DONE: Force PPTView.exe to always show on secondary monitor

[kproth]

I need a way to force M$'s PowerPoint 2003 viewer (PPTView.exe, included with PowerPoint 2003 or freely downloadable from microsoft.com) to display a slide show on a secondary monitor. Ideally I don't want to have to click or press something after launching it either -- it should just pop up on the second monitor every time.

PPTview.exe lacks a cmd-line option for this. Furthermore it lacks a title bar, so I can't even just drag it over.

Don't know if such a thing is possible; I know it's doable for most apps but don't know if PPTview will work properly if something else forces it to display over there.

I already googled a bit trying to find an existing utility that would handle this task.

The PC in question is used to drive the projector at church on Sunday mornings, so I don't want anything bloated or flaky installed; in my mind, that rules out swiss-army-knife multi-mon apps, like Oscar's MultiMon Taskbar, UltraMon, or ATI's Hydravision.

We're using an ATI Radeon x300 card (yeah, cheap, but it works...) if it makes any difference.

Anyone game? Or can you point me at an existing utility that might do what I'm looking for?

[kimmchii]

found this from google:

Configuring this PowerPoint feature is simple.

1. Start PowerPoint on the primary monitor and open the required slide show.

2. Choose Slide Show – Set up Show menu. (I have used Office 2003 as a reference).

3. Notice that there is a section called Multiple Monitors.

4. This is enabled only when dual monitors are configured.

5. Open the popup – “Display slide show on” popup and choose ‘Secondary Display’.

6. Also enable the Presenter View.

7. That’s it. Now run the presentation as usual.

8. The secondary display will show the presentation in full screen mode.

9. You will also see a Presenter view on your base monitor. From this view, you can read notes, navigate slides, view slide thumbnails, view elapsed time and so on.

[kproth]

Close, but... I'm looking to force the PPTview.exe program onto the second monitor. That's different than viewing a slide show from within the main powerpoint app; PPTview is strictly for viewing - and it opens only a "window" for the slide show, so neither the slide deck nor the presenter view is showing.

For what it's worth, I'm actually hoping to use this to make it easier to show a second slide deck while one is already running from within the main program.

- Kevin

[lanux128]

maybe Skrommel can add multi-monitor support for WinWarden and solve this problem...

[kproth]

Nice find -- and I think it would work. At least, WinWarden, on my single-monitor PC, is able to resize and move the PPTview window. 

Skrommel, what think ye? I can't remember for sure, but didn't you add code to GridMove (err, ZoneSize?) recently that could detect multiple monitors? If so, could it be adapted to give WinWarden the ability to force a given window onto a given monitor's desktop space?

I suppose I could probably use WinWarden as is to force the window into the right position. I'll try that next time I'm at a two-monitor PC!

[kproth]

lanux128 - you're a genius 

WinWarden works just fine to move the PPT to the second monitor.

For the record, I'm using the following line in WinWarden2.ini:

Code

Creating,PowerPoint Viewer Slide Show - *,,WholeScreen,,1280,0,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

I have two monitors @ 1280x1024, so the new position of 1280,0 moves the PPT window to the upper left corner of monitor #2. Note, this only works if both monitors are the same size. WinWarden will resize the window if desired, but PPTview doesn't recognize that situation, and as such it behaves as if you simply cropped the presentation - it doesn't resize the presentation to match the new window size.

So, problem solved. Yay!

[lanux128]

glad that you've worked it out, kproth..
the real genius is skrommel, who has written fantastic programs that were non-existent previously and some donation credits for him would be nice...

[Kruskal]

lanux128 - you're a genius 

WinWarden works just fine to move the PPT to the second monitor.

For the record, I'm using the following line in WinWarden2.ini:

Code

Creating,PowerPoint Viewer Slide Show - *,,WholeScreen,,1280,0,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

I have two monitors @ 1280x1024, so the new position of 1280,0 moves the PPT window to the upper left corner of monitor #2. Note, this only works if both monitors are the same size. WinWarden will resize the window if desired, but PPTview doesn't recognize that situation, and as such it behaves as if you simply cropped the presentation - it doesn't resize the presentation to match the new window size.

So, problem solved. Yay!

I tried this and it seemed to work when the secondary monitor was  to the right of the primary one.  But when I made it to the left -- where I really want it -- it failed in a strange way.  I used the line:

Creating,VLC media player*,,WholeScreen,,100,100,200,400,,,,,,,,,,,,

This defines a window larger than the default window for VLC.  When I tried it with a single monitor, it worked great.  But when I tried it with a secondary monitor -- a TV -- on the left, it came up on the primary monitor just as it had when that was the only monitor.  But then in a flash, the window was replaced with the default size. 

Any idea why the resize?  Is WinWarden2 supposed to respect the location of the secondary monitor?

Thanks -- Vincent

[lanux128]

Creating,VLC media player*,,WholeScreen,,100,100,200,400,,,,,,,,,,,,

try using negative co-ordinates and see if it helps..

Code

Creating,VLC media player*,,WholeScreen,,-100,-100,200,400,,,,,,,,,,,,