How to make a countdown timer in powerpoint

[Jacob]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Hi everyone,
I'm preparing a presentation for a big conference.
I'm going to be on stage just before the keynote speaker.
There will be a short break after my session and I would love to finish my session with a countdown to the keynote.
The keynote will start at 10.30, that is roughly 20 min. after my session ends.
I would like a countdown that shows exactly how long time there is, even if I end a couple of min. before.
Do any of you guys know if that is possible in Office 2008?
And do any of you have any idea how this can be done?
Thanks!
Cheers,
Jacob

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Processor: Intel Hi everyone,
I'm preparing a presentation for a big conference.
I'm going to be on stage just before the keynote speaker.
There will be a short break after my session and I would love to
finish my session with a countdown to the keynote.
The keynote will start at 10.30, that is roughly 20 min. after my
session ends.
I would like a countdown that shows exactly how long time there is,
even if I end a couple of min. before.
Do any of you guys know if that is possible in Office 2008?
And do any of you have any idea how this can be done?

Absent VBA (and VBA is absent from 2008) you might be able to cook
something up in Applescript to pick up the current time, calculate how
much time remains until "liftoff" and advance the slides accordingly
(or possibly even put text onto a slide).

A simpler alternative would be to launch a slide show that contains,
eg. 20 slides, each with a message like "20 minutes to go", "19 minutes
to go" and so on. Set the transition timings so that they advance
automatically every 60 seconds.

Assuming you won't finish ridiculously early and leave an extra 10
minutes unfilled, I'd be inclined to make the last slide say something
like "Any second now ..." and just let sit there to take up the slack.

Or make the first slide "Next up ... Speaker Name"
Give it no automatic transition; at 20 minutes to show time, you
manually click to the next slide and let it advance automatically from
there.