Envoke a ppa (a form) from a ppt macro?

[Martin Stender]

Hi All,

Is there any way to make a macro in a ppt-template activate an
installed add-in?

Or maybe there are other solutions to the problem, which is this:
We have an add-in, that - when you click a toolbar button - displays a
form. All fine there.

But we also want the users to be able to click on a
desktop/quicklaunch/startmenu-icon and then have the form displayed to
them, right after PowerPoint launches.

There is one gotcha - we have used an active-x component (custom form
control). So the "Trust already installed add-in and templates" is set
to "on".

The plan was to save the ppt containing the form as a ppa, and then
rename it to templateform.pwz (PowerPoint Wizard) and double-click
that. That makes PPT display the form, but we get the active-x warning.
So that won't work.

Another workaround was to move the 'templateform.pwz' to the 'trusted
add-in folder', and then adding it by typing "*.*" in the add add-in
dialogbox.

That suppresses the active-x warning, but then we get another warning,
that a presentation by that name ("templateform") is already open.
Aaargh ...!

Any suggestions?

TIA
Martin

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Hi All,

Is there any way to make a macro in a ppt-template activate an
installed add-in?

No. Code in templates or PPT files never runs automatically, only the
Autpen sub in a PPA.

But we also want the users to be able to click on a
desktop/quicklaunch/startmenu-icon and then have the form displayed to
them, right after PowerPoint launches.

Write the code/form in VB and make an EXE of it? The EXE could launch PPT and
then display the form, possibly call subs/functions within your addin and then
exit.