Virus Warnings - please Help!!

[littlecross]

i have created a slideshow on PPT which has a number of links to other word
documents. The slideshow is now on a cd, but when i try to open each link on
the cd the following message appears:
Some files can contain viruses or otherwise be harmful to your computer.
It is important to be certain that this file is from a trustworthy source.
Would you like to open this file?
This presentaion is being given to a number of people and i really dont want
this warning to appear all the time. I have been on :
http://officeone.mvps.org/download/hyperlink_warning.html
but it does not seem to do anything at all. The cd opens with PPT Viewer
2003.
Does anyone what i can do? I have been on:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=829072#XSLTH3145121123120121120120
but the advice offered here seems very problematic, im a bit worried the
computer will die on me!!
Thanks in advance, i cant begin to tell you how grateful i am!!

 

[Bill Foley]

Other than the advice already provided you in a previous thread, instead of
creating hyperlinks, you might want to try this. It is always advisable to
have your files in the same folder as your PowerPoint presentation BEFORE
you create these links, as they will still work when copied to a CD.

1. Place an object on your slide that you want to assign the link to.
2. Right-click that object and select "Action Settings".
3. Click the "Run Program" option, then the "Browse" button.
4. Change the "Files of type" dropdown from "Programs (*.exe)" to "All Files
(*.*)".
5. Browse to and select your linked file.
6. Make sure the "Highlight Click" option is checked on the "Action
Settings" dialog box before clicking "OK".

Not positive that this will work for all documents/files, but worth a try.

 

[littlecross]

Thanks Bill, I have tried it, but it doesnt seem to work either. an
unsolvable mystery it would appear! That said, i dont have the contents
pages before they had hyperlinks attached to them , would this make a
difference?

 

[Bill Foley]

Not sure what you mean by, "i dont have the contents pages before they had
hyperlinks attached to them". Your post says you are linking to Word
documents. Don't you have these files in the same folder as your
presentation?

 

[Sonia]

To quote the PowerPoint 2003 Viewer ReadMe file: "The PowerPoint Viewer does
not support running macros, programs, or opening linked or embedded objects."
--

Sonia Coleman
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP Team
Autorun Software, Templates and Tutorials
http://www.soniacoleman.com

 

[Echo S]

Thanks Bill, I have tried it, but it doesnt seem to work either. an
unsolvable mystery it would appear! That said, i dont have the
contents pages before they had hyperlinks attached to them , would
this make a difference?

I don't understand. If you don't have the contents pages, then how are you
linking to them?

Also, you seem to have a specific project you're trying to develop, and
you're running into specific issues. It might help you to keep them in one
thread, because some of the solutions we might suggest to resolve an issue
in one thread may actually *cause* the issue you're seeing in another
thread.

For example, we might suggest you convert your presentation to HTML to
resolve linking issues, but you might have mentioned in another thread that
your presentation has a background music track. That HTML conversion will
need some work, then, to make that background track play like it does in
PPT.

Basically, I'm saying that, while it's usually easier for us to tackle one
problem in a thread, yours is truly a "big picture" set of project problems,
and creating a bunch of individual threads may not be the way to get the
best help for them.

 

[littlecross]

Addressed to everyone! im just answering the individual comments!

Bill - Sorry for being unclear, reading it back, youre right, it makes no
sense at all!! ok, where to start... i have 4 pages which make up the
contents, other than the front cover i have no other slides on this
presentation, except these 4 pages. I have hyperlinked lots of Word
documents to the relevant area on the contents pages. As you suggested i
used the 'Run Program' option under 'Action Settings' rather that the
'Hyperlink' option. This didnt seem to work, which i thought might be the
result of not having cleared (for want of a better word) the hyperlinks
before using 'run program'. I wondered whether this would make a difference
to the success of the 'run program' option. Hope this clarifies what i was
trying to say a bit better!

Echo - totally valid point, sorry i hadnt even thought of it that way. will
keep them in the same threads from now on!

Sonia - does this mean that i wouldnt be able to do it in Powerpoint either,
or does this just apply to PPT Viewer? I have package the presentation to cd
without using Viewer and it opened the the 'E' Drive displaying all the
individual files rather than going straight to the presentation. Was i doing
it wrong or are you not able to do it using PPT?

Thank you all so much for your help, i really appreciate it.

Liz

 

[Echo S]

Addressed to everyone! im just answering the individual comments!

heh, works for me, Liz!

This is from the "screen tip missing on CD package" thread

Eek! um, ok, i guess theres no other way of doing a similar thing
either is there? Would i still be able to have them if i packed the
cd to powerpoint rather than viewer? How would this affect the rest
of the presentation i.e hyperlinks etc?
Sorry to be so annoying guys!

You can't really "pack the CD to PowerPoint." A PPT/PPS file has to have PPT
or the PPT Viewer in order to run. The Viewer will run from the CD, but
PowerPoint itself won't. I suppose you could create an INF file that would
just have the PPT/PPS file play on whatever version of PPT the recipient
has, but if they don't have PowerPoint, your presentation won't run at all.

(Oh, and you're not being annoying.)

Bill - Sorry for being unclear, reading it back, youre right, it
makes no sense at all!! ok, where to start... i have 4 pages which
make up the contents, other than the front cover i have no other
slides on this presentation, except these 4 pages. I have
hyperlinked lots of Word documents to the relevant area on the

Okay, so it seems you're really just using PPT as a menu system of sorts. In
that case, I think Steve's suggestion to convert it to HTML is probably the
best bet. As you're finding out, there are some drawbacks to linking to
other files from PPT, especially if you have to distribute the files.

Sonia - does this mean that i wouldnt be able to do it in Powerpoint
either, or does this just apply to PPT Viewer? I have package the
presentation to cd without using Viewer and it opened the the 'E'
Drive displaying all the individual files rather than going straight
to the presentation. Was i doing it wrong or are you not able to do
it using PPT?

Oh, duh. That's what you meant by "pack the CD to PowerPoint." Sorry, I have
these moments when I'm really *thick,* you know.

If you pack without the Viewer, the "package for CD" process just gathers
the PPT file and any linked files. It doesn't create the autorun.INF and
..bat files like a Package for CD With the Viewer does. So you'd have to
create your own. If your recipients all have PPT, and assuming that it
doesn't matter which version of PPT they have (i.e., new animations and
transitions aren't necessary), then I'm sure we can come up with something.

 

[Sonia]

For several reasons you cannot create a "self-running" CD that utilizes the
PowerPoint program. An autorun CD works because you are able to include the
PowerPoint Viewer on the CD and it doesn't need to be installed on the target
system. If you don't include the Viewer on the CD, the end user MUST have
PowerPoint or the Viewer installed on their system and the CD will not run
automatically.

If you need to make an autorun CD and you need to show text to explain what an
object is linked to, I recommend that you just use plain text on the slide to
describe the linked file.

 

[littlecross]

Hey! Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly! ok, all the
recipients do have PPT and it shouldnt matter which version they have. So,
what do i do now? If you think that converting the files into INF (what on
earth are they!) would be the best bet, how would i go about doing this?
Would that then prevent hyperlink warning signs? And presumably, there is
nothing i can do about the screen tips?
Huge thanks again
Liz

 

[Echo S]

No, you don't convert the PPT files to an INF file.

Look at the contents of the folder or CD you got when you did the Package
for CD and chose to include the Viewer. It has an autorun.INF file in it.
This tells the CD what to do when it's put in the drive (assuming that the
person on the other end hasn't disabled that, anyway). The autorun.INF that
the Package for CD creates might say something like this:

[autorun]
open=pptview.exe Presentation1.ppt

And that's all. This autorun.INF file tells the PPT Viewer to open and play
Presentation1.

 

[Echo S]

Oh, crap. I meant to save that post, not send it!

To finish my thought, the autorun.INF file needs an EXE. You're not using
the PPT Viewer in this example, so I'd use Shyam's Launch utility instead.
You can download it here http://skp.mvps.org/download.htm It's toward the
bottom of the page.

Open notepad and type

[autorun]
open=Launch.exe open lizpresentation.html

Save the notepad file as autorun.inf (you'll have to go use "all files" in
the save as type dropdown in the Save As dialog).

Burn Launch.EXE, lizpresentation.html, and autorun.INF to your CD.

(I'm not 100% positive that the syntax for the autorun file above is
correct, but I'm sure someone will be along shortly to correct me if it's
not. Sorry, don't have time to test it right now, though.)

No, you don't convert the PPT files to an INF file.

Look at the contents of the folder or CD you got when you did the
Package for CD and chose to include the Viewer. It has an autorun.INF
file in it. This tells the CD what to do when it's put in the drive
(assuming that the person on the other end hasn't disabled that,
anyway). The autorun.INF that the Package for CD creates might say
something like this:

[autorun]
open=pptview.exe Presentation1.ppt

And that's all. This autorun.INF file tells the PPT Viewer to open
and play Presentation1.