Max # of slides

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Guest

I'm building a ppt presentation that needs to be 6290 slides. Fortunately they are ALL just plain text. I can't seem to get more than 4093 slides in one presentation file. Does anyone know the maximum number of slides in one ppt file? Thanks.

Rance
 
That's a fair question (and I'm open to alternative options).

We display the words to Hymns at our church in PP. On certain days we have "Hymn Requests" from the congregation. There are about 628 hymns in the Hymnal. If we allot 10 slides to a hymn, then when a song is requested, the operator could simply enter the song number followed by zero, then press Enter. That would take us to the first slide for that hymn. For song # 250 we enter 2500 (and press Enter). That saves us from having to use a cross reference sheet to see what slide song #250 starts at.

The second use for this presentation is sortof a database. When the secretaries build a slide show for a service, they could simply go to one place (the Hymn Request presentation, 6290 slides) to insert the slides for a particular song.

I realize there are programs out there to do this but we would rather not have to pay for something that we can do ourselves, besides having to deal with the hassles & cost of upgrades etc.

Can you offer a better approach that still fulfills BOTH our needs? Thanks.

Rance
 
Assuming he does want one, one option is to break the presentation into two
or more presentations. This worked well for a large (25 MB) teaching
presentation.

Surely he is not going to show all 6,290 slides in one viewing?
 
Rance,
I would suggest breaking this up into multiple presentations (H1to50,
H51to100, etc.) and then building a series of menus to find the right
slides. You could even build a macro that would pull up the right hymn when
given the number.

The presentation will run much faster and cleaner this way.
Just my two cents....
--
Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft PPT MVP
If this helped you, please take the time to rate the value of this post:
http://rate.affero.net/jacobskl/
Get PowerPoint answers at http://www.powerpointanswers.com
Cook anything outdoors with http://www.outdoorcook.com
Kathy is a trainer, writer, Girl Scout, and whatever else there is time for
I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived
 
Having a main working file that pushes the machines recourses to the limit
is a recipe for certain and major disaster. Of course this is my own rather
humble opinion, but I'd avoid a single-file hymnal repository.

Instead, why not create a hymnal folder and have 628 PPT files in it. You
can insert a hymn manually into a presentation in about 3 seconds ( Insert |
insert slides from file | navigate to hymn folder | select hymn | insert all
| close ). Or if you want to be fancy, you could do a little vba juke box
thing, using the main presentation as a menu and editing the links to the
stored PPTs.



Unlike your top boss, computers do make mistakes and the result can be a
corrupted file. Regardless of how good your computer is, one day it will
think it read a 1 when, in reality, a zero was written. I'd rather rebuild
a single hymn, than a hymnal.

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.
..
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Kathryn,

I am a very heavy MSAccess programmer(read: I'm not afraid of writing some code behind the ppt to solve this), I've even added some code to Excel. However I'm fairly new to PP. I can easily break this up into multiple ppt files. But when you say "build a series of menus" are you talking about 'popup' menus added to the PP presentation? Would this be similar to a Word "Master Document"? Adding to the existing menu at the top is out of the question. This would mean (during the presentation), pressing ESC to get back to "design mode", then navigating the menu... Too slow, too clumsy. This will be run by more than one person (sometimes not as computer savvy as you and I).

With multiple ppt files, can one file jump to another one through code control? I can prob. figure out how to add a popup menu, and getting the slide number from the operator but in code 1) how do you jump to another ppt file, and 2) how do you jump to a specific slide in that file (through program control) all the while keeping the presentation in full-screen mode.

Keep in mind that I need to navigate to the other slides while the presentation is running (ie. full screen). And I need to get to the new slide in 4-5 seconds or less.

Rance
 
Rance,
The menus I am talking about are PowerPoint slides that link to other
slides. Each slide has text on it that is hyperlinked (or set to have an
action setting) to another slide, allowing you to move through the layers
via mouse clicks. The layering would look something like this:
Menu Presentation:
Slide one text:
Pick Hymn from Hymns 1 to 100 (linked to slide two)
Pick Hymn from Hymns 101 to 200 (lined to slide three)
....

Slide two text:
Pick from Hymns 1 to 10 (linked to slide with hymn links for hymn1, hymn2,
etc.)
Pick from Hymns 11 to 20 (linked to slide with hymn links for hymn11,
hymn22, etc.)
....

Slide three text:
Pick from Hymns 101 to 110 (linked as above)
Pick from Hymns 111 to 120 (linked as above)
....

And so on...

Or, you could write a piece of VBA that would ask the user for the hymn
number, figure out the presentation number from that hymn number, and open
the presentation containing that hymn. (If you want one hymn per
presentation, this would give you a picking presentation and one
presentation for each hymn. If you want a smaller number of files, your code
will have to use a decision structure to determine which slide in which
presentation to show.)

If you want to learn about VBA, check out the VBA entries on the PPT FAQ. I
would start with these pages:
How do I USE this VBA stuff in PowerPoint?
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00033.htm

Where can I learn more about VBA programming in PowerPoint?
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00032.htm

Go there, Come back
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00408.htm

Macros I record in Normal/Slide view don't work in Slide Show
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00159.htm

and to learn about using hyperlinks from code....

Hyperlink .SubAddress - How to interpret it
http://www.rdpslides.com/pptfaq/FAQ00162.htm

Lots to read, I know. But post questions and code as you work through it and
we will all help as best we can!
--
Kathryn Jacobs, Microsoft PPT MVP
If this helped you, please take the time to rate the value of this post:
http://rate.affero.net/jacobskl/
Get PowerPoint answers at http://www.powerpointanswers.com
Cook anything outdoors with http://www.outdoorcook.com
Kathy is a trainer, writer, Girl Scout, and whatever else there is time for
I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived
 
[CRITICAL UPDATE - Anyone using Office 2003 should install the critical
update as soon as possible. From PowerPoint, choose "Help -> Check for
Updates".]

The "actual" limit (the point at which various failures will begin to
occur) is 4096 slides (including master slides), but the practical limit is
2048.

We don't recommend that you go over 2048 in any presentation (including
master slides) since all of our testing involves presentations within this
practical limit.

John Langhans
Microsoft Corporation
Supportability Program Manager
Microsoft Office PowerPoint for Windows
Microsoft Office Picture Manager for Windows

For FAQ's, highlights and top issues, visit the Microsoft PowerPoint
support center at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=ppt
Search the Microsoft Knowledge Base at:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbhowto

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
Use of any included script samples are subject to the terms specified at
http://www.microsoft.com/info/cpyright.htm
 
This is nice to know John. Up until now I thought this was a simple system
resource issue. I have made dummy presentations with as many as 10k simple
slides, but since I was not actually using the file for anything, I did not
realize they would have had functional problems.


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.
..
..
 
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