powerpoint problem

[hulkMAD]

i have this powerpoint presentation with about 15 slides in it. i want to repeat 3 slides over and over again automatically until i click the mouse. the rest of the slides i want to be able to change manually (with my mouse). i kno how to do everything except how to make the 3 slides loop until i click the mouse.

powerpoint 2000

[Target]

OK... I have an idea, but I need to warn you that I am not a PowerPoint guru, and have not personally tried this (but plan to do so just to see if it works). However, since nobody else has taken a shot at it, I will.....

There is a thing in PowerPoint 2000 called a Playlist. It allows you to run presentations sequentially from the PowerPoint Viewer.

My idea is that you could split your original 15 slide presentation into 3 different presentations.

Part 1 would include the slides leading up to the loop. Part 2 would be only those slides that you want to loop continuously (you'll have to specify the loop continuously until ESC, and duration between slides for in the properties of this presentation). Part 3 would be those slides you want to show after the loop that would then conclude your presentation.

Next, you simply create a playlist that has Presentation 1, followed by Presentation 2 (which loops till you end it), followed by Presentation 3 which will conclude the entire presentation. To the audience, it would appear to be a single non-stop presentation rather than 3 different ones merged together.


Again, I have not tried this, and its just an idea I had. But based on what I know about PowerPoint, and what I was able to learn via the help files and a cursory look around the web, its what I came up with. Perhaps it will work.

[Target]

W00T! ...... It worked

I had to: install the PowerPoint viewer that came with Office because I didn't already have it loaded, create three seperate presentations (#1-regular, #2-looping, #3-regular), then use a text editor to create the playlist. PowerPoint Viewer is required as PowerPoint itself no longer supports playlists.

Then I fired up the PowerPoint viewer, and had it open my playlist. It went through the first set of slides normally, with me clicking each time I wanted to advance to the next slide. Then it got to the second presentation, and it sat there looping indefinitely through the slides of that presentation. Next, I moved my mouse over the slide, and in lower left-hand corner an icon appeared that when clicked upon allowed me to "end show". The viewer/playlist then continued on to the next presentation, which again let me advance slides manually till completed. The whole time the viewer never closed, and I couldn't tell that it was switching between 3 different presentations.

Took me a while to figure out that moving my mouse over the 2nd presentation would give me that icon in the lower left corner, and that it would allow me to click and choose "end show" on just the current running presentation. Before figuring that out, I had tried to hit the ESC key, which unforatunately stopped the entire playlist script from executing and closed the viewer. There may be another way to have the viewer stop and then continue to the next presentation on the list, but I don't know that that is.

So, there you have it hulkMAD.... its possible after all! While there may be other/better ways to do this, thats what I was able to get to work for me given my limited knowledge of PowerPoint.

Hope this is what you were looking for, and that it will help you. If you need help with how the viewer works, creating playlists, or the presentations, let me know. Everything you need to know about it you should be able to find in the PowerPoint help as I did.

[hulkMAD]

thanks!