Month: March 2014

Remove or Hide PowerPoint Controls on All Slides

chrisbitting, , , , , , Leave a comment

ppt3If you customize PowerPoint with controls (button, text boxes, labels, etc.) you may want to delete or hide these to create a clean version of your presentation. Below is a script you can use hide all of the controls (or you can filter). My example uses PowerPoint 2010 but should apply to most recent versions:

 

1. Create a new module: ppt1

2. Paste the below text:

Public Sub HideControls()

'keep a count of how many items hidden - just fyi
Dim cntrlCount As Integer
    'loop through slides
    For Each sld In ActivePresentation.Slides
        'loop through slide shapes - includes button, text boxes, ole controls, etc
        For Each shp In sld.Shapes
        
        ''Filter here if you want - by name or type
        ' If InStr(shp.Name, "command") >= 1 Then
        ' If shp.Type = 3 Then
        
        'set hidden
        shp.Visible = False
        
        'if you wanted to delete*: shp.Delete
        
        cntrlCount = cntrlCount + 1
        
        Next
    
    Next

MsgBox cntrlCount & " items affected."

End Sub

3. Click Run (green play button) to run this code and hide your controls. ppt2

 

If you want to show or unhide your controls, change shp.Visible = False to shp.Visible = True

 

*Note: if you use shp.Delete, you won’t be able to recover your items.

Remove or Hide PowerPoint Controls on All Slides

Renaming a local file in Cordova / PhoneGap

chrisbitting, , , , , , , , 1 Comment

A few folks have asked “how do I simply rename a local file in Cordova?” Well, to start, you’ll need the file plugin from Apache Cordova. If you don’t already have this, run the below to add the file plugin.

cordova plugin add org.apache.cordova.core.file

Then, you can use the “moveTo” function to rename the file. Below is a reusable function I utilize to pass the current file name, directory, the new file name and a function that happens when the rename is successful.

You can utilize the below function like:

//to call the function. 'renameSuccess' is an function that is used as the success event if the rename is okay
renameFile('somefile.xml','myapp/xml/','new.xml', renameSuccess);

//the function
function renameFile(currentName, currentDir, newName, successFunction) {

    window.requestFileSystem(LocalFileSystem.PERSISTENT, 0, function (fileSystem) {

        fileSystem.root.getFile(currentDir + currentName, null, function (fileEntry) {
            fileSystem.root.getDirectory(currentDir, {create: true}, function (dirEntry) {
                parentEntry = new DirectoryEntry(currentName, currentDir + currentName);

                fileEntry.moveTo(dirEntry, newName, function () {

                    successFunction();

                }, renameFail);
            }, renameFail);
        }, renameFail);

    }, renameFail);
}

//and the sample success function
function renameSuccess() {
    alert('renamed!');
}

//and the sample fail function
function renameFail() {
    alert('failed');
}

I’m not saying this is the ‘best’ way to do this, so feel free to comment on improvements!

Renaming a local file in Cordova / PhoneGap

Allow Local File Access in Chrome (Windows)

chrisbitting, , , 2 Comments

chrome-128Sometimes it’s cool to debug and test javascript applications in Chrome but you want to read / write to local files. Example: you’re looking to use ajax and do a $.getJSON(‘json/somefile.json’). Chrome by default won’t allow this and will throw an error similar to:

Failed to load resource: No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' 
header is present on the requested resource. 
Origin 'null' is therefore not allowed access.

Or
XMLHttpRequest cannot load. No 'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' 
header is present on the requested resource. 
Origin 'null' is therefore not allowed access.

Chrome does have a switch to enable this, it’s quite easy to turn on. You’ll need to make sure Chrome is closed completely, and run chrome with the ‘–allow-file-access-from-files’ flag. Ie:

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application>
chrome --allow-file-access-from-files

Or you should be able to run:

%localappdata%\google\chrome\application\chrome --allow-file-access-from-files

I’ve made the below into a .bat file I use, if you find it helps.

start "chrome" %localappdata%\google\chrome\application\chrome --allow-file-access-from-files
exit

To see if the flag is set, you can visit:  chrome://version/ and look at the Command Line section and you should see –allow-file-access-from-files

You’ll most likely need to run this with at least admin access, and I would caution visiting unknown sites with this setting on, as they could capitalize on your setting and potentially read local files.

Update, see my newer post on using node and http-server to create a local web server to get around these issues:
Local web server for testing / development using Node.js and http-server

Allow Local File Access in Chrome (Windows)