are "crowd sourcing" the issue.

It could always be a Microsoft issue, but it would be an unusual one where many Macs are not affected and a significant number are. But it has happened before and might have happened again.

I did a very quick perusal of your Etrecheck report, but honestly, I don't see much in there that might explain the powerpoint video misfunctions. I see some audio utilities installed, but those seem like something of a long shot to mess up powerpoint. How are those videos being produced and put together? Maybe something there is not fully compatible with powerpoint?

Maybe another way to get insight: do the issues also occur when booted into Safe Mode? Or with a new user created only for testing purposes?

Steven_Murawski_13 wrote:

If I wanted to do upgrade to do a quick EtreCheck run and then downgrade quickly, would a full time machine backup of my system be effective for this. For instance, if I update to Tahoe 26.2 to check if powerpoint works, do an EtreCheck run, and want to immediately downgrade and quickly get all my apps and files back the same way in MacOS 15.3.2, would doing a full Time Machine backup of my current OS be an effective method for this?

Thanks!

While that should work, I would not recommend doing that, it would be very time consuming and maybe not reveal much because my expectation is that everything installed that shows in your current Etrecheck report will also appear in a report generated under 15.7.3 or under Tahoe. So that would not reveal much not already apparent in your current Etrecheck report; you would also need very reliable backups (two are recommended to be safe) to ensure a trouble free restoration, although I think you have already done this at least once.

Maybe others reading here will notice one or more items that I have not perceived to be capable of causing video issues. What video artifacts are you specifically seeing?

For what it's worth, It's really up to Microsoft to make a 26.2 compatible version.

Steven_Murawski_13 wrote:

So it would be nice to know if the Tahoe dev team is doing anything to work with Microsoft to potentially fix this bug.

No one here would know that. This is a user forum.

Indeed. This is the place for it.