MIRC Powerpoint Tool

PPT2MIRC is a Powerpoint plug-in that saves a Powerpoint presentation as a MIRCdocument on a MIRC site, allowing the presentation to be found through normal MIRC queries. It was written by Scott Keller, based on work done by Prof. Amilcare Gentili of UCSD.

PPT2MIRC creates a page-mode document containing standard MIRC elements (title, author, abstract, etc.), a link to the presentation itself, images of each of the slides, and an invisible section containing the text from all the slides and notes pages, allowing the presentation to be found by searching for any of the text on any of the slides or notes pages. The link to the presentation allows the user to retrieve the original Powerpoint presentation from the MIRC site.

1 Installation

After downloading the Powerpoint Tool, it must be registered with Powerpoint as an add-in. The default location where Powerpoint looks for add-ins is C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Microsoft\AddIns, where USERNAME is to be replaced by your actual username.

After placing the file in the AddIns directory, you must set the security level for macros and then enable the add-in.

To set the security level:

• Run Powerpoint.
• In the menu bar, select Tools / Options.
• In the Options dialog, click the Security tab.
• Click the Macro Security... button.
• In the Security dialog, click the Security Level tab.
• Click the Medium radio button.
• Click the OK button on the Security dialog.
• Click the OK button on the Options dialog.

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File:MIRC2PPTb.JPG

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To enable the add-in:

• In the menu bar, select Tools / Add-ins.
• In the Add-Ins dialog, check the PPT2MIRC box if it appears; otherwise, click the Add New... button and navigate to the PPT2MIRC.ppa file.
• Click the Close button.

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2 Operation

To use PPT2MIRC, open a presentation in Powerpoint. In the Tools menu, select Convert to MIRC. A window will be displayed as shown to the right.

Set the MIRC Address field to point to the MIRC site to which you want to submit the MIRCdocument. The default setting points to a storage service named storage on a MIRC site running on your local computer (localhost) on port 8080. Change these parameters as required. (If you aren't sure what the values should be, go to the query page for the site, click the Submit Service button, and look in the browser's address bar.)

Next, fill in any of the fields you want. Pay special attention to these fields:

• Set the title, author and abstract fields so that the MIRCdocument reflects the presentation when it is included in query results.
• Make sure you put your MIRC username in the owner field. This is important to ensure that you will have control over the document when it is stored on the MIRC site.
• Set the three access fields to determine whether others can read, update, or export the document.

When you have set all the fields the way you want, click the Send button on the MIRC Address line.

PPT2MIRC will then create the MIRCdocument and the images of the slides and then submit everything to the MIRC site. The result will be displayed in the results field of the window as shown. You can click the link in the results field to go directly to the MIRCdocument on the site.

If you entered your MIRC username in the owner field, you will be able to edit the MIRCdocument through the author service on the MIRC site.