Powerpoint support is getting pretty good in OpenLP. Thanks to those who've been working on it. I've discovered that as long as I control the slides using arrow keys in OpenLP instead of clicking on the presentation itself, the live preview pane and the remote view get updated with the current slide (if I click on the presentation and let Powerpoint move the slides, then OpenLP doesn't realise that the slide has changed and can't update its snapshot). So far so good if I can convince the preacher to use a remote clicker instead of tapping on the pulpit touch screen.<br><br>One minor problem: animations aren't shown. A typical slide with text floating in line by line each time the presenter clicks will have each line of text appearing immediately without the animation. Transitions between slides work as expected with a fade between slides, but animations of elements on a given slide are missed out. I don't usually care for animations but sometimes the slide will have a long series of animations, for instance flags appearing on a map over the course of several seconds. This scenario looks bad when presented with OpenLP because nothing happens on the screen until the presenter clicks again and everything appears at once. This is with Powerpoint 2013 on Windows 7. Integration overall is better with Office 2013 but I think animations were displayed correctly when using Office 2007 (unsure about this). I suspect that the problem is that animations only run when Powerpoint has focus and I'm using OpenLP to control it so OpenLP has focus.<br><br>So it seems that I have the choice between:<br>
launching the PPT from OpenLP and using the keyboard arrows (or a remote clicker) to control the slideshow from OpenLP. Pros: the remote view (used by visually impaired people) updates correctly. Cons: no animations.
launching the PPT from OpenLP and clicking on the slideshow window (Powerpoint itself) to advance the slides. Pros: the animations display correctly and everything works as designed in Powerpoint. Cons: the remote view doesn't update and only displays the first slide.
<p>Is this right or have I missed an option?<br></p><p>I realise that Powerpoint integration is tricky and only one of many aspects of OpenLP, so many thanks once again to the dev team for all your efforts.<br></p>