Webmaster Forum / Flash / General Flash Topics / July 2008

No, and yes........

Let me explain.

I don't believe you can work with the program that Presenter exported in
Flash.  I've never worked with Presenter myself, so perhaps I am incorrect.

BUT.  You can export that PPT to Flash with help from a third-party plug-in
(You can find one
)http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/EM102549991033.aspx?pid=CE0108209
81033  That will probably give you a SWF, but a quick decompile will give you a
FLA.  Once you have a FLA, you can add all of the functionality you asked about
and much much more.

That would very likely work.  I myself cannot say with 100% accuracy, as I have
never used Presenter, but I see no reason for it NOT to work.

A flash form is very easy to make.  And, it is fairly simple to host a SWF in
a PPT.  The only risky area is in publishing the PPT out to Presenter.  But, I
would say that its worth taking a look at.  Before purchasing Flash, download
the 30-day free trial from Adobe's website.  That way you can give it a shot
risk-free (or at least money-free).

The easiest method for you would be to use the following components:

TextInput - this is an input text field
Button - would be the submit button

To put it together:

Make a new Actionscript 2 flash file.  AS2 is much easier to work with for a
beginner, and is fairly easy for this purpose.

Drag your instance of the TextInput and Button to the stage, and position
them.  Add some text for instructions.

Select the TextInput, go to the properties panel and give it an instance name
(the field under the drop-down) - something like "myInput"

Do the same with the Button ("myBtn")

click on the first frame in the timeline, and go to the Actions panel.  You
will know you are entering actions properly if the panel says "Actions - Frame"
in the tab.  Enter the following scripts:

myBtn.onRelease = function(){

//this is where you perform whatever actions you need.
trace(myInput.text);

}

Next, Control::Test Movie, enter some text in the input box, and click the
button.  The text you entered into the input box will trace out into the Output
tab of Flash.

I do not know the script you need to get the text from the flash out to the
Presenter, but this will get you started.