Links not working when hiding overlapping textboxes

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dewey
  • Start date Start date
D

Dewey

Hi

I have a unique animation challenge. I have 10 action buttons in a row on
the left of a slide that bring up text boxes on the right of the slide. The
right starts empty, and with each action button clicked, a text box appears,
grows, and "flies" in from the area near its corresponding action button to
the right side of the slide using a combination of effects. I do this by:

Upon the slide loading, using the disappear effect on all 10, as well as
shrinking them all to 25% size.
When the corresponding action button for each text box is clicked, the text
box appears, follows a motion path to the right of the slide, and grows by
400% (this makes it normal size after being shrunk to 25% earlier). At the
same time ("with previous"), I apply the disappear property to the 9 other
text boxes to make sure the one flying in has a blank spot to fly into. When
in edit mode, all text boxes are stacked on top of each other (at their final
spot on the slide).

Everything I've described so far works beautifully. The problem is that
each text box includes a hyperlink to slides further in the presentation.
When I first made the slide, all of them worked fine. However, when I began
editing the text boxes and I think I may have changed their order, I noticed
all the links stopped working except whichever one was on the text box that
was on the top of the pile in edit mode. I've tried copying and pasting the
boxes that work and using the "bring to front" command to re-order the boxes,
and I can't seem to get any of the links to work except the one on the top
or, occasionally, the top most one and the two bottom-most ones (I have no
idea why this would be).

It appears the boxes that are made to disappear are still there, not totally
gone, and hence the links on the boxes on the bottom of the pile are covered
by the ones above, and PowerPoint somehow can't make the links work when a
text box is covered by another, even when that other box has been made to
disappear. Note that the links are all in the same place on each text box.
The links are in the form of a hyperlinked image.

The only thing I can think is to somehow force the "bring to front" order
command each time a text box is shown. I have heard that PowerPoint doesn't
have an auto-run macro for VBA, and doesn't offer the "bring to front"
command in custom animation options. Is there anything I can do?

Thanks for any help
-Josh
 
Hi Ute

Thanks for your reply. I actually am using motion paths. (Didn't mean to
use the term "fly in"...you must be talking about the "fly in" effect. I
forgot about that when I wrote this).

I'm stumped.

-Josh
 
You said you tried copy and paste. Did you try copy and paste to a new
slide? You might also try HTML round-tripping:

HTML "Round-tripping" to repair corruption
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00526.htm

--David

Hi Ute

Thanks for your reply. I actually am using motion paths. (Didn't mean to
use the term "fly in"...you must be talking about the "fly in" effect. I
forgot about that when I wrote this).

I'm stumped.

-Josh
Click to expand...


--
David M. Marcovitz
Author of _Powerful PowerPoint for Educators_
http://www.PowerfulPowerPoint.com/
Microsoft PowerPoint MVP
Associate Professor, Loyola University Maryland
 
Thanks for your reply. I actually am using motion paths. (Didn't mean to
use the term "fly in"...you must be talking about the "fly in" effect. I
forgot about that when I wrote this).
Click to expand...

Hi Josh,

can you rearrange your motion paths so that the text boxes are not in their
end position in edit mode? So that there are no ghost images to "cover" your
hyperlink.

Best regards,
Ute
 
I have just a couple of thoughts. (Not sure if they'll be helpful, but I
think they're worth considering!)
Everything I've described so far works beautifully. The problem is that
each text box includes a hyperlink to slides further in the presentation.
When I first made the slide, all of them worked fine.
Click to expand...

This makes me wonder if you've hit the link limit and your links are going
wonky because of that, not because of their z-order on the slide.
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00668.htm has more information.

Now, if you spread your linked objects out on the slide so they're not
overlapping and they still go to the right place, then this is of course not
the issue!

My other thought is about the hot-spot on the objects. Using PPT 2002 or
2003, I made a Jeopardy board that has three stacked rectangles for each
puzzle. From top to bottom, there was a rectangle for the dollar amount, for
the question, and for the answer. (Well, it was Jeopardy, so the question
was really the answer, but you get the idea. <g>) When you click the dollar
amount box, it goes away (using a trigger animation -- Exit Fade, I think
was the specific one) to reveal the question. When you click the question
box, it triggers that box to exit and reveal the answer underneath.

Problem was, I'd used a gradient fill on the boxes (one color radial
gradient), and when you clicked in the center of the box, they wouldn't
work! You had to really be very careful to hover around the edge of each box
until you got a hand cursor that you could click to, well, trigger the
trigger. I can't recall for sure, but I think that changing the fills to
solid colors took care of that issue.

I wonder if you're seeing something like that?

If you're using PPT 2007, you can check the z-order of your objects using
the Selection Pane on the Home tab.

--
Echo [MS PPT MVP] http://www.echosvoice.com
What's new in PPT 2010? http://www.echosvoice.com/2010.htm
Fixing PowerPoint Annoyances http://tinyurl.com/36grcd
PowerPoint 2007 Complete Makeover Kit http://tinyurl.com/32a7nx
 
Hi David.

I initially had very high hopes for round tripping when I tried it on a
local copy of the file and it seemed to work (very exciting stuff). Then, I
saved the file back to the SharePoint where I had it originally stored and it
stopped working again! (This is by far the most strange PPT behavior I've
ever seen).

I'm still searching...

Thanks for the tip about round tripping though. I'd never heard of it.

-Dewey
 
Hi again Ute.

Thanks for this tip. I don't want to do this for some reason, since the
programmer in me wants this to work the way they are arranged now, but in the
end, this might be the only solution.

Thanks for the idea!

-Dewey
 
OKAY! I finally came to a resolution. Ute's idea of positioning the motion
paths as before, but positioning the text boxes themselves so they reside on
the slide such that they don't overlap (in edit mode) WORKED.

They all move following the same path, and end up at the same place on the
slide, but in edit mode they are not overlapping.

I didn't have to keep 100% of each text box from overlapping all the others,
just the portion in the lower corner that contained the button with the
image-link. So I have, in edit mode, a stack of boxes that resemble a deck
of cards that has been spread slightly. Fortunately, my link image is in the
lower right corner, so each link is visible in edit mode.

I'm not sure why PowerPoint (this is 2003 - forgot to mention) has a problem
with links when overlapped, but it does. Fortunately, this is a solution
that retains the functionality I was hoping for.

Thank you to everyone who suggested solutions! I learned a lot more about
PowerPoint in the process. Hopefully this helps someone else down the road.

-Dewey
 
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