ole embedded object animation

[Bob]

Grrr, ok can anyone help me with ANIMATION of an OLE Embedded Object
in PowerPoint?

I have an OLE server that I wrote but PowerPoint is not animating the
objects correctly. So as to divorce the animation problem from my
code, I created a brand new presentation and embedded an OLE "Wave
Sound" object in it. Same problem! It seems like it HAS to be a bug
in PowerPoint 2003, but I haven't been able to find any explanation of
or resolution for it.

Versions of PowerPoint prior to 2003 work just fine, it seems it's
only 2003 that has the problem. I haven't had an opportunity to test
it on anything newer.

Here are the steps to reproduce (it involves making two slides):
1. Open PowerPoint 2003.
2. Create a new blank presentation.
3. Click Insert -> Object...
4. Select "Wave Sound" from the list.
5. The standard Sound Recorder opens up. If you have a microphone,
just record some sound. If you don't, then open a .wav in a separate
instance of Sound Recorder, copy, and paste it into the one for
PowerPoint.
6. Close the Sound Recorder.
7. Right-click on the grey speaker icon in the slide and choose Custom
Animation.
8. In the Custom Animation pane click the "Add Effect" button, choose
"Object Actions", and "Play".
9. Right-click the new entry (probably called "Object 3") and change
it to "Start After Previous".
10. Add a second slide to your presentation.
11. On the second slide, perform steps 3 through 9 to add a unique
sound to this slide, setting it to start playing as soon as the slide
opens.

Now, run the presentation and you'll find that the second slide only
SOMETIMES plays the sound!! On my computer it almost never plays it,
but occasionally it does.

I'm flabbergasted by this behavior, it seems to make no sense. Has
anyone seen this before or found any reports of it or documentation
from Microsoft about it, especially how to resolve it?

I can work around it by setting the custom animation to "Start on
click" but what I want is click-less activation. I could script it in
vba, but this needs to be applicable to other projects in the future
and I can't be copying vba code all over the place and changing
people's security settings to allow macros.

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks!!
Bob

P.S. For anyone who has also seen my other OLE-related post from last
week, this is a separate issue altogether, though its solution is
equally important to effectively using my ole server.

 

[Bob]

No one?

I've found that if I make the animation start at 0.1 s instead of 0,
it seems to work around the bug. Still there's no reason it should
not work at 0 s, and it's going to be annoying to have to tell all my
users to manually change the animation start time.

I submitted the bug to Microsoft. They probably don't care much since
it's not a security vulnerability, but I can dream.

 

[Bob]

No one?

Well I found if I set the timing so the animation starts at 0.1
seconds instead of 0, then it seems to work every time. Bizarre, and
I'm not sure how I'm going to explain to my users that they have to do
this every time, especially since I chose to make it an OLE Server
rather than an ActiveX control specifically for the ability to animate
its verbs in PowerPoint.

I reported it to Microsoft since it's clearly a bug, though it's not
of the "security vulnerability" variety so I get the sense they won't
really care.

Well I tried. I guess I'll just have to deal with the frustration
indefinitely. If anyone has ideas about this down the road, please
let me know.

 

[Bob]

No one?

Well I found if I set the timing so the animation starts at 0.1
seconds instead of 0, then it seems to work every time. Bizarre, and
I'm not sure how I'm going to explain to my users that they have to do
this every time, especially since I chose to make it an OLE Server
rather than an ActiveX control specifically for the ability to animate
its verbs in PowerPoint.

I reported it to Microsoft since it's clearly a bug, though it's not
of the "security vulnerability" variety so I get the sense they won't
really care.

Well I tried. I guess I'll just have to deal with the frustration
indefinitely. If anyone has ideas about this down the road, please
let me know.

 

[Bob]

Oops, sorry about the re-posting. For some reason my replies are not
showing up in the Google view of the group.