Boardworks

This issue is caused by the recent Windows update called 1803, which is incompatible with our products and prevents you from opening the product on your PC. However, the product is still installed on your computer.

Please contact us by using the form below or emailing us directly and we can determine whether or not we have a solution for the products you’re using.

If you need immediate access to the PowerPoints for your lesson:

The product is still installed on your computer and you can access and use all the files without opening the application. You can do this by opening a windows explorer window and navigating to the folder where the product is installed.

On most computers this is in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Boardworks folder. Then open the “Powerpoint” subfolder, for example: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Boardworks\KS3 Science\powerpoint”. You can launch all the presentations directly from here.

If the project is installed on a network drive, you may need to request assistance from your system administrator.

This can occur when there is a problem with the installation of MS Office where the program does not correctly associate itself with .ppt files. Please perform a repair install of Office which should resolve the issue. 

This is caused by an incompatibility issue with some older versions of Boardworks software when installed on Windows 7. Please contact us to enquire about compatible versions of your product. 

If you are using Windows 10 you can also try right clicking on the shortcut and selecting the ‘Compatibility’ tab. Tick the ‘Run this program in compatibility mode for:’ checkbox and select ‘Windows 7’. Click ‘Apply’ and try to launch it using the shortcut. 

This is caused when an incompatible version of Boardworks software is installed on a system that has a Microsoft Office 2007 or 2010 family product already installed. Please contact us and enquire about compatible versions for your product. 

Microsoft Office is blocking the Flash and Shockwave controls in PowerPoint due to a recent Microsoft update.

To fix this issue, you will need to download this file. This is a registry key that will enable the flash controls in Microsoft Office for you. This is a system file, so you may see a security dialog box when you attempt to download it – this is expected.

In order to enable flash controls in Microsoft Office, please use the following steps: 

1. Exit all Microsoft Office applications 
2. Unzip and save the file attached to this email on your desktop.  
3. Start the Registry Editor by tapping Start (or pressing the Windows key on your keyboard) then typing “regedit” and pressing enter. 
4. Open the regedit.exe (you may need to right click and run it as an administrator) 
5. Click File > Import and select the file attached to this email that you saved to your computer in step 2.  
6. Exit the Registry Editor window, open one of the presentations and check that the flash works. 
7. You may need to restart your computer for the change to take effect. Please also make sure that you have the most recent version of Adobe Flash Player installed.  

For more information about this issue and the registry edit solution, please refer to Microsoft Office’s support article on the subject, read it here.

When opening a presentation, you receive a warning from Microsoft PowerPoint that states “Some controls on this presentation cannot be activated. They might not be registered on this computer.”  

Due to a bug within the Flash Player plugin, presentations containing Flash activities which have been saved on Windows 7 will encounter this error when opened on versions of Windows 8 and above. There are two solutions for this issue:

1 – Reinstall the resources from the original disk shipped to your school. The original, published versions of our presentations will work correctly on your PC.

2 – If the presentation has been edited, and you wish to retain these changes, then you can open the presentation with PowerPoint, go to File > Save As…, and re-save the document as a *.pptx file. The resulting file should work as expected on all supported versions of Windows.

Please download and run the Adobe Flash Uninstaller from http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html. This will clear all remnants and possible conflicts with the Adobe Flash plugin installed on your system. Once you have run this tool and restarted the machine, please install the latest version of Adobe Flash for Internet Explorer, which you can download from here http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/otherversions/

If, after performing these steps, you receive the same error, open the presentation with PowerPoint go to File > Save As… and re-save the document as a *.pptx file. The resulting file should work as expected. 

You need to enable the interactive Flash activities by default. To do this you will need to add the location of the Boardworks’ resources to the Trusted Locations list within Microsoft PowerPoint. To do this, open a presentation and go to PowerPoint Options -> Trust Centre -> Trust Centre Settings and add the folder containing the Boardworks presentations to the ‘Trusted Locations’. By default this is C:\Program Files\Boardworks (32-bit) or C:\Program Files (x86)\Boardworks (64-bit systems). 

When adding the location make sure to check the option “add subfolders”. It is possible to add a network location to this list, if the files are stored on a shared network area. 

You need to enable the interactive Flash activities by default. To do this you will need to add the location of the Boardworks’ resources to the Trusted Locations list within Microsoft PowerPoint. To do this, open a presentation and go to PowerPoint Options -> Trust Centre -> Trust Centre Settings and add the folder containing the Boardworks presentations to the ‘Trusted Locations’. By default this is C:\Program Files\Boardworks (32-bit) or C:\Program Files (x86)\Boardworks (64-bit systems). 

When adding the location make sure to check the option “add subfolders”. It is possible to add a network location to this list, if the files are stored on a shared network area. 

This issue can usually be resolved by installing all the available updates for your version of Microsoft Office.

If this does not solve the problem however, a fix can be implemented on a file by file basis as follows. Open an affected .ppt file and go to Tools, then Macro, and click on Visual Basic Editor (Office 2000, XP & 2003) or navigate to an interactive slide in editing view, right click on the animation and select View Code (Office 2007 and 2010). The Visual Basic editor will open. Click the Save button in the toolbar and close the Visual Basic editor. Now click Save in the PowerPoint toolbar and close the presentation.