[RESOLVED] PowerPoint: How to VBA instead of SCRIPT ???

Esteemed Forum Participants and Lurkers:
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PowerPoint 2003

This is my first foray into the bowels of PowerPoint.

I have been having a devil of a time setting up a PowerPoint (PP) presentation on WinXP and Win2k. The only real "work" platform I have is the Win2k machine. In the process of trying to figure out the aggravating intricacies of Slide events, Sound File control, and Volume control, I discovered that although PP has a VB Editor available, all of the control junk is written in HTML Script (Oh, Joy!).

PP control is so brain damaged that I can't figure it out. Take for instance, the Sound File Volume: There is a master system volume control that doesn't seem to have any effect on the PP volume, except that the mute indeed does kill the sound entirely. There is also an "Edit Sound Object" menu in the popup box that appears when you right-click on the sound icon on the slide. If you select that tool, there is what appears to be a "Sound Volume" control that, when opened, shows a volume slider that doesn't seem to do a damned thing to the sound volume. However, there is a "Mute" box which if checked, kills the sound entirely.

I tracked down the HTML script that seems to play the Linked/Embedded Sound File:

<oa:audio src="file0002.wma" o:srcRefType="shape" o:srcRef="_x0000_s3076"
volume="50.0" hideWhenStopped="true" id="TimeNode6" begin="indefinite"
end="document.onpptnext;document.onpptprev;document.onstopaudio"
repeatCount="1.0" fill="hold" o:display="hidden"/>

I notice that "volume="50.0", and indeed, no matter what I do with any of the volume sliders, the file seems to play at about half volume.

Do I just curse MegaSh** and throw up my hands and forget about it, or is there really some meaningful way of smashing PP into doing what I want it to do? Hey, I just want to kick off a 30 second sound bite when the slide starts that plays independently of the slide presentation (one clip on the opening slide, and one on the closing slide), and I want to make the volume a function of the master system volume control. Is that such an outlandish idea?

Thank you for any and all comments, suggestions, and assistance.

Art
Have you checked this out? It might be the easiest way to do this...

http://office.microsoft.com/training...RC010713231033

Thanks Declan ... VERY interesting, but it leads to more MegaShaft crap ... the Help (sic) tutorial in sample PPT presentation says:

To get to the stop settings, click the arrow on the media effect in the pane, and then click Effect Options on its menu. On the Effect tab, notice the Stop playing area. In addition to On click, you can make the sound play through the current slide or over the number of slides you specify.

Thanks folks, but on my system (Win2k, Office 2003) there is no "Stop playing area". So what do I do now???

OK ... PPT will take all kinds of sound files, BUT ... this particular feature evidently works ONLY with ".wav" files. (NOW you tell me.)

I don't know what is going on with the presentation I am building. All sorts of strange things have happened, but I have it running now. I even got it to work with ".wma" files.