Add a hovering quick access toolbar to the slide show to directly select the color of the annotation pen, a highlighter, an eraser, laser pointer, insert a new empty slide and display the slide overview.
The toolbar can be used in duplicated screen view as well as on the presenter view.
As you can see, there are two versions of the toolbar. At startup you will see the horizontal version. Clicking the turn left/right icon allows to switch between the two versions.
The vertical version is, due to restrictions for the minimal width of userforms in office, quite wide.
The toolbar has been tested with Office 2016 and 2019 with 64bit versions
Test the Add-in by double clicking the the file PenTool.ppam and Powerpoint should start and run the Add-in. To install the toolbar, you should copy it to your Add-in directory (e.g. C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\AddIns ). Open an empty Powerpoint presentation and
goto File -> Options -> Add-Ins -> Manage "Powerpoint Add-Ins" -> Insert new and select the file PenTool.ppam
It might be, that a security warning appears to enable macros. You will only be able to use the Add-in, when macros are allowed to be executed.
A new entry in the Menu appears called Pen Tool.
The Add-in has been created with Powerpoint 2016 and tested on 2019. If an error message pops up, when enabling the toolbar, your version is not compatible.
To solve this problem, you can follow the instructions below for the customization to create the Add-in from the PenTool.pptm file.
When starting Powerpoint, the toolbar is disabled. To enable it, you need to click the Enable button in the Pen Tool menu.
The toolbar appears once the slide show is started.
Annotations are usually done with a second screen/projector attached to the laptop or tablet. Per default, Powerpoint starts with the "Presenter View" on the main screen. The toolbar will appear on the "Presenter View" screen in the top left corner. You can use it to annotate the current slide in the presenter view. Usually you would increase the size of the current slide to make this convenient.
To draw directly on the projected screen, you need to switch to "Mirrored Screens" AND disable the "Presenter View" in the "Slide Show" settings. Goto Monitor group and uncheck "Use Presenter View".
: Move the toolbar to a different location
: Turn the toolbar to vertical layout
: Switch to annotation pen and select the color
: Switch to eraser tool
: Switch to highlighter pen
: Use pen as laser pointer
: Add an empty slide
: Open the slide overview
: Goto previous slide
: Goto next slide
: Revert cursor to arrow
: Show a black screen
: Continue presentation
: Exit the slide show
Open the file PenTool.pptm and start the VBA console (ALT+F11). To run the code, you have to execute InitializeApp in
the module PenTool_Init: select the module, place the cursor at the end of the code and hit F5 to execute. Afterwards, goto the
PPT window and start a slideshow. The toolbar should appear now.
After you did your modifications, save the pptm file AND do a save as to PenTool.ppam. The latter requires some additions.
Install the CustomUIEditor or the project Office RibbonX Editor, load the ppam file and right click on the name in the left hand pane. Select Office 2010 ... and
paste the content of the file PenTool.xml into the right pane. Customize the XML content.
Thats it! Now you can load the Add-In again. If you did not change the name, the modifications will be visible at the next start of Powerpoint.
The standard version PenTool.ppam sends key shortcuts to Powerpoint to switch to the Eraser, Highlighter and Laser Pointer.
This might fail, depending on the Office version. The PenTool_simple.ppam contains a pure Visual Basic macro based version. This
version misses the Highlighter and the icon of the Eraser is the laser pointer.
Enjoy!