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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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

(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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Ever print something and have it be slightly different than what you saw in Print Preview? Conversely, ever go into Print Preview and see something that’s just a tad off from what your file actually looks like? For the most part, the differences are probably minor, but why does it happen at all...