Using Macros with SharePoint and Doing Videotaping with PowerPoint

I spent the past weekend trying to do a mini-videotape on how to navigate SharePoint and use a certain file. This post is just my stream of consciousness output of what I learned during the whole process.

First, the videotaping. You can actually do a videotape of your screen using PowerPoint. It’s basically “inserting your screen recording” as depicted in Figure 1. Now I had to re-do the videos maybe between 5 to 10 times before I got a sense of what I could and could not do, so here’s a short list of what I think you can do to help prepare and corral your information for the video:

• Plan on practicing a couple of times. That’s a must.
• Maybe plan out some PowerPoint slides as part of your video so you can move through the slides and then move to the action you want to show. The slides can set the agenda of what will be shown on the video and can capture in written word the salient key points to bolster what is being said.
• Learn to move from slide presentation to other parts of the desktop. For example, if you need to move from your slide presentation to the internet, make sure you know how to do that. From the Slide Show tab in PowerPoint, you can start the slide “From Current Slide” (Figure 2). To get out of presentation mode and move onto other parts of computer, down at lower left-hand corner you will see some icons very faintly. Click on the “…” icon to bring up some choices (Figure 3). Then click on “Screen” and then “Show Task Bar” (Figure 4). This will give you a task bar at the bottom so you can maneuver around the computer. Play with this to get familiar.

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• Again, practice, practice, practice, so you know what you are going to do.

Here’s an example of a PowerPoint where I prepared my thoughts and used throughout the video:

Next, SharePoint. There’s a couple of little quirks about SharePoint that I’ve had to learn.

• First, if your SharePoint does not show up in the File Explorer format, your macro will have to be different.
  
  Below I’m embedding a snippet of what I think are the relevant part of the codes for Dropbox and for SharePoint, so you can compare. I’m doing something where I create a network drive that points to the SharePoint site and then when I’m done, I close down that drive.

You will have to scroll around to see the code or you can download the file.

• Now, if I can make SharePoint show up in File Explorer, then I think the macro will go back to being very similar to the Dropbox.
• There is an autosave feature. At home, when I open up files from SharePoint, the autosave feature does not appear but at work it does. If you want the capability to close down a file without saving any changes you make to the file (maybe you were just testing or playing around but you really didn’t want to save the file), then the autosave will have to be turned off. If the autosave is turned on, it looks like SharePoint will save any changes you make to the file.

Okay, sorry for the roughness of this post but I just wanted to get down some thoughts before going to bed. I’m done for the night.