Apple Silicon (Rosetta) setup for Flat Pack

If you have an Apple Silicon Mac with an M1, M2, M3, or M4 chip, PowerPoint has to run in Rosetta mode for Flat Pack to work. This is the most common reason Flat Pack does not work on a Mac. You only need to set it up once.

Do these symptoms sound familiar?

If Flat Pack is installed and licensed but you’re seeing any of these, Rosetta mode is almost certainly the cause:

• Path not found when you click Create PPT or Create PDF.
• Something went wrong creating the secured PDF.
• PowerPoint crashes the moment you try to create a PPT or PDF.

Turn on Rosetta mode for PowerPoint

1. Close PowerPoint completely.
2. Open Finder and go to the Applications folder.
3. Select (single-click to highlight) Microsoft PowerPoint. Don’t launch it.
4. Go to the File menu → Get Info.
5. Under General, tick Open using Rosetta.
6. Reopen PowerPoint. Flat Pack now works normally.

Prefer to watch it done? There’s a short video walkthrough on Vimeo.

Tip

If PowerPoint still crashes after enabling Rosetta, update PowerPoint first (PowerPoint → Help → Check for updates), close it, then confirm Open using Rosetta is still ticked.

Why this is needed

Flat Pack relies on the way older, Intel-based PowerPoint handled files behind the scenes. Rosetta lets PowerPoint use that older Intel behavior on Apple Silicon, so Flat Pack can create files without the path and PDF errors above. You don’t need to install anything. Rosetta is part of macOS.

Once this is set, head back to Getting started to make your first flattened file, or see the FAQ & fixes if anything else comes up.