Ms Office Tune Up

During or after a slide show, it’s not unusual for an audience member to have a question about a previously viewed slide. However, unless that slide has some memorable text or graphic, it’s often hard for the person to describe which slide he is talking about. It is much easier to display numbers on each slide, which means audience members can then refer to “slide number 5,” “slide 12,” and so on.

PowerPoint displays slide numbers in the slide footer; a section is located at the bottom of each slide. You can display not only the slide number, but also the date and time (the current values or fixed values), as well as custom text. The latter is useful for displaying things such as copyright messages, your name, your company’s name, a project reference, and so on. Here are the steps to follow to display the slide footer and insert a custom text message:

1. Choose Insert, Header & Footer to display the Header and Footer dialog box.
2. In the Slide tab, click to activate the Footer check box.
3. Type your custom text into the Footer text box.
4. To leave the footer text off the presentation’s title slide, click to activate the Don’t Show on Title Slide check box.
5. Configure the other slide footer options you want to use.
6. Click Apply to All to display the footer on every slide in the presentation. (If you want only the footer on the current slide, click Apply instead.)

This figure shows some custom footer text in both the Header and Footer dialog box and the slide.

In the Header and Footer dialog box, use the Footer text box to specify your custom footer text.

The Footer text box in the Slide tab of the Header and Footer dialog box enables you to add static text that displays in a placeholder. However, you may prefer something more dynamic, such as the full pathname of the presentation file. You can do this with a relatively simple VBA script that modifies the Footer object’s Text property.

Listing 1 A Script That Inserts a Presentation’s Pathname into the Footer Placeholder

Sub AddPathToFooter()
Dim txtPath As String
Dim s As Slide
With ActivePresentation
‘
‘ Build the presentation’s pathname
txtPath = .Path & “\” & .Name
‘
‘ Add the pathname to the Slide Master’s footer
.SlideMaster.HeadersFooters.Footer.Text = txtPath
‘
‘ Loop through all the slides
For Each s In .Slides
‘
‘ Add the pathname to the slide
s.HeadersFooters.Footer.Visible = msoTrue
s.HeadersFooters.Footer.Text = txtPath
End With
End Sub

This procedure stores the active presentation’s folder path (the Path property) and filename (the Name property) in the txtPath variable. This string is then stored in the Footer object’s Text property for both the slide master and the existing slides. Listing 2 shows another example.

Listing 2 A Script That Inserts the String “Slide X of Y” into the Footer Placeholder

Sub AddSlideXOfYToFooter()
Dim s As Slide
With ActivePresentation
‘
‘ Loop through all the slides
For Each s In .Slides
‘
‘ Add the “Slide X of Y” text
s.HeadersFooters.Footer.Visible = msoTrue
s.HeadersFooters.Footer.Text = “Slide “ & s.SlideNumber & _
“ of “ & .Slides.Count
Next ‘s
End With
End Sub

This procedure loops through all the slides in the active presentation. For each slide s, the Footer object’s Text property changes to Slide X of Y, where X is given by the Slide object’s SlideNumber property, and Y is given by the Presentation object’s lides. Count property.

If you also want to add custom text to the date and time placeholder, modify the DateAndTime object’s Text property:
s.HeadersFooters.DateAndTime.Text = “Text”

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