Text box macro

[Juliette]

Hi,
I am not using VB a lot with PPT so appologize if my question is very easy...
My understanding is that each time we create a text box in a presentation,
it has a unique ID whatever slide it is in. I would like to refer to this
text box, without refering to a specific slide.

Currently I have something like:
Set sh = PowerPoint.ActivePresentation.Slides(5).Shapes("Text box 2")
sh.TextFrame.TextRange.Text = "Test"

And I would like to be able to refer to "Text box 2" without refering to
"slide(5)". I would like to avoid using "slideid" as well to make my life
easier. Is that any possible?

Many thanks for your help

 

[David Marcovitz]

Juliette,

Well, it might not be easy, but it might be. There are three ways to
refer to a slide:

(1) By slide number
(2) By slide name
(3) The current slide

You can do (1) just like you have done:

ActivePresentation.Slides(#)

Then you get the shapes on that slide with:

ActivePresentation.Slides(#).Shapes(#)

For (2), you do the exact same thing except that you replace the slide
number with the slide name in quotes:

ActivePresentation.Slides("MyIndexSlide")

For (3), you can refer to the current slide:

ActivePresentation.SlideShowWindow.View.Slide

Then you can refer to shapes on the current slide with:

ActivePresentation.SlideShowWindow.View.Slide.Shapes(#)

This works for most of my purposes because I either want to refer to
some other slide (by name or number) or the same slide. I often have
several similar slides and want to manipulate the same shape on
different slides. For example, if I have a quiz, I might want to
manipulate a smiley face shape that gets hidden and shown. There is a
smiley face on each slide (perhaps, named "SmileyFace") that I can
manipulate use option 3 above so it hides or shows the smiley face on
the current slide.

For some information about naming shapes and slides, you can refer to
Example 8.7 on my site:

http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/

Just click on "Examples by Chapter" and "Chapter 8."

--David