About EZView

In PowerPoint, you can start a slide show by pressing F5. That, however, starts the show from slide number 1. In many occasions, I want to start the slide show from the current slide, which, as you may already know, requires clicking a particular icon in PowerPoint. So, what's the big deal? That icon, officially named "Slide Show (from current slide)", is tiny and is in the far far away lower-left corner of PowerPoint. In fact, the icon is so small that many people I know can't tell what is on the icon---I think it's a pull-down projector screen with one line of text on it. What's worse, some people don't even know about its existence after many years of using PowerPoint because of its difficult-to-spot position. Now if you believe that Fitts's Law is actually true (I do), then this is indeed a hard to acquire object. As far as I know, there is built-in no keyboard accelerator (shortcut) in PowerPoint 2K/XP to trigger its functionality. EZView is my attempt to add Alt-Z as an accelerator to that icon in PowerPoint 2K/XP. The way this program works is very simple: it "reads" your screen to find the icon and then "clicks" it for you. What about PowerPoint 2003? As it turns out, Microsoft finally listens to its customers about this issue and added Shift-F5 as the accelerator. Amen. However, I have also updated EZView to work in PowerPoint 2003 for my friends. What about PowerPoint 2007? Well, I don't have it...

Files for Download

Installer (will also upgrade an existing installation)

• EZView-1.9-Setup.exe

Source (GPL)

• gpl.txt (Licence)
• EZView.ppt (PPT with VBA source)
• EZView.vba.html (HTML-ized VBA)
• EZView.nsi (NSIS installation script)

Usage Instructions

After running the setup program, PowerPoint should have a new item on the Main Menu called EZView, as in the graphics at the top of this page. When you want to start a slide show at the current slide, just press "Alt-Z".

I have taken the time to prepare the installer and the uninstaller properly. So if you want to remove this, you can use "Add/Remove Programs" in Control Panel.

Manual Installation

If you are a Linux user using CrossOver Office with PowerPoint installed, or if you simply want to do the installation manually, here are the steps.

1. Download EZView.ppt
2. Open it in PowerPoint
3. Click File->Save As
4. Pull down Save as type combo box and select PowerPoint Add-In
5. Click Save
6. Click Tools->Add-Ins
7. Click Add New...
8. Select EZView.ppa and click OK
9. Click Close

After these steps, you should see EZView as a new item next to Slide Show in the Main Menu every time you use PowerPoint. Enjoy!

Version History

1.9 (2009-03-01)

• Bug fix: handle square brackets properly (thanks to G. Rajanikanth)

1.8 (2005-06-08)

• Bug fix: handle file extension capitalization properly

1.7 (2005-04-22)

• Bug fix: locale issues (special thanks go to Denis-Franois Gravel who helped me nailed this down)

1.6 (2005-03-26)

• Bug fix: handle unsaved files properly (better than the solution in version 1.3)

1.5 (2005-02-06)

• Bug fix: handle read-only files properly

1.4 (2004-06-08)

• Bug fix: root directory bug introduced in 1.3
• Bug fix: handle the case when file extensions are hidden in Explorer
• Added debug message logging

1.3 (2004-04-29)

• Bug fix: check for unnamed presentations (new presentations that have never been saved)
• Code cleanup

1.2 (2004-04-28)

• Bug fix: when multiple presentations are opened, EZView could get confused about which presentation to show

1.1 (2004-03-31)

• Check for an opened presentation, or else display a message box and stop

1.0 (2004-03-10)

• Initial public release

Bugs and Issues

• There is a possibility that EZView doesn't work over WinVNC when it tracks cursor locally. I do not know how to fix this.

Please let me know if you have found any bugs. Thanks.

Maverick Woo