Office & productivity software forum: Using USB Flash Drive for powerpoint presentations w/ video

that this is to do with the links to the movie samples in the PowerPoint Presentation.

I can't tell you much because I have never created a PowerPoint file and I don't know the procedure, but if that fie has links to the movies that include the full path, eg E:\Movies Folder\Movie1.mpg, then when you start the presentation it will look for the movie files in drive E. If that doesn't exist, or if the flash drive is loaded as a different drive on different computers, then that search will fail.

You need to change the link to the movies so that it does not refer back to the drive letter. Instead of an absolute link, you need a relative link.

The absolute link will look like E:\Movies Folder\Movie1.mpg

The relative link will look something like ..\Movies Folder\Movie1.mpg

The ..\ tells the software to step back to the previous directory, (in ths case the root directory of the flash drive), then look for the folder "Movies Folder".

I hope that helps. I know it isn't very clear.

Mark

how you inserted the movies in the first place.

Those places in the PowerPoint document where you inserted the movies will be 'links' to the movie file locations. I can't tell you how to look at those links because I have not used PowerPoint, but if you find the place where one has been inserted, try right clicking that entry and see what displays in the menu that appears. It may show Properties, or Edit or something else that is relevant.

The link will look something like E:\Movies Folder\Movie1.mpg where E is the flash drive where the movie was saved to, and 'Movies Folder' is whatever folder name you have given to where the movies are.

Then you change/edit that location to ..\Movies Folder\Movie1.mpg , or whatever the movie name is.

I am unsure what the convention is here. It may be that the slashes should be forward, not backward, ie;
../Movies Folder/Movie1.mpg

But what matters is that you remove the E:\ or E:/ and substitute ..\ or ../

I hope that helps.

Mark

It makes no sense that PowerPoint can't accept relative links in other sub-folders. All other Microsoft products do.

But, there you go. It can't, so we have to use the methods available.

Mark

It appears Vergeront received their answers and while you have a question, it's incomplete. Locking this one so you can make a new complete post.