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Shyam Pillai has a PPT addin called “live web” that will help with the URL updating. It has browser controls, but it would be worth checking out. http://www.mvps.org/skp%5B/url%5D As far as activating the URL without clicking anything, I’m 99% certain Shyam’s Live Web activates the webpages without mouseclicks/mouseovers. However, can’t for the life of me figure out how you’d be able to accomplish this without a browser of some sort. I’m not even sure that could be done with VBA, to tell the truth!

I also don’t know how you could show just part of the site, but you might be able to do just the traffic camera part if that were hooked up to your computer (like a webcam or camcorder or something). Martin Conradi has mentioned in the MS PPT newsgroups that his company has created software to do this kind of thing with an ATI All in Wonder video card. You might shoot him an email. http://www.showcase-online.co.uk[/url%5D (I think there’s contact info on his site.)

And finally, you’ll want to be aware that long-running PPT kiosk shows like this sometimes stall out after a period of time. (How long? you ask. Well, that depends on a myriad of factors, so I couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess for this particular presentation.) One way around it is to have the presentation restart occasionally, say, at midnight when nobody’s watching. Tushar Mehta gives good instructions on how to auto schedule PPT presentations at http://www.tushar-mehta.com[/url%5D

I went a little link-happy, I do believe. But hopefully that will at least get you started.

You might want to let your students know that rule of thumb for adding multimedia to PPT is to put the AVI, MP3, whatever, in the same folder along with the PPT presentation before inserting it into PPT. That will create a relative link so that PPT knows where to find the linked multimedia file when it and the presentation are transferred to another computer.

Just something to be aware of.

Oh, no problem, I should have asked for clarification earlier. AVI files will always be linked, so you’ll need to send them along with the PPT file. No matter what size they are!

The only thing I know to suggest would be to create an autorun CD (Do it yourself info on this is available on my site.) and send that to your users. Or, if you have PPT 2002 available, you could use Producer, a free addin for PPT 2002/XP which is used to create streaming media presentations distributable via web. That way you could just send a link to your users. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details…&DisplayLang=en%5B/url%5D You’d also need to be running WinXP, NT or 2000. Producer won’t work with Win98.

To that end, you could use Soft TV (? I think that’s the name of it) to create something similar. Or if you’re good with HTML, you could build a webpage from scratch that would do the same thing. (But I sure wouldn’t want to attempt *that*!) Or perhaps simply use WinZip to zip the PPT file and the AVI together to send to the NetMeeting recipients.

I can’t tell if the hyperlink is correctly embedded in your homepage, because you still haven’t given us the URL to your homepage! What files did PPT’s HTML create for you to work with, and what link did you insert (and how?) into the code of your index page?

If you get really stuck, you might consider using RnR’s PPT to HTML tool. The guy who created it did so because PPT’s own HTML can be quite unwieldy to work with. http://www.rdpslides.com/pptools/FAQ00004.htm%5B/url%5D For getting the music to play on the web version like it did in the PPT version, you’ll want to see http://www.powerpointanswers.com/article1018.php%5B/url%5D

For good info on creating an autorun CD from your PPT files, see the autorun CD pages of my site (URL in signature) for the “do it yourself” approach. I also list a ton of third-party products that you might want to consider (PPT to Flash, etc.).

I highly recommend Sonia Coleman’s Autorun CD Project Creator to help automate creating an autorun CD, especially if you have linked files. It’s inexpensive shareware and Sonia gives great customer/tech support. A link to it is also on my site listed under third-party products.

The 50000kb setting in Tools/Options is not retroactive. So if it had been set at 100kb and you inserted 2MB (2000kb) WAV files, and then changed the Tools/Options setting to 50000kb, those WAVs would not be embedded.

Steps to embed WAVs under 50MB are: change the number in the Tools/Options to 50,000kb, *then* insert the WAV files. If they are smaller than 50MB, they’ll be embedded in the PPT file.

If after doing that to embed the WAV narrations, they’re still not transferring through Netmeeting, then I’d guess it’s something wrong with that application or the way it transfers files or something.

You know, I just realized the subject here is NetMeeting/PPT and *MOVIE* clips. Video clips will always be linked to PPT files and will always have to be sent in addition to the presentation. (Actually, all sound files except WAV also follow this rule.)

What file types are the narrations? I ask because only WAVs will be embedded, and then only WAVs under the size you have set in Tools/Options/”Link sound files greater than XXX kb.” If it’s a larger WAV or any other type of sound file, you’ll have to send the sound file along with the presentation.

> But I doubt you’ll have any of those problems, because what you’re really doing is adding PPT 2002/XP to your existing Office 2000 apps.

Oops, got that backwards. You’re adding PPT 2000 to existing Office XP apps.
Regardless, you shouldn’t have any problems.

Well, I haven’t had any problems with the different registry entries, except for Word–which keeps wanting to install something every time I open either 2000 or 2002/XP. I’ve heard others have had that same issue, but just letting it go through its thing (it doesn’t ask for the install disk) seems to let everything work ok. (I *think* there’s a fix for that, but I’d have to dig around for it.) I will say that all my Office assistants have @#$!% out lately in all versions, but I’m pretty sure this is due to the beta, not any of the existing versions.

But I doubt you’ll have any of those problems, because what you’re really doing is adding PPT 2002/XP to your existing Office 2000 apps. Some of the shared apps–such as MS Graph–could run the risk of overwriting registry entries, but I honestly haven’t had that issue on my system. And I know others with similar setups, and they haven’t reported problems there, either.

You know, PPT 2002/XP has some new things like the diagramming tool that replaces Org Chart. Even so, Org Chart still works on my machine with previous versions of PPT. And the new Clip Organizer that works with Office XP hasn’t overwritten my old Clip Gallery, which shipped with the previous versions; I can still access both on my system with no problems. So I’d say very little would get overwritten on your end.

The upshot is that yeah, I think the different drive letter should be more than enough for what you’re doing. You could even probably get away with installing everything on C and not have any issues (I know I don’t see any between 95 and 97, both on my C drive) , but I’d definitely suggest using a different folder for installation if you decide to go that route (which is what I did with 95/97 on C).

Just my $.02. Others may have better, more specific information for you.

How very bizarre. But I’m glad to hear you got it working!

Since you have Scale to Fit Paper checked in both print options places, that should take care of scaling the slide so it doesn’t run off the edge. It’s odd that it’s not working. Wonder if reinstalling the printer driver would help at all here? Oh, and try turning background printing off. (It may not help here, but you can leave it off, as it really just slows down printing. It’s not related to the slide background at all.)

You might also check http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00097.htm%5B/url%5D for a workaround. It’s not pretty, but if nothing else accomplishes it…

Is it possible that the landscape slides are printing in portrait view? Sometimes that’s an issue with certain printers, and it can often be resolved by changing the settings in the actual printer settings, not just within PPT. See http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00369.htm%5B/url%5D for some ideas on that.

Actually, you wouldn’t have to install on a second harddrive, unless you’re really anal!

I have Office 97, 97, 2000, XP and the new Office 11 beta on my Windows XP machine. I simply used Partition Magic to create a number of partitions, and I installed each subsequent version of Office to a different one. So O95 is on my C drive, O97 is there as well. O2k is on my G drive, OXP on H, and the beta on I.

I suspect that you’d be okay with PPT 2000 and Office SBE XP both on the C drive, though. Just at least install them to different folders on the C drive. Usual rule of thumb is to install oldest to newest, so you might consider uninstalling Office SBE, installing PPT 2000, then reinstalling Office SBE applications.

If it doesn’t work, the worst that will happen is you have to go the partition or second harddrive route.

As you’ve discovered, keeping the linked files in one folder is the best way to ensure that your links all remain intact. You might want to check into the RnR Tools FixLinks, though. It should help keep your links working. http://www.rdpslides.com/pptools/FAQ00035.htm%5B/url%5D

In addition to WebGenii’s suggestion, you might want to look into the photo album addins that Scott C and Shyam P have developed. You can specify full-screen and import a bunch of images all in one swell foop. http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00050.htm%5B/url%5D

Note that there’s also a photo album addin available free for PPT 2000, and if you’re using PPT 2002/XP, it’s an inherent feature.

Finally, you can resize the images in an image editor so that they’re properly sized (pixel-wise) to come in full-screen. Info on how to do that is available at http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com/powerpointgraphics.htm%5B/url%5D

Wow, what a great welcome! (Sure makes nntp look plain, doesn’t it?!)
Thanks, Wendell. I’ll look forward to contributing.