How to start Office in Safe Mode

PowerPoint and the other Office XP applications may automatically start up in Office Safe Mode if they detect problems with addins or other office files, registry or templates. If so, you'll see a message that explains the problem and asks you whether you want to disable the part of the program that is apparently at fault.

You can see a list of what's disabled by choosing Help, About Microsoft PowerPoint, Disabled Items. From this same dialog box, you can re-enable disabled items.

You can force PowerPoint to start in Office Safe Mode: hold down the CTRL key while you start the program by double-clicking its icon or by double-clicking the icon for a PPT, PPTX, PPS, PPSX file. Hold the CTRL key down until you see a message box that asks whether you want to start in safe mode. Click Yes.

You can also use the /safe option if you start PowerPoint from the command line.

When you start PowerPoint in this "user-initiated safe mode" some of the following restrictions will apply:

• You can't save templates
• The Office Assistant isn't automatically displayed
• Toolbar and command bar customizations aren't loaded; customizations aren't saved
• The AutoCorrect list isn't loaded; changes to it aren't saved
• Recovered documents aren't automatically loaded on startup
• Smart tags aren't loaded, can't be saved
• Command line options, other than /a and /n, are ignored
• Additional features and programs won't automatically load

Search terms:

---