Open Powerpoint Slide from a WinForm

[Guest]

I have a VB.Net application and a PowerPoint presentation explaining how each
form in the application works, etc.. I would like to select and display the
slide appropriate for each form by pressing the F1 key. In other words, I
want to use the powerpoint presentation for my help system. I am calling the
SlideShow from the applications menu, and it works great; however, the same
techniques are not working for selecting individual slides.

How do I initialize the PowerPoint application and call an individual slide
from it from each Windows Form? The documentation for PowerPoint is not
adequate for my needs. Products: VB.Net 2..3 (1.1) and Powerpoint 2000
(v.9) Thanks. --
Will

 

[W.G. Ryan eMVP]

First you'll need to add a COM reference to the powerpoint library (unless
you already have the Presentation done and you want to Process.Start it)
Add this
Imports Microsoft.Office.Interop.PowerPoint

Dim present As New Application

present.Activate()

present.SlideShowWindows(Index:=1).View.Next()

The object model is pretty straightforward - if you're going to create new
slides you'll have to do that programatically - just record a macro if you
don't know the object model and that'll give you a good feel for what you
need to do.

HTH,

Bill

 

[Guest]

Bill,

Thanks. The code below did not work. SlideShowWindows seems to think that it
is an array and wants to have an initial value set. However...

you did nudge me in what I assume is the right direction. Here is what I got
to work -- al least in displaying a particular slide.

Private Sub FindSlide(ByVal n as Int16)

Const sLocation = <my location>

Process.Start(sLocation)
Dim present As New PowerPoint.Application
Dim oPres as PowerPoint.Presentation
' I don't know why, but I had to dimension a variable (oPres) as
PowerPoint.Presentation inorder to get the next line to work....

present.Presentations.Item(1).Slides.FindBySlideID(n).Select()

End Sub

Now, the fun part is that Slide # 1 = SlideID 256 (not 0 or 1), Slide #2 =
SlideID 257, Slide #3 = SlideID 265, Slide #4 = 258, etc. In short, they are
not in consecutive order at all. This is going to make it interesting and a
lot of fun assigning the SlideID values for over 200 forms and slides.

I would appreciate any explanation(s) you can give for any of the above.

Thanks,

You have helped.

Will