This page contains information relating to the use of OfficeFX Presenter on the Vista operating system.

Running FXTheme Tutorials or Demos

Because our FXThemes (and associated demo and tutorial PowerPoint files) are located in the Program Files folder, Vista marks them as read-only. This means that OfficeFX Presenter cannot open them for editing via the "FXEdit" button on the OfficeFX Presenter toolbar. Rather, to view these files in Presenter you must choose one of the FXShow options.

Alternatively, you can copy or save the examples to a new location, and full editing access via the FXEdit button will be restored.

Purchase or Authorize OfficeFX or FXThemes Workaround

When OfficeFX Presenter or any FXThemes are purchased or authorized for use, we have to access the OfficeFX program folder, which is usually located in "C:\Program Files\Instant Effects\OfficeFX". Under Vista, by default, the Program Files area is not accessible when users are running with normal user (non-admin) privileges. This causes the purchase or authorization to fail.

To get around this issue, we suggest you turn off User Account Control (UAC) in the Vista Control Panel Users applet. Once turned off, purchase or authorization of OfficeFX Presenter or FXThemes proceeds without incident. But please note that turning off User Account Control disables Vista's access control mechanism for all applications, so if you take this approach, you may want to turn UAC back on after OfficeFX Presenter and/or any FXThemes have been purchased or authorized.

For a simple method to turn UAC off/on, follow this link: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-user-account-control-uac-the-easy-way-on-windows-vista/

Performance / Display Drivers

OfficeFX Presenter is a full-time 3D application that pushes the graphics system fairly hard. Thus, it is important to use the latest display drivers available for your system. Vista drivers are constantly being updated by the major display hardware manufacturers, and performance improvements are substantail in some cases. With the latest drivers, OfficeFX performance under Vista is still somewhat below the performance attainable with identical hardware under Windows XP. We expect that gap to continue narrowing over time.