#489 PowerPoint slides flickering on slide change

[Michael Warwick]

We have tried updating to the latest Windows version (3.4.8) from 2.2.7 and have an issue with PowerPoint slides flickering on slide change. It seems to flick back to the first slide and then to the slide it should be showing. There is no problem with animations within slides, only an actual slide change. Since most of our speakers seem to use animations to reveal bullet points we normally use OpenSong to start the PowerPoint, then switch focus to PowerPoint so that when the speaker uses the pointer to avance it goes to the next step, not the next slide. An improvement which would benefit us would be if, when presenting PowerPoint files, the arrow keys were passed through to PowerPoint rather than advancing to the next slide. This would allow us to stay in OpenSong for the whole service.

[Anonymous]

Can confirm, we are experiencing this bug on two computers.

[SvA]

I can confirm the absolutely inacceptable visual flaws a modern PowerPoint creates with our automation.

The library (or rather plugin) we use to automate PowerPoint is rather dated and it is unlikely it will get an update. So we needed to find a new way of automating PowerPoint.

Moreover, a quick search for powerpoint automation surfaced lots of content concerning automated slide creation, but nothing up-to-date concerning remote controlling the presentation.

For now, I recommend using PowerPoint from an external slide of type Application. Use the /s parameter in order to start up in presentation mode. Set up the presentation beforehand to use the correct screen for presentation.

You will have to switch between PowerPoint and OpenSong, if you need to. (Make sure "Wait for external application to finish" is turned off in this case.)

Likely, using an older version of PowerPoint would work too (pre Office 365), but I have not tested this on a supported version of Windows.

It has never been possible to use incremental steps from within OpenSong. I have never used any app that was able to do this, including previews for the operator.

If anyone knows more about how to automate (remote control) presentation (not the document but the performance) in a contemporary version of powerpoint, beyond sending keybord commands, let us know.

[Derrick Bozem]

I noticed an issue with Open Song not handling PowerPoint files correctly. I ran into a similar issue but found a workaround by converting my presentations to PDFs using a professional powerpoint presentation from the company SlidePeak. It may not be a perfect solution, but it gets the job done until the error will be fixed. Hope this helps others facing the same problem!

[Michael Warwick]

I used the advice at https://medium.com/@chasekidder/controlling-powerpoint-w-python-52f6f6bf3f2d and with some looking at the code at https://git.lorimer.id.au/ppt-control.git/blob/e5c6ba60e958156340aefd73c7277f03aed49f55:/ppt_control/ppt_control.py to put together the following python script which opens a PowerPoint presentation, runs it in presenter mode (might be default), uses next to go to the second slide, then next to run the animation I made on that slide, then exports a png image of slide 3, then jumps to slide 1.

import win32com.client as win32
app = win32.Dispatch("PowerPoint.Application")
objCOM = app.Presentations.Open(FileName="TestSlides.pptx", WithWindow=1)

#START THE SLIDESHOW
objCOM.SlideShowSettings.Run()

#ADVANCE SLIDES/ANIMATION STEPS
objCOM.SlideShowWindow.View.Next()
objCOM.SlideShowWindow.View.Next()

#EXPORT A SLIDE
objCOM.Slides(3).Export("test.png", "png")

#JUMP TO SPECIFIC SLIDE
objCOM.SlideShowWindow.View.GotoSlide(1)

This is written in Python but it was straight forward to see the relationship to VBA, is it possible to do something like this in Xojo?