How to loop through the first 3 slides, then continue?

Ryan · Guest

Help! I've convinced my Church to use OpenOffice for the time being. But I am having some trouble with it (granted I don't know if MSPP would do this either).

Before the church service starts I'd like to have it loop through several slides. Then when the service is ready to start, I'd like the presenter to press their remote button (it emulates the PgDn key) and it would jump to slide '4' or whatever the first real slide is. I haven't been able to get this working. I can get the first 3 slides to automatially advance, and I've found out how to loop through an entire show, but I can't figure out how to loop through the first three until it receives user input, then continue on to slide 4.

I tried linking an image on one of the slides to a separate document, but this doesn't work well. I the projector will be *on*, and I can't have the congregation watching us load another file, then going from edit mode to play mode. Also the person running the remote isn't technical, and also, it's just a remote, so they can't even press F9 to get into show mode.

Hope this made sense, it's very late and I have been working on this for hours.

Thanks,
-Ryan

BTW, I'm running OO 1.1 on Win32.

anvilsoup · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 4:46 am Post subject:

Kewl! Your church is using OOo! My church is still with PPT.
You might consider letting the non-techie guy touch the keyboard or the mouse. THat way he can manually pg up pg dn when things inevitably go wrong.
Anyway here's how you could do it:
1. Create a custom slide show with the first 3 slides (Slide Show > Custom Slide Show)
2. Change the transitions for these slides to Automatic (View > Workspace > Slides View > [select slides 1,2,3] > Transition > Automatic)
3. Add an interaction to these three slides (View > Workspace > Drawing View > [click text] > Slide Show > Interaction > Go to page or object > Slide 4)
4. Run the show and check to see if it works!!
Basically, it'll cycle the first 3 slides until someone clicks on any of the text, then it will go straight to slide 4.
OK hope it helps, tell me how it goes.

anvilsoup · Posted: Sat Jan 24, 2004 4:48 am Post subject:

O, if it says "click to end presentation" or does a count-down, change the settings:
Slide Show > Slide Show Settings > Type > Auto > 00:00:00

Ryan · Guest

Thanks for the reply.

I setup the custom slide show, and set one of the pictures in one of the slides to jump to slide 4. But then when I advance past 4 using PgDn, it jumps back into the custom slide show againb (just the first 3 slides).

Bummer. Any other ideas? Could I instead setup an action on my image that runs a macro that jumps to a different custom slide show? I would have no idea how to write a macro, though.

Thanks,
-Ryan

anvilsoup · Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 4:48 am Post subject:

Bummer, you're right.
O well, change the interaction to Run Program and execute the next presentation. THere's a thread here on how to start the presentation automatically I think. Anyone?

anvilsoup · Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2004 4:58 am Post subject:

Hmmm looks like there's only macro workarounds.
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1051
O well!

THe other workaround mentioned is to export the first three to PDF. In Acrobat Reader, you can see the PDF in full screen. In Acrobat Reader Preferences there's Full Screen options to automaticlly advance after x second then loop back to the start.

Then, when you wnat the thing to kick off, simply ALT-TAB to the running OOoImpress presentation. THis'll mean a small task switch dialogue box coming up but it's pretty quick and imperceptible.

Or, you could still use my solution and add interactions to each slide to advance to the next - but this is of course a bit time consuming.

Or, you could buy the special Presenter software (expensive) that's designed for presenting words on screen at churches. Don't know the URL. May be search Presenter and Church?

anvilsoup · Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 1:38 am Post subject:

Wow an old forum thread popped up and it has some great info about church presenters:
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=898
It refers to two free presenters (as opposed to the commercial one which costs $1000s)
http://www.adebenham.com/lds/
http://www.zionworx.org.uk/
Wow. Kewl. I think my church just bought the $$$ one. Suckers! D'oh!

DannyB · Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2004 11:02 am Post subject:

I was thinking of a macro solution.

oDoc1 = StarDesktop.loadComponentFromURL( ....document 1... )
oDoc2 = StarDesktop.loadComponentFromURL( ....document 2... )

oDoc1.getPresentation().start()
oDoc2.getPresentation().start()

The idea is to load both documents. Start the presentation on document 1. When you click, the presentation ends. The macro then starts presentation 2.

Problem: Basic execution continues after the first "start()" statement. Thus presentation 1 starts, and immediately, presentation 2 is started -- cancelling presentation 1.

Now if there were only a programmable way to "wait" until presentation 1 finished? Sorry I'm not much of an Impress expert.
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