Powerful PowerPoint for Educators: Using Visual Basic for Applications to Make PowerPoint Interactive

Figure 10.3. Slides for Pick-A-Partner Tem plate
The Pick-A-Partner Tem plate Pro ject 177

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In the template, clouds rep resent in structions to the students who will be
filling in the con tent. The students are told to follow the in structions in the
clouds and de lete the clouds when they are done. In Figure 10.3, the cloud in -
structions are only shown on the first slide, but I gen erally include them on all
slides.
Once all stu dents fill in the con tent for their pre sentations, stu dents ro tate
around the room looking at each others’ pre sentations. When they reach the “Do
You Want To Work With Me?” slide, if they choose “Yes,” they are asked for a
name, an e-mail ad dress, and a project idea.
Most of the pro ject uses traditional PowerPoint features. The first seven
slides use features such as text, sound, pictures, but tons, and hyperlinks. VBA is
used in the first slide, the eighth slide, and the last slide to do the following:
• Some mi nor nav igation tricks were achieved with VBA.
• Users are asked to input name, e-mail ad dress, and project ideas.
• A new slide is created with the in formation the user in puts and a but -
ton to ad vance to the next slide.
• A but ton is used to navigate to a particular slide number (not a
named slide as is done with standard PowerPoint) so it can reach the
slide that was cre ated with VBA.
Figure 10.4 shows the complete code for this pro ject. Remember that, be -
cause this is a template, my students do not type any of this code. They simply
fill in the con tent in the first seven slides.
On the first slide, the se cret but ton (the in visible but ton in the up per left cor-
ner) is tied to the procedure
GoToPartners
. This procedure goes to the elev-
enth slide. Nor mally, this could be done with a traditional hyperlink, but in this
case, the eleventh slide is go ing to be created with VBA. A tra ditional hyperlink
cannot link to a slide that does not yet ex ist. On the last slide, the “Look at Po ten-
tial Part ners Again” but ton also is tied to 
GoToPartners
for the same reason.
The only other but ton that uses VBA is the “Yes” button on the eighth slide.
When users de cide they want to work with you, they click on this but ton to ini ti-
ate a series of events. This but ton is tied to the 
WorkTogether
pro ce dure, which
controls this series of events.
178 Tem plates

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