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#1
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Private Annotations on PPT Slides
Do any of you have a way to make truly private annotations on PowerPoint
slides? I have explored the approach of deleting notes (or parts of notes) with the help of some others here, and may go that route...but it that solution leaves the door open for accidental distribution of private notes (i.e., one forgets to run the macro to delete them). When I began looking into this a couple of days I started with a CNET search on Sticky Note programs. Data produced with those would have the advantage (okay, the disadvantage, too; but I digress) of being stored separately from the PowerPoint deck and requiring a special viewer program besides, so that the danger of accidental note leaks would be lessened. However, I didn't see anything that looked like I could tie a note to a specific slide -- which I'm also looking for, since slides are otherwise hard to identify uniquely (without a lot of work), and tend to move around in Presentations. The ideal option would be encrypted notes embedded in the PowerPoint deck itself, but last time I looked that wasn't supported. 8-) The macro-deleted notes may still be the best option, but just checking for other ideas... Thanks, Greg Dunn |
#2
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Private Annotations on PPT Slides
A couple of links that might interest you:
Store information associative with a presentation, slide or shape: http://officeone.mvps.org/vba/ppt_tags.html Store user-modifiable information associative with a presentation: http://officeone.mvps.org/vba/ppt_customdocprops.html - Chirag PowerShow - View multiple PowerPoint slide shows simultaneously http://officeone.mvps.org/powershow/powershow.html "Greg Dunn" wrote in message ... Do any of you have a way to make truly private annotations on PowerPoint slides? I have explored the approach of deleting notes (or parts of notes) with the help of some others here, and may go that route...but it that solution leaves the door open for accidental distribution of private notes (i.e., one forgets to run the macro to delete them). When I began looking into this a couple of days I started with a CNET search on Sticky Note programs. Data produced with those would have the advantage (okay, the disadvantage, too; but I digress) of being stored separately from the PowerPoint deck and requiring a special viewer program besides, so that the danger of accidental note leaks would be lessened. However, I didn't see anything that looked like I could tie a note to a specific slide -- which I'm also looking for, since slides are otherwise hard to identify uniquely (without a lot of work), and tend to move around in Presentations. The ideal option would be encrypted notes embedded in the PowerPoint deck itself, but last time I looked that wasn't supported. 8-) The macro-deleted notes may still be the best option, but just checking for other ideas... Thanks, Greg Dunn |
#3
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Private Annotations on PPT Slides
In article , Greg Dunn wrote:
Do any of you have a way to make truly private annotations on PowerPoint slides? I have explored the approach of deleting notes (or parts of notes) with the help of some others here, and may go that route...but it that solution leaves the door open for accidental distribution of private notes (i.e., one forgets to run the macro to delete them). When I began looking into this a couple of days I started with a CNET search on Sticky Note programs. Data produced with those would have the advantage (okay, the disadvantage, too; but I digress) of being stored separately from the PowerPoint deck and requiring a special viewer program besides, so that the danger of accidental note leaks would be lessened. However, I didn't see anything that looked like I could tie a note to a specific slide -- which I'm also looking for, since slides are otherwise hard to identify uniquely (without a lot of work), and tend to move around in Presentations. The ideal option would be encrypted notes embedded in the PowerPoint deck itself, but last time I looked that wasn't supported. 8-) Not out of the box, but the links Chirag posted suggest the same workaround I was chewing on. Each shape or slide in PPT can have a virtually unlimited number of "tags". These are, in effect, invisible "sticky notes" containing text. There's no user interface for them, so you'd need to write or find somebody to write it for you. The average user would never be able to get at these. For another level of security, you (well, the program you write) could encrypt the text in the tags before storing it. Of course, next you might need a way to display each set of notes along with its slide. That gets more complex and probably involves including it in notes or other visible PPT shapes and now we're back to the possibility of it getting out in the wild while still visible. Uh oh. ;-) On the other hand, what if the existing add-in that you've already tried were to somehow "flag" slides that have visible content that should be hidden. Perhaps a red border around the edge of the slide or something like that. ----------------------------------------- Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com PPTools: www.pptools.com ================================================ |
#4
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Private Annotations on PPT Slides
There's a swell PowerPoint enhancement suggestion emerging here.
On the other hand, what if the existing add-in that you've already tried were to somehow "flag" slides that have visible content that should be hidden. Perhaps a red border around the edge of the slide or something like that. The biggest vulnerability is somebody accidentally or ignorantly distributing the deck with the stuff not removed, without ever looking inside the presentations. So I think the approach of using encrypted tags is probably the most promising one. There will definitely need to be a UI, though. The instructor (or presentationware developer) needs to see the annotations right out front when developing or studying the deck, and also be able to edit them as easily as the notes can be edited. Unfortunately this is not something I can pursue or wait for at the moment, so my plan is to keep the annotated decks in a folder named "Blah Blah (Annotated)", and the distributable version in another folder name "Blah Blah (For Distribution)", and not let anybody except myself have the former until I've personally initiated them. It isn't the ideal solution, but at least I have some way of making annotations where I need them, and easily removing them (thanks to you, Bill, and others). Greg "Steve Rindsberg" wrote in message ... In article , Greg Dunn wrote: Do any of you have a way to make truly private annotations on PowerPoint slides? I have explored the approach of deleting notes (or parts of notes) with the help of some others here, and may go that route...but it that solution leaves the door open for accidental distribution of private notes (i.e., one forgets to run the macro to delete them). When I began looking into this a couple of days I started with a CNET search on Sticky Note programs. Data produced with those would have the advantage (okay, the disadvantage, too; but I digress) of being stored separately from the PowerPoint deck and requiring a special viewer program besides, so that the danger of accidental note leaks would be lessened. However, I didn't see anything that looked like I could tie a note to a specific slide -- which I'm also looking for, since slides are otherwise hard to identify uniquely (without a lot of work), and tend to move around in Presentations. The ideal option would be encrypted notes embedded in the PowerPoint deck itself, but last time I looked that wasn't supported. 8-) Not out of the box, but the links Chirag posted suggest the same workaround I was chewing on. Each shape or slide in PPT can have a virtually unlimited number of "tags". These are, in effect, invisible "sticky notes" containing text. There's no user interface for them, so you'd need to write or find somebody to write it for you. The average user would never be able to get at these. For another level of security, you (well, the program you write) could encrypt the text in the tags before storing it. Of course, next you might need a way to display each set of notes along with its slide. That gets more complex and probably involves including it in notes or other visible PPT shapes and now we're back to the possibility of it getting out in the wild while still visible. Uh oh. ;-) On the other hand, what if the existing add-in that you've already tried were to somehow "flag" slides that have visible content that should be hidden. Perhaps a red border around the edge of the slide or something like that. ----------------------------------------- Steve Rindsberg, PPT MVP PPT FAQ: www.pptfaq.com PPTools: www.pptools.com ================================================ |
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