Give your audience the action they crave with a Flash-y animation

You don’t have to be a fancy web developer to take advantage of Flash animations in your PowerPoint presentation. We’ll show you how it’s done.

Note: All images referenced in this article can be viewed @ http://bit.ly/tyqqt

In a world in which it’s rare to see a static web page — yet common to see a boring slideshow— it’s likely that your website designers have some Shockwave Flash File (SWF) animations that you can snag to add some zip to your PowerPoint presentations. We’ll show you how to insert and take charge of them, as shown in Figure A, so they work perfectly and are at your disposal.

Prepare PowerPoint to use SWF files

Before you can insert or control SWF files, you need to ensure that PowerPoint is set up to handle the format. If it isn’t, you can easily download the controls you need.

To determine whether you can use SWF files:

1. Open PowerPoint to the slide on which you want to insert your Flash file.
2. Select View Toolbars Control Toolbox. (In 2007, go to the Developer tab’s Controls group. If you don’t see a Developer tab, click the Office button, click PowerPoint Options, and in the Popular section, select the Show Developer Tab In The Ribbon check box.)
3. Click on the More Controls icon to expand the list of available items.
4. Scroll down and look for the Shockwave Flash Object, as shown in Figure B.
5. If it’s listed, you can skip to the next section. If you don’t see the control, visit www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer and download the free player.

You may have to close and reopen PowerPoint to activate the control. If you’ve updated Shockwave from a previous version, you may have trouble getting a SWF movie to play. See the Adobe TechNote article at www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_12727 to fix the problem.

Plan your file’s resting place

Now that PowerPoint is able to play SWF files, you must decide where to store the file permanently.

• If you plan to play your presentation at various locations, you can store it on the web and link to it there.
• On the other hand, if you want to use the presentation solely on your computer, simply place it in a folder and use that path.
• You can also embed the file, which increases the PowerPoint file’s size, but avoids the need to keep track of multiple files.

Whichever method you choose, note the path to your SWF file.

Insert the Flash file

Inserting a Shockwave Flash Object is straightforward. Just navigate to the slide on which you want the object to appear, and follow these steps:

1. Once again, click on the More Controls icon on the Control Toolbox toolbar and select Shockwave Flash Object, as shown in Figure B.
2. When the pointer changes to crosshairs, click and drag a rectangle to house your SWF movie. (You can resize it later.)
3. Right-click on the placeholder that appears, and select Properties. Click on the Alphabetic tab if necessary.
4. Note the text shown in the (Name) property text box — you’ll need it later. For instance, ours is ShockwaveFlash1.
5. Set the Playing property to False by selecting it from the dropdown list.
6. Click in the Movie property field and enter the URL or pathname for the SWF file you wish to insert, as shown in Figure C.
7. Close the Properties sheet and view your slideshow to ensure the movie plays correctly.

At this point, you may wish to embed your movie. To do so, simply reopen the Properties sheet, set the EmbedMovie property to True, and then close the Properties sheet.

Take control of the SWF playback

Now that your movie is in place, you can allow it to play as soon as your slide displays by setting the Playing property to True. However, if you want more control over the movie, you can add a bit of Visual Basic script and a few colorful buttons that allow you to Play, Rewind, or Pause your movie. This can really come in handy when you need to address an audience question or replay the movie a second time.

I can’t control my movie!
Some versions of Flash allow developers to disable the play, pause, and rewind navigation commands. If you use a movie file secured in this manner, the action buttons described in this article won’t work. If you know the Flash developer, however, you can request a navigable version of the file.

Let VB code do all the work

To create seamless navigational controls for Flash movies in PowerPoint, you need to enter a few lines of VB code into the Visual Basic Editor (VBE).

1. Choose Tools Macro Visual Basic Editor (or press [Alt][F11]) to launch the editor. (In 2007, go tothe Developer tab and click Visual Basic in the Code group or use the shortcut key.)
2. In the VBE, choose Insert Module and type the code in Listing A into the new module.
3. Replace all instances of SlideX with the number of the slide on which you’ve inserted your movie(for instance, Slide2, in our sample presentation).
4. Replace all instances of ShockwaveFlashName with the name of your Shockwave Flash Object we noted earlier. (We used ShockwaveFlash1.)
5. After you enter the code, save your work and close the VBE.

Each Sub line creates and names a new macro that you’ll use later to make your movie play, pause, or rewind on command. For instance, Sub PlayShock() created a macro named PlayShockthat, when activated, plays your ShockwaveFlash1 movie.

Check your macro security settings: The VB code creates macros that PowerPoint may block depending on your current security settings. To adjust them, select Tools Macro Security. (In 2007, go to the Developer tab, and in the Codegroup, click the Macro Security button.)

Create the control buttons

With the code in place, all that’s left to do is to create the control buttons on our slide and assign the appropriate code to each one.

1. On your movie slide, select Slide Show Action Buttons.
2. Select Action Button: Custom button (the blank square).
3. Click and drag a rectangular button on your slide where you want the Play button to sit. When you release the mouse button, the Action Settings dialog box appears.
4. On the Mouse Click tab, select Run Macro, and then select PlayShock from the Run Macro dropdown list and click OK.
5. Right-click on the button you just created and select Add Text.
6. Enter Play and click away from the button.
   

Adapt for PowerPoint 2007: In 2007, you need to insert a shape for your action button first; just go to the Insert tab, click the Shapes button, select a shape you want to use, and then click and drag theshape onto your slide. Then you can select the shape and click the Action button in the Insert tab’s Link group to open the Action Settings dialog box. From there, you can set up your macro to run just as you would in earlier versions.

Your button is ready to use, but you may wish to format it to match your slide. Right-click on it and use the Format AutoShape dialog box to change its appearance. Our finished button is shown in Figure D.

Repeat the process for the PauseShock and RewindShock macros. When you’ve finished, you should have three buttons on your slide, as shown in Figure A. Now, when you run your slideshow, you can use the buttons you just created to play, pause, and rewind your movie to your heart’s content.

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