How to invoke an action during powerpoint slideshow programmatically?

Don't ask me why C# behaves like this but it does!

You have to issue the command twice for it to work...

Tried and Tested

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)    {        //To launch Powepoint        PowerPoint.Application objPPT = new PowerPoint.Application();        objPPT.Visible = Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoTriState.msoTrue;        //Add new presentation        PowerPoint.Presentations oPresSet = objPPT.Presentations;        PowerPoint.Presentation oPres = oPresSet.Add(Microsoft.Office.Core.MsoTriState.msoTrue);        //Add a slide        PowerPoint.Slides oSlides = oPres.Slides;        PowerPoint.Slide oSlide = oSlides.Add(1, PowerPoint.PpSlideLayout.ppLayoutTitleOnly);        //Add text        PowerPoint.TextRange tr = oSlide.Shapes[1].TextFrame.TextRange;        tr.Text = "Launch notepad";        //tr.Select();        //Add Action settings on the shape        oSlide.Shapes[1].ActionSettings[PowerPoint.PpMouseActivation.ppMouseClick].Action = PowerPoint.PpActionType.ppActionRunProgram;        oSlide.Shapes[1].ActionSettings[PowerPoint.PpMouseActivation.ppMouseClick].Run = @"C:\WINDOWS\system32\notepad.exe";        oSlide.Shapes[1].ActionSettings[PowerPoint.PpMouseActivation.ppMouseClick].Action = PowerPoint.PpActionType.ppActionRunProgram;        oSlide.Shapes[1].ActionSettings[PowerPoint.PpMouseActivation.ppMouseClick].Run = @"C:\WINDOWS\system32\notepad.exe";        //start slideshow        objPPT.ActivePresentation.SlideShowSettings.Run();    }

HTH

Sid

This might be a more complicated solution than what you were hoping for, but if you could somehow determine the X and Y coordinate of your "text/shape" object on the screen (perhaps with the Coded UI and VSTO Libraries?), you could use the User32 "SendInput" method to emulate moving the mouse to the location of the object and then emulate a mouse click.

Here is the code to emulate the user's input:

int x, y;// ...  First obtain the X and Y coordinate of the "text/shape" object from APIs//InputEmulator inputEmulator = new InputEmulator();inputEmulator.MoveMouse(x, y);inputEmulator.ClickMouse();

And here is a stripped down version of an InputEmulator class I use to emulate Windows UI actions:

class InputEmulator{    private const int INPUT_MOUSE = 0;    private const uint MOUSEEVENTF_MOVE = 0x0001;    private const uint MOUSEEVENTF_ABSOLUTE = 0x8000;    private const uint MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTDOWN = 0x0002;    private const uint MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTUP = 0x0004;    public void MoveMouse(int x, int y)    {        INPUT[] inp = new INPUT[1];        inp[0].type = INPUT_MOUSE;        inp[0].mi = createMouseInput(x, y, 0, 0, MOUSEEVENTF_ABSOLUTE | MOUSEEVENTF_MOVE);        SendInput((uint)1, inp, Marshal.SizeOf(inp[0].GetType()));    }    public void ClickMouse()    {        INPUT[] inp = new INPUT[2];        inp[0].type = INPUT_MOUSE;        inp[0].mi = createMouseInput(0, 0, 0, 0, MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTDOWN);        inp[1].type = INPUT_MOUSE;        inp[1].mi = createMouseInput(0, 0, 0, 0, MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTUP);        SendInput((uint)inp.Length, inp, Marshal.SizeOf(inp[0].GetType()));    }    [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]    private static extern uint SendInput(uint nInputs, INPUT[] pInputs, int cbSize);    private static MOUSEINPUT createMouseInput(int x, int y, uint data, uint t, uint flag)    {        MOUSEINPUT mi = new MOUSEINPUT();        mi.dx = x;        mi.dy = y;        mi.mouseData = data;        mi.time = t;        //mi.dwFlags = MOUSEEVENTF_ABSOLUTE| MOUSEEVENTF_MOVE;        mi.dwFlags = flag;        return mi;    }    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Explicit)]    private struct INPUT    {        [FieldOffset(0)]        public int type;        [FieldOffset(sizeof(int))] //[FieldOffset(8)] for x64        public MOUSEINPUT mi;    }    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]    struct MOUSEINPUT    {        public int dx;        public int dy;        public uint mouseData;        public uint dwFlags;        public uint time;        public IntPtr dwExtraInfo;    }}