How much can VBA control? (PPT 2000)

[pwright2]

I remember that Woody claimed in one of his earliest books (since quite contritely retracted) that everything about Word could be controlled by macros. My interest is Powerpoint and how much of its UI can be controlled by VBA. Is everything accessible? How much of its API has been revealed?

I realize this is pretty vague. I haven't learned any programming language since ALGOL and Fortran IV in my college days. And some spaghetti code BASIC with my C64. But PPT would be oh so much more useful to me with what would seem to be a minor change in the way I can control its existing abilities. So, an assessment of whether it would take me a year or 10 years to adapt it is my interest.

[Kevin]

Go ahead and ask a specific question about programming PPT. What exactly do you want to do?

[pwright2]

Takes some of the fun out of it. Part of the adventure is 'Can I learn?'. However,

Visualize: dual screen system. Powerpoint is showing a slide on the secondary monitor. The primary monitor is in slide-sorter mode. The slide being shown is highlighted. Now, in this mode pressing PgUp, PgDn, etc, does not make any change to the shown slide. You can, however, punch in the number shown under the slide in slide-sorter mode and hit enter and that slide will be shown. But the highlight does not change. Also, you can punch in the number of a slide that is offscreen (in s-s mode) and it will show but the s-s screen does not scroll to show it. Makes it real easy to lose track of where you are in the show.

What I want to do is: (1) make the highlight follow the shown slide (including scrolling screen where necessary) and ;(2) enable PgUp, PgDn, etc. navigation. B key would be nice too.

So, can I do that with VBA?

[Kevin]

Not having the luxury of a dual monitor setup, I can't answer those questions. But let's see what others say...

[jscher2000]

Interesting; I wonder if this could be done with a single monitor and a projector?

Anyway, take a look at the following in the object model:

Application_SlideSelectionChanged

[pwright2]

Great. That's the kind of concepts I need.

(Yes, the second monitor output also goes to the projector.)

Now what i need is a link to "Getting started in VBA programming and Powerpoint" or some such. I bet it exists here in the forum, which is why the lack of a functional search engine hurts so much. Victim of success, I gather.

Can you point me to some instructional text?

[jscher2000]

I bought "Office 2000 Visual Basic for Applications Fundamentals" when for some unknown reason it appeared at my local Costco. It has a reasonable introduction to PowerPoint's event model and general VBA intro for other parts of Office 2000.

Also, we have a visiting MVP who posted some useful links earlier this year on the PowerPoint board (I think her name was Echo). I can't really remember the name of the person whose site she recommended, so this spelling is highly suspect: Shyam Pillar?? Hopefully you can find that site!

[HansV]

You probably PowerPoint MVP <!profile=ShyamPillai>ShyamPillai<!/profile>'s Office Tips. The other is <!profile=Echo Swinford>Echo Swinford<!/profile>. Both are Microsoft PowerPoint MVP's and visiting MVP's in the Lounge.