Linking Presentations

[David Lipetz]

Folks,

We will be presenting to over 500 people on Thursday and are looking for the
best way to link multiple Powerpoint presentations together.

We have multiple speakers, each with their own presentation. We would like
to be able to link the presentations together, in the order in which they
will be presented. The technician advancing the slides should not have to
worry about which presentation to queue up next.

Most of the presentations use the same template, but each author may have
made minor changes, so combining all slides into one presentation is not
practical. Plus, several of the presentations are from completely different
templates so combining all slides into a single presentation will not work.

Also, since these presentations will be projected, we don't want the
audience to see any fumbling around between presentations.

I've tried the method of inserting an object on a slide, which when clicked,
will link to another slide or another presentation. This is also not a good
solution as it requires the technician to use the mouse, locate the object,
and click it in order to get the next presentation on screen.

Ideally, the same technique of simply pressing "page down" to advance from
slide to slide within a presentation would also work by starting the next
presentation when the current one has ended.

Am I missing something? Is there some easy way to do this that I have
overlooked? Surely many people are in this situation, what is the best way
to handle?

As an aside, when we ran this conference last year, we opened all the PPTs,
and ALT-TAB'd between them. The technician would use digital freeze on the
projector to hold the last slide in place until the next presentation was
queued up, then would unfreeze the projector when the first slide of the
next presentation was on screen in presentation mode. While this works, it
is a cumbersome and puts a lot of pressure on the tech to get it tight.

Ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

David

 

[B]

2 quick questions...

What version of PowerPoint?

Will navigation within the presentations be strictly sequentially?

B

 

[David Lipetz]

Interesting, but won't the audience see the Flash menu?

I'd really like a solution which does not require operator intervention or
one that lets the audience see what is going on.

Thanks for your suggestion!

 

[A Smith]

It sounds like you need a menu system to launch each PP show individually.

In several similar situations, I have created a menu page in Flash. The
menu buttons launch batch files which in turn launch a PP show on top of the
menu. When you finish or esc the show, the menu page underneath is again
visible.

This has been a great approach with a couple caveats. First, it can be a
pain to correctly key in all the file names correctly depending on the
number of presentations. Second, there is a slight 2 second delay from when
you click the button in Flash to when the show actually opens. If the
operator is not ready for this, he or she might launch multiple instances of
the same show and eventually freeze the pc. The best solution is to set up
the flash menu with a built in delay after the initial click which prevents
the operator from overclicking.

 

[A Smith]

The flash menu screen could be made to look exactly like your most common PP
template.

Maybe then what you really want is the last slide of one presentation to
open up the next? You can place a button on the last slide that opens
another presention (create button shape, right click, Action Settings,
Hyperlink to, Other PP, select file).

The only problem is closing the previous presentation once the new one
opens. I think I've seen this somewhere. Anyone??

 

[David Lipetz]

PowerPoint 2000 SR-1

Yes, all presentations will be sequential based on a firm agenda

8am - Speaker 1
9am - Speaker 2
etc

 

[David Lipetz]

Yes, but again, that forces the operator to do something. And fumbling
around with a mouse to click an on-screen button in front of 500 people is a
little too risky.

I would just like the last slide of presentation A to automatically load the
first slide of presentation B and so on and so forth.

 

[TAJ Simmons]

David,

Good News.....This tutorial explains in detail step by step exactly how to
link many presentations together sequentially.
http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com/powerpointlinking.htm

It requires no messing about with the mouse to click certain buttons or
areas. All it requires is the "next slide" key (e.g. space, page-down,
right-cursor etc) to be pressed. So even a lonely slide operator can manage
it. Even the presenters themselves

There is no displaying of menus, or powerpoint screens, or alt-tabbing, or
clicking shortcuts.

An added bonus is....that you can press the "End" key if one presenter
decides to forget that they have 80 slides, and they only talk to 40. The
presentation will end...and move on to the next (presenters) set of slides.

Cheers
TAJ Simmons
microsoft powerpoint mvp

awesome - powerpoint backgrounds,
free sample templates, tutorials, hints and tips etc
http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com

 

[B]

Homework: Read this --
http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com/powerpointlinking.htm


You will need to create a common PowerPoint presentation that will link to
each of the others. You should use a method called picket fencing, so that
only the common show and maybe one other presentation are in memory at any
given point.

The basics are this:
Slide 1 to 10 -- Fill slides
- Your company logo, welcome, blah, blah, blah

Slide 11 - Link to presenter A's show
- Insert | Object | From File | Browse
- Navigate to and select file
- Check link and display as icon
- Click OK
- Drag resulting icon off the edge of the slide
- Right click on icon and select custom animations
- Click on 'multimedia settings' tab
- Select 'Show' from 'Object action' pull down box
- Click on the 'Order and Timing' tab
- Select automatically and set box for 00:00 seconds
- Click OK

- Note the last slide of Presentation A will not smoothly transition into
slide 11, it will just appear. So it would look best if both of these
slides are identical (so that no change will be evident when slide 11
appears).

Slide 12 - 15 - Fill slides
- Intermission/break slides

Slide 16 - Link to presenter B's show
(Repeat steps in slide 11)

Slide 17 - End slide

If you've done this correctly, the person at the computer will only have to
hit the advance button and the presentations will link and advance
seamlessly.

B

 

[Austin Myers]

David the simple answer is to make it all one big presentation, write down
(yeah I know, it's old fashioned) the slide numbers of the beginning of each
presentation and give it to your tech. He types the slide number and hits
enter and PPT jumps to it.

No mouse, no fuss, nothing on the screen.

Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

 

[David Lipetz]

For reasons stated previously, this will not work.

Different presentations from different masters.

Looks like I'll be doing it the old fashioned way again...

You would think that this would be built in to the software:

End presentation with:
last slide
black slide
slide #___ of file ___________

Argh.

 

[Austin Myers]

Different presentations from different masters.

Looks like I'll be doing it the old fashioned way again...

You would think that this would be built in to the software:

They did, it's called PowerPoint XP. <g>


Austin Myers
MS PowerPoint MVP Team

 

[Echo S]

Just use TAJ's linking tutorial. It will do exactly what you're asking.
The URL to it has been posted twice in this thread.