Hyperlinks in PowerPoint viewer

[TonyT]

Hi Guys,
I'm in need of help. I created a large CD project for a client using
PowerPoint presentations as the Index for the CD. It seems to work fine in
PowerPoint but is having problems in Viewer. Here is the clients note:

"As per telcon. NIMS 3.0 states requires PowerPoint '97 or later.

However testing shows works OK under PowerPoint 2003 (full system) but not
under PowerPoint Viewer 2003. Basically none of the icons in the PPS files
are clickable under the latter nor can F5 be pressed as states on screen.
This is both under an Admin and Limited User account so not a security
problem.

Whilst we may be able to install PowerPoint Viewer 2007, which itself will
require internal testing to verify OK in our environment, I don't want to go
to that effort if there still are problems. Can you ask your IT people to
investigate and advise. It may well be the manual is incorrect of course.

Ideally I need an answer by next Tuesday to meet our quarterly deadlines."

I created the file in PowerPoint 2003. Anyone else have this problem?

THANKS!

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

However testing shows works OK under PowerPoint 2003 (full system) but not
under PowerPoint Viewer 2003. Basically none of the icons in the PPS files
are clickable under the latter nor can F5 be pressed as states on screen.
This is both under an Admin and Limited User account so not a security
problem.

Assuming the icons are PPT shapes that have an action setting assigned to them,
what is the action setting? What are they supposed to do?

What do you expect F5 to do? In PowerPoint, IF you have a presentation loaded,
it will start the presentation in Slide Show view. So far as I know, F5 it
does nothing in either Slide Show view or in any of the viewer versions.

Do you have on-screen instructions on the first slide telling the user to press
F5 to start the presentation? It might be simpler to save the presentations as
PowerPoint Show (PPS) files instead. These open automatically into slide show
view.

 

[TonyT]

Hi Steve,

Saw a talk you gace at PowerPoint Live 2003 so I know your expertise.

I created a ppt in PowerPoint 2003 - Windows XP - it links to other ppt
"modules"
these modules mainly consist of a few pages with 40 to 50 boxes which are
hyperlinked to PDF files.

Every time I test it worke fine. I also tested the viewer but not on a
machine without PowerPoint. So my thinking is that there is a hyperlinking
issue with the viewer. My customer can't get it to work.

Also, they mentioned F5 because I noticed in Vista the ppt didn't open in
show but in editor mode. Confusing? Any known hyperlink issues with PPT
viewer?

Thanks,

 

[TonyT]

Found this at Microsoft Web site:

Overview
PowerPoint Viewer 2003 ....

The following Microsoft PowerPoint features are not supported by this viewer:
Information Rights Management (IRM) presentations.
Running macros, programs, or ---opening linked--- or embedded objects.

My hyphens added for emphasis.

This is hugh as I assumed it did. Of course, my bad. Guess I need to redo
the indices as PDF files with links. Any thoughts would be apreciated.

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Hi Steve,

Saw a talk you gace at PowerPoint Live 2003 so I know your expertise.

Uh oh. Tapdance faster, Steve. ;-)

I created a ppt in PowerPoint 2003 - Windows XP - it links to other ppt
"modules"
these modules mainly consist of a few pages with 40 to 50 boxes which are
hyperlinked to PDF files.

Every time I test it worke fine. I also tested the viewer but not on a
machine without PowerPoint.

To be sure you're getting the viewer, you'll want to start it manually then pick the
file to launch rather than doubleclicking a PPT/PPS file.

So my thinking is that there is a hyperlinking
issue with the viewer. My customer can't get it to work.

A possibility: some versions of Acrobat Reader just don't work with PPT. If they
have the first release of Reader 7, they need to apply updates in order for links to
PDFs to play.

Also, they mentioned F5 because I noticed in Vista the ppt didn't open in
show but in editor mode. Confusing? Any known hyperlink issues with PPT
viewer?

If it opens in edit mode, it *can't* be the Viewer.
Viewer has no edit mode.

Color me a slightly greenish shade of confused. ;-)

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

Found this at Microsoft Web site:

Overview
PowerPoint Viewer 2003 ....

The following Microsoft PowerPoint features are not supported by this viewer:
Information Rights Management (IRM) presentations.
Running macros, programs, or ---opening linked--- or embedded objects.

It seems that everybody at MS gets an attack of SillyHead whenever anyone waves
links at them. Tsk. They seem unable to discriminate between Linked OLE
Objects, hyperlinks and other types of links like linked picture files. Tsk.

Result: Information like the above, which is a SUPERB medium for growing
mushrooms but isn't of much use to you. It's either badly written, incomplete
or wrong. Take yer pick.

They mean linked (OLE) objects, not hyperlinks, and it's true, the viewer
doesn't do OLE.

A hyperlink to a PDF will give you the infamous "Danger Danger You're About To
Infest The World With Viruses" message, but when you OK that, the PDF should
launch. It does here. Just doublechecked it in fact.