timing macros

[johanhartman]

I need help with powerpoint macros. I have created a presentation with a main
menu from where you can navigate to the other independant pages by clicking
on an action button in the main menu, when the presentation is started a
screensaver slide comes up prompting the user to click on the screen to start
the presentation, then there's a welcoming animation screen which prompts the
user to click on the screen to continue to the main menu. My problem is that
I want the presentation to gao back to the welcoming animation after the
presentation was left idle for a certain time and then back to the screen
saver if the welcoming screen was left idle for a certain time, because of
the complexity of this presentation it is very impracticle to simple use the
built in timer, can someone please give me the VBA code to take a
presentation to a certain slide after a certain time.

PS: it wont help to just advance the slide, because the presentation needs
to reset to the welcoming animation.

Any help appreciated greatly!

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

Here are some thoughts:

(1) Except for version 2000, any slide show in Kiosk mode will
automatically go back to the first slide after 5 minutes.

(2) If you want the animation to reset, the easiest way to do this is to
put a blank slide before it that is set to automatically advance to the
next slide after 0 seconds.

(3) So far, macros aren't involved at all.

(4) I think you have an issue with having that first blank slide need to
advance to two different slides, either the one prompting the user to
click to advance the presentation or the opening animation. This could
involve a macro.

(5) I could see this happening as part of the button that is clicked on
the first slide (now the second slide because of the blank one).

(6) What would happen if you have the following line as part of your
button:

ActivePresentation.Slides(2).SlideShowTransition.Hidden = msoTrue

I think what would happen is that slide 1 is blank and automatically
advances to slide 2. Slide 2 has a button that when pressed, hides slide
2, does whatever other macro business you have, and advances to the next
slide. Since slide 2 is now hidden, when the kiosk mode presentation
jumps back to the first (blank slide), it will automatically advance to
the next slide, which is now slide 3.

I don't know if this is exactly what you have in mind or if it will work
as you intend, but it seems like a simple solution that covers most of
your problems.

--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

 

[johanhartman]

Thanks for the reply David. However I am not so confident with PowerPoint as
you might have originally thought, i.e. I don't know what you mean by "Kiosk
Mode". The rest of your information I understand and find helpful. So it
would be helpful if you can please explain what you mean by "kiosk mode".

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

Go to the Slide Show menu and choose Set Up Show. Click on the button for
Browsed at a kiosk. When you make this selection, your slide show will
behave normally with two exceptions:

(1) All navigation must be done automatically or with clicks on buttons
or hyperlinks. That is, the space bar, the arrow keys, right or left
mouse clicks will not advance the slide show, so you must provide links
to any place you want the user to go. The only keypress that will work is
the Escape key, which will exit the slide show.

(2) After five minutes of being idle, the slide show will return to the
first slide.

--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/