Modularing PPT Presentations (reprise)

[Scott Meyers]

At the beginning of this year, I was in process of converting a large
number of presentations from PDF to PPT, and I posted this question:

The resulting discussion (available at http://tinyurl.com/yekjmk) didn't
really yield any ideas I could use, so now that I have more experience
under my belt, I'm posting again. At this point, I have over 30
different presentations ranging from about 35 slides to over 500 (length
varies from 1.5 hours to about 35 hours) and a total of over 2000 slides
comprising many dozens of modules. Yesterday I had to update some of
the material in one of the modules used in 7 different presentations, so
I had to edit all 7 modules. Not fun.

I continue to welcome ideas on how to address this problem. Also, I'm
using PPT 2002; does anybody know if there are new features in the 2003
or upcoming Vista version of PPT that will help in managing PPT content?

Thanks,

Scott

 

[Guest]

Scott,

Did you try the Custom Show option? Even with 500 slides in your Main deck,
creating custom shows to represent each of the modules is a one time deal
(and you can assign the same slides across multiple custom shows/modules. You
only have to edit a slide once and it's reflected in each of your
shows/modules.

 

[Scott Meyers]

Did you try the Custom Show option? Even with 500 slides in your Main deck,
creating custom shows to represent each of the modules is a one time deal
(and you can assign the same slides across multiple custom shows/modules. You
only have to edit a slide once and it's reflected in each of your
shows/modules.

I looked into it. There does not seem to be a way to get the slides in
a custom show numbered sequentially (the slides not in the show still
get numbers). At the very least, this would look strange to attendees,
and it would also make it more difficult to identify missing pages due
to printing glitches (which do happen from time to time).

It appears that custom shows can't reorder slides, and, as I said, the
topic order need not be the same from presentation to presentation.

I'm also concerned about the usability of the PPT facility for creating
custom shows. My "main deck" would have probably 2000+ slides, and the
dialog for creating custom shows lists only the titles of only 9 slides
at a time. Creating custom shows with that interface would be like
digging a tunnel using a teaspoon: possible, but not very pleasant.

I continue to welcome all suggestions. It's fairly clear at this point
that what I really want doesn't exist, so I know I'm going to have to
make compromises.

Thanks,

Scott

 

[ChrisHarrington]

Hi Scott,

I cannot remember if I had responded to your original posting. But I think
that PPTATK can do this for you.

http://www.activeinterface.com/pptatk.html

Chris Harrington
Active Interface, LLC