[Legacy PowerPoint] Help: The poll does not load after following the instructions

← Troubleshooting
This article only applies if you're using our old (pre-June 2013) slides. These slides are thekind you would download from the Poll Everywhere website instead of using the PollEv Presenter for Windows PowerPoint add-on. They ran embedded Flash instead of HTLM5. You could recognize them because the polls would look like white rectangles with an X in them before being loaded.

Upgrade to the PollEv Presenter app for a more reliable PowerPoint experience


We've changed the way that Poll Everywhere works with PowerPoint to be drastically more reliable. To upgrade:
  1. Download the PollEv Presenter App for Windows.
  2. Install the app.
  3. Open or restart PowerPoint, locate the "Poll Everywhere" ribbon.
  4. Log in to your account.
  5. Insert a poll into your slide. Holy smokes! No more white box with an X in the middle! Things are looking up.
  6. Now start the presentation.
  7. That's it!
If you run into problems, email us at support@polleverywhere.com.

Not ready to upgrade to the PollEv Presenter app?


Please reconsider upgrading to the PollEv Presenter app one more time. We're going to cut all of our customers over to this improved experience on September 1, 2013, so its going to happen sooner or later.

OK, No really - help me troubleshoot the old Flash-based PowerPoint Slides (pre- Sept. 1, 2013)

If you need directions for getting started with downloading polls for use within PowerPoint read the User Guide topic.

Poll Everywhere is compatible with Microsoft PowerPoint ‘97 and newer on Windows. To use PowerPoint on a Mac, check out the Mac Presenter App.

First, some basics:

  • Be sure that you’re in PowerPoint’s fullscreen presentation (slide show) mode (shortcut key: F5). Polls do not display in PowerPoint’s slide editing view.

  • Polls will not display in "protected view." Be sure to enable editing if prompted to do so when opening the PowerPoint file downloaded from the website.


90% of or users can resolve issue with PowerPoint by following these 3 steps

1. Open Internet Explorer. It is important to do this using Internet Explorer as opposed to a different web browser, as Powerpoint shares the same plug-ins. 

2. Update your Flash Player by navigating to get.adobe.com/flashplayer

Note: Uncheck any "optional" downloads on this page, as they're not necessary to update your Flash Player.

3. Close and reopen your PowerPoint slideshow and try to load the polls in slide show mode again.

If the 3 steps above didn't fix it, congratulations! You are special and part of the 10%. Look over the list of symptoms below to find further troubleshooting instructions.

Symptom: When opening a PowerPoint presentation, a message stating "Some controls on this presentation can not be activated. They may not be registered on this machine." appears.

Symptom: Polls go from "Loading Poll..." to "Fetching poll data..." to "Disconnected. Retrying." and never loads. Poll Does load properly from the website in Internet Explorer.

Symptom: Polls get stuck on "Loading..." in PowerPoint and Internet Explorer.

Conflicts with PowerPoint Add-Ins

It’s very rare, but some users have reported that the following PowerPoint Add-ins conflict with the Adobe Flash PowerPoint ActiveX control that we use:

PDF Maker
Camtasia
PRS Com
Send to Bluetooth
SnagIt
Presentation Notes

So if you’ve tried everything else above, try temporarily disabling any add-ins. For a quick check to see if this will work, there’s a blanket “disable add-ins (may limit functionality)” checkbox in the PowerPoint Options / Trust Center of PPT.







Troubleshooting

  1. [Legacy PowerPoint] Help: The poll does not load after following the instructions
  2. PowerPoint: My slides are not advancing past the slide with an embedded poll
  3. [Legacy PowerPoint] "Some controls on this presentation can not be activated. They may not be registered on this machine."
  4. My poll is not responding to text messages
  5. I can't see the graphical poll on the web
  6. My PollEv page is not updating or displaying my poll
  7. My participants can only vote once per poll. How can I allow them to vote multiple times?
  8. [Legacy PowerPoint] Polls get stuck on "loading..." (the red loading bar) and never load.
  9. Windows PowerPoint Plug In (PollEv Presenter App)

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