Keeping The User Where You Want Them

Keeping The User Where You Want Them

In some self-running presentations, you will want to control more closely how people move through the presentation. For example, if distributing a test as a presentation, you want to be sure the user can't skip the test and go straight to the answers.

In these cases, you want to be sure there is some way to leave the current page. This mechanism, though, will not be included in the basic icons listed above.

For example, if creating a series of questions the user must answer to navigate through the presentation, you must make sure the clicked answers will take the user to either the next question (if they got the answer right), or to a Wrong Answer page followed by a return to the question (if they answered the question wrong). If you want to give the users more than one shot at an individual question, you will need to develop a macro to handle the looping.

Since the basic navigation buttons are on the master slide, you will need to somehow not show those buttons on the test slides. The process for this differs depending on what version of PowerPoint you are using.

In PowerPoint 2000 or earlier, turn off the master elements and paste in the graphics needed from the master slide to the individual slide. To do this:

1. Right click the slide and select Background

2. Check the Omit background graphics from master box

3. Turn on the header and footer information if it should be showing

4. Go to the master slide (View ’ Master) and select everything (Ctrl+A)

5. Deselect the two placeholders (Ctrl+click each)

6. Deselect the navigation elements (Ctrl+click each)

7. Copy (Ctrl+C)

8. Return to the slide (View ’ Normal) and paste (Ctrl+V)

9. With the pasted elements still selected, right-click and Order ’ Send to Back

Tip 35: Send to Back with a lot of elements selected

If you have a lot of elements selected, it can be hard to right click without unselecting everything or selecting something else.

There is another way to access the Order menu. If you look at the Drawing toolbar, you will see the word Draw. Click this and a menu shows up. Select Order ’ Send to back and the elements move to the back without changing the selection.

 

In PowerPoint 2002 and later, this process is much easier. Since you can have multiple masters, create a master slide that doesn't have the navigation elements and use it instead.

1. View ’ Master ’ Slide Master

2. Insert ’ Duplicate Master

3. Remove the navigation elements from the new title and slide masters

4. When you are ready to create the quiz slides, right click the slide in question and select Slide Design

5. In the Slide Design task pane on the right, click the drop down arrow for the master without the navigation elements and select Apply to selected slides

The Timing Option

Since you are running kiosks , the keyboard is disabled, with the exception of the escape key. What you may not know is the Kiosk mode also disables the ability for the audience to use right-click. So, unless there are navigation elements, users won't be able to move through the slides, right? Wrong.

When setting up the show (Slide Show ’ Set Up Show), it can be set to either manual advance or to use timings, if present. The timings referred to are transition timings and narration timings.

If you really want to control how the presentation is seen, set it up so each slide has a transition time on it. Then, for those slides where users have a choice of where to go next, remove the transition timings and add navigation buttons. This will force the user to choose one of the options in order to continue the show.

You can set up slides to advance on whichever comes first, the passage of the right amount of time or the click of a mouse. If the show is set up this way, be sure to leave enough time for users to read and understand all of the slide content before moving on. With both options set up, they can always advance more quickly than you want them to, but moving slower takes backtracking.