Identifying Hidden Slides When Printing (PowerPoint)

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Hi there –


I often hide slides, and like to print them together with the nonhidden slides. Problem is, there’s no way, when they’re printed, to tell which slides are hidden.


Is there a setting I’m missing? Or a workaround?


Thanks a lot.

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Hi all – Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions? Thanks so much.

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Sorry, but I’ve not been able to find a way. Perhaps someone more familiar with PowerPoint will chime in.

--Joe

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I can’t find anything either. But you could fudge it though. Just add a code on each slide e.g. hidden, perhaps in the title. Then you can see which are hidden. As long as the ‘code’ is unique (so hidden might not be a good choice), you can do a find and replace (with a blank replace) to remove them all, or some of them (as per normal find and replace in Office). I suppose a lot depends on how many there are. I did say it was a fudge, but might be better than nothing. Even Googling it hasn’t come up with anything (as I suspect you have already found).

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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Thanks. Unfortunately, most of my big decks are pretty big — 100-200, of which 1/4 are hidden — so this isn’t practical…

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I would think that there is no obvious way to do it but you could create a macro to help. For instance, the macro adds a text box to each “hidden” slide

Or you could assign a different slide master to the hidden slides so there is something visual that makes those slides stand out when printed.

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I think that Andrew’s suggestion could be a good basis for a macro – I assume that you select a number of slides and then mark them as hidden. So instead of just right clicking and hiding them, have a button which starts a macro to both add some text as Andrew suggests then marks them as hidden. You would also need to have a macro to reverse this as well (whether individual sides or a selection). However, not having used macros to any great extent, I can’t suggest how this might be done or even if it’s possible….

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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Thanks. I’m intrigued, just clueless as to how to get started. Thanks.

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You could use a module like this to give you a macro that adds the label and another macro to remove them. If you were really clever, you could hijack the print command to add the labels, print it and then remove the labels again.

Code:

Option Explicit

Const sLabel As String = "Hidden Slide"

Sub LabelHiddenSlides()
  Dim aSld As Slide, aShp As Shape
  For Each aSld In ActivePresentation.Slides
    If aSld.SlideShowTransition.Hidden = msoTrue Then
      Set aShp = aSld.Shapes.AddTextbox(Orientation:=msoTextOrientationVertical, Left:=50, Top:=50, Width:=30, Height:=150)
      With aShp.TextFrame.TextRange
        .Text = sLabel
        .Font.Size = 20
        .Font.Color = vbRed
        .Font.Name = "Calibri"
        .ParagraphFormat.Alignment = ppAlignCenter
      End With
      aShp.Fill.ForeColor.RGB = RGB(255, 255, 255)
      aShp.Fill.Transparency = 0.4
      aShp.Name = sLabel
    End If
  Next aSld
End Sub

Sub RemoveHiddenLabels()
  Dim aSld As Slide, aShp As Shape
  For Each aSld In ActivePresentation.Slides
    For Each aShp In aSld.Shapes
      If aShp.Name = sLabel Then
        aShp.Delete
        Exit For
      End If
    Next aShp
  Next aSld
End Sub

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Looking at your code Andrew, there’s no way I could have written this, so thanks. I take it that it doesn’t actually mark the slide as hidden but Jon will have to hide them first.

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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Thanks, Andrew. Much appreciated. So sorry for the delay.

I tried just creating and this running this macro, but got an error, a screenshot of which I’m attaching.

At this point, I feel like a fool and a j*** — a fool for asking a question that involves so much labor, and a j*** for taking so long to reply, and then complaining it doesn’t work.

If you’re up for further troubleshooting, I’d be in your debt. Of course, if you’re not, I totally understand.

Thanks so much.

45761-01

45762-02

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Jon
Delete the first line which shouldn’t be there (and wasn’t in the code I posted).

The first line of the module should be
Option Explicit

Check through the rest of the code to ensure there isn’t any other remnants that you might have had in the module where you pasted my code. Typically the vba editor creates an End Sub line automatically when a sub is created so there could be an extra one in your code somewhere.

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Thanks, Andrew! That did the trick! You are the best!

One follow-up: is there a way to add this macro to my PowerPoint template, so it’s available for all presentations? Right now, it appears that I need to manually create the macro each time I want to use it.

Thank you again.

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Add the code to a blank powerpoint file and save it as an addin (.ppam). I would also add both macros as buttons on the Quick Access Toolbar and save those customisations to the same document.

Then place a copy of that file into your addins folder which can be found by pasting the following line into the folder path of a Windows Explorer window and pressing Enter.
%appdata%/Microsoft/Addins

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Many thanks, Andrew, for your continued patience. I just spent 15 minutes trying to implement this, but ran into all sorts of problems. So, I’m going to look on the bright side: at least I know how to create the macro when I need it. Thanks again for everything!

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