Help (US ARMY)

  • Thread starter Thread starter CB
  • Start date Start date
C

CB

Help,

I have a very important q? We have daily briefings re: Iraq.... Each unit
is responsible for a piece of the briefing pie. The Slides are called BUB
(Battle Update Brief). On our server we have a secure Public dirve. Each
unit has their folder where they store their daily updated BUB slides. I am
responsible for going out to the public drive and grab all of the units BUB
slides and colsolidate them into one briefing for the top brass.

Q? I want to find a way to with ONE CLICK (say a custom action button)
consolidate all of the slides into a Master Brief (over 100 slides). I am
sure that this can be done....If any brain can help me I would be greatful
 
I think that the best solution would be to ...

1) Collect each unit's PowerPoint to a central folder on the server under an
assigned name (i.e. "3rdInfantryReport.PPT"). Give them guidelines, such as
"each show must begin and end with a black slide and have no more that x
minutes of material". Perhaps even give them a sample of what you want.

2) Build a master presentation that will link to each of these sub
presentations. Each of the sub presentations will revert back to the master
when it is completed.

With security being a major concern, you obviously do not want one unit to
be able to gather information from the other's presentations, so I would
write a simple VB6 (or software of choice) program to collect these
presentations from the units server folder's and copy them to a single
folder on the local hard drive of the main presentation's computer. As a
general rule, you do not want to run any presentation over a network.

The master presentation will not need to be updated from week to week. The
collection program would be run once a week. The units would be responsible
for updating their presentations by their deadline.


Sound like a workable system?

Here are some additional references that will help:

---Linking
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00193.htm

---Networks
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00122.htm

---Previous discussions (watch text wrap)
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=...3ZBW5OKfDHA.616%40TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl&rnum=4


And in case no one has told you today, Thank you.
B
===============
Please spend a few minutes checking vestprog2@
out www.pptfaq.com This link will yahoo.
answer most of our questions, before com
you think to ask them.

Change org to com to defuse anti-spam,
ant-virus, anti-nuisance misdirection.
..
..
 
CB

In addition to 'B's excellent advice.

Another way may be to use the "insert slides from file" feature of powerpoint.
It's not a ONE CLICK solution...but it may be quicker than your current procedure.

Insert > slides from file>

Find Presentation
Browse
Find the first folder for the 1st unit - OK
Click "Add to favorites"

Then repeat

The next time to need to assemble the presentation.

Insert > slides from file >
List of Favorites
Display
Insert All.
And just work through the list of all the favorites.

Thanks
TAJ Simmons
microsoft powerpoint mvp

awesome - powerpoint backgrounds,
free powerpoint templates, tutorials, hints and tips etc
http://www.powerpointbackgrounds.com
 
If you need to do this often, consider a cataloging application like
Presentation Librarian that can consolidate the presentations automatically
to a new presentation.
 
I wish I could help more, but have you tried the insert slides from files
option? With a new master brief file open, click on insert, then choose
slides from files. A slide finder box will appear. Just browse to the file
location and choose to insert some, or all, of the slides in the file. By
holding down the control key, you can select many specific slides that you
want to insert. (You can also choose to keep source formatting if you like,
or they will all be given the formatting that appears on your master brief
file.)

Using the slide finder box, you can add all of your file locations to your
list of favorites. That way the next time you do it, just click on the
favorites tab and you'll see all of the files you need.

Certainly it'll take more than one click, but it may save you some time.

You may be able to create a macro to do this by recording your macro, then
using an action button to run your macro, but I've never tried it with
anything as complicated as this task.

Good luck and stay safe.
 
Oops. Forgive me. For some reason the other replies to your question did
not appear on my screen before I decided to reply. There are people more
qualified than myself that had already answered it.
 
Colleen,

Don't worry about it.....it happens all the time.....we need all the answers we can get....it's quite interesting seeing
different/same answers to the same questions

Cheers
TAJ
 
In that case, I would write a VB program to do this. You could point it at
the base folder where all units have their sub-folders. Have it create a
blank presentation, iterate through the sub-folders, open each PPT file
found, insert slides from file, close each presentation and continue until
no more sub-folders. Save As the new presentation with a file name
indicative of the date. I can't imagine this being very many lines of code.
The PowerPoint part is probably the easiest.

TAJ Simmons said:
Colleen,

Don't worry about it.....it happens all the time.....we need all the
Click to expand...
answers we can get....it's quite interesting seeing
 
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