Looping Animation Sequences on a PowerPoint Slide

Laura Foley has posted an ingenious method here that will loop sequences of animations on a PowerPoint slide. Laura provides excellent instructions in her post, and I successfully followed them this evening. These are the basic steps to follow:

1. Starting with a slide that has several animated objects, create an audio file in PowerPoint using the option on the Insert tab to the right in the Media section. Go to Audio . . . .Record audio.

2. Record an audio file that is the length you want one sequence of the animations to run.

3. Select the audio file on the slide, and on the Audio Tools . . . Playback tab check the options for 'Loop until Stopped'; 'Hide During Show', and 'Mute' in the Volume drop down menu.

4. Click play on the audio file. Pause it at intervals where you want the animated objects to appear, and then select Add Bookmark on the Playback tab.

5. Right click on each of the animated objects and add a trigger under Timing that is set to start on the click of the recorded sound and on the play of a specific bookmark.

6. Add 'exit' animation sequences that are set to start at a bookmark at the end of the audio file.

You'll have to excuse the unartful design, but the below gif shows how this method creates a continuously looping animation sequence.

Edit Videos in PowerPoint

Don't miss that in PowerPoint 2019, you can trim down video files that have been inserted into a presentation.

Simply select the video, and then click on the Playback tab under the Video Tools menu. You'll have the option to trim down the video; insert captions for it; or adjust how it appears and fades out.

Note that the video will not be saved at its new length, until the presentation is compressed. This is done under File . . . Info

It's possible to reduce the size of a presentation greatly without suffering a significant loss of quality in the video clips. After the compression is completed you will be able to save a local copy of the video at the new length.

PowerShell script to merge .csv files

A PowerShell script posted on the Microsoft Scripting blog here, can be used to merge multiple .csv files together.

Begin by entering this source code for the merge function in PowerShell:

function Merge-CSVFiles { [cmdletbinding()] param( [string[]]$CSVFiles, [string]$OutputFile = "c:\merged.csv" ) $Output = @(); foreach($CSV in $CSVFiles) { if(Test-Path $CSV) { $FileName = [System.IO.Path]::GetFileName($CSV) $temp = Import-CSV -Path $CSV | select *, @{Expression={$FileName};Label="FileName"} $Output += $temp } else { Write-Warning "$CSV : No such file found" } } $Output | Export-Csv -Path $OutputFile -NoTypeInformation Write-Output "$OutputFile successfully created" }

Enter this code and press return. The function will be activated. Next compose a simple line of script which references the full path for each of the .csv files you want to merge together:

Merge-CSVFiles -CSVFiles C:\foofolder8\AllstarFull.csv,C:\foofolder8\Appearances.csv,C:\foofolder8\Batting.csv -OutputFile c:\foofolder8\output.csv

Separate the listed .csv files with a comma. At the end of the script, enter a path for the resulting file which will contain the merged data.

The new .csv file will contain a new column at the right which lists the name of each source file.

As always, I tested out this script myself tonight, and confirmed that it functions correctly.