EDIT:
Microsoft support has confirmed that it's a bug with PowerPoint 2007 SP3.
I have recently encountered a problem with the "Save as PDF/XPS" add-in for PowerPoint 2007. When I use "Save as PDF/XPS" to create a PDF version of my presentation, some slides are only partially included in the resulting PDF file. For example, this:
(download the PPTX file here)
is reduced to this (in Adobe Reader X or Acrobat Pro X (both 10.1.1)):
(download the PDF file here)
So far, I have only encountered this with slides that contain animation elements, but which part of the elements remain in the PDF version appears not to have anything to do with the order in which the animated elements appear, so that might just be a coincidence.
Update: The problem persists even if I "un-animate" the slides (removing the animation but leaving the previously animated elements intact).
When viewing the affected slides in Acrobat Reader, it sometimes complains about the file containing invalid elements, and that I should complain to whoever generated the PDF file…
Update 2:
I have just installed Office 2007 on a new Windows 7 x64 PC. With the original Office version (12.0.4518.1014 MSO 12.0.6562.5003), a correct PDF file is generated. After installation of SP3 (12.0.6606.1000 SP3 MSO 12.0.6607.1000) a corrupt PDF file is generated. Today's Microsoft Updates (to PowerPoint version 12.0.6654.5000) haven't changed anything, by the way.
Update 3:
I have opened a tech support incident with Microsoft. They have confirmed the "limitation", as they called it, and it is indeed limited to 2007 SP 3 only. They are going to pass it on to the developers but they can't say when or even if a fix would be forthcoming, so I guess I'll upgrade to 2010…
Best Answer
I suppose you are using the 2007 Microsoft Office add-in Save as PDF or XPS.
This add-in does not support animations, transitions or sounds, so they will come out as blank.
One solution I can think of is to replace the problematic elements by images.
If this is unacceptable, it would help if you could post a small example of such a presentation and the generated pdf, so we could have a look at them, using some file-sharing site such as mediafire or rapidshare.
[EDIT]
Hold everything : I can see your pdf file, and it is perfect.
So there is nothing wrong with your Office 2007 : It is your pdf viewer that is brain-dead.
With what product are you viewing the pdf ? My own is Foxit Reader.
[EDIT2]
Complete reversal : Trying out your pdf file on GhostScript gave the following error and displayed exactly the same incomplete page as you included in the post
Conclusion: You have found a bug in the PDF add-in of Office 2007. Perhaps, as you say, it was introduced by Office 2007 Service Pack 3. Foxit Reader is smart enough to "repair" the damage, but Adobe Reader is not.
Reproducing the problem on a clean install will be instructive. I would suggest to install the Office service packs one-by-one, meaning SP1, SP2 and SP3, to find when was the bug introduced. It may only be triggered by vector images, but nothing is sure.
The only solution would seem to be to either use a third-party product to produce the pdf, so avoiding Office, or maybe using OpenOffice/LibreOffice, or maybe replacing the vector images by ordinary ones, and lastly reporting the bug to Microsoft and waiting for SP4 (or SP5 or 6).