Digital Workshop

I wonder if anyone has any advice on this one:

One of my uses for Opus XE 4.3 is to use an interface I've constructed to launch other people's presentations (including Powerpoint) which are .pps files accessed by a simple button on the Opus interface..

The Powerpoint presentations may have been constructed with various versions (97, 2000, 2003....).

On my viewing machines, I had the Powerpoint 97 viewer installed, and that copes with anything, but obviously won't show presentations properly which contain vbs activity, or some of the whizzier animations in Powerpoint 2003. Otherwise, all the presentations opened and ran O.K.

The problem I have is:

I uninstalled the old PPT97 viewer and replaced it with the PPT2003 viewer to cope with the additional functionality, but now my Opus launcher interface fails to launch any PPT presentations!

The individual PPS files will readily open and run when double clicked in Explorer, but not from the Opus interface.

It may be of relevance that the machine I am using to author Opus publications has Office 2000 Professional installed rather than 2003 - would this make a difference?

Any input on this would be welcome, as I need to resolve the issue fairly urgently.

Thanks

Chris

Chris --

Make sure your PPS files are in the same Directory as your Pub files when testing/Preview, and manually copy them into the root directory of any CD-ROM you create. I've done this successfully using 2.81, but haven't had a request for PowerPoint presentations since switching to 4.3.

Thanks, Fred, but that's not the problem - all the files are where they should be and worked fine, it's just the change from the Powerpoint 97 viewer to the Powerpoint 2003 viewer that seems to have thrown Opus.

DW, if you're monitoring this, have you any input? Could you perhaps test this phenomenon on a machine without Office installed, and just one or other of the Powerpoint viewers?

Chris

When you say that your Power Point files run OK in Explorer do you mean in Internet Explorer itself or do they open up externally in the Power Point Player?

It may be that when you have installed the latter version of Power Point it may have altered the file association to prevent PPT files from running in a browser. If this has happened because Opus uses the Internet Explorer Active X control to play the PPT it will not work.

Try opening Windows Explorer and go to:

Tools
Folder Options
File Types
Find PPT
Click on the Advanced tab and make sure browse in same window is checked

Brenden, when I say Explorer I mean the Explorer available from My Computer. Double clicking one of the .pps files opens and runs it whatever version of Powerpoint viewer is installed.

I have checked the file associations and all appears to be OK.

With the Powerpoint 97 viewer installed on a computer (which, by the way, doesn't have Microsoft Office installed at all), my Opus publication will open and run any Powerpoint presentation linked to a "launcher" button in the publication.

I have uninstalled the Powerpoint 97 viewer from that same machine, and in its place installed the new Powerpoint 2003 viewer. The file associations have been checked, and I can open and run any .pps file as I've already said.

However, the Opus publication will no longer open the .pps attached to the "launcher" button - nothing happens.

The attachment should make things clearer - button is fine with PPT97 viewer, but not PPT2003 viewer.

Chris

What happens if you type E:\TC Training\NorthTVC.PPS intorun on the machine that does not work?

Regards

Brenden

The presentation runs in the respective Powerpoint viewer, regardless of which one happens to be installed....

Chris

Khazi,

Have you tried launching the PowerPoint viewer and using the switches and parameters to pick the .pps file?

You can direct it to which .pps you want to play as well as turn off the splash screen, set a playlist, etc.

I had an example here that I did, but I cannot seem to find it right now. Let me look around a bit.

I'd be grateful for any pointers, Tom.

The nub of it seems to be the inability of my Publication to launch a pretty standard .pps file in it's native viewer. Just because the viewer has been updated, that shouldn't affect the mechanics of getting it to open a file - particularly as the file can be run in all the other normal ways. (Like double-clicking or launching from the Run command).

Is there something fundamentally different about the Powerpoint 2003 viewer?

If pps files are automatically associated with the Powerpoint viewer, I don't understand why a simple launch action now fails to work from an Opus button, when it did before the viewer was updated.

The reason for using the viewer and not installing the full Powerpoint programme on target machines is a). to ensure the presentation runs as a show, and b). to prevent users from opening Powerpoint proper and messing around with presentation content.

It's been pretty foolproof up until now.

There's probably a very simple resolution staring me in the face, but for the life of me I can't see it!!

Chris

Khazi,

Try this link to a Microsoft page that explains the command line switches you can include in the parameter field in the launch action.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... -us;830040

You are putting the player app on the cd and launching it from there or are you relying on the end user to have the player installed?

If you are putting the player on the distribution CD, I believe you need to make sure that the player, its associated files and the .pps files are in the root of the CD.

I think this will work. (see attached image)

OK, Tom - I'll ty that when I get back to work on Monday.

None of this is committed to CD - it all runs from the hard drive (E) on several machines. The directory structure is identical on each machine.

I've no doubt your suggestion will work, and I'll report back. It's just odd that the method used in my previous post (with attachment) always worked O.K. with the old viewer.

You live and learn!

Thanks for your efforts.

Chris