Andrew May's WebLog : PowerPoint

PowerPoint: Launching Other Applications with Command Line Switches

Andrew May — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 21:49:00 GMT

Here's something I meant to mention a while back: did you know that when you set a shape's action setting to launch a program, you can pass command line switches to that program?

This is something I stumbled across, and there doesn't seem to be any mention of it in the PowerPoint 2003 VBA Reference, so until the next update I'm posting the information here.

You can set PowerPoint to perform certain actions, including starting other programs, based on user interaction with a given shape. You do this by specifying a shape's action settings. Each shape can have two actions:

· One PowerPoint performs when the user clicks the shape.

· One PowerPoint performs when the user moves the mouse over the shape.

If you specify that PowerPoint should launch another application as one of a shape's action settings, you can also include any command line switches you want PowerPoint to pass to the target application.

Take a look at the code below. It assigns an action setting to the selected shape. The code selects the action PowerPoint performs when the shape is clicked, and sets two of that action's properties. The Action property specifies which action to perform; in this case, run a program. The Run property represents the program name, as well as any command line switches. In this example, we're passing the "/sidenote" command. During a presentation, when the user clicks on the shape, PowerPoint launches OneNote as a new side note.

Sub OpenSideNote()

With ActiveWindow.Selection.ShapeRange(1) _

.ActionSettings.Item(ppMouseClick)

.Action = ppActionRunProgram

.Run = "onenote.exe /sidenote"

End With

End Sub

(Wondering what other command line switches are available for OneNote? Oh look, I just happened to write an article about that very subject. How's that for cross-promotion?)

For the code-adverse of you out there, you can also do this through the user interface:

· Right-click the shape, and select Action Settings.

· On the Mouse Click or Mouse Over tab, select the Run program button.

· Enter the application name and command line switches in the text box below the Run program radio button.

Now all I have to do is update the PowerPoint VBA Reference...

PowerPoint: A Codeless One-Slide Timer (Part 2 of 2)

Andrew May — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 19:04:00 GMT

Read part one here.

Next, we need to create custom animation that controls the order in which PowerPoint displays the shapes on the slide.

1. From the Slide Show menu, click Custom Animation.

2. Select the shape that displays the second-highest time (in our case, the shape displaying 0:50). In the Custom Animation task pane, click Add Effect, select Entrance, and then click on Appear.

3. The animation should now be listed in the animation list in the task pane.

4. Select the animation, and in the Start drop-down, select After Previous.

5. Click on the drop-down arrow next to the animation name, and then click Timing. In the animation dialog box, on the Timing tab, for Delay enter 10.

Repeat this for each shape, in descending order of the time each shape displays. So now you've got the shapes appearing at 10 seconds intervals, in the order of most time displayed (1:00) to least time (0:00). Note that you don't assign an animation to the first shape, because you want that shape to be visible as soon as PowerPoint displays the slide.

Now stack all the shapes on top of each other. That way, as each shape appears, it covers the previous shape. Because all the shapes appear the same, except for the time displayed on each, during a slide show they'll appear as a single shape counting down the seconds left on the time.

So our timer counts down the seconds correctly, but we also want to move to the next slide when the timer is done. For this, we'll use a slide transition, just as Geetesh does in his timer. We'll set the slide transition to occur one second after the timer finishes its count.

1. On the Slide Show menu, click Slide Transition.

2. In the Slide Transition task pane, select the type of transition you want.

3. Under Advance slide, check Automatically after and enter '01:10' in the text box. Make sure On mouse click is not checked.

We're done. When PowerPoint displays the slide, the animation sequence starts, displaying each shape at ten second intervals. At the same time, the slide transition is counting down. PowerPoint displays the final counter shape (0:00) one second before it executes the transition to the next slide.

As you can see, if you wanted a longer timer, say a five or ten minutes, or wanted to count off one-second intervals, creating the timer could get tedious real fast. The main advantage to this approach, as well as Geetesh's, is that it doesn't rely on anything other than PowerPoint's native functionality. Which means you can move the presentation to another machine and not have to worry about stuff like whether the security setting will allow code to run.

The disadvantages, of course, are that it's somewhat laborious to set up, and it's not very flexible. Because it relies on slide transition functionality, the timer has to start as soon as PowerPoint displays the slide. I couldn't think of a way to make the slide transition dependant on user interaction, which would have enabled me to let the user start the timer whenever they wanted. But for short timers where you don't want to (or can't) use VBA code or add-ins, it could come in handy.

As I mentioned in the last entry, the PowerPoint FAQ lists several timers available as VBA code or add-ins.

Speaking of time, it's probably past time I got back to my SharePoint research…

PowerPoint: A Codeless One-Slide Timer (Part 1 of 2)

Andrew May — Sun, 23 Jan 2005 19:01:00 GMT

Yesterday, a co-worker asked a few of us in PowerPoint user assistance how to create a timer to use during a presentation break. The only stipulation was that the timer had to use PowerPoint's native capabilities: she wanted something she could give to other people without having to include instructions you'd need if the timer was an ActiveX control or relied on VBA code.

One of the other team members referred her to the Clocks and Timers section of the PowerPoint FAQ. Sure enough, there was an example of a timer using slide transitions, courtesy of Geetesh Bajaj.

And it got me thinking: Geetesh uses multiple slides to create a timer, but couldn't you create a timer using shape animation and a single slide? Creating a single-slide timer was primarily an aesthetic preference. The timer functions the same either way. I just preferred to have it on a single slide, so that when I'm in Normal or Slide Sorter view, the timer doesn't appear as a long series of slides. Having everything on a single slide also makes moving the timer, or pasting it into another presentation, easier.

(Creating it was also a nice distraction from all the SharePoint studying I've been doing. But that's neither here nor there.)

Anyway, here's how you can create a single-slide, codeless timer:

As an example, let's say you wanted to create a one-minute timer, with the visual display updated every ten seconds. First, add a new slide to the presentation. Then, create a shape that represents your timer, like so:

Next, copy and paste the shape back onto the same slide. Change the text so it displays ten seconds less. Repeat this process until you have shapes that count down to zero:

Now, let's make sure the z-order of the shapes is correct. The z-order basically refers to the order in which shapes are layered on the slide. We want the shapes stacked in order of increasing time, with the one-minute shape on the bottom. Think of it this way:

(Tip: Don’t actually stack the shapes on top of each other yet. That'll make the shapes to hard to work with.)

Here's how we can explicitly set the z-order:

Right-click the shape with the most time displaying (in our case, that's the one-minute shape), point to Order, and click Bring to Front. This moves that shape to the top of the z-order stack. Repeat this process with the shape displaying the next most time, and so on.

So now we have our shapes in the proper z-order. Next, we need to animate them so that PowerPoint displays them in the proper sequence, and at the proper intervals. Then we need to add a slide transition for when the timer hits zero. All of which we’ll do in the next entry.

PowerPoint: Using Tags to Store Custom Data

Andrew May — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 17:44:00 GMT

So, after blogging several times about the Tags functionality in Publisher, I finally took a look in the PowerPoint object model, and guess what I found? However, the tags functionality is implemented a little differently in PowerPoint than in Publisher, so it deserves some discussion.

To review: Tags are, in essence, generic holding bins where you can store whatever information you want to persist with the presentation. Each tag is comprised of a name, and a value. Tags are one of the rare pieces of the PowerPoint object model that doesn't have a counterpart in the application's user interface. Tags are a totally programmatic feature: you can't get or set Tags objects except through code. So unless you explicitly expose them in the user interface (by displaying them in a dialog box, for example) or the user writes code to find them, the average user isn't going to be aware of them at all. Which makes them an ideal place to store information you don't want the average (that is, non-programming) user to have easy access to, such as:

· Attribute information that isn’t already persisted in any of the available object model properties.

· Variable data needed for programmatic functionality you’ve written.

In PowerPoint, the Tags object is a child of the Presentation, Slide, SlideRange, Shape, and ShapeRange objects, so you can use it to store custom information at the presentation, slide, or shape level.

Each tag has a name, and a value. In Publisher, the tag value took a Variant data type; in PowerPoint, you’re limited to a String data type for the tag value. The biggest difference between how the two application implement tags, however, is in how you create and access individual tags. Unlike in Publisher, the Tags object in PowerPoint is not a collection; there are no individual Tag objects in the PowerPoint object model. Rather, you get and set the name and value of the individual tags by using methods of the Tags object itself. Here’s how tags are structured in the PowerPoint object model:

As you can see, Name and Value are methods of the Tags object, rather than properties of an individual Tag object (as they are in Publisher). Personally, I find this makes them a little more cumbersome to work with, but the PowerPoint object model has been around a lot longer than the Publisher object model, and the Tags object has been there since at least PowerPoint 2000, so I’m willing to cut it a little slack.

Here’s another aspect of the Tags object that may be less than intuitive: to update the value of a tag, you call the Tags.Add method, passing the name of the existing tag, and the new value. This effectively overwrites the tag and updates the value.

So let’s look at a code example. Here’s one I swiped from the PowerPoint Visual Basic Reference. It tests the value of the Region tag for all slides in the active presentation, and hides any slides that don't pertain to the East Coast (denoted by the value "east").

For Each s In ActivePresentation.Slides

If s.Tags("region") <> "east" Then

s.SlideShowTransition.Hidden = True

End If

Next

As I noted in my entries about tags in Publisher, you can come up with some pretty simple, yet powerful solutions by using tags to store custom information where you need it, then writing procedures that use that information. What kind of information, and what do you use it for? Whatever makes the most sense for your business practices.

Think about it.

PowerPoint: No Action Settings for Group Shapes

Andrew May — Fri, 12 Nov 2004 00:02:00 GMT

Here's something I just found out the other day: did you know that you can't assign action settings to grouped shapes? But there is a fairly easy work-around.

I discovered as I was using PowerPoint's drawing tools to create a grouped shape that I intended to use as a custom button to launch a macro. Turns out there is no way, either programmatically or through the user interface, for me to assign an action setting to the finished group shape. This includes actions like jumps to other slides, other presentations, launching programs, running macros, or hyperlinks.

So I talked with a few people here that have been working on PowerPoint far longer (and most likely, far more productively) than I, and it seems this has always been the case, and was by design. But no one could tell me what the thinking behind this design choice. However, one of our wonderful and resourceful support people was able to suggest a work-around (thanks, John!), which I now impart to you. Basically, you create the grouped shape, and then cut and paste it back into the slide as an embedded enhanced metafile:

1. Create the grouped shape as you want it. (To group the shape, select all the shapes, right-click and point to Grouping, and then select Group.)

2. With the grouped shape selected, from the Edit, menu click Cut.

3. From the Edit menu, select Paste Special. In the Paste Special dialog box, make sure the Paste radio button is selected, and then select Picture (Enhanced Metafile), and click OK.

4. Assign action settings to the metafile shape.

One nice thing about this approach is that the resulting enhanced metafile is a vector graphic. So you can scale it (resize it larger or smaller) without it looking pixilated or jagged.

Here are some other random thoughts about this approach:

If you're working with small shapes (as I was), you might find that the shapes don't move exactly where you want to position them, but instead act like they're snapping to some invisible underlying grid. This is because they are snapping to an invisible underlying grid. If this is the case, zoom in closer to make fine adjustments easier to control, and do one of the following:

· Disable objects snapping to the grid. From the View menu, click Grids and Guides, deselect Snap objects to grid, and then click OK.

· Temporarily disable objects snapping to the grid. Hold down the ALT key as you use the mouse to drag the edge or corner of the shape one display pixel at a time.

One drawback of the metafile work-around is that, once you've turned your grouped shape into a metafile, you can't edit the individual shapes. So if you later decide you wanted one of the shapes to be red and not blue, you have to start all over again. So you might want to copy the shape, instead of cutting it. That way, you still have the original grouped shape to edit if you want to make changes later on. You can always position the grouped shape on the work area around the slide, so it doesn't show up when you put the presentation in slide show mode.

You could also turn the grouped shape into a jpg, gif or bmp, using a program like Paint. Just take a screen shot of the slide, paste it into your image program, and crop it down to just the grouped shape. However, if you do it this way, the resulting image is not a vector image. So it may not be as sharp, and will likely become pixilated if you expand its size.

PowerPoint: Pause a Sound File During Slide Show

Andrew May — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 21:48:00 GMT

Here’s one of my rare post concerning things you can do without using code.

I got an email the other day from a user who had read my blog entries about inserting sound files using code. He had an issue he was looking for help with. He didn’t seem all the comfortable with programming, but was willing to learn some coding if it solved his problem.

Here’s what he wanted to do: He had recorded narration for a slide as an mp3 file. He knew how to insert the file, and set it to play automatically, but he also wanted to have a Pause/Play button on the slide itself, so he could pause the narration at will during the slide show.

I knew how I’d set that up in code, but it seemed like a reasonable thing that users would want to be able to do without resorting to automation. So I went to our ever-helpful end-user writers, and sure enough, you can do what he wanted to without writing a single line of code. After they showed me how, I wrote up instructions and mailed them to him. Then I figured I might as well post them on my blog, in case anyone else was trying to do something similar. So here they are.

When you break it down, here’s what we actually want to do:

· Insert narration that plays automatically when the slide loads.

· Add a button that lets you pause the narration during the slide show.

So here are the four general tasks we need to set this up:

1. Insert the sound file on the slide, and set it to play automatically.

2. Add a ‘Pause’ button to the slide.

3. Add a custom animation to the slide that pauses the sound file.

4. Set the custom animation so that it’s triggered when you click the Pause button.

First, let’s insert the sound file:

1. From the Insert menu, select Movies and Sounds, and then select the option for the sound you want to insert (Sound From File, etc.).

2. We want the narration to start when the slide loads, so click Automatically when prompted.

Next, add the action button:

1. From the Slide Show menu, select Action Buttons, and then click the button you want to use.

2. Draw the button on your slide.

3. When the Action Settings dialog box appears, under Action on Click, select None, and then click OK.

Next, add a custom animation to your slide:

1. From the Slide Show menu, click Custom Animation.

The Custom Animation pane appears.

2. In the Custom Animation pane, select Add Effect, then Sound Actions, and then Pause. This inserts a Pause animation into your animation sequence.

Finally, set the Pause animation to be triggered when the user clicks your ‘Pause’ action button:

1. Select the Pause animation in the Custom Animation pane.

2. Right-click and select Timing.

3. On the Timing tab, click Triggers. Then click Start effect on click of, and select the action button from the pull-down list. Click OK.

That should do it. Now, when the sound file plays, clicking the action button will pause the file playback. Clicking the button again starts the sound file from where it was paused.

The end-user writers were also kind enough to suggest some online articles and trainings that cover these issues in more detail.

Here’s an article that’s about triggers:

Use triggers to create an interactive slide show in PowerPoint

This course covers the new sounds options that were available in 2003:

Playing Sound

While the next link is to a course focused on video, its second lesson tells how to set up the button panel to play the video (sound, in this case).

Playing movies

And, as always, you can also check out the public PowerPoint newsgroup. It’s a great place to get quick answers for stuff like this.

PowerPoint General Questions

Animating Shapes in PowerPoint 2000 and 97 (Part 4 of 4)

Andrew May — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 18:53:00 GMT

(Previous entries in this series: part one, part two, and part three.)

Creating Animation Effects for Media and OLE Objects

For audio and video files inserted as media objects, not only can you set the shape’s animation effect, as with other shapes, but you can customize how the file plays as part of its animation effect as well. The PlaySettings object contains properties that enable you to customize how sound and movies play when they are animated. Table 1 lists these properties, and what you use each for.

Table 1. Selected PlaySettings object properties.

PlaySettings property	Definition
HideWhileNotPlaying	Set whether to display the media object when it is not playing.
LoopUntilStopped	Set the file to play continuously until it’s stopped by the user clicking it, or the next slide transition.
PauseAnimation	Set whether the animation sequence for the slide is paused until the file completes playing.
PlayOnEntry	Set whether the file plays when the file’s entry effect occurs as part of the slide’s animation sequence.
RewindMovie	For video files, set whether the first frame of the movie is automatically redisplayed as soon as the movie has finished playing.
StopAfterSlides	Set the file to stop playing after a specified number of slides have been displayed or when the media clip comes to an end, whichever happens first.

You can also specify that an OLE object perform one of its verbs as part of its animation effect. Use the ActionVerb property to specify which of its verbs the OLE object performs.

Each Shape that represents an OLE object contains a OLEFormat object. The actions an OLE object can perform are contained in the ObjectVerbs collection, which is a child of the OLEFormat object. For example, the following code returns the verbs available for the specified OLE object:

Dim intCount As Integer

With ActivePresentation.Slides(5).Shapes("AVI File") _

.OLEFormat.ObjectVerbs

For intCount = 1 To .Count

Debug.Print intCount & " " & .Item(intCount)

End With

Note that if you insert an audio or video file as an OLE object, rather than as a media object, you cannot set PlaySettings properties for that shape that apply to media objects.

To determine if a given shape is a media or OLE object, use the Type property of the Shape object. This property returns an MsoShapeType constant, such as MsoEmbeddedOLEObject, or MsoLinkedOLEObject or MsoMedia.

For more information on adding media and OLE objects to your presentations programmatically, see Adding Multimedia to a PowerPoint 2003 Presentation.

Object Model Maps

The following diagrams detail the structure of the AnimationSettings object model section.

Figure 1. The AnimationSettings Object

Figure 2. The PlaySettings and SoundEffect Objects

So there you go. As you might have guessed, about half way through writing these entries, I realized I had a full-blown article on my hands. So I’ll probably roll these entries together, clean ‘em up, and submit them as a single article for the Office Developer Center. But it may be awhile until the finished, polished article appears on MSDN, so in the meantime, here’s the information in draft form.

Animating Shapes in PowerPoint 2000 and 97 (Part 3 of 4)

Andrew May — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 17:28:00 GMT

Today, we talking about build effects. If you’re just joining us, you can find the first two parts of this series here and here.

Creating Build Animation Effects for Text and Charts

As mentioned earlier, you can create a special type of animation effect for text and chart objects. For these types of shapes, you can specify a build animation, in which sub-objects of the shape are animated sequentially so that they combine, or build, to display the complete shape. For example, suppose you have a single text box that contains five bullet points. You can specify that each bullet point enter the slide individually.

Use the ChartUnitEffect property for chart shapes, or the TextLevelEffect property for text boxes, to specify a Shape object’s build level; this refers to the lowest level of sub-objects at which you want to assign the effect. For example, for a text box effect with a build level of ppAnimateBySecondLevel, each first and second level bullet point, or paragraph, would be animated separately. Third, fourth, and fifth level paragraphs would be animated at the same time as the second level paragraph above them.

By default, the ChartUnitEffect property is set to ppAnimateByChartAllAtOnce, and the TextLevelEffect property is set to ppAnimateByLevelNone.

In addition, for text you can use the TextUnitEffect property to specify the level at which you want PowerPoint to animate the text within each paragraph: by character, word, or paragraph. By default, the TextUnitEffect property is set to ppAnimateByParagraph.

Finally, you can use the AnimateTextInReverse property to have PowerPoint animate your text build in reverse order, last point first, first point last. For example, if you constructed a slide listing the top ten reasons for something, or the top ten finalists in a contest, you might want to display the list in reverse order.

The following example creates a new slide in the active presentation, and adds a title and three paragraphs, or bullet points. The code sets the title to be animated character-by-character, and uses a color scheme to set the dim color for the title once its animation concludes. For the body text, the code sets the build level to the first level, meaning that the second level paragraph appears on the slide at the same time as the first level paragraph above it. The code also sets the dim color for the body text paragraphs.

With ActivePresentation.Slides.Add(2, ppLayoutText).Shapes

With .Item(1)

.TextFrame.TextRange.Text = "Title"

With .AnimationSettings

.Animate = msoTrue

.TextLevelEffect = ppAnimateByAllLevels

.TextUnitEffect = ppAnimateByCharacter

.AfterEffect = ppAfterEffectDim

.DimColor.SchemeColor = ppShadow

End With

With .Item(2)

With .TextFrame.TextRange

.Text = "This is the first level heading" & vbCrLf

.InsertAfter "This is the second level heading" & vbCrLf

.InsertAfter "This is another first level heading"

.Paragraphs(1, 1).IndentLevel = 1

.Paragraphs(2, 1).IndentLevel = 2

.Paragraphs(3, 1).IndentLevel = 1

End With

With .AnimationSettings

.Animate = msoTrue

.TextLevelEffect = ppAnimateByFirstLevel

.AfterEffect = ppAfterEffectDim

.DimColor.RGB = RGB(100, 150, 130)

End With

To determine if a given shape is a chart, placeholder or text box, use the Type property of the Shape object. This property returns an MsoShapeType constant, such as MsoChart, or MsoPlaceholder or MsoTextBox. Placeholder shapes contain a PlaceholderFormat child object, which in turn includes a Type property that identifies what kind of placeholder the shape is.

Assigning Indent Levels to Text

Because you assign build effects to a shape’s text based on the indent levels of the text paragraphs, such as first-level, second-level, etc., it’s worth discussing how to specify the indent level for text.

Each Shape has a TextFrame object, which in turn has a TextRange object that contains all the text in that shape. You can then use various methods of the TextRange object to return other TextRange objects that represent various subset of the text in the shape, such as paragraphs, sentences, lines, runs, words, or characters. The IndentLevel property of a given TextRange returns or sets the indent level assigned to that text.

You can specify one indent level per paragraph. If you assign an indent level to a text range that is a sub-set of a paragraph, such as a single sentence or character run, that indent level is applied to the entire paragraph. If you assign an indent level to a text range that encompasses text in multiple paragraphs, then each of those paragraphs is assigned the specified indent level. For example, if you change the indent level of a sentence, word, or run in a second-level paragraph to 3, then the indent level for the entire paragraph is set to 3.

Because the objects returned by the various TextRange methods are TextRange objects themselves, they have all the methods and properties of that type. For example, TextFrame.TextRange.Paragraphs.Count returns the number of paragraphs contained in a shape’s text frame. Use the Paragraphs method to set the indent level of your paragraphs.

The following code example adds four paragraphs, or bullet points, to a shape on a slide. It then uses the Paragraphs method to individually return and set the indent level of each of those paragraphs.

With objShape.TextFrame.TextRange

.Text = "This is the first level heading" & vbCrLf

.InsertAfter "This is the second level heading" & vbCrLf

.InsertAfter "This is the third level heading" & vbCrLf

.InsertAfter "This is another first level heading"

.Paragraphs(1, 1).IndentLevel = 1

.Paragraphs(2, 1).IndentLevel = 2

.Paragraphs(3, 1).IndentLevel = 3

.Paragraphs(4, 1).IndentLevel = 1

End With

Tomorrow we’ll talk about setting media objects and OLE objects to perform as part of their animation effects. And if you’re good, maybe I’ll throw in some object model diagrams as well.

Animating Shapes in PowerPoint 2000 and 97 (Part 2 of 4)

Andrew May — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 18:06:00 GMT

So yesterday we started talking about how to animate shapes if you’re programming for PowerPoint 97 or 2000. Today we continue by discussing how to trigger your animation effects, and control the order in which they occur. We’ll also touch on how to further customize a shape’s animation, by adding sound and/or changing the shape’s post-animation appearance.

Setting the Order in Which PowerPoint Animates Shapes

The AnimationOrder property of each shape determines the order in which PowerPoint animates the shape, from the lowest number to the highest. By default, if you don’t explicitly specify an animation order, PowerPoint sets the animation order in the order in which you set the Shape objects to be animated; that is, the order in which you set the Animate property to msoTrue for each Shape object. The first shape for which you set Animate to msoTrue is first in the animation sequence, the next second, and so on. If you later set a Shape objects AnimationOrder property to a specific value, PowerPoint re-orders the index of each shape’s animation accordingly.

The following code demonstrates this. The code creates a new blank slide, then adds four shapes and specifies that each be animated. No animation index is specified, so PowerPoint sets each shape as the next in the animation sequence as the code specifies each to be animated. The code prints the name and animation order of each shape. Then the code adds a fifth shape, and explicitly sets the animation index of this shape to ‘2’. PowerPoint automatically resets the animation order index of each shape that comes after the new shape in the animation order. Lastly, the code prints the name of each shape, and its revised animation order.

Sub DemoAnimationIndexing()

Dim iCount As Integer

Dim objShape As Shape

ActivePresentation.Slides.Add Index:=1, Layout:=ppLayoutBlank

With ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes

For iCount = 1 To 4

Set objShape = .AddShape(msoShapeCube, 100, 100, 100, 100)

objShape.Name = "Cube " & iCount

With objShape.AnimationSettings

.Animate = msoTrue

'.AnimationOrder = iCount

End With

Debug.Print objShape.Name & _

" Animation Order: " & _

objShape.AnimationSettings.AnimationOrder

Next iCount

Set objShape = .AddShape(msoShapeCube, 100, 100, 100, 100)

objShape.Name = "Cube 5"

With objShape.AnimationSettings

.Animate = msoTrue

.AnimationOrder = 2

End With

For iCount = 1 To .Count

Debug.Print .Item(iCount).Name & _

" Animation Order: " & _

.Item(iCount).AnimationSettings.AnimationOrder

Next iCount

End With

End Sub

Setting How PowerPoint Advances to the Next Animation Effect

You can specify when you want PowerPoint to advance to the next shape animation in the animation sequence: either when the user clicks the slide, or after a specified time interval. Use the AdvanceMode property to specify whether you want PowerPoint to perform a shape’s animation when the user clicks on the slide, or after a certain period of time. For timed advancement, use the AdvanceTime property to specify the time, in seconds, PowerPoint should wait after the last animation effect before performing the specified animation.

By default, the AdvanceMode property is set to ppAdvanceModeOnClick.

The following example sets a shape to be the first shape animated when the slide loads, and for PowerPoint to automatically animate the shape five seconds after the slide loads.

Dim objShape As Shape

With ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes

Set objShape = .Item("Title")

With objShape.AnimationSettings

.EntryEffect = ppEffectBlindsHorizontal

.AnimationOrder = 1

.AdvanceMode = ppAdvanceOnTime

.AdvanceTime = 5

End With

Further Customizing Your Animation Effects

Once you’ve set which shapes get animated, with which animation effects and in which order, you can customize the animation effect for each shape even further. You can add a sound effect to a shape’s animation, and alter the appearance of a shape once PowerPoint has performed the shape’s animation effect.

In addition, certain types of Shape objects have additional animation functionality. You can animate text and charts to build piece-by-piece, to reveal the complete shape. If you animate media or OLE objects, you can customize how they perform as part of their animation effect.

Adding Sound to Your Animation Effects

You can also add a sound effect to a shape’s animation effect. This is different from adding sound files to the slide itself. An animation sound effect is not an independent shape that appears on the slide; rather, it is a sound file that plays when PowerPoint animates the shape to which it is assigned. The SoundEffect object, a child of the AnimationsSettings object, contains members that enable you to set and control a Shape object’s animation sound effect.

Use the ImportFromFile method to specify a sound file you want imported and used as an animation sound effect. You can also use a sound effect that is native to PowerPoint by setting the Name property.

You can also use the SoundEffect object to stop a sound effect from a previous shape’s animation effect. By default, PowerPoint plays each sound effect through once, unless the next shape’s animation starts first, and it has a sound effect. But you might want to stop the previous sound effect when the next shape’s animation begins, but that shape’s animation effect does not have a sound effect. In this case, set the SoundEffect.Type property of the second shape to ppSoundEffectStopPrevious. This stops the previous sound effect; you do not need to specify a sound file for the sound effect.

For shapes with build animations, such as text or charts, the sound effect restarts each time PowerPoint animates the next sub-object. For example, if you set the TextLevelEffect property to ppAnimateByFirstLevel, the sound effect restarts each time PowerPoint animates the next first level paragraph. In addition, if you set the TextUnitEffect property to ppAnimateByCharacter or ppAnimateByWord, then the sound effect restarts each time PowerPoint animates the next character or word, respectively.

The following example specifies the animation settings for the selected shape on a slide. The code specifies that PowerPoint display the text in the shape character by character, playing the typewriter sound effect each time PowerPoint displays a new character. Note that “Typewriter” is a native PowerPoint sound effect.

With .Shapes("Body Text").AnimationSettings

.TextLevelEffect = ppAnimateByFirstLevel

.TextUnitEffect = ppAnimateByCharacter

.SoundEffect.Name = "Typewriter"

End With

Changing the Appearance of the Shape Once PowerPoint Completes the Animation Effect

You can also specify how you want the Shape to appear once the animation is finished by using the AfterEffect property. You can use after effects to de-emphasize a slide element once you want to move the user’s focus elsewhere, and to conserve slide ‘real estate’. For example, you can set shapes or text to turn a neutral color, so they fade into the slide background and do not distract from the slide shape being animated next. You can also set PowerPoint to render a shape invisible, either immediately after PowerPoint finishes animating it, or on the next slide click. With the exception of ppAfterEffectHideOnClick, PowerPoint performs the specified after effect as soon as it finishes animating the shape.

By default, the AfterEffect property is set to ppAfterEffectNothing.

If you specify ppAfterEffectDim, you can use the DimColor property to specify a ColorFormat object representing the dim color you want. The dim color is the color PowerPoint turns the shape or text once PowerPoint is done animating it.

Next time, we’ll cover build effect animations: what they are, and how to assign and customize them.

Animating Shapes in PowerPoint 2000 and 97 (Part 1)

Andrew May — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 22:16:00 GMT

So, while I was out of town, my first article dealing with PowerPoint animation made its debut:

Comparing Ways to Control Animation in PowerPoint 2002 and 2003

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries, there are actually two ways to programmatically animate shapes on a slide: one that works best for PowerPoint 2002 and 2003, and one that’s been retained for compatibility with PowerPoint 2000 and 97. This article examines the differences between the two, and discusses when using each is appropriate.

Slated for publication next week is the first of a two-part article that covers how to use the revised and greatly expanded animation functionality included in PowerPoint 2002 and 2003.

Now, while my articles naturally focus on the advantages of using the 2002 and 2003 functionality, in order to write these articles I had to learn how to use the 2000 and 97 functionality as well. And since there’s a large number of developers out there still working with those versions, it seems worthwhile to take a few minutes and present that information here. So for the next few days, I’ll be covering how to animate shapes using the AnimationSettings object.

Applies to:

Microsoft PowerPoint 2000

Microsoft PowerPoint 97

Introduction

In PowerPoint, the term animations refers to special visual or sound effects you add to text or an object. Animation effects give motion to text, pictures, and other content on your slides. Besides adding action, they help you guide audience focus, emphasize important points, transition between slides, and maximize slide space by moving things on and off.

These effects can include how the shape (or its component parts) enter the slide, what the shape does once it appears on the slide, and how it appears once the animation sequence moves to the next shape. You can set the animation sequence to advance to the next animation effect by the user clicking on the slide, or pre-set timing settings.

Important If you are programming for PowerPoint versions 2002 or 2003, you should be using the TimeLine object model for dealing with animation effects; the AnimationSettings object model should only be used for PowerPoint versions 2000 and 97. The two object models are not compatible. Using the AnimationSettings object model for programming PowerPoint 2002 or 2003 is not recommended, as it can have unexpected and undesirable results for your animation sequences. For more information see Comparing Ways to Control Animation in PowerPoint 2002 and 2003.

Animations in PowerPoint 2000 and 97

In PowerPoint 2000 and 97, each Shape object on a slide can have a single animation effect, represented by that Shape object’s AnimationSettings object. You create and customize animations using the AnimationSettings object’s members and child objects. While each Shape object can have only one animation effect, in the case of charts or text, the animation effect may be a build effect, in which sub-objects of the shape are animated sequentially so that they combine, or build, to display the complete shape. We discuss build effect animations is greater detail later.

Shapes that are not animated appear on the slide when it first loads.

The individual animation effects for each shape collectively make up a slide’s animation sequence. There is one animation sequence per slide, and it starts when the slide loads.

Setting the Type, Timing, and Order of a Slide’s Animation Sequence

When you decide to add animation effects to a slide, the general questions you need to answer concern the sequence and timing of the shapes you want to animate:

· Which shapes do you want to animate?

· What kind of animation do you want PowerPoint to perform on each shape?

· In what order do you want PowerPoint to animate the shapes?

· How do you want to initiate each shape’s animation effect?

Setting Which Shapes Get Animated

For PowerPoint to animate a shape, you set the Animate property of its AnimationSettings object to msoTrue. PowerPoint automatically sets the Animate property to msoTrue in either of the following instances:

· You set the TextLevelEffect property to a value other than ppAnimateLevelNone.

· You set the EntryEffect property to a value other than ppEntryEffectNone.

The converse is also true. PowerPoint automatically sets the Animate property to msoFalse if you set the TextLevelEffect property to ppAnimateLevelNone, or set the EntryEffect property to ppEntryEffectNone.

Even if you have set other properties of the AnimationSettings object, PowerPoint disregards them and does not animate the shape unless the Animate property is set to msoTrue.

Shapes with an EntryEffect property of ppEffectNone are visible when the slide loads.

There are instances when you would want to set the EntryEffect property to ppEffectNone. For example, you could have a media object you want visible on the slide when it loads, even if you do not want to play the file until the fourth animation in the sequence. The following code does just that. Note that the code explicitly sets the Animate property is to True after it specifies the EntryEffect property as ppEffectNone.

With ActivePresentation.Slides(1).Shapes

Set objShape = .Item("Title")

With objShape.AnimationSettings

.EntryEffect = ppEffectBlindsHorizontal

.AnimationOrder = 1

End With

Set objShape = .Item("Shape1")

With objShape.AnimationSettings

.EntryEffect = ppEffectFlyFromLeft

.AnimationOrder = 2

End With

Set objShape = .Item("MovieClip")

With objShape.AnimationSettings

.EntryEffect = ppEffectNone

.Animate = msoTrue

.AnimationOrder = 3

End With

Specifying the Animation Effect PowerPoint Performs on a Shape

Use the EntryEffect property to specify which animation effect you want PowerPoint to perform on the selected shape. All animation effects created using the AnimationSettings object are entrance effects. Entrance effects are animations that control how the shape becomes visible on the slide. For example, this could involve having the shape appear to move onto the slide from outside the slide boundaries, such as flying in from the right edge of the slide; or having the shape become visible in place in a particular manner, such as dissolving into visibility.

By default, if you do not set an animation effect for a shape, PowerPoint uses the ‘Appear’ effect, ppEntryEffectAppear. The code example in the following section demonstrates this.

Tomorrow, we’ll tackle setting the animation order of the shapes on a slide, and how to trigger a shape’s animation effect.

Playing Invisible Sound Clips Revisited

Andrew May — Tue, 01 Jun 2004 21:56:00 GMT

So, it turns out there’s still more to report on how to programmatically control your media objects in PowerPoint. And it’s good news, so read on.

I originally wrote about how to have a sound clip play automatically when a slide is loaded, without having the sound file icon visible. I used the AnimationSettings.PlaySettings object, which works fine for PowerPoint 2000 and below. But it’s the exact wrong thing to do with PowerPoint 2002 and 2003, as it may lead to some of your other animation effects being deleted from the slide. Then I showed how you could do the same thing using the TimeLine object. Unfortunately, because of a flaw in the object model, when you access the PlaySettings object through the TimeLine object, you still might end up deleting effects unless you’re very careful.

Now, thanks to PowerPoint’s wonderful development team, I’ve learned that you can actually set a media object to play, pause, and stop, all without accessing the PlaySettings object. This presents a nice work-around that prevents you from accidentally deleting animations from your slide. Here’s how it works:

Turns out there are three effect types that control the playing of a sound or movie file: MsoAnimEffectMediaPause, MsoAnimEffectMediaPlay, and MsoAnimEffectMediaStop. By assigning Effect objects of these effect types to a media object, you can control when the audio or video file plays during your animation sequence, without accessing the PlaySettings object.

So, going back to our example from those previous entries, here’s how you would insert a sound file, move it off the viewable slide area, and create an Effect object that would play the file as soon as the slide loads:

Sub AddAudioOffSlide()

Dim shpSound As Shape

With ActivePresentation.Slides(1)

'Add sound file

With .Shapes

Set shpSound = .AddMediaObject _

(FileName:="C:\soundfiles\bobmould\black sheets of rain.mp3")

'Position sound file off viewable slide area

With shpSound

.Left = 0 - .Width

.Top = 0 - .Height

End With

With .TimeLine.MainSequence

'Add effect to play sound file

'As first effect in main sequence

'set effect to perform when slide is loaded

.AddEffect Shape:=shpSound, _

effectId:=msoAnimEffectMediaPlay, _

trigger:=msoAnimTriggerWithPrevious, _

Index:=1

End With

Now obviously, with the ability to play, pause, and stop media files, you create much more complex animation sequences than the above example.

One interesting thing worth mentioning: the MsoAnimEffectMediaPause effect type actually functions to toggle whether the media object is playing or not. That is, if the media file is playing, assigning an MsoAnimEffectMediaPause effect to the file pauses it; but if the file is already paused, assigning another MsoAnimEffectMediaPause effect to the file causes the file to resume playing from the point at which it was pause. Conversely, an MsoAnimEffectMediaPlay effect always starts the file playing from the beginning of the file, whether or not the file is currently paused at a certain point in the file.

The following example adds effects for a video file to a slide’s main animation sequence. When the user clicks the page, the video file plays for 10 seconds, then pauses for 10 seconds, then starts playing for another 10 seconds before it stops. To accomplish this, the code adds four effects to the sequence. The first starts the file playing; the second pauses the file; the third starts the file playing again; and the final effect stops the file playing. The first effect is triggered when the user clicks the page; the other three are set to be triggered with the previous effect. The code sets the trigger delay time for each effect is set to different durations; otherwise, PowerPoint would perform all the effects simultaneously.

Note that the third effect, the one that resumes the file playing from the point where it was paused, is of type MsoAnimEffectMediaPause rather than type MsoAnimEffectMediaPlay.

Dim shpVideo As Shape

Dim effPause As Effect

Dim effPlayAgain As Effect

Dim effStop As Effect

With ActivePresentation.Slides(1)

Set shpVideo = .Shapes("demovideo")

With .TimeLine.MainSequence

.AddEffect Shape:=shpVideo, _

effectId:=msoAnimEffectMediaPlay, _

trigger:=msoAnimTriggerOnPageClick

Set effPause = .AddEffect(Shape:=shpVideo, _

effectId:=msoAnimEffectMediaPause, _

trigger:=msoAnimTriggerWithPrevious)

effPause.Timing.TriggerDelayTime = 10

Set effPlayAgain = .AddEffect(Shape:=shpVideo, _

effectId:=msoAnimEffectMediaPause, _

trigger:=msoAnimTriggerWithPrevious)

effPlayAgain.Timing.TriggerDelayTime = 20

Set effStop = .AddEffect(Shape:=shpVideo, _

effectId:=msoAnimEffectMediaStop, _

trigger:=msoAnimTriggerWithPrevious)

effStop.Timing.TriggerDelayTime = 30

End With

For more information about inserting media objects to a presentation, you can always refer to my article Adding Multimedia to a PowerPoint 2003 Presentation.

I’m working on several articles dealing with how to create and customize animation sequences in PowerPoint 2002 and above. With any luck they’ll be published in a few weeks. Of course, I’ll post the links here once those articles go live.

Many thanks again to the PowerPoint development team for their willingness to bring me up to speed and (gently) correct my mistakes.

Working with multimedia files in PowerPoint

Andrew May — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:50:00 GMT

My first two developer articles for PowerPoint are now available on the Office Developer Center:

How PowerPoint 2003 Plays Multimedia Files in a Presentation

The title pretty much say it all. The first article should actually be of interest to more than just PowerPoint developers. It explains how PowerPoint 2002 and 2003 decide which Microsoft media technology to use to play a given multimedia file, and includes some advice on how to help ensure PowerPoint plays your sound and movie files as you want, whether on your machine or somewhere else. I’ve seen questions about this issue come up a lot in the newsgroups, so hopefully this article provides some answers. And while it’s published on MSDN, it should be understandable and useful to anyone who uses multimedia files with PowerPoint; there’s not a single line of code in it, I promise.

Adding Multimedia to a PowerPoint 2003 Presentation

The second article is more firmly aimed at a developer audience. It covers how to programmatically insert audio and video into PowerPoint presentations, and the advantages of inserting the files as media object, as opposed to OLE objects.

I’m really happy with how these turned out. Give ‘em a read, and let me know what you think.

Assigning Build Levels to Text

Andrew May — Fri, 02 Apr 2004 20:07:00 GMT

So, as I may have mentioned, I’m currently writing a few articles dealing with PowerPoint animations. One of the interesting concepts here is that of the build, in which the sub-objects of a shape enter the slide, either individually or in subsets, to build the final shape. One of the most prevalent uses of this is the dreaded ‘text build’, where the various bullet points of a text box enter a slide.

Because you assign build effects to a shape’s text based on the indent levels of the text paragraphs, such as first-level, second-level, etc., it’s worth discussing how to specify the indent level for text.

Each Shape has a TextFrame object, which in turn has a TextRange object that contains all the text in a shape. You can then use various methods of the TextRange object to return other TextRange objects that represent various subset of the text in the shape, such as paragraphs, sentences, lines, runs, words, or characters. The IndentLevel property of a given TextRange returns or sets the indent level assigned to that text.

You can specify one build level per paragraph. If you assign an indent level to a text range that is a sub-set of a paragraph, such as a single sentence or character run, that indent level is applied to the entire paragraph. If you assign an indent level to a text range that encompasses text in multiple paragraphs, then each of those paragraphs is assigned the specified indent level. For example, if you change the indent level of a sentence, word, or run in a second-level paragraph to 3, then the indent level for the entire paragraph is set to 3.

Because the objects returned by the various TextRange methods are TextRange objects themselves, they have all the methods and properties of that type. For example, TextRange.TextRange.Paragraphs.Count returns the number of paragraphs contained in a shape’s text frame. Use the Paragraphs method to set the indent level of your paragraphs.

The code below adds four paragraphs, or bullet points, to a shape on a slide. It then uses the Paragraphs method to individually return and set the indent level of each of those paragraphs.

With objShape.TextFrame.TextRange

.Text = "This is the first level heading" & vbCrLf

.InsertAfter "This is the second level heading" & vbCrLf

.InsertAfter "This is the third level heading" & vbCrLf

.InsertAfter "This is another first level heading"

.Paragraphs(1, 1).IndentLevel = 1

.Paragraphs(2, 1).IndentLevel = 2

.Paragraphs(3, 1).IndentLevel = 3

.Paragraphs(4, 1).IndentLevel = 1

End With

And here’s how the text would display on the slide:

· This is the first level heading

· This is the second level heading

· This is the third level heading

· This is another first level heading

How Not to Animate Your Slide

Andrew May — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 23:12:00 GMT

Hey, remember that nifty tip in my last blog entry about how to set up a sound file so that’s it’s ‘invisible’ and plays automatically when the slide loads? Nice trick, huh? Turns out that entry, in addition to being my first official PowerPoint blog entry, afforded me the rare opportunity to be horribly wrong with my advice in two completely different ways. Not only should you not set up the file to play automatically using the code I wrote, but even if you wrote the correct code, it might well screw up other animation effects for your entire slide.

Here’s the deal:

Unbeknownst to me at the time, it turns out that in PowerPoint 2002 and above there are actually two separate, incompatible sections of the object model that enable you to set up animation effects for your slide. The new, expanded object model section, contained in the TimeLine object, provides more flexibility and options for richer interactive animations then ever before. This is the object model section you should use for animation whenever possible. The other section, contained in the AnimationSettings object, was retained strictly for backward compatibility reasons. Unless you’re programming for PowerPoint 2000 and below, never use the Animation Settings object. (This, of course, make me wonder why this section of the object model wasn’t hidden for PowerPoint 2002 and above, but that’s a minor digression.)

Still with me? Because of basic differences in the way they are organized, the two object models are not compatible. The AnimationSettings object model only supports entry effects for shapes (which is one reason the TimeLine object model was created, to offer users multiple effects for a single shape.) Here’s where the fun begins. If your code uses the AnimationSettings object to set any effect properties, PowerPoint assumes you are programming for PowerPoint 2000 or below, and therefore deletes any animation effects that are not entry effects, for the entire slide. This includes effects that were added using the user interface.

Ouch.

So naturally, the code I wrote for my tip inserted the sound file ‘offscreen’, and then used the AnimationSettings object to set the file to play when the slide loaded. Let me apologize right now if I blew up anyone’s slide and you’ve been trying to figure out why ever since.

Now, normally at this point, having finished my mea culpa, I would show you the proper way to set the file to play automatically, using the TimeLine object model.

Except it doesn’t work that way either.

Turns out there’s currently a bug in the PowerPoint object model. You set a file to play automatically by setting PlaySettings.PlayOnEntry to True. You can access the PlaySettings object through either object model. Unfortunately, because of the bug, when you access certain properties of the PlaySettings object, even if you do so through the TimeLine object model, PowerPoint assumes you are programming for PowerPoint 2000 or below, and—you guessed it—deletes any animation effects that are not entry effects, for the entire slide.

This is true for the following PlaySettings properties: ActionVerb, HideWhileNotPlaying, PauseAnimation, PlayOnEntry, and StopAfterSlides. It seems like you can access the following two properties and not suffer any ill effects, but no guarantees: LoopUntilStopped and RewindMovie.

Did I mention that I was still learning my way around the PowerPoint object model?

Actually, I’m in the process right now of writing several articles on how to create, customize and control animation effects in PowerPoint. And unlike these helpful blog entries, the articles will be tech reviewed by developers on the PowerPoint team. Stay tuned.

Playing Sound Clips Without Seeing the Icon

Andrew May — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 19:16:00 GMT

So here it is, my first official blog entry dealing with programming PowerPoint presentations. It’s a modest tip, but then, I’m still learning my way around the PowerPoint object model.

When you insert a sound clip into a PowerPoint presentation, a small icon representing the sound file appears on the specified slide. Which is fine if you intend to start the sound file playing by user interaction, that is, by clicking on the icon or moving your mouse over top of it. But what if you just want the clip to play automatically when the slide loads? Then the icon is just visual clutter.

In the user interface, if you drag the icon off into the ‘work space’ area around the slide, then the icon won’t appear during the presentation. Just remember to set the sound clip to play automatically when the slide appears, however, because without the icon you don’t have any way to start the slide during the presentation itself.

The following code does the same thing programmatically. First, it inserts the sound file. Then it moves the sound file (now represented by a Shape object, the icon) over to above the upper left hand corner of the slide. Then it sets several properties of the AnimationSettings object, which controls the playback behavior of the sound file. Specifically, the sound file is set to be the first shape on the slide animated, but to have no entry effect (so it just appears—or rather, doesn’t, as it’s positioned off the slide), and to play as soon as it appears, which is when the slide appears.

Sub AddAudioOffSlide()

Dim shpSound As Shape

With ActivePresentation.Slides(2).Shapes

Set shpSound = .AddMediaObject _

("C:\soundfiles\pixies\wave_of_mutilation.mp3")

With shpSound

.Left = 0 - .Width

.Top = 0 - .Height

With .AnimationSettings

.Animate = msoTrue

.AnimationOrder = 1

.EntryEffect = ppEffectNone

.PlaySettings.PlayOnEntry = msoTrue

.AdvanceMode = ppAdvanceOnTime

.AdvanceTime = 0

End With

End Sub

I believe you could also set the sound file to play in conjunction with another shape’s animation by setting the AnimationSettings.AnimationOrder of both Shape objects to the same value, but I haven’t tested that. And anyway, if you just wanted to play the sound file once as part of another shape’s animation, you can just use the AnimationSettings.SoundEffect property to do that, without having to add the sound file to the slide at all.