“Sorry, PowerPoint can't read” the file

Why it happens

• Windows has blocked a file downloaded from the internet or opened from an email.
• The file was opened from OneDrive, SharePoint or a network folder before it had finished syncing.
• The presentation is damaged: cut short, or with its slide list or (for .ppt) its internal filesystem broken.

Try these first, they're free

1. 1If the file came from email or the web, right-click it, choose Properties, tick Unblock and press OK. PowerPoint refuses blocked files with messages that look like damage.
2. 2Move the file out of a synced or network folder to your desktop and open it from there: a half-synced copy is a common culprit.
3. 3Check the file's size. A file of 0 KB holds nothing at all, so look for another copy.

How we fix it

If the file is damaged, we rebuild its container and slide list. An old .ppt has its internal filesystem rebuilt and comes back as a .pptx, with whatever slide text survives.

On 384 damaged Office files, we recovered 81% of the content; Office's own repair recovered 53%. See the benchmark.

Other messages

• PowerPoint found a problem with content
• Repair a corrupted PowerPoint file online
• Excel: “We found a problem with some content”
• Excel cannot open the file because the format or extension is not valid