Countdown Clock

[Tom K]

Does anyone know how to display a countdown clock in PowerPoint? We use
PowerPoint in our monthly homeowners association meetings. At the end of the
meeting we do an "Open Forum" where any of the 75-100 members can address
the board. They are allowed 5 minutes to speak. When we get to that point in
the program, I would like to display a countdown clock on the screen (MM:SS)
where it counts down from 5 minutes to 0. Then I would like to be able to
reset/restart it again for the next speaker.

Has anyone ever seen this done in PowerPoint? We're open to buying a
third-party programmed utility as well if the price is reasonable.

Would appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks,

Tom K

 

[Brian Reilly, MVP]

Tom K,
This is quite do-able in several different ways. Some require VBA,
some require ActiveX controls.

Please answer the following questions for more details of exactly what
you want and one or more of us will get back to you.

1. Do you have someone who is driving the mouse and keyboard to
advance to the next slide?
2. Should it count down from 5:00 to 0:00?
3. Anybody there who is comfortable with VBA programming. This is not
hard if someone knows the basics. In fact, if you search on my name
earlier today you will see the approach which would just need a little
tweaking to do this in a textbox.
4. Not going to run in the Viewer you know, since the PPT Viewer
doesn't support VBA or Active X controls. What version of real PPT are
you planning to use this in?

Brian Reilly, MVP

 

[Bill Dilworth]

If you use an animation, you will be able to do this without code and usable
in the viewer.

Take a graphic, any graphic (like you association's logo or a house or an
hourglass), and add an exit wipe down animation that lasts for 5:00. Tell
the speaker they have as long as the graphic stays on the screen. Do an
auto-advance 0:01 on the page so that when the animation (5:00) is done, it
will advance to the "You are a Bad presenter and have run over time" page.

You can also do a thousand variations on this (five one minute balls, a ball
that moves to the bottom of the screen very slowly like Times Square, etc.)

If you do not insist on the 5:00 format, this is pretty easy.


--
Bill Dilworth
A proud member of the Microsoft PPT MVP Team
Users helping fellow users.
http://billdilworth.mvps.org
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
vestprog2@ Please read the PowerPoint FAQ pages.
yahoo. They answer most of our questions.
com www.pptfaq.com
..

 

[Tom K]

Brian:
Thanks for the offer of assistance. Regarding your questions:
1. My laptop and projector sit about 25' away from me on a table. I advance
the slides from where I sit using a presenter's remote and a small USB
receiver that plugs into the laptop. The remote has five functions: advance
slide, go back slide, hide slide, escape from presentation, and launch
presentation. It doesn't have any mouse navigation functions. No one sits at
the laptop.
2. I would ideally like it to count down from 5:00 minutes to 0:00 minutes,
but if it had to count up from 0 to 5, that would probably work too.
3. Once or twice I've done some very basic VBA. I would be willing to learn
more if needed to do this. Most of the members of the homeowners association
are retired (as I am). I haven't found a lot of PC experience within the
group.
4. Not necessary to run in PPT viewer. We use the regular version PPT 2007
on my laptop.

If it matters, this would normally be the last slide of the meeting. The way
I saw this happening, if possible, would be once I got to the last slide, it
would have 5:00 shown on it. Pressing one of the keys on the remote would
start the clock counting down when the speaker steps to the podium. When
they are finished, or the clock stops at 0:00, I would go back a slide, then
advance again to the last slide where the clock would be refreshed (or some
other process is feasible too).

Thanks,
Tom

 

[Tom K]

Bill:

Thanks for the idea. I've tried to see if on one slide I could create five
1-minute bars that wipe from top to bottom (and then disapper) where the
first bar is triggered by the mouse, and the others by the previous bar. I
think that might be a solution except that I can't get the bars to wipe over
a 1-minute period. The properties for each bar only allow, at most, a
5-second wipe, which the program labels "very slow." Is there some way to
override this with a longer time? I'm using Powerpoint 2007.

Thanks,
Tom

 

[Brian Reilly, MVP]

tom,
Gee, I'm disappointed in Bill's comment. (g). He is a fellow MVP and
does program in VBA as well. Shame on hime for trying to do this
within PPT's built-in contraints (vbg).

Tell us if this approach would work for you:
You have a slide or several (haven't worked that out just yet), that
would have a textbox that counted down saying something like "5:00
minutes to go" and then updated every second or 5 or 10 seconds to say
"4:59 minutes to go" or "4:55 minutes to go". The text is up to you
the counting time is up to you and would update in seconds, which
might be distracting or in increments of 5 or 10 seconds, which might
be less unnerving and less distracting.

I think we could patch this together in not much time from existing
code from various MVP's and just have to tell you how to get it into
the PPT presentation.

You'd essentially control it from your remote by hitting next slide so
if a person only took 3:33 and you wanted to move on it would reset to
5:00 and resume countdown.

Let me know, and I'll cobble something up, fingers crossed that PPT
2007 hasn't messed this up like it has with some other areas of VBA.
But I shouldn't think so. But I can test on 2007 to be sure.

Brian Reilly, MVP

 

[Bill Dilworth]

Hi again Tom,

You can over-ride the default suggested animation durations with one lasting
between 0.1 seconds and many hours. Luckily, you needs fall in between
those extremes.

1) Add the wipe from top exit animation.
2) Click on the down arrow shape next to the animation (in the list of
animations) and select 'Timing' from the dropdown list.
3) In the duration field of the animation dialog box, modify to whatever
time you want (5:00 for 5 minutes)
4) Ok out of the boxes

--
Bill Dilworth
A proud member of the Microsoft PPT MVP Team
Users helping fellow users.
http://billdilworth.mvps.org
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
vestprog2@ Please read the PowerPoint FAQ pages.
yahoo. They answer most of our questions.
com www.pptfaq.com
..

 

[Bill Dilworth]

I have one of these, but it is more involved than most people really want.
Why make something harder than it has to be?

My cats said to say hi to Capt.

--
Bill Dilworth
A proud member of the Microsoft PPT MVP Team
Users helping fellow users.
http://billdilworth.mvps.org
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
vestprog2@ Please read the PowerPoint FAQ pages.
yahoo. They answer most of our questions.
com www.pptfaq.com
..

 

[Tom K]

Bill:

Thanks again. My PPT 2007 version doesn't have a "duration" field on the
timing tab, but I see where I can overtype the default 5 seconds in the
"speed" field to make it wipe with the right timing. I think I could make
this work if I run into problems with Brian's solution for a clock.

Thanks for your help.

Tom

 

[Tom K]

Brian:

What you are suggesting would be ideal. And I agree that updating the
seconds every 5 or 10 would be less distracting to the audience. Being able
to hit the advance slide button and have it stop and reset, to presumably
start again for the next speaker on advance slide would also work smoothly.

I don't think I would need any additional text along with the clock--like
X:XX minutes to go--just the clock would be fine.

You guys are great! Many thanks.

Tom

 

[Brian Reilly, MVP]

Tom,
Countdown timers have been frequently asked for and as I have said
there are a wide variety of ways to do this. I personally like this
solution since I can code it and publish it to the PPTFAQ.COM site as
a robust solution that can be easily adapted to many needs.

I will fit it into my schedule to wite some very robust code,
flagrently stealing Shyam Pillai's code to do the API call, and
providing a simple way for a user to set the timer to 1/5/10/30
seconds etc. Will post back here by end of week. Fortunately other
work gets in the way (g). Maybe I'll even let my cat talk to Bill
Dilworth's cats to see if they want to add the option to show it more
visually than just in a text box. I know Bill is smart, but it may
take a few days to herd those cats.

Brian Reilly, MVP

 

[Ray MacNeil]

Am I missing something here?

If you go to
http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/templates/CT101423491033.aspx?stt=26
there's all kinds of timer slides. Surely, with minor modifications,
something here will suit your needs?

Ray

 

[Bill Dilworth]

No Ray, you're not missing something. These are the same thing that Brian
was leading Tom to. I had not seen that MS had put those up. Nice of them.


--
Bill Dilworth
A proud member of the Microsoft PPT MVP Team
Users helping fellow users.
http://billdilworth.mvps.org
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
vestprog2@ Please read the PowerPoint FAQ pages.
yahoo. They answer most of our questions.
com www.pptfaq.com
..

 

[Tom K]

Thanks Ray/Bill for the suggestion. That's pretty much what I'm after. Do
either of you know how these work? I'm testing the 5 min one in my
presentation. I would need to modify it to show more frequent "counting
down" with at a minimum having a frequency of every 15 seconds. Is there
like a series of hidden images that are activated one by one? If so, how
would I see these so that I can modify them?

Thanks,
Tom

 

[Brian Reilly, MVP]

Ray,
Good link. These all use animations of multiple static objects like
Bill originally suggested.
If Tom were to settle on an update every 15 seconds he would need to
manage (4 objects per minute x 5 minutes) 20 objects, if he wanted
ever 10 seconds he'd have to manage 6 x 5 or 30 objects, all static.
That certainly is one fine way to do this.

Just not my way. My way would permit Tom or others to mange only two
inputs and could be changed to any variable number of timing sessions.
Thanks for pointing to this web page on the MS site.

Brian Reilly, MVP

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:25:04 -0800, Ray MacNeil <Ray