Installing VBA macro help in PPT X

[Jack]

Can someone explain how to do this?

The 'built-in' help describes doing this via the installer but the
options mentioned: "Programmability" and "VBA Help" do not appear
there.

Can someone recommend a good book on this topic? I read "How to do
Everything With Powerpoint 2003" but that had minimal coverage of
macros.

Thanks, Jack

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

Are you saying that the macro help is not installed? Have you tried going
to the VBA Editor? The general help doesn't cover macros, but the help in
the VBA editor does.
--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

 

[Jack]

Are you saying that the macro help is not installed? Have you tried going
to the VBA Editor? The general help doesn't cover macros, but the help in
the VBA editor does.
--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

There wasn't any VBA help. When I launch VBA (tools>macro>visual basic
editor) and then request help (help>search microsoft visual basic
help) I get a dialog box stating: The "MS Office VBA Editor Help" file
that contains this topic cannot be found. To fix this problem,
reinstall Help by using the Microsoft Office Installer program.

Well that wasn't right, but from my other nosing around I got to the
bottom of this. From the installer I did a custom install and there
found the "Value Pack" installer. And that installer had an option for
VBA help. I can see this at last.

I also located a MS book on this topic: "Microsoft Office 2000/Visual
Basic: Programmer's Guide". I've ordered a copy of this and hope that
it will work as a tutorial.

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

There wasn't any VBA help. When I launch VBA (tools>macro>visual basic
editor) and then request help (help>search microsoft visual basic
help) I get a dialog box stating: The "MS Office VBA Editor Help" file
that contains this topic cannot be found. To fix this problem,
reinstall Help by using the Microsoft Office Installer program.

Well that wasn't right, but from my other nosing around I got to the
bottom of this. From the installer I did a custom install and there
found the "Value Pack" installer. And that installer had an option for
VBA help. I can see this at last.

I also located a MS book on this topic: "Microsoft Office 2000/Visual
Basic: Programmer's Guide". I've ordered a copy of this and hope that
it will work as a tutorial.

Good. I'm glad you figured it out. What are you trying to do with VBA.
I'm not familiar with the book you listed, but it is unlikely to be much
help with PowerPoint. Most of the general VBA books have very little
information on using VBA with PowerPoint. When I was trying to learn VBA
with PowerPoint, I found a few books that gave a little information about
automating slide creation with VBA, but I found nothing about using VBA
to interact in Slide Show view. I ended up writing my own book (see
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/), but it is very limited so it really
depends on what you want to do as to whether it will meet your needs.
--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

 

[Jack]

Good. I'm glad you figured it out. What are you trying to do with VBA.
I'm not familiar with the book you listed, but it is unlikely to be much
help with PowerPoint. Most of the general VBA books have very little
information on using VBA with PowerPoint. When I was trying to learn VBA
with PowerPoint, I found a few books that gave a little information about
automating slide creation with VBA, but I found nothing about using VBA
to interact in Slide Show view. I ended up writing my own book (seehttp://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/), but it is very limited so it really
depends on what you want to do as to whether it will meet your needs.
--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

I do technical training. Some of the courses that I present have
shared content. I would like to create stand alone PPT presentations
for the shared portions and then define (I think I need to use VBA for
this) ways to combine them to create the content for each particular
class. This needs to be a presentation that I can show visually and
print to give to the students.

The PPT "Custom Shows" feature is too cumbersome for all the
combinations I'd require. It would also require a massive superset of
slides.

Right now I am keeping track of the parts of each class manually and
then putting them together using the "Insert Slides From File"
feature.

I hope that by using a VBA macro I'll be able to automate this along
the lines of:

Run macro for class "xyz". This causes the following to happen: Append
presentation file 1, presentation file 2, presentation file 3 and
presentation file 4, naming the result "class xyz.ppt".

Alternatively, run macro for class "abc". This causes the following to
happen: 'put together' file class abc.ppt by adding presentation file
1 at a specified 'place' within presentation file 2, add presentation
file 3 at another specified 'place' within presentation file 2, append
presentation file 4 to the end of the combined results.

Being able to also print x copies of the notes for the result would be
icing on the cake.

 

[Jack]

Good. I'm glad you figured it out. What are you trying to do with VBA.
I'm not familiar with the book you listed, but it is unlikely to be much
help with PowerPoint. Most of the general VBA books have very little
information on using VBA with PowerPoint. When I was trying to learn VBA
with PowerPoint, I found a few books that gave a little information about
automating slide creation with VBA, but I found nothing about using VBA
to interact in Slide Show view. I ended up writing my own book (seehttp://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/), but it is very limited so it really
depends on what you want to do as to whether it will meet your needs.
--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

p.s. I own and have already read your book! It was a very big help
getting as far as I have, but now I need to get deeper into this.
Thanks for throwing the light on this topic that you did.

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

p.s. I own and have already read your book! It was a very big help

getting as far as I have, but now I need to get deeper into this.
Thanks for throwing the light on this topic that you did.

Great. After reading your last description I was going to recommend that
you were probably a bit too advanced for my book. Now, I know why. All we
need is for someone to write a follow-up to my book that takes it to the
next level. The problem is that there is not enough of a market for it to
make it worthwhile.

--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

I do technical training. Some of the courses that I present have
shared content. I would like to create stand alone PPT presentations
for the shared portions and then define (I think I need to use VBA for
this) ways to combine them to create the content for each particular
class. This needs to be a presentation that I can show visually and
print to give to the students.

The PPT "Custom Shows" feature is too cumbersome for all the
combinations I'd require. It would also require a massive superset of
slides.

Right now I am keeping track of the parts of each class manually and
then putting them together using the "Insert Slides From File"
feature.

I hope that by using a VBA macro I'll be able to automate this along
the lines of:

Run macro for class "xyz". This causes the following to happen: Append
presentation file 1, presentation file 2, presentation file 3 and
presentation file 4, naming the result "class xyz.ppt".

Alternatively, run macro for class "abc". This causes the following to
happen: 'put together' file class abc.ppt by adding presentation file
1 at a specified 'place' within presentation file 2, add presentation
file 3 at another specified 'place' within presentation file 2, append
presentation file 4 to the end of the combined results.

Being able to also print x copies of the notes for the result would be
icing on the cake.

I believe that there are some third-party solutions to what you want to
do, but I'm not sure if they work on the Mac (see, for example,
http://www.slideexecutive.com/ -- I just did a search to find this so I
don't endorse this in any way). The basics of what you want to do
shouldn't be that complicated, but to do a really nice job of creating a
slide library would be a massive undertaking. Additionally, in the back
of my mind, I seem to recall some issue with some versions not allowing
VBA to keep source formatting when inserting slides from files. You might
try doing this in Windows first by recording macros (for some reason, the
Mac version doesn't record macros) and seeing if you can then port the
code.
--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

 

[Jack]

Great. After reading your last description I was going to recommend that
you were probably a bit too advanced for my book. Now, I know why. All we
need is for someone to write a follow-up to my book that takes it to the
next level. The problem is that there is not enough of a market for it to
make it worthwhile.

--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

Hi David;

This doesn't pertain to the question, I'd like to ask you for some
other general advice/how to.

I see that folks here have 'spam-proofed' their email addresses and
I'd like to do that too. But the email address doesn't seem to be edit-
able in my profile. Was this something I needed to do when I set up
the profile in the first place? But if I remember that right, I needed
to provide a good email address then. Well in any case, if you could
let me know a procedure to get my email address changed I appreciate
it.

Also I have a 'policy' (I guess) question. I had posted another
question and had an interesting reply to it. But I ran into a snag
trying the proposed solution. The guy who'd replied initially didn't
respond to my statement of the problem. I have posted this as a new
post but I'm afraid I'll be nailed for not leaving it in the original
post, kind of damned if I do and damned if I don't. Any advice about
how to handle that situation?

Thanks, Jack

 

[David M. Marcovitz]

Hi David;

This doesn't pertain to the question, I'd like to ask you for some
other general advice/how to.

I see that folks here have 'spam-proofed' their email addresses and
I'd like to do that too. But the email address doesn't seem to be
edit- able in my profile. Was this something I needed to do when I set
up the profile in the first place? But if I remember that right, I
needed to provide a good email address then. Well in any case, if you
could let me know a procedure to get my email address changed I
appreciate it.

Also I have a 'policy' (I guess) question. I had posted another
question and had an interesting reply to it. But I ran into a snag
trying the proposed solution. The guy who'd replied initially didn't
respond to my statement of the problem. I have posted this as a new
post but I'm afraid I'll be nailed for not leaving it in the original
post, kind of damned if I do and damned if I don't. Any advice about
how to handle that situation?

Thanks, Jack

I think that SPAM-proofing your email address depends on what you use to
read newsgroups. I generally read newsgroups with Xnews, which allows me
to set anything I want as the display email.

As far as your policy question, it is generally a good idea to keep
things in the same thread. However, sometimes old threads are hard to
find. Additionally, once a question has been answered by someone, others
sometimes back off (possibly not even following that thread anymore). If
you haven't heard back from someone who responded, a new thread might be
a good idea as long as it doesn't happen too often. When you start the
new thread, you'll have to provide the context of the previous discussion
(which is why it is usually, but not always, better to stick with the
origianl thread).

--David

--
David M. Marcovitz
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Director of Graduate Programs in Educational Technology
Loyola College in Maryland
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I also located a MS book on this topic: "Microsoft Office 2000/Visual

Good. I'm glad you figured it out. What are you trying to do with VBA.
I'm not familiar with the book you listed, but it is unlikely to be much
help with PowerPoint.

It's actually a pretty good book - best I've yet run across, in fact; covers
some things you won't find elsewhere, and even does a fair to middling job of
warning you about stuff that won't work in VBA5 (PPT 2000 and up use VBA6,
Jack; PPT97 and all Mac versions use VBA5)



================================================
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================