I am on a quest to solve PowerPoint control issues that come up during my presentations. I Zoom, Teams, and share my screen a lot. I often communicate business ideas via slides and love being able to give effective presentations. My biggest issue in a multimonitor setup is flipping back and forth from Zoom or Teams to PowerPoint and having my presentation lose focus. I then go to advance the slides and nothing happens. I then Alt+Tab to find my slideshow and try again. I want to advance my slides no matter what window is in focus. My solution involves a wireless presenter remote and the AutoHotkey utility for Windows. You can reproduce this configuration with any HID device like a footswitch or even an Arduino. I have also used the Elgato Stream Deck to accomplish the same result but I find it clunky to use when I am presenting. I like holding on to the remote, talking with my hands, and being animated to heighten the impact of my message.
Big pitcure. We are going to install the norwii Preernter woftware, config the buttons on the presenter remote, and create a custom AutoHotkey script to intercept the button presses and send them to PowerPoint. If you don’t do this, the presenter remote will only work when PowerPoint is in focus. That works well in some situations, but it doesn’t work as well for online meetings where you are moving around your desktop to monitor the chat, look a response, or find a document.
Buy the Norwii N28 Presenter Remote on Amazon. The N28 has a big button for advancing slides. It’s wireless. And, most of the buttons are customizable. I also like this model since it uses a AAA battery instead of a rechargeable battery. The rechargeable model sounds like a good idea, but I have found out that it is always dead when you want to use it. With the replaceable battery model, you just replace the battery if it is dead. From my experience and usage, the AAA battery lasts almost a year.
Install the Norwii Presenter Utility for Windows. This software has the driver for the wireless dongle and also a tool for remapping the buttons of your remote to new buttons. You can remap all of the buttons (except the laser pointer button). The software is not necessarily easy to use, but it gets the job done. Other presentation remotes lack the ability to be reprogrammed. This is why I love the Norwii models.
Customize the Norwii Presenter buttons. Click on the Customize tab in the utility and make sure N28 (M) is selected as the model. Under each key configure the short press function for each mapping that you have in AutoHotkey (more on that in a moment). The big yellow button is known as the “Page down” key. I use Shift + F12 to advance my slides in PowerPoint. you can do the other buttons if you like. I have experimented with programing all of the buttons to advance the slides. That way I don’t have to fumble around trying to pick the right button in the heat of the moment. But, I have expanded this to backing up a slide (page up key) and exiting the presentation with the enter key. I practiced a few times to get this right. Let me know in the comments what works for you.
Also, make sure that the Norwii Presenter Utility starts up with Windows. This will make sure that the utility is running in the background after you reboot to install Windows updates. Click the Setup tab and select, “Start Norwii Presenter after Windows startup.”
Install and configure AutoHotkey. We are going to use an awesome utity for Windows PCs called AutoHotkey. This utility listen for your custom key presses redirects the controls to PowerPoint. Let me warn you now ff this is your first time using AutoHokey. You are going to get addicted to automation. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Install AutoHotkey on your Windows PC. AHK will run in the background waiting for keyboard commands that match the rules that you have created. For help, check out the documentation and the Hello World video on YouTube. I know, it will be daunting at first, but a community of people for the last decade have been creating videos, examples, and tutorials. You just might be inspired to automate other computing tasks. My goal is to map Shift+F12 and Shift+F11 to Page Up and Page Down. Page Up and Page Down are keyboard shortcuts for PowerPoint.
- Right-click on your desktop
- Find “New” in the menu
- Click “AutoHotkey Script” inside the “New” menu
- Name it PowerPoint.ahk
- Right-click on PowerPoint.ahk and click “Edit Script”
- Enter the v1 or v2 and save:
+F12::
If WinExist("PowerPoint Slide Show")
{
WinActivate ;
Send {PgDn}
return
}
Else
{
ControlSend,mdiClass1,+{F5},ahk_exe POWERPNT.EXE
return
}
+F11::
if WinExist("PowerPoint Slide Show")
{
WinActivate ;
Send {PgUp}
return
}
return
+F8::
if WinExist("PowerPoint Slide Show")
{
WinActivate ;
Send {Esc}
return
}
return
For more AutoHotkey button mappings, check out my GitHub repository.
Use your new power to deliver the ultimate PowerPoint presenation. Now that you are all powerful, open PowerPoint and click the big yellow button on the Norwii N28 remote. This will put your presentaiton into presentation mode. Click the big yellow button again. Your slides or animations advance. Click it again. Your slides advance. It is a beautiful thing.
Let me know in the comments if you try this out. Also, let me know if you have some tricks for PowerPoint or other Windows apps. I am always looking to optimize.
Update: July 11, 2023 – New AutoHotkey v2 Config File
I got a new laptop and had to reinstall my PowerPoint control setup. I noticed that AutoHotkey has changed their configuration files a lot and have defaulted to AutoHotkey v2 and deprecated v1.
I re-wrote the config file for AutoHotkey v2 and updated the code on the GitHub repo: https://github.com/nothans/autohotkey-config-for-powerpoint