Hi guys,

after having spent almost 4 nights without getting hardly one single step forward, I finally had to admit that I would have to reach out to the pros.

What I want to do is the following:

• On the first slide of the presentation is a textbox called StartingTime where I want to enter the scheduled starting time of the presentation.
• The presentation is structured into several sections of which each starts with a chapter title slide. These chapter title slides are instantiated of a commun slide master called ChapterTitle that contains a placeholder for the title and a textbox called ChapterDuration where I want to enter the scheduled duration for the respective section.
• Furthermore, the slide master ChapterTitle” should contain two more textboxes OverallTime and Delay. OverallTime should add up the scheduled ChapterDurations of the previous chapters, whereas Delay should indicate how I am doing timewise with my presentation, i.e. the number of minutes I am behind or ahead schedule, i.e. the difference between the current time and the StartingTime + OverallTime.

Let’s have an example.

1. Section 1 starts at slide 3 and is scheduled to last 5 minutes (which is entered in the textbox ChapterDuration on slide 3
2. Section 2 starts at slide 8 and is scheduled to last 10 minutes (which is entered in the textbox ChapterDuration on slide 8
3. Section 3 starts at slide 17 and is scheduled to last 20 minutes (which is entered in the textbox ChapterDuration on slide 17

Assuming that my presentation is scheduled to start at 09:00 (StartingTime = 09:00) and that it starts on time and the first two sections took as scheduled 15 minutes together, then the textboxes on slide 17 when starting section 3 should indicate: OverallTime = 15 minutes and Delay = 0 (Current time – (StartingTime + ChapterDuration[seciton1] + ChapterDuration[section2])

However, if the presentation actually started at 09:04 and the first section took say 3 minutes longer, than scheduled, the textbox Delay on slide 17 should display 7 minutes because the current time is now 09:22 and 09:22 – (09:00 + 5 minutes + 10 minutes) = 7 minutes.

The three major problems I encounter are:

1. ActiveX textboxes put on slide masters seem not to work.
2. How can I address the ChapterDuration textboxes on the previous ChapterTitle slides?
3. How can I automatically execute the macro that calculates the delay whenever I reach a ChapterTitle slide?

Thanks for your appreciated help.

Michael