Power point slide show - interesting problem

[Axel]

Note that I've given this to MS tech support to chew on, but they haven't come up with anything yet.

Here's the situation -
Office 97 Power Point
created a slide show which runs in an endless loop. This is transmitted to television monitors for certain reasons.
We have different slide shows which have to automatically kick off on certain days. We placed the presentations in Norton Scheduler to kick off automatically.

Thing is - if a current looped show is running, Power-point won't let you start another show. You have to shut down the current show, then launch the next show.

One way to end a show is to hit <esc>.

So - does anyone out there either know how to stop a running power-point show, or, how about an assist in issuing a batch-file <esc> command which I can run as an executable in Norton to stop the running show....

Any takers?

[Mntsnow]

Well the easiest way that I can think of to create a "workaround" is to use the advanced power management on your system (namely the RTC setting in the bios) to shutdown your system at say 1200am and restart your system at 1202am. That will turn off any running programs and allow your norton scheduler to start the next slide show.

Would that work for you?

Mntsnow

[Axel]

nice try -
no such animal on the CPU's in question - also, have to be able to kill and restart the show on the fly - these slide shows are sometimes used to relay outage information.

Some slide changes would have to be automated mid-day....

I think the question becomes - can you write a batch file to issue an <esc> key stroke - I.E. schedule the batch file <esc>, then schedule the next slide show a minute later in norton scheduler.

I'm just not sure how to have a batch file issue an <esc> key stroke....

[Mntsnow]

Gotcha....Well I dont play with batch files/scripts that much so I'm afraid I'm out of answers for you /forum/frown.gif But I will keep my eyes open for info and watch your thread with interest.

Mntsnow

[Chainsaw]

Your're right, this can't be done directly from the DOS prompt since ESCape simply clears whatever you've just typed.
What you need to do is use the ECHO command to write the ESCape sequence to the screen from within a batch file.
If you are using EDIT to generate the batch file, you need to hold the CTRL key down and press P, then ESCape.
What appears on the screen when you do this is !.

Hope this helps
...chainsaw



[This message has been edited by Chainsaw (edited 11-16-1999).]

[Axel]

Well - we figured out how to execute an <esc>, but that didn't quite do what we wanted as we can't execute the <esc> within the power-point window.....

So - any ideas on how we might kill the entire power-point application from a command line/batch file. Then we can restart it with a short-cut to the correct show in norton scheduler. - I.E. we don't want to reboot the entire machine. just stop power-point.

[Axel]

We've taken a different direction on the problem. - We have abandoned norton scheduler and switched in favor to MS scheduler ( under my computer - 95 OSR2 ) We are no longer looking for a batch file solution as I don't think there's one out there.
The new problem has become that when MS scheduler starts a power-point document (*.pps), but doesn't launch the show - it only opens the first page in power-point and doesn't advance an automated show.

Any ideas? - I'm still playing with it on this end.

[LittleKing]

Instead of having MS schedular open powerpoint. Have it open the presentation.

What I mean is, create an show that you could run on any computer even without powerpoint. Then all you would have to do is then have the schedular open the "movie" and close it at certain times and open another "movie" at a certain time.

LK

[Axel]

littleking - nice try, but we are pointing it directly at the presentation and not at power-point. It's still not executing correctly. I've got MS technet chewing on it as well and they don't have an answer yet - they actually pointed me towards some other third party product - Bill would turn in his grave if he were dead yet....

[Donkey]

A completely different way around it would be to save each slide as a seperate gif or something and then write a small bit of code in visual basic or the like which scrolls through the pictures in order and when it comes to the end of them it can start at the beginning. So as long as you always label your images in a certain way it will always just keep going and looping through the pictures. This could then be easily started and stopped through scheduler as it would be an exe file.
just a thought!

[Axel]

Donkey - I'm afraid I'd have to handle too many "organic peripheral faults" if you know what I mean - I want to use supported off the shelf software to find a solution. I definitely want to keep it simple, if for nothing else, to keep training of my end users down to a minimum.
MS closed my first ticket out - "unsupported functionality" - so I put a different twist on it and opened a new ticket.

Anyone know where I can download a copy of system agent, or perhaps the entire 95 PLUS! pack? - they aren't in the MS site as far as I could find in a few hours of searching and my guys lost the office copy.

[Axel]

Thanks RPW - I'll down-load it off MS if I can find it there and let you know. Not sure it will work as the machine it's running on is an old 150mhz on a FIC mobo, running win95a.
Mbarb - I'll look for marcoexpress as well, but would rather stick with MS stuff on this one for future support reasons.

[Mbarb]

Could you use a program like macro express to record the mouse clicks/key presses needed to stop the old slide show and start the new one. I'ts been a while since I've used Macroexpress but I think it includes a scheduling feature as well.

[RPW]

Just curious have you tried running the KILL /f powerpnt in a batch file?? This would forcefully kill PowerPoint and allow you to start a new iteration of that app. You may be able to write a quick batch file that kills the previous PowerPoint app and starts your new presentation all in one and schedule that in either scheduler. I'm not to versed in PowerPoint I have gotten it to bring the presentation up but not automatically start it…. I guess you already have that done ok. The KILL command is part of the WINDOWS 98 Resource Kit and is used in conjunction with TLIST (lists all the tasks/apps running)…. Not sure where on the web to download but worth getting and trying. PS make sure you get Windows 95/98 version, NT version will not work on a win95 PC. Hope this helps! RPW