One of our sites is having a strange issue when saving to a network location in Powerpoint.  I'm not sure it's a Powerpoint problem, but it's a place to start...

When saving a ppt to a mapped network drive (the client is running Windows 8 / Office 2013, the network drive is a DFS share, pointed to a Server 2012 machine if that matters), users will almost always get the following error:

"Someone else is working in (filepath\name) right now. Please try again later." 

This happens regardless of where the file is being saved on the network drive, in fact it happens even when there is no pre-existing file with that name in the location.  So, even if I'm saving a brand new copy of test.pptx to F:\Share\PPT where there is not currently a test.pptx, I get the error.

Word, Excel, and all other tested apps save properly.  Powerpoint can save correctly to the local computer, but not to the network drive or to My Documents (which redirects to the same network drive).

When the error pops up, if I look in Open Files in Computer Management on the Fileserver, I see the file I'm trying to save listed as being open, but it shows 'Disconnected' rather than a username.

Any suggestions would be appreciated - again, not sure that this is a Powerpoint problem - could be Windows 8 or some mysterious DFS thing...

Thanks.

Hi,

Since you have create a brand new file and the issue still occurs, then maybe try to rebuild the network drive to check the issue.

Unfortunately that's not really a possibility - the 'drive' is actually a DFS share, and all other programs and users at other physical sites can access it properly.  I'll try referencing the fileserver directly instead of the DFS share to see if that does anything...

No change when referencing the server as \\servername\share$ instead of \\dfsshare.  Same problem.

Hello,

Been having a very similar issue in our environment and just came across this thread while Googling and looking for answers.

In our case, we have Windows 7 clients and 3 main files servers - 2 are Server 2008 R2, and one is Server 2012.  We use PeerLink File Collaboration to sync the files between the servers (similar concept to DFS).  For us, it seems to happen specifically with Excel 2013, and only when saving to the Server 2012 file server.  I can reproduce the message pretty much every time.  After seeing your post, I tried it in Powerpoint just out of curiosity, but it saved properly - Word saves properly as well.  

Been doing a bunch of testing to try and narrow it down, and this is what I've found:  

Excel 2013 -> Server 2012 = error message.  
Excel 2013 -> Server 2008 R2 = no error message.  
Excel 2010 -> Server 2008 AND Server 2012 = no error message.

<o:p>We've been leaning towards the PeerLink replication as the culprit up to this point, but last night I did some testing with the PeerLink Collaboration turned off, and still received the error message.. so now I'm even more confused! 

I see that it's been a few months since your post..  have you made any progress here?</o:p>

Work with powerpoint file by repair corrupt ppt file online

Read the article http://www.onlinerepairpowerpoint.powerpointrepairtoolbox.com