Version: Dec 30, 2024

AutoHotKey Windows PowerPoint

Overview

I have a client, Dreblow and Associates, a company owned and operated by my family. My father, Daniel Dreblow, is the Founder and President. As the head of IT, I manage the organization’s entire technical infrastructure, which includes developing and maintaining email addresses, websites, webinars, and a plethora of technical tools.

In today’s challenge, we faced an issue while using GoToWebinar to broadcast a PowerPoint presentation while speaking to potential prospects, but they encountered an issue: whenever the GoToWebinar app was in focus, the PowerPoint slideshow lost focus, making it impossible to cycle through the slides during the presentation. To solve this, I used AutoHotKey (AHK) to create global keyboard shortcuts that worked across all windows, in Widnows 11. This allowed the client to control the PowerPoint slideshow seamlessly, even while GoToWebinar was the active application. The AHK script enabled smooth transitions between slides without disrupting the webinar, ensuring a professional and hassle-free presentation experience.

This guide hopes to help those get AHK running with the provided script. The provided script interacts with Microsoft PowerPoint via PowerPoint API. When things are up and running, One will be able to control the slides via ctrl-left for a previous slide and ctrl-right for the next slide.

1. Download AHK

• Its recommended that one download the AutoHotKey from the Microsoft Store - AutoHotkey

2. Creating AHK Script

Using the PowerPoint COM API is the most robust solution when other methods fail. Here’s a script leveraging the COM object model to control the slideshow programmatically. This will work even when PowerPoint is not the active window.

• Create a txt file, take the below script and paste it in the text file.
• Change the file type from txt to ahk
• PowerPoint COM API Script

  #NoEnv
  SendMode Input
  SetTitleMatchMode, 2 ; Enable partial matching for window titles
  #Persistent
  
  ; Initialize PowerPoint COM object
  ppt := ComObjCreate("PowerPoint.Application")
  
  ; Next Slide: Ctrl + Right
  ^Right::
      slideShow := GetSlideShow()
      if (slideShow) {
          slideShow.View.Next
      } else {
          MsgBox, No active PowerPoint slideshow found.
      }
      return
  
  ; Previous Slide: Ctrl + Left
  ^Left::
      slideShow := GetSlideShow()
      if (slideShow) {
          slideShow.View.Previous
      } else {
          MsgBox, No active PowerPoint slideshow found.
      }
      return
  
  ; Function to get the active slideshow
  GetSlideShow() {
      global ppt
      try {
          return ppt.SlideShowWindows(1) ; Get the first active slideshow window
      } catch {
          return
      }
  }
  

3. Launching Script

With AutoHotKey (AHK) installed and running, double-click on the .ahk file to start the script. Open a PowerPoint presentation of your choice and put it in slideshow mode. Then, open another application, such as Windows Explorer or a web browser, and position it in the foreground so that the PowerPoint presentation is visible in the background but not focused. This setup simulates the scenario where GoToWebinar (or another app) is in focus during a presentation.

Now, test the global keyboard shortcuts you set in the AHK script. Press the assigned keys to cycle through the PowerPoint slides (e.g., next or previous), ensuring the commands work seamlessly even when the PowerPoint application is not the active window. Verify that the slides transition correctly without disrupting the application in the foreground. If everything functions as expected, your script is successfully enabling smooth slide control during presentations.