Question

I’ve got a macro in PowerPoint 2010 that links audio files to each and every slide. However, this takes some time, and although there is a status bar “linking files” progress, I would like something more In your face.

Caveat: I’m really not familiar with VBA or it’s API.

What I want:

ImBusyDialog("Linking Files...").Open()

// Call Sub that does real work.

ImBusyDialog.Close();

and that’s it. If there’s something built in like the page loading spinner in IE, then great, if not, I’m happy with a simple message box. The important thing is that it require no user intervention.

Answer 1

Use the same logic as you do to set the status bar. Where you set the statusbar text, you’ll simply add the appropriate code to call a status dialog box.

O’Reilly has a rather detailed description on how to build a status bar dialog box with a progress bar and everything. It is probably a bit overkill for what you want, but more to see what is possible in VBA: http://oreilly.com/pub/h/2607

Stackoverflow has dealt with this issue before as well with a relatively simple box you could easily modify to show which file is being worked on an any given moment: How do I create a status dialog box in Excel

The important code from the previous post:

Sub ShowForm_DoSomething()r
Load frmStatus
     frmStatus.Label1.Caption = "Starting"
     frmStatus.Show
     frmStatus.Repaint
'Load the form and set text
     frmStatus.Label1.Caption = "Doing something"
     frmStatus.Repaint
'code here to perform an action
      frmStatus.Label1.Caption = "Doing something else"
     frmStatus.Repaint
'code here to perform an action
      frmStatus.Label1.Caption = "Finished"
     frmStatus.Repaint
     Application.Wait (Now + TimeValue("0:00:01"))
     frmStatus.Hide
     Unload frmStatus 'hide and unload the form
End Sub

The O’Reilly solution certainly is an involved solution, but it seems the “prettiest” and would probably be very user-friendly. The SO solution appears to be much easier to implement though.