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MS Office Forum / General PowerPoint Questions / January 2007Need help with powerpoint footer replacement with C# Office Automation
This is an office automation project. I am currently working on a document control project tracking powerpoint, word, and excel documents. The documents are required to have a specific style of footer as mandated by an organization that has given us certification. The style looks as follows: <UserDefinedInfo> <UserDefinedInfo> <Date> Page <page> of <Pages> If there is a footer the data needs to be erased and then replaced with a footer that looks like the one above. If there isn't a footer then one needs to be added and include the above information. The word and excel documents went well and work fine. However, seeing as there is no real standardization between how the products work. I'm having a lot of trouble. The biggest is we can assume nothing about the format of the document. We can't assume slide size, footer location, whehter or not the footer is present or whether or not it has text in. I could find a lot of information on such activites in word and excel but absolutely nothing in Powerpoint. I've performed the task as a macro and then converted the VBA to C#, however, the VBA that gets spit out is specific to the document the macro was recorded in. The boss was very adamant about this being possible and done in this exact away, however, he could offer no input as to how. If anybody can give me a hand or point me in some type of direction with this I would much appreciate it. Thanks, ~Justin Determining whether one of your own footers is there or not should be simple. You'd only need to give the shape or shapes unique name(s) and/or tags so you can get a reference to them later. The problem is grabbing an existing footer that might have been created by someone else. Again, grabbing the PPT supplied one shouldn't be too hard but beyond that, how do you decide what constitutes a footer? Is it any text within a certain area? If so, you could iterate through all the shapes on the slide (or master) and test their .Top and .Left properties against some target values. > This is an office automation project. > [quoted text clipped - 29 lines] > Thanks, > ~Justin ----------------------------------------- Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com PPTools: www.pptools.com ================================================ See, thats the problem I'm having is that I am not allowed to assume anything about it. So though there will be a unique name I have no way of knowing exactly where it is. The Top and Left values I could probably set up to work for the majority of causes however it is not general enough to work for all. I originally was going to just check if a footer exists...if it does delete it and create my own footer to insert it. However, issues such as the footer size and where it should be placed came up. I could compute the values given the restraints of the current slide. But there are a ton of other problems that come up to, such as making sure my footer doesn't cover up something that is already there. I knew I shouldn't have got into computers. :) ~Justin > Determining whether one of your own footers is there or not should be simple. > You'd only need to give the shape or shapes unique name(s) and/or tags so you [quoted text clipped - 47 lines] > PPTools: www.pptools.com > ================================================ > See, thats the problem I'm having is that I am not allowed to assume > anything about it. I don't see how you can do anything w/o making at least some assumptions, otherwise any bit of text on the screen *might* be a footer. But you say there's a unique name? The footer shape, that is? If so, it'd be quite easy to locate. > So though there will be a unique name I have no way > of knowing exactly where it is. The Top and Left values I could [quoted text clipped - 63 lines] > > PPTools: www.pptools.com > > ================================================ ----------------------------------------- Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com PPTools: www.pptools.com ================================================ > I don't see how you can do anything w/o making at least some assumptions, otherwise > any bit of text on the screen *might* be a footer. This was my point exactly. :) > But you say there's a unique name? The footer shape, that is? If so, it'd be > quite easy to locate. I am not an amazing powerpoint guru but every object underneath should have a unique name associated with it. But it isn't known necessarily what that name is. This is all just speculation I haven't been able to find a lot of info on it. The shapes are stored as a collection (at least that is how you access them through code) and they have a name associated with them such as "Rectange 4" and such. I don't know how the names are set up or anything like that. This is just the best estimates I could come up with. I'm at wits end with this stuff. The worst part is the only reason the documents are in powerpoint instead of word or even better just excel like they should be is because the people who did them were more comfortable with Powerpoint. WHO ENTERS FORM DATA IN POWERPOINT!?!?!?!? :) Man this job would be great if it wasn't for the users. lol j/k Thanks for the help Steve. I think I'm just going to chalk this up as a lost cause. > > See, thats the problem I'm having is that I am not allowed to assume > > anything about it. [quoted text clipped - 78 lines] > PPTools: www.pptools.com > ================================================ > > I don't see how you can do anything w/o making at least some assumptions, otherwise > > any bit of text on the screen *might* be a footer. > > This was my point exactly. :) Sounds like it's time to flatten the boss' pointy hair with the Reality Bat then. > > But you say there's a unique name? The footer shape, that is? If so, it'd be > > quite easy to locate. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > what that name is. This is all just speculation I haven't been able > to find a lot of info on it. Ah, well, yes. Each shape has a name and on a good day, the names are unique (though PowerPoint may sometimes create more than one shape with the same name - something to be aware and beware of) Your understanding is correct. You can take it a few steps further and test each shape to determine what type of shape it is, whether it has text and so on, but that still just narrows it down to the shapes that have text. Unless you can find some other unique feature (position, font, size, color, some bit of identifying text) you can test for, there'll be no way to distinguish footnotes (or at least text that's been placed on the slide to look like a footnote) from other text. > The shapes are stored as a collection (at > least that is how you access them through code) and they have a name [quoted text clipped - 90 lines] > > PPTools: www.pptools.com > > ================================================ ----------------------------------------- Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com PPTools: www.pptools.com ================================================ |
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