Powerpoint 2010 - vba - embedded control coordinates

Question

Hi

>> I am after the translation of units to pixels  or where in the VBA slide of a msoOLEControlObject object, has the top left pixel values ?

e.g. in the object i can get the offsetWidth (document.body) and height in pixels. This seems to be true.
However the units for left, top of the embedded control are float numbers like 48.25, 83.5

Now using Spy++ the pixel values of the top left of the control in a full screen are 128, 283. You can see that even if you scale 48.25, this isn't the same scale ratio as the 83.5.

I am guessing some part of the object model has either the pixels or the correct scaling.

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi Greg,

Thanks for posting in the MSDN Forum.

I don't know how to measure the top, left property of the Shape, how ever I noticed that the Slide's Width is 720 and Height is 540. If you set 720 to Left, 540 to Top of the shape, the shape will just out of the slide's visible range. Angle on the angle. If you can know offsetWidth of the Slide I think you will easy to know how to measure the top and left.

Have  a good day,

Tom

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Tom Xu [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 2

Thanks Tom but what you have suggested does not resolve the issue.

Two issues as outlined above and why this is the case :

- Coordinates from object do not correspond with actual pixel values in full screen (and likely windowed mode)
- I need the top, left pixel and the values in the object do not map to the pixel locations or width in pixels

                Set theObject = oShape.OLEFormat.Object
                oLeft = theObject.Left
                oTop = theObject.Top
                oWidth = theObject.Width
                oHeight = theObject.Height
                theObject.Navigate (url)
               Debug.Print "oLeft " & oLeft; " Top " & oTop & " Width " & oWidth & " Height " & oHeight

>> There is a missing "X' from the doco which maps the values to true screen pixels

Regards Greg

Answer 3

Hi Greg,

OK, I will involve some experts into this issue the see whether them can help  you. There might be some time delay, thanks for your patience.

Have a good day,

Tom

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Tom Xu [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 4

Hi Greg,

I have a few questions, what PowerPoint build and operating system are you running? Also what is your overall reason and objective in you acquiring the top left pixel value for an ole object? In very general terms what are you trying to achieve. Thanks for your time and effort.

Regards,

Arthur

Answer 5

Hi Greg,

I also think the following link is worth taking a look at.

http://startbigthinksmall.wordpress.com/2010/01/04/points-inches-and-emus-measuring-units-in-office-open-xml/

Regards,

Arthur

Answer 6

If you search for me on posts in this forum, you will see a long list of questions wrt. Powerpoint and VBA.

I have a successful kios running in the company and the icing was allowing long web pages to scroll.

I found out i can make this work by clicking the mouse inside the web browser object and doing a page down in VBA.

It work reliably if you click on the RHS scroll bar. => Thus the need to know the screen coords.

The article above looks promising, i get back here once i have tried a few things.

regards Greg

Answer 7

Hi Greg

I have not heard back from you, but I am hoping the article I referenced below helped you answer some of the questions you may have had. http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officegeneral/thread/b2b070ff-4436-4c9d-95f5-6ff39e2bdf76

If this information did not suffice, I would advise possible oppening a support case with us. Thanks for your time and effort.

Regards,

Arthur

Answer 8

Arthur

I got stymed trying to use .PointsToScreenPixelsX which needs a DocumentWindow

See http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officegeneral/thread/ba10911f-abbc-4538-b9c6-1765a0331994 

Unfortunately, Powerpoint is not consistent and does not always provide the DocumentWindow object

Add to this that the coordinates are relative to the PP window, i.e. in full screen no problem, but in windowed mode you need to know you top left cord.

Even then i am not sure if this is includes or excludes the realestate of the title bar in windowed mode.

I worked on an alternative of using windows queries, that too is problematic becuase of the class changes between edit and run mode, full screen and windowed mode.

I'll post back some results soon.

Regards

Answer 9

OK here is the results of many hours of trial and error...

 .PointsToScreenPixelsX  does not work as documented, see http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/officegeneral/thread/eb927b38-bbf4-4c38-8cbd-18c8a5974bd1

The way that does work is to look for the Windows used, parts of my code is below. This is for Powerpoint 2010.

Of note, in fullscreen mode, the top window has class "screenClass". In windowed mode the window is "PPTFrameClass" (note this is shared with Edit mode as well).

A web browser is housed in the "Shell Embedding" window. The coords are for the whole window so if a scroll bar exists it will be about 20 pixels before the X2 (right edge) point.

Don't be fooled by the "Internet Explorer_Server" window Spy++ shows, this is a common window used in all other IE windows and is not a direct child of the Powerpoint process.

=> Once you know the coords of the windows, both the full presentation (PresRect) and web browser  (MDIRect) , then controlling scrolling works. I used a timer, clicked on the scroll bar and did page downs.

NB: Name will vary for older versions of Powerpoint but the approach is much the same.

Public Declare Function SetCursorPos Lib "user32" (ByVal X As Long, ByVal Y As Long) As Long
Public Declare Sub mouse_event Lib "user32" (ByVal dwFlags As Long, ByVal dx As Long, ByVal dy As Long, ByVal cButtons As Long, ByVal dwExtraInfo As Long)
Public Declare Function GetCursorPos Lib "user32" _
(lpPoint As POINTAPI) As Long
Declare Function FindWindow Lib "user32" Alias "FindWindowA" _
      (ByVal lpClassName As String, ByVal lpWindowName As String) As Long
Declare Function EnumChildWindows Lib "user32" (ByVal hWndParent As _
Long, ByVal lpEnumFunc As Long, ByVal lParam As Long) As Long
Declare Function GetClassName Lib "user32" Alias "GetClassNameA" (ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lpsz1 As String, ByVal hwnd As Long) As Long
Declare Function GetWindowRect Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As Long, lpRect As Rect) As Long
Type Rect
     x1 As Long
     y1 As Long
     x2 As Long
     y2 As Long
End Type
Private Type POINTAPI
    X As Long
    Y As Long
End Type
Public MDIRect As Rect              ' Co-ords of object
Public PresRect As Rect             ' Co-ords of presentation
Public ptLocation As POINTAPI       ' Current cursor point
Public ptLocationSet As POINTAPI    ' Point we asked to cursor to be
Public Const SCROLLBAR_XADJUST = -10
Public Const SCROLLBAR_YADJUST = 100
Public Const PARK_XADJUST = -300    ' Where to park relative to BR
Public Const PARK_YADJUST = -20     ' Where to park relative to BR
Option Explicit
'
' Find the "Shell Embedding" window for the browser
'
Function GetBrowserLocation() As Boolean
    Dim hwnd1 As Long
    Dim retval As Long ' return value
    
    hwnd1 = FindWindow("screenClass", vbNullString)     ' This is valid in Full Screen Mode
    Debug.Print "screenClass - Handle is " & hwnd1
    
    If hwnd1 = 0 Then
    hwnd1 = FindWindow("PPTFrameClass", vbNullString)   ' This is valid in windowed mode, note name here is for Powerpoint 2010
    Debug.Print "PPTFrameClass - Handle is " & hwnd1    ' Other versions would need additional name checks
    End If
    
    GetWindowRect hwnd1, PresRect       ' Remember co-ords of overall presentation
    
    MDIRect.x1 = -1 ' Deliberately set -ve value to be used to check if valid co-ords have been found
    
    ' Use the above callback function to list all of the enumerated windows. Note that lParam is
    ' set to 0 because we don't need to pass any additional information to the function.
    If hwnd1 <> 0 Then
        retval = EnumChildWindows(hwnd1, AddressOf EnumChildProc, 0)
    End If
    
    If MDIRect.x1 = -1 Then
        GetBrowserLocation = False      ' Web browser not found
    Else
        GetBrowserLocation = True       ' Web browser found
        ' OK place cursor at parked position
        ptLocationSet.X = PresRect.x2 + PARK_XADJUST
        ptLocationSet.Y = PresRect.y2 + PARK_YADJUST
        
        SetCursorPos ptLocationSet.X, ptLocationSet.Y
    End If
End Function
' Display the title bar text of all children of window MDIForm1. This
' task is given to the callback function, which will receive each handle individually.
' *** Place this code in a module. This is the callback function. ***
' This function displays the title bar text of the window identified by hwnd.
Public Function EnumChildProc(ByVal hwnd As Long, ByVal lParam As Long) As Long
    Dim hwndChild As Long
    Dim buffer As String
    Dim retval As Long ' return value
    
    buffer = Space(100)
    
    retval = GetClassName(hwnd, buffer, 100)
    buffer = Trim(buffer)
    'Debug.Print "Class name: " & buffer
    ' By using Spy++ this is the common window name used to contain the object
    If StrComp(buffer, "Shell Embedding", 1) = 0 Then
        ' This means we have found the embedded object
        Debug.Print " Shell Embedding found"
        GetWindowRect hwnd, MDIRect     ' Remember location
        Debug.Print "Window Coords TL " & MDIRect.x1 & ", " & MDIRect.y1 & " BR " & MDIRect.x2 & ", " & MDIRect.y2
        EnumChildProc = 0
    Else
        'Debug.Print "Not found #" & hwndChild
        EnumChildProc = 1 ' return value of 1 means continue enumeration
    End If
End Function