title: run consecutive powerpoint presentations automatically from a remote
body: <p>My firm presents seminars. Each seminar runs for three days, and each contains multiple PowerPoint presentations for each day. </p>
  
  <p>Our presenters have minimal technical expertise. When they’re presenting, they use a very basic remote that can forward and advance slides or switch to a black screen. That’s it. </p>
  
  <p>When they get to the end of the first PowerPoint presentation, they do not want to have to walk over to the laptop, close the show, and open the next one. This needs to happen seamlessly. And for many years, it has. Older versions of PowerPoint had an option called “Package for CD” which would bundle all of the presentations into a single folder (along with any embedded audio and video files – there are lots of those). The folder would also contain an EXE of PowerPoint Viewer, and a .BAT file containing the file names of all of the shows. So all we’d have to do is run the BAT file, and each PPT file would play sequentially. </p>
  
  <p>However PPT 2010 no longer bundles multiple files together. I tried to come up with a BAT file that calls for the PPT exe to run, and then lists each file, with a command line switch to run in slideshow mode. And it works… some of the time. And then some of the time it comes with a “can’t read file” error. </p>
  
  <p>In a nutshell – we need a way to run a series of PPT files in slideshow mode, so that one file opens and then at the end of the file it opens the next one, without needing to press any buttons or touch the laptop. </p>
  
  <p>This is the text of the BAT file I created that works intermittently: </p>
  
  <p>"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\POWERPNT.EXE" /S 00Intro.pptx 01Legal.pptx 02pers.pptx</p>
  
  <p>Any help would be appreciated. </p>