Fixing OrgChart Errors in Office 2003

There’s a nice little bug (I call it a bug anyway) that prevents users who have Powerpoint presentations created in Popwerpoint 2000 or below that contain Org Chart objects from being able to edit the org charts in Powerpoint 2003.

The error message was: The Microsoft Organizational Chart server application can’t be found. Please contact your system administrator to install this server application.

Microsoft recommends some convoluted crap that, as usual, doesn’t work. So after some poking and prodding, I discovered that the OrgChart executable located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ORGCHART\orgchart.exe has “Special Permissions” for Administrators and Power Users. Very odd… Full control for everyone else, but the guys who should have full rights get jailed rights… odd. But Okay, this is Microsoft.

Then again, this doesn’t seem to pertain to everybody either.

Namely, the Special permissions were that Admins and Power users had DENY permissions on the orgchart.exe for Traverse Folder / Execute File. This essentially demasculated Orgchart when run as an Admin.