For several years Excel 2003 and PP 2007 and some vba worked perfectly to provide a rolling leaderboard. Essentially a single PP slide looping until escape and updating/repositioning on each loop. The system this was on has recently been upgraded to Office 2013 and despite many hours of frustration I cannot get it to run as it should. I'm convinced that it something simple and that when it's spotted I will no doubt kick myself.

I don't think that the vba is the issue.
I can provide more detail of the setup etc if required but basically.......
The PP presentation is launched by an Excel file.
A single slide is set to loop continuously until esc. Slide transition set to timings.
On each loop the slide is updated and elements are repositioned. This all happens but for I now need to hit the spacebar to advance the slide. It is no longer automatic!!? I did duplicate the slide to create a two slide presentation and set that to loop. The transition between slide 1 and slide 2 requires a key press but the transition between 2 and 1 is automatic and all the updates etc take place as they should. The transition settings are identical!!

Why does the first slide not loop automatically??

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

I think you will need to post examples of the Excel and PPT. No-one is likely to solve this blind.

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John,

Many thanks for the response and I appreciate what you are saying.

However, I have now managed to narrow the problem down somewhat and it would appear to be a vba issue. Hopefully the following will clearly explain what is / isn't happening and enable someone to offer a solution.
Courtesy of OfficeOne I am using their EventGenerator add-in and have coded for several events. OnSlideShowBegin and OnSlideShowEnd, both of which interact with two Excel files, are absolutely fine. The problem would appear to be with OnSlideShowNextSlide.
As previously stated I have a one slide presentation set to loop until esc. The extent of the simple PP animation is that shape 'MainBoard' fades in and is visible for 20 seconds before fading out. Then it loops to repeat.
For the past 5 years, using PP2007, the OSSNS event has called a sub, ‘MoveMain’ which grabs some data from an Excel file and then repositions the shape ‘MainBoard’. The slide then redisplays / animates the modified slide and loops again. Since being forced into using PP 2013 the automatic looping is being prevented. Slide change / loop progress can only be made with a click or spacebar hit.
Sadly, I do not have the ability to revert to the old set up, not even for testing.

Reduced down to a simple form, instead of calling ‘MoveMain’ I just tested with a one line reposition, here is the OSSNS event code.

Without calling 'MoveMain' or the test one-liner everything is fine. My watch / debug bits are being processed and the slide keeps auto-looping as required.

With e.g. the one-liner that moves the MainBoard shape the auto-looping stops and a manual click is required to move it on!!!

So my questions would be.
1) Does the OSSNS event not handle 2013 in the same way that it did 2007 ? Which is probably a question I should direct to the good people at OfficeOne?

2) Is there a workaround ? After the call to 'MoveMain' is there some action that I can invoke that will mimic the now required spacebar hit?

Thanks once again for your time and interest.

If you are ONLY calling that simple event you may be able to get away without CDhirag's AddIn.

Try this code: (Disable the AddIn if you want)

Sub OnSlideShowPageChange(Wn As SlideShowWindow)
'called on next slide event to reposition the main leader board object
SW.View.Slide.Shapes("MainBoard").IncrementTop -20 '*****
End Sub

You will also need to add ANY item from the control toolbox just off the slide. This item does not need code but will make the method more reliable!

It loops and works in 2013 here.

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John,

Thanks for the suggestion but it has not solved the issue. Basically it is behaves pretty much as the next slide event....... runs for first loop and then stops BUT then won't even advance on click.

You would not believe how much time I've spent trying to understand this. It worked for 5 years for goodness sake!!! The presentation was needed for today and so yesterday I stopped repeatedly playing with show settings, timings, questioning my code etc etc. in the hope that I would hit upon something and applied a more controlled approach. The upshot was that I determined that within the NextSlide event code I could move any object I wanted (whilst looping show) bar for the one I wanted, i.e. the MainBoard. Then it occurred to me that the MainBoard was the only object that was being animated, albeit with just a simple fade in / fade out.

When I removed the animation the show happily looped continuously and moved / updated the MainBoard object!!! This applied with both the NextSlide event and your suggested OnSSPageChange.

A little tweaking got me up and running for today but you now see the board repositioning, rather than have it fade out to reveal a nice logo before seamlessly fading back, repositioned and updated.

This one setup handles many competitions and there are others that are similar but dedicated so I now need to take a look at those.

It seems odd to me that 2013 is handling this all so differently? Whilst I remain curious as to why, I am accepting that it is probably best for me to amend them all and be done with it.

If you do come across an explanation then I would be interested to hear it.

Thanks again for your time and interest.

Tony

I can't actually repro that. The loop still works here with a fade in / out applied BUT I can tell you that mixing animation and changing slides layout with vba often gives problems. Often moving objects with vba can reset the animation timeline which can cause weird things.

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