PPT VBA - Clicking on non-existent textbox?

In article , Zigzag wrote:
Hi David,

I effectively tried this for a couple of "More " textboxes using the
custom animation fade in and disappear. The problem is not the fact that the
boxes don't show but as they are on top of one another in the zorder only
one becomes clickable (whether it is showing or not).

Try using GoToSlide( your current slide's slide index ) after making changes to
zorder/visibility.

Changing the zorder at
runtime does not seem to change which box is actually clickable (it always
appears to be the one on top when the presentation starts).
For a matter of record, I also tried to motion path the boxes to and away
from the position I wanted them in but the clickable areas for both boxes
remained at their starting positions. It's as if the clickable areas get
'locked' when the presentation starts.

I'll have a look at the example.

Cheers

Zig
"David M. Marcovitz" wrote in
message ...
Zigzag,

There are several ways to do what you want to do. If you want to create
shapes and make them clickable in run time, check out Example 7.9 on my
Web
site:

http://www.loyola.edu/education/PowerfulPowerPoint/

Go to "Examples by Chapter" and "Chapter 7." In example 7.9, you want to
look at the PrintablePage procedure. This procedure creates a slide and
puts
some text on the slide. Additionally, it creates two buttons: homeButton
and
printButton. These buttons are created and assigned a macro to run, which
is
just what you asked for.

However, if I were doing what you wanted, I would probably create all the
shapes in advance and hide and show the shapes as needed, using the
shapes'
.Visible properties. That way, you don't have to keep track of what has
been
created and deleted, and you don't have to worry about using code to add
text
or make shapes clickable. All the code needs to do is hide or show the
appropriate shapes by setting .Visible to True or False.

--David

David Marcovitz
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.loyola.edu/education/PowerfulPowerPoint/

"Zigzag" wrote:

Ah, Monsieur Hollerith is a good fellow but he doesn't know how easy his
life was. Cards? We only had stacks of wooden slabs. And we had to
run
thread every which way through them before we could think of starting.
And
they kept the machinery atop a mountain we had to climb every morning.
Barefoot. Through thorns that grew atop the icepack.

Luxury. And you tell kids these days and they don't believe you.

Cobol seemed SO longwinded. We had to enter everything onto punchcards;
bad enough in Fortran. I'd still be punching at it if I'd done Cobol!

I too started with Fortran, then Pascal, then Cobol. When starting Cobol
I
believed it was like writing in sanskrit, it looked so archaic. But you
know, after a while, I preferred it. I believe the effect is something
akin
to the Stockholm syndrome.

Now OO languages I just can't get my head around. That's not a criticism
of
the genre, just my view of them.

Which brings me, longwindedly, to my problem which I hope someone can
help
me with.

I am experimenting with putting together a presentation on one slide
using
animation appear and disappear effects. I know that a work-around would
be
to use more than one slide but I would like to learn how to resolve this
particular problem.
When I click on an image, an associated descriptive textbox fades in.
This
is fine until I have more text than I can reasonably show in the textbox.
If
there is more text I display a "More " textbox on the slide and make
it
clickable to fade out the original description and fade in the additional
text. This works hunky-dory until I have more than one image with two
pages
of text. As the "More " textboxes are located in the same position on
the
slide then ppt only allows me to click on the one on top of the zorder.
I've tried moving the appropriate "More " textbox to the top of the
zorder using vba. This moves the textbox but doesn't make it clickable
when
running the show. Understandable but not the effect I want.
So here's what I now want to do:
Click on an image to display the descriptive text and Create the "More
"
textbox (where appropriate).
Click on the created "More " textbox to fade out the descriptive text,
show the additional textbox and remove the "More " textbox.
I can use vba to create the "More " textbox but I don't know how to
make
it clickable and associate a procedure with it when it doesn't exist at
runtime. I need to do this for each image where there is more than one
textbox worth of descriptive text.

Any help would be appreciated.

TIA

Zig





-----------------------------------------
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

Given the popularity of OO I can only resign myself to the fact that I have
a short circuit somewhere which refuses to identify the logic behind these
languages.

My money's betting the other way. Give it time, poke it a bit and sooner or
later (I'm betting on sooner) the Light.On event will fire and
ZigZag.Aha.NowIGetIt will toggle from false to true.

With the 'old' languages you had a number of commands that you applied in a
logical sequence to achieve what you wanted - read, manipulate, write.
Now, you can do all sorts - if you know what's available, or so it seems to
me.

Go into the vba editor and press F2 (object browser). And also look up the
object model in VBA help. Very useful.



Unless you are really stuck on doing this using VBA, there is an easier
way. Create one "More" button for each set of text that is longer than one
box. Give it an appear animation. Drag that appear animation to just after
the triggered animation for the first text box. Now, when you click the
trigger for the text box, both the text box and the more box appear. (Oh,
and don't forget to add it's exit to the trigger for making the second
text box disappear. But you know that already.)

Have already tried this Kathy. The problem lies in the fact that I might
have more than one "More" box at the same location on the slide even if only
one is showing. PPT seems to 'lock' the clickability of the top box even if
you change the zorder in runtime.

Regards

Mr. Sanders


-----------------------------------------
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

SNOBOL is a string-processing language (hence my comment about the STRING of
puns, but if you have to explain a joke...). Sorry, I must have missed the
BYTE magazine article. I learned SNOBOL in a class that also covered APL and
LISP, but that was a long time ago.
--David

David Marcovitz
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.loyola.edu/education/PowerfulPowerPoint/

"Steve Rindsberg" wrote:

In article , David M. Marcovitz
wrote:
That brings back memories. I don't know if I have ever met anyone else who
has even heard of SNOBOL.

Having heard of it is about all I can lay claim to. Oh, I may have read an article
about it in Byte magazine, remember that?

[If he fesses to that, he's older than he looks, folks]

In article , David M. Marcovitz
wrote:
SNOBOL is a string-processing language (hence my comment about the STRING of
puns, but if you have to explain a joke...).

They must have covered that in the Byte article. Got it on the first take. ;-)

Sorry, I must have missed the
BYTE magazine article. I learned SNOBOL in a class that also covered APL and
LISP, but that was a long time ago.

From SNOBOL to APL. Polar opposites on the verbosity scale.


--David

David Marcovitz
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.loyola.edu/education/PowerfulPowerPoint/

"Steve Rindsberg" wrote:

In article , David M. Marcovitz
wrote:
That brings back memories. I don't know if I have ever met anyone else who
has even heard of SNOBOL.

Having heard of it is about all I can lay claim to. Oh, I may have read an article
about it in Byte magazine, remember that?

[If he fesses to that, he's older than he looks, folks]




-----------------------------------------
Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP
PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com
PPTools: www.pptools.com
================================================

Hi David,

I have never seen the behavior you described.

Phew, I was starting to doubt myself for a minute there so I've backtracked
to how it all started, (I've done a lot of attempted fixes), and I've
recreated the original problem.
You are right, you can click on boxes which are layered but I noticed that
whereas you can click anywhere on the topmost box including text, any other
box lower down the zorder will only allow you to click on the textbox edge
and not the text itself.
Now, it would be fair of you to say that during a presentation an audience
wouldn't notice if you were clicking on the text or just off it and you
would be right. However, this presentation is designed to be run by a single
user on their screen and not by me. I noticed it straight off and thought
I'd forgotten to assign an event to the box. That is until I moved the mouse
away from the text. Call me Mr. Pernickety but I thought it looked
unprofessional so was resolved to correcting the offending detail. The
attempted fixes seemed to Snobol (thank you Mr. Steve ;-) ) out off control.

I appreciate the help yourself and others have offered, (puns excluded), and
there is plenty to be going on with.

Many thanks

Mr. P

Hi Steve,

My money's betting the other way. Give it time, poke it a bit and sooner
or
later (I'm betting on sooner) the Light.On event will fire and
ZigZag.Aha.NowIGetIt will toggle from false to true.

I appreciate the sentiment Steve, I can see your glass is half full.

And now I know you're fallible ;-)

Let me get you a refill sometime.

Cheers

Zig

Having heard of it is about all I can lay claim to.

Moi, aussi

Welcome to the Zimmer club.

[If he fesses to that, he's older than he looks, folks]

I remember Adam as a lad, right terror - always sneaking into the orchard.
Bit off more than he could chew tho'.

Zig

Hi Austin,

Will do, the more the merrier.

Thanks a lot.

Zig

Hi Kathy,

(After all, if I could...)

What's this? Modesty?
I would have thought a lady with your obvious charm, subtlety, intelligence
and other assets, (can I stop yet?), would have been proudly proclaiming
from the highest rooftops.
And modesty as well - a virtue greatly admired so they say.

So where were we?

Oh yes, I've just realised that OO is in Pooh Bear. What a coincidence eh?
The conspiracy is lent another hand.
Do you reckon PB could be part of the group monitoring the take-up of oo by
the masses? A sort of litmus test forum with Christopher Robin being a
pseudonym for He Who Wants To Control Everything In The Forest, known to his
friends as... Bill.

I think we're on (to) something here.

Regards

Zig and Cat

Hi,

LOL! You fit in well here vbg!

--
Regards,

Glen Millar
Microsoft PPT MVP
www.powerpointworkbench.com

Australia

"Zigzag" wrote in message
...
Hi Kathy,

(After all, if I could...)

What's this? Modesty?
I would have thought a lady with your obvious charm, subtlety,
intelligence and other assets, (can I stop yet?), would have been proudly
proclaiming from the highest rooftops.
And modesty as well - a virtue greatly admired so they say.

So where were we?

Oh yes, I've just realised that OO is in Pooh Bear. What a coincidence eh?
The conspiracy is lent another hand.
Do you reckon PB could be part of the group monitoring the take-up of oo
by the masses? A sort of litmus test forum with Christopher Robin being a
pseudonym for He Who Wants To Control Everything In The Forest, known to
his friends as... Bill.

I think we're on (to) something here.

Regards

Zig and Cat