Advance to first slide

[Matthew]

I'm using PowerPoint 2007 to develop a basic touch screen information kiosk.

Users advance through the slides in a non-linear order, I've used hyperlinks
to other slides when they touch the screen.

I want my presentation to return the the first slide after a period of
inactivity. This means that if a user wanders off after getting the
information they need the presentation resets itself. I thought this would
be doable by using hidden slides for everything except my first slide and
then simply saying advance after a set period, thus advancing to the only
unhidden slide... This doesn't work the presentation simply continues through
the hidden slides.

Any ideas of how to solve this would be great.

TIA

 

[Emprovision]

Try making the entire presentation (except the first slide) a custom show
(Slide Show> Custom Show). Then make a rectangle on the hidden slide, then
Insert>Action>Mouse Over>Hyperlink it to End Show.

This will make the rest of the presentation open in a second windows above
the home PowerPoint, and the hidden slide will close that second window.

I like your idea on having the presentation go back on inactivity! B)

 

[Rick Altman]

Matthew, what a great challenge you have given us! I can get you part of the
way home, but I can't get past a particular hurdle here. I don't think it
matters whether you hyperlink to custom shows or to particular hidden
slides; either way, I can get you to that halfway point. The key is this:

1. From Slide Show | Set up show, tell PowerPoint that the only slide in the
show that you want to run is the first slide. Either create a custom show of
that one slide or just define the range as From 1 to 1.

2. Check Loop Continuously until Esc. That tells PowerPoint to return to the
beginning when it is done -- and "done" is defined as either finishing a
custom show that you link to, or advancing to the next slide, only to find
that they are all hidden, it gets to the end, and it starts over at the
first slide.


The part that I cannot overcome is the period of inactivity part, and how
that is defined. It is trivial to set the slide to advance on its own, but
PowerPoint isn't smart enough to know, say, that there might be a lot of
text on that slide to read and so it should wait longer before advancing
back. PowerPoint doesn't understand the concept of inactivity, so you will
have to program that on each slide, by way of hidden objects that have
lengthy delays before their turn in the animation scheme (after which
PowerPoint will see that the slide's business is done and will advance).

I'd love for you to keep us posted on how you tackle this...

 

[David Marcovitz]

This is what Kiosk mode is supposed to do. It has had problems in
various versions of PowerPoint, but the theory is that any presentation
in kiosk mode will automatically return to the first slide after 5
minutes of inactivity. I don't know if that feature has problems (or if
it was removed) in 2007, but it is supposed to work that way.
--David

 

[Bill Dilworth]

You were close to the solution ...

Make sure the presentation is set to loop until escape.

Make slide 1 unhidden then hide all the other content slides

Set the auto advance on all slides (except the first to 1:00)
Add a blank slide between slide 2 & 3
Make it autoadvance in 0:00 seconds
Copy this slide between EACH of your other slides

What will happen now is that any slide left on the screen for more than 1
minute will advance to the next slide. The next slide is an auto-advance
slide that will automatically skip to the next UNHIDDEN slide (which is also
a blank auto-advance slide) and so on along the tops of the blank slides
until it reaches the end of the presentation and loops back to the start
slide.

I mentioned this technique a few years ago calling it Picket Fencing
(because of the alternating nature of it). I should probably do a web page
on it.

Bill Dilworth

 

[Rick Altman]

Wow, a new addition to our lexicon: Picket Fencing. I love it!

 

[John Wilson]

Clever!
--

john ATSIGN PPTAlchemy.co.uk
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