Disable screensaver whilst playing slideshows in Powerpoint 2010

[Ric_]

I've given a couple of teachers Office 2010 to play with and I've only had one complaint! The screensaver comes on when they are playing powerpoint presentations.

 

I thought there was a way to stop this happening within PowerPoint itself but it seems there is not - although every other aspect of the playing process can be changed!

 

Ideas people?

 

(btw - screensaver is controlled via GPO and I don't want to disable it completely)

[EduTech]

As Per MSN Convo

 

Lenovo Support & downloads - Presentation Director for Windows Vista, XP, 2000 - Notebooks > Might Help

 

James.

[JoeBubbles]

Download the attachment and rename it to *.vbs. I created a shortcut to this script on my desktop and named it "Slideshow Stay Awake". Simply drag-and-drop your presentation or slide show onto the shortcut, the script will do the rest. (It won't touch your screensaver or GPO settings at all.)

[JoeBubbles]

Edugeek's attachment upload function seems to be broken. Here's the content of the attachment I tried to upload:

 

'===============================================================================

'

' Program : Slideshow.vbs

' Version : 1.0

' Created : 7-Apr-2010

' Author/s : Joe Bubbles

'

' Purpose : Drag and drop a PowerPoint slideshow onto this program icon, it

' will then launch the slideshow and emulate a keystroke at

' predetermined intervals to avoid the screensaver activating, thus

' by-passing the screensaver password protection (if enabled).

'

'===============================================================================

Option Explicit

 

Const Keypress_Interval = 10 '(seconds)

 

CheckHost

KeepBusy Slideshow

 

'_______________________________________________________________________________

 

Function KeepBusy(Presentation)

Dim objSHL, objEXE

 

Const CommandLine = "cmd /C start ""Slideshow"" /realtime /wait "

 

Set objSHL = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

Set objEXE = objSHL.Exec(CommandLine & """" & Presentation & """")

 

DisplayHelp

 

Do While objEXE.Status = 0 '(Still Running)

objSHL.SendKeys "+" '(SHIFT, harmless during presentations)

Wscript.Sleep Keypress_Interval * 1000

Loop

 

End Function 'KeepBusy

'_______________________________________________________________________________

 

Function Slideshow()

Dim objArgs, t

 

t = ""

Set objArgs = WScript.Arguments

 

If (objArgs.Count > 0) Then

t = objArgs(0)

Else

WScript.Quit

End If

 

Slideshow = t

 

End Function 'Slideshow

'_______________________________________________________________________________

 

Sub CheckHost()

Dim objSHL

 

Const Q = """"

Set objSHL = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")

 

If Not WScript.FullName = WScript.Path & "\cscript.exe" Then

objSHL.Run "cmd /c " & WScript.Path & "\cscript.exe //NOLOGO " & _

Q & WScript.scriptFullName & Q & " " & Q & Slideshow & Q, _

1, False

WScript.Quit 0

End If

 

End Sub 'CheckHost

'_______________________________________________________________________________

 

Sub DisplayHelp()

Dim t

 

t = Slideshow

t = Right(t, Len(t) - InStrRev(t, "\"))

 

With WScript

.Echo

.Echo " This window will automatically close within " & _

Keypress_Interval & " seconds "

.Echo " after you close """ & t & """."

.Echo

End With 'WScript

 

End Sub 'DisplayHelp

'_______________________________________________________________________________